How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

Video of 2nd mech.battalion of Presidental brigade from Avdiivka direction

Russians assault their position with two BMPs, one has blown up by mine and second was hit with some AT weapon, both burned directly on UKR positions, but had time to dismount infantry. Likely UKR garrison of trench was outnumbered and decided to withdraw. When Russians seized trenches they were heavy bombed with drones with dropping systems. Suffering losses, Russians retreated. UKR squad again retaken own position and took POWs. It's claimed 20, but on the video is only one.

 

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, dan/california said:

The issue is the next layer of deep strike that the Ukrainians have not been permitted to do. If the Kerch bridge was in the water, and the weakest links in the rail system in the parts of Russia immediately surrounding Ukraine were under relentless missile attack this thing would be in a completely different place. Jake Sullivan has decide he would rather the Ukrainians lose than that take that risk. Given his brilliant piece about the state of the Mideast last week, i think he needs to go.

Well yes and no.  The problem with green lighting deep/strategic strike is gauging what you want it to do.  If you want to harass or disrupt something specific, we could be talking a workable solution.

If we are talking broad scale strategic corrosive warfare, well that is essentially a systematic campaign at things like Russian industry, energy and transportation infrastructure.  Go down that road and I suspect things would spiral out of control quickly.  The working theory is that Putin only has so much support for this thing - we were just talking about this.  Start hammering every railyard, airfield, power generation and military factory in western Russia and he may very well get green lit for some really crazy responses.  In many ways it could play into his hands.

So from a US perspective it is risk vs gain.  What are a few longer range systems really going to do?  Ukraine would need a lot of systems to break Russia through strategic corrosion.  Not as much as say WW2, but still a lot higher than anyone is comfortable to go with right now.

So we are back to military operational victories in Ukraine strung together.  Closest we came to strategic disruption of Russia was back when Priggy made his thunder run.  But the poor dumb bastard fumbled to ball and balked, and we all know how that ended.

[TheVulture]

14 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

It probably was, but the vehicle loss count is at battalion level (eg 45 or whatever).  A formation has around 300 F and A1 ech vehicles.pm give or take.  Mauled the hell outta whatever went through there but it wasn’t the loss of an entire brigade.

Being cynical, a full strength formation has around 300 vehicles. How many a DNPR formation has at this point in the war might be a different matter. Although one would assume they'd be re-stocked to some extent when being thrown in to the main assault of the last few months, but them with Russia, all bets are off: as we've seen, they do things differently there.

[Chibot Mk IX]

25 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Video of successfull attack of assault group of 128th mountain-assault brigade on Russian strongpoint in 3 km N from Kopani, which allowed to take this position about 2-3 days ago.

The tank shoots out trenches, forcing Russian infantry to hide and later run away when UKR assault squad arrived on BMP. 

As you can see both UKR and RUS forces had about squad of troops. But Russians had only a squad for enough large trench system

 

what a beautiful smoke screen.

[Haiduk]

UKR TG source writes about Russian tactic of assaults near Avdiivka

Katsaps during own attacks on Avdiivka tested updated tactic. Because they managed to assemble quite large grouping of the armor, they decided to divide own troops in attack on two parties.

- The first party consists of tanks only. It drives to our positions and begins to shell directly each spotted firing point. After this party rolls back and the second party engages.

- The second party consists of mainly with BMPs/APCs. It also can have small group of tanks for covering. They have to arrive immediately afetr first party finished own task and begin assault and capturing of our positions. But in real situation happen, when the second party misses the moment, when it have to engage and this gives opportunity for our soldiers to take positions in trenches after dense tank shelling

As you can see by multiple videos of both sides this is not "updated", but usual tactic, when the tank or pair of tanks goes forward and supress infantry in the trench, when light armor with infantry approaches to attack line. But if all what we had seen before were mosty small groups, that in Avdiivka case we can see Russian attempts to scale this on the platoons-companies level 

   

Edited October 13, 2023 by Haiduk

[A Canadian Cat]

5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

It's like a badly run big corporation with too many middle management types.  Take out 1/3rd of middle management and productivity might actually go up.

