How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

26 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

About goddamn time.

Always just slow enough the Russians can adapt. Their is still an attempt on going to thread the diplomatic needle. Given the consequences of Russia just collapsing that might be justified, however their is ever more evidence that all that is left of the needle is slag on he!!'s shop floor. That makes threading it kind of hard.

 

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'll chime in from my perspective.

UGVs can perform pretty much any role that any current ground vehicle can perform, though admittedly much larger ones are needed to exactly mimic the role of SPGs and MBTs (i.e. large caliber, relatively cheap rounds fired rapidly and in quantity).  This is an important thing to keep in mind when examining the relative benefits of UGVs over conventional ground vehicles:

1. production - cheaper, quicker, and easier to design, produce, and stockpile
2. logistics - cheaper, easier, and more flexible to keep running in peacetime and sustain in the field during wartime
3. deployment - cheaper, quicker, and easier to deploy en mas anywhere in the world in very short order
4. adaptability - cheaper, quicker, and easier to produce UGVs that can perform a variety of roles depending on nearly instant swapping out of components based on mission requirements.  This isn't really in the cards just yet (everything is too exploratory to be standardized), but it is where things are headed
5. survivability - theoretically harder to spot and hit, therefore more likely to survive in combat
6. longevity - cheaper, quicker, and easier to replace worn parts, upgrade to better parts, integrate advancements, etc.
7. reduced personnel - everything about UGVs requires fewer trained personnel at a time when militaries are failing to meet recruiting targets and physical fitness requirements
8. new capabilities - everything above, when combined, is going to open up strategic, operational, and tactical possibilities that are currently impossible to do with legacy systems. Don't believe me?  Look at UAVs in this war right now and where they are headed.  Individual soldier MEDEVAC, precision delivered tailored just-in-time resupply, AI demining, etc. are all entirely new capabilities emerging out of Ukraine.  It's only going to get more sci-fi as time goes on.

And that is just off the top of my head   The takeaway here is that there is nothing a legacy system can do that a UGV can't do cheaper, better, and more flexibly once UGVs mature.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, picture a C-17 moving a single Abrams tank with nothing to support it.  No fuel, no ammo, no logistics tail, no nothing.  Now picture how many UGVs and their associated range of capabilities can fit onto a single C-17.  We're talking about sending a company or two's worth of firepower with one trip WITH logistics instead of a single MBT.  What sort of impact does that have on military options?  More than 2 or 3, that's for sure

Steve

 

Is one of those a ~six week old old UGV towing a ~60 year old single barrel 23 mm auto-cannon? That is the most Ukrainian thing ever. And yeah, these are the future of land warfare.

[chuckdyke]

200 years since the Red Coats and Green Jackets. Red Coats have been replaced by the Machine Gun and the Green Jackets evolved in the modern rifleman (Cover, Concealment Fire Positions.) Yes, UGVs in the form of ground drones is feasible too. Size of a domestic cat with better eyesight and easier to train doing the scouting. 

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-8-2023

• Russian forces have reportedly made notable changes to their command and control (C2) in Ukraine to protect command infrastructure and improve information sharing, although Russian force deployments are likely still exacerbating issues with horizontal integration.
• Artillery constraints in Ukraine are reportedly prompting the Russian military to accelerate longstanding efforts to implement a fires doctrine prioritizing accuracy over volume.
• Russian forces are additionally reportedly adapting their deployment of electronic warfare (EW) complexes.

 

There is apparently some level of military Darwinism occurring, and some of the brighter orcs have lived long enough to impart lessons learned. Hopefully ATACMS will show up quickly and erase some the new model back and buried command posts that seem to be appearing.

•  

[Battlefront.com]

This just in... Russia finally gets a clue!  Quote from ISW's Sept 9th report about Russian efforts to reform it's artillery in the wake of a year and a half of wasteful employment.

Quote

RUSI noted on September 4 that Russian commanders are doubling down on the need to prioritize the development of a reconnaissance fires complex (RFC) due to assessing that existing Russian fires doctrine, which heavily relies on a high volume of fires and pre-established calculations of the density of fires needed to achieve certain effects, without a reliable system of rapid battle damage assessment, is non-viable.