Oh man. I have worked at a few companies like that. I have no doubt there are dozens and dozens of them where that would be true. I'd go further 2/3 if you really want a boost - you need to get all of those dopes that hold meetings just to hold meetings and create process just to create process and have people reporting to them just so they have more people than the other dope. Then you need to keep the ones that actually define and stick to requirements and clear obstacles for their people. Come to think of it random death would not work - it would leave too many dopes and not enough good managers.

 

5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Second, they have crap command and control to start with.  Bad coms, bad leaders, too few leaders, horrible command climate, etc.  Zapping an HQ might actually raise morale, not lower it.

Sigh. Would it though? I mean I get that there are bad leaders etc. and some grunts might get a lift knowing that comrade col that ordered the last idiotic thing is dead but there has to be someone ordering forces shift here and there and counter attack away from the main event to distract the AFU. Otherwise nothing would hold together in a seamless coverage of the defensive line.

Maybe the AFU just hasn't found the effective HQ yet to blow up

[Haiduk]

Russians moved to front even old experimental armor, which wasn't in service of Russian army. Near Avdiivka was spotted BTR-90 "Rostok". This is developing of 1994 year armed with 30 mm gun in the turret similar to BMP-2. Despite MoD adopted this APC in 2008, it was never ordered. Later in 2011 MoD finally rejected BTR-90 for the sake of developing of newest platform "Boomerang". Later BTR-82/82A was choosen as wheeled APC

Probably only several BTR-90 exists. 

 

[dan/california]

25 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Well yes and no.  The problem with green lighting deep/strategic strike is gauging what you want it to do.  If you want to harass or disrupt something specific, we could be talking a workable solution.

If we are talking broad scale strategic corrosive warfare, well that is essentially a systematic campaign at things like Russian industry, energy and transportation infrastructure.  Go down that road and I suspect things would spiral out of control quickly.  The working theory is that Putin only has so much support for this thing - we were just talking about this.  Start hammering every railyard, airfield, power generation and military factory in western Russia and he may very well get green lit for some really crazy responses.  In many ways it could play into his hands.

So from a US perspective it is risk vs gain.  What are a few longer range systems really going to do?  Ukraine would need a lot of systems to break Russia through strategic corrosion.  Not as much as say WW2, but still a lot higher than anyone is comfortable to go with right now.

So we are back to military operational victories in Ukraine strung together.  Closest we came to strategic disruption of Russia was back when Priggy made his thunder run.  But the poor dumb bastard fumbled to ball and balked, and we all know how that ended.

I don't mean  a full strategic campaign. I mean the Kerch bridge, and the three or four or five most important bridges in the Russian railway system feeding Ukraine. Make them truck everything another two or three hundred miles. Or at least break bulk and reload it, which would itself create the target of all targets.

[The_Capt]

22 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

Being cynical, a full strength formation has around 300 vehicles. How many a DNPR formation has at this point in the war might be a different matter. Although one would assume they'd be re-stocked to some extent when being thrown in to the main assault of the last few months, but them with Russia, all bets are off: as we've seen, they do things differently there.

Well that could be true.  Depends on the formation.  If an entire Brigade only has 45 armoured vehicles it really isn’t going to do much with them anyway.  I mean if you have a break-in, you have no follow up beyond a bunch of guys running.  In fact it really doesn’t make sense to attack unless we are largely being symbolic - which does make sense.  Anyway, it is a Mech Bns worth, how that gets spread around or not varies.  

[The_Capt]

Just now, dan/california said:

I don't mean  a full strategic campaign. I mean the Kerch bridge, and the three or four or five most important bridges in the Russian railway system feeding Ukraine. Make them truck everything another two or three hundred miles. Or at least break bulk and reload it, which would itself create the target of all targets.

Can’t they hit the Kerch Bridge now?  Storm Shadow and all that?  Regardless, this would not be a bad idea.  This is increasing friction.  Would likely be temporary but if you timed it right, it could do some solid shaping.

This is still in the space of “annoyance” as opposed to decisive, but it would create pressures.  Ukraine is not going to lose the war if it can’t do this nor is Russia going to win it because they can still use Kerch bridge.  Longer Range deep strike will create more options - which is a good thing - but they may not be translatable into decisions given some of the constraints and restraints.

[Artkin]

55 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

After seeing that I wanted to buy a Ford.

Yikes!!!

[kimbosbread]

Unrelated, does anybody have any idea how badly a cope cage or improv drone armor affects fuel efficiency? I know at over 30kph 80% of effort is overcoming air resistance, so I assume it’s pretty awful.

[Haiduk]

Hmmmm..... @The_Capt You expected Christmass river crossing, well something suspicious happened today. Reportedly UKR HIMARSed small bridges through canal, heading south from Nova Kakhovka. Russian source wrote about bridge near Tsukury village, locals later claimed there were strikes on more three bridges, particularlly near Chornianka village

 

UKR TG claims UKR drones today destroyed six "masts" on left bank of Dnipro, unclear what was meant cell-comms masts or "Murom" observation complexes, deploying on masts. 

Konstantin Mashovets recently pointed out Russians are hastley laying additional minefields in Nova Kahovka area. 

One Russian TG warned locals that because of coming "unknown events" cell-communication will be shut down, so all have to be ready to this.

So... Is it prelude for landing or UKR command just want that Russians were ensured that we have intentions to cross the river? 

 

Edited October 13, 2023 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

"Rarog" drone unit of 24th mech.brigade (now deployed in Horlivka area) bombs in the night Russian unit in some village, making full devastation. R18 bomber works.

 

Edited October 13, 2023 by Haiduk

[danfrodo]

29 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

Unrelated, does anybody have any idea how badly a cope cage or improv drone armor affects fuel efficiency? I know at over 30kph 80% of effort is overcoming air resistance, so I assume it’s pretty awful.

when vehicle weighs many tons and is not going very fast, like typically less than 50km/hr, I am quite sure air resistance is the least of the fuel expenditures.  Especially for a tracked vehicle and especially driving over dirt.  I'd be shocked if it were even a measurable difference.  These are fuel guzzling behemoths and I think the only thing that would make a difference is increased mass, of which these cages don't seem to be much relative to the starting mass.

[dan/california]

47 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Can’t they hit the Kerch Bridge now?  Storm Shadow and all that?  Regardless, this would not be a bad idea.  This is increasing friction.  Would likely be temporary but if you timed it right, it could do some solid shaping.

This is still in the space of “annoyance” as opposed to decisive, but it would create pressures.  Ukraine is not going to lose the war if it can’t do this nor is Russia going to win it because they can still use Kerch bridge.  Longer Range deep strike will create more options - which is a good thing - but they may not be translatable into decisions given some of the constraints and restraints.

I strongly suspect they were instructed not to. There may or may not be an issue with the number of missiles it would take to do a proper job, as well. Ukraine took at the S-400 on the east side of Crimea. I have expectations about the S-400 system guarding the bridge sooner or later.

Edited October 13, 2023 by dan/california

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

Video of 2nd mech.battalion of Presidental brigade from Avdiivka direction

Russians assault their position with two BMPs, one has blown up by mine and second was hit with some AT weapon, both burned directly on UKR positions, but had time to dismount infantry. Likely UKR garrison of trench was outnumbered and decided to withdraw. When Russians seized trenches they were heavy bombed with drones with dropping systems. Suffering losses, Russians retreated. UKR squad again retaken own position and took POWs. It's claimed 20, but on the video is only one.

 

Does this illustrate/imply that one of the Russian's problems is that they can't move jammers up fast enough to cover an advance, so one of the many problems of the mobiks in a newly seized position is that drones can work them over far more easily and effectively?

[Seedorf81]

Us intelligence: Russia received it's first shipment of North-Korean weapons. (1000 containers)

Link is Dutch, but original US Twitterpost is in English.

https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/buitenland/artikel/5413059/rusland-oekraine-noord-korea-wapenleveranties-munitie

Edited October 13, 2023 by Seedorf81

[Vanir Ausf B]

5 minutes ago, Seedorf81 said:

Us intelligence: Russia received it's first shipment of North-Korean weapons. (1000 containers)

Link is Dutch, but original US Twitterpost is in English.

https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/buitenland/artikel/5413059/rusland-oekraine-noord-korea-wapenleveranties-munitie

AP is reporting the same:

The White House said on Friday that North Korea has delivered more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia for its ongoing war in Ukraine.