This is the sort of thing that many experts missed prior to the start of this war.  They counted up how many tubes Russia had and how much ammo for them.  They did not take into consideration that the bulk of the guns and the ammo for those guns would be turning empty fields into craters or used to level small villages that weren't meaningful to the conduct of the war.  But we can't be too hard on the experts because the Russian military didn't see it either.

Although ISW didn't mention it specifically, it would seem that Russia's massive losses of artillery and exhausting its shell stocks has a lot to do with this change in attitude.  Expecting positive effects from massed fires without the mass apparently has some Russian generals thinking something needs to change.

Steve

[kevinkin]

Physical metrics are burned into the money spent within the DOD. What is lacking any original thinking from the US State Department organizing with the DOD to defeat Russia in this war. They are dumb. What if Iran gets a nuke? From Russia. That's maneuver warfare since it would be so disruptive. That's what is all about. If a rouge state get those we can't fight back for fear of escalation. F16s, tanks, drones, cruise missiles and trillions of dollars will not not matter unless we in the US have skin in the game. 

Edited September 9, 2023 by kevinkin

[kevinkin]

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/afghanistan-war/

Instead of a Communist-led nationalist movement to reunify Vietnam, the Vietnamese Communists were portrayed as a force that could start toppling a row of “dominoes” that would end with Communist victory in France and Mexico. Instead of a tinpot regional dictator, Saddam Hussein became a nuclear menace to the U.S. homeland. The Taliban, an entirely Afghan force, supposedly had to be fought in Afghanistan so that we would not need to fight them in the United States.

Edited September 9, 2023 by kevinkin

[kevinkin]

https://www.military.com/daily-news/opinions/2023/09/07/why-our-generals-dont-win.html

A military professional must be a master of his trade. Ulysses Grant, John Pershing, Dwight Eisenhower and Chester Nimitz never served as joint officers before leading great armies and fleets to victory. Each spent years in the trenches learning his craft. We do not need more ticket punchers; we have railroad conductors for that.

Woke will make the nation broke. 

Edited September 9, 2023 by kevinkin

[Kinophile]

31 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Woke will make the nation broke. 

This is just getting sad. 

Edited September 9, 2023 by Kinophile

[chuckdyke]

I think this is an excellent documentary. I checked the subtitles and think it is a good translation. 

 

[sburke]

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

This is just getting sad. 

yep, being aware of inequities in society is gonna make us go broke.  Much easier to teach that slavery wasn't so bad.  Trying to understand the real continuing impact of slavery on our society is too woke.  You go Florida!

[FancyCat]

2 hours ago, kevinkin said:

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/afghanistan-war/

Instead of a Communist-led nationalist movement to reunify Vietnam, the Vietnamese Communists were portrayed as a force that could start toppling a row of “dominoes” that would end with Communist victory in France and Mexico. Instead of a tinpot regional dictator, Saddam Hussein became a nuclear menace to the U.S. homeland. The Taliban, an entirely Afghan force, supposedly had to be fought in Afghanistan so that we would not need to fight them in the United States.

The author is part of the Valdai Club, a Russian thinktank to peddle their lies.

[The_MonkeyKing]

daily loss data from the summer in RU artillery:
source https://ukr.warspotting.net/analytics/daily/russia/8/

Edited September 9, 2023 by The_MonkeyKing

[Letter from Prague]

5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

To add bit of my expertise for once - I was part of robotics project that included drones moving around in buildings and in urban setting (I did some of the programming, not much of the robotics stuff).

This size is probably fine, especially tracked. But I would not expect to see much smaller drone ground vehicles than this. Definitely don't expect something the size of the tiny quadcopters or RC cars. Small wheels suck for moving around even in buildings and in towns, in war terrain with craters everywhere it would just not work. For small ones, flying is much better.

[Grey_Fox]

6 hours ago, dan/california said:

Always just slow enough the Russians can adapt.

Why do some people perpetually expect some sort of wunderwaffe to change the course of a war?

It's been almost a century since Hitler was raving about them in his bunker. Have people learned *nothing* since then?