The White House released images that it said show the containers were loaded onto a Russian-flagged ship before being moved via train to southwestern Russia. The containers were shipped between Sept. 7 and Oct. 1 between Najin, North Korea, and Dunay, Russia

https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-russia-us-munitions-ukraine-war-7091eaba254b680888a9b1ec8a68135f

[paxromana]

2 hours ago, dan/california said:

Complete military incompetence from reporters and spokespeople is a world wide problem. Half of them can't tell the difference between a sniper rifle and a PZH-2000 SPG.

Only half?

[The_Capt]

53 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Hmmmm..... @The_Capt You expected Christmass river crossing, well something suspicious happened today. Reportedly UKR HIMARSed small bridges through canal, heading south from Nova Kakhovka. Russian source wrote about bridge near Tsukury village, locals later claimed there were strikes on more three bridges, particularlly near Chornianka village

 

UKR TG claims UKR drones today destroyed six "masts" on left bank of Dnipro, unclear what was meant cell-comms masts or "Murom" observation complexes, deploying on masts. 

Konstantin Mashovets recently pointed out Russians are hastley laying additional minefields in Nova Kahovka area. 

One Russian TG warned locals that because of coming "unknown events" cell-communication will be shut down, so all have to be ready to this.

So... Is it prelude for landing or UKR command just want that Russians were ensured that we have intentions to cross the river? 

 

Could be feinting or could be sizing up for something else.  A crossing (or set of crossings) down in the Kherson sector could collapse the entire RA left flank.  But…and it is a big one, you need surprise and sustainment.  Surprise I’d damned hard in this environment.  The build up of forces could get cover in urban areas but is really hard to hide. 

Then you don’t just cross once, you need to sustain a breakout force, which is dodgy until you can push those crossings out of gun range.  Does the UA have this sort of engineering capability?  Did we give them any?  Or were we too busy rubbing ourselves over Leo 2s?  These are not easy crossings - right up there with amphib on the difficulty scale.  First sign is usually stuff like we see here, shaping - cutting nodes and connectors.  Then airborne or airmobile drops along with infantry assaults come next.  If the UA pulls it off, it will be the first crossing of its type since Yom Kippur (I think) and even that was not really opposed.

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Disagree with that last part. Ukraine has already PGM'd its way to a victory.  Pushing the RA back to the point they can no longer conduct offensive operations is a massive victory.

My bad.  I said "victory" and we all know how difficult it is to define what that means.  What I intended was to say that Ukraine can not likely PGM their way to ending this war because of what I said in my post.  PGMs have, however, probably kept Ukraine in the game by largely neutralizing Russia's material advantages to the point where, as I said in my post, they are just a mob of armed drunks fighting for money.  It also saved Ukraine a lot of its own lives because the weapons being knocked out take time to be replaced and when replaced are decidedly inferior to the ones that were destroyed.

I guess to put it another way, I think the value Ukraine is getting out of PGMs has peaked and declined somewhat.  Still important, still critical for ultimate success, but PGMs weren't enough to push Russia over the edge (again, I sussed out an argument for that already).  Therefore, Ukraine needs something else in addition to determination and PGMs.  Which gets us to...

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

My sense is that the UA needs to set conditions to switch this whole thing up for a game shift: manoeuvre.  The RA is so degraded (as you note) that any effective manoeuvre would break them.  Problem is, how does UA create conditions for manoeuvre?  Well, I think it is happening in front of us - nibble and bite until your opponent thins out somewhere enough to make a go of it.  That is a lot of frontage, and the UA can see pretty much all of it, so I expect there may be method to this madness yet.

Another Kharkiv is what Ukraine needs.  I think we all were thinking that, if not directly saying it, before the counter offensive started.  We had all figured it would happen this summer, ranging from conservative (Tokmak) to extremely optimistic (Crimea).  Unfortunately, we didn't even get our conservative hopes fulfilled.  Yet.  I am in agreement with you that it might just be taking longer than anybody expected, but is still going to happen.