Edited September 9, 2023 by Grey_Fox

[Grey_Fox]

14 hours ago, dan/california said:

There are some use cases for helicopters, in that they can be fifty miles up or down the front in minutes. I find this unconvincing thought most of the time. The Russians have to use them because they designed that missile for the sensor suite on that helicopter, and the helicopter around the missile. The newest top tier ATGMs if you can even call them that, like the latest generation Spike missile have a standoff range of tens of kilometers, and are are pretty much launch platform agnostic. The best way to deploy them on defense is park them on a disposable launcher in an outhouse, and the second best way is a super stealthy UGV, any midsize four wheel drive pick up equivalent works too. All of these options are dirt cheap, have a vastly lower logistics overhead, and therefore free up huge amounts of money to buy more of the missiles. The choice between 500 missiles in inventory, m with ten helicopters to launch them from, and five or ten THOUSAND missiles to deploy on cheap attritable, and preferably unmanned platforms should not be hard.

None of this means that manned attack helicopters are obsolete.

[Bulletpoint]

12 hours ago, FancyCat said:

I suppose the North Korea deal was the shot across the bow.

 

If this is true, then on one hand, it's very good news.

But on the other hand, it's also bad news.

Because it's a clear sign that those in charge, with access to good intel on what's actually happening on the ground, are not convinced the Ukrainian offensive is going anywhere fast.

If they thought Ukraine had broken through the hard crust and would soon see big gains, it wouldn't be the time to finally release a weapon that has been held back for so long.

[Beleg85]

14 hours ago, dan/california said:

 

I wonder if this because they are worried about partisan/ SOF drone attacks in Belarus, or the desperately need every aircraft in the south.

Alternatively, they could just run out of tires to cover their aircrafts in Belarus.

 

Curious news about tensions from Armenia- there are rumours that coup d'etat with Russian trace bahind involved may be in plans. Or it's just another psyops... Hard to tell how valid they are, but Armenian and Azer militaries seem to be placing equipment along the borders.

Pashynian was for a long time thorn in "Russian world" geopolitics, as only leader risen from revolution and visibly not content with Putin. I wouldn't be surprised if Kremlin would prefer to stage his fall, using Azeri menace, as part of wider "cleaning" their bakcfield from Western influences.

[Holien]

7 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

If they thought Ukraine had broken through the hard crust and would soon see big gains, it wouldn't be the time to finally release a weapon that has been held back for so long

Or some background threshold in which Russia was told if you do X we will do Y has been breached.

Could be plenty of reasons for the release that doesn't fit your statement...

 

[Maciej Zwolinski]

15 hours ago, Grey_Fox said:

Attack helicopters with standoff weapons have proven useful and fairly survivable (in that they're still fighting over a year and a half later) thus far in the Ukraine conflict.

This is because they are currently in an assymetric match-up vs NATO-supplied battlefield AA weapons, which has come about due to the AA being an afterthought in NATO armies which assume air superiority, and Ukrainians not having air superiority. This is a fairly random capability gap, which can is likely to be eliminated before the next war. I think it will be eliminated soon as part of the effort to reclaim superiority in the up to 2000 m. sphere (per the_Capt's excellent post from yesterday)

[Splinty]

12 minutes ago, Holien said:

Or some background threshold in which Russia was told if you do X we will do Y has been breached.

Could be plenty of reasons for the release that doesn't fit your statement...

 

I personally think it's mostly a combination of diplomatic and bureaucratic inertia. Never underestimate the delaying power of "getting all the Is dotted and all the Ts crossed".

Edited September 9, 2023 by Splinty

[Maciej Zwolinski]

5 hours ago, dan/california said:

There is apparently some level of military Darwinism occurring, and some of the brighter orcs have lived long enough to impart lessons learned.

That has historically been how Russians got their armies to improve. In WW2 it took them two years become decent, and one more year to be good. Plotting that learning curve on this war's calendar Russians should now be somewhere at the level of Operation Uranus. Luckily, their current counteroffensive in the North-East looks more like Operation Anus, so it looks like they are learning slower.

[Bulletpoint]

24 minutes ago, Holien said:

Or some background threshold in which Russia was told if you do X we will do Y has been breached.

Could be plenty of reasons for the release that doesn't fit your statement...

 

I could be wrong of course.

[Teufel]

We get it, Elon Musk does not want to pick sides, or shall I say does not want to rock the boat.

 

Edited September 9, 2023 by Teufel

[Teufel]

Spectacularly beautiful forest fire.