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Or alternatively, we have gone as far as current levels of precision and erosion can take things?  Or is manoeuvre essentially dead as we know it?  You may be correct, the RA may be already corroded to the point that all they can do is throw troops in holes, and mines in other holes - but it might be enough.  Ukraine would need to escalate to strategic corrosive warfare in order to break this, but that sadly remains off the table - might not for next major war. 

Or Ukraine needs to change the game. Question really is, "can they?"

I think they can, but I'm thinking it's even more tilted towards creating conditions within Russia that even the Russians won't accept.  And this is where I think the US and Europe should accept reality and work towards toppling Putin's regime using the full array of tools at its disposal.  It's a huge risk, I know, but the devil we know seems to be bad enough to gamble on the devil we don't know.  Especially because I think the only real solution to the threat of Russia is to have a much smaller Russia.

Steve

[danfrodo]

10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Could be feinting or could be sizing up for something else.  A crossing (or set of crossings) down in the Kherson sector could collapse the entire RA left flank.  But…and it is a big one, you need surprise and sustainment.  Surprise I’d damned hard in this environment.  The build up of forces could get cover in urban areas but is really hard to hide. 

Then you don’t just cross once, you need to sustain a breakout force, which is dodgy until you can push those crossings out of gun range.  Does the UA have this sort of engineering capability?  Did we give them any?  Or were we too busy rubbing ourselves over Leo 2s?  These are not easy crossings - right up there with amphib on the difficulty scale.  First sign is usually stuff like we see here, shaping - cutting nodes and connectors.  Then airborne or airmobile drops along with infantry assaults come next.  If the UA pulls it off, it will be the first crossing of its type since Yom Kippur (I think) and even that was not really opposed.

You have been mentioning how if UKR could, it should initiate a breakthrough attack in some significantly weakened section of the RU lines.  When summer started, this was I thought would happen.  They'd attack at one end of the front then once RU reserves were solidly committed, they'd launch attack at other end of line.  Sadly, this did not happen.  

But where on the line would UKR attack that doesn't require a surprise-destroying investment to get through the minefields?  By the time they clear the forward lines/obstacles, RU has had plenty of time to respond, robbing from some other quiet sector to the newly threatened one. 

Crossing the Dnieper seems super risky, but it's the one place that isn't strewn w mines & defensive networks.  And it would put UKR right into RU backfield.  But how on earth to supply such an operation over time???  RU aint great at precision but they can certainly throw enough ordnance at the bridges to knock them out, over & over again.  I guess Dnieper is at it's yearly lowest depth right now, which helps.  But w the coming rain it will rise and also the banks will get very, very muddy.  But dang, wouldn't this be amazing?  I don't think it'll happen but it would be one for the history books, like you said.

  

[Battlefront.com]

Not specifically related to anything said recently, but Kofman had something to say relating to our discussion over the past few days about assessing Ukraine's degree of success with the summer counter offensive.

https://warontherocks.com/2023/09/one-tree-line-at-a-time-breaching-russian-defenses-in-ukraine/

His take on it is that based on Ukraine's own comments the aspect of territorial liberation and geographical positioning have come up very short.  Pretty obvious and fair, I think.  However, he declared the related campaign against the Black Sea Fleet to be a big success.  I think that's fair as well.  Which means assessing the relative success/failure of the counter offensive (summer portion, at least) is not straight forward.  Especially because the counter offensive is still going on.

However, most of the (short) podcast was him talking about why assessments right now might not be meaningful.  It could be that Ukraine's goals of degrading Russian forces was more successful than they expected, which could make the next moves more successful than they otherwise would be.  His arguments were not to give credit to Ukraine for something unknown, but rather to withhold judgement for a few months to see how the post summer campaigning plays out.

I think of it like a construction project.  Sometimes the earlier phases go a lot slower and are more costly than expected, but in the end it's deemed worth it because the final product was better than originally envisioned or, perhaps, thought possible. 

In short... it's complicated.

Steve

[Vojo_herz]

I wonder how long both sides can keep going at this pace. A good chunk of Eastern Europe (my country too) hasnt even recovered from WW1 or WW2 let alone a new raging conflict eating men up. It really is a disaster here. This set us back atleast 20 years again.