How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Jr Buck Private]

19 hours ago, Tux said:

If we know anything about North Korean engineering that indicates their tolerances and standards are lacking vs western equivalents, that’s all we need to reasonably propose that their ammo will be less safe, predictable and reliable than western ammo, at least.

Having said that I can’t recall having seen any examples which prove that, myself.

Even if 1 in a 100 shells blew up in their faces I still think the Russian high command would deem that an acceptable loss ratio.   Human lives are as cheap as a shot of vodka to them.

[MOS:96B2P]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

You are baiting me, right?  “Why they fail” is because this guy has zero idea what he is talking about.  Maybe less than zero.  As in, people lose knowledge just by watching his video.

Starting with the flail is the first hint.  A flail is for admin and rear area clearances.  I know some militaries still have them on assault vehicles but everyone in the business agrees they are dumb.  On the modern battlefield the flail is suicide anywhere but clearing parking lots for Bde HQ.  

Minebots - IED work, not for combat clearing.  At least not yet.

Rollers.  Ok, these are not designed to work in isolation.  In fact it is his entire problem.  Minefield clearing is a team sport.  This guy is pointing to player positions and trying to figure out which one is best at “playing football”.  Plough and rollers are the primary breaching systems.  Rollers are designed to 1) detect a minefield, normally through a strike, and 2) prove a minefield after a plough tank has done a breach.  

Every plough tank can only clear a safe lane “that every one must follow”.  Sorry bald YouTube guy we have yet to invent an area clearance plough.  Ploughs are at the center of mechanical breaching.  But they are also tricky and terrain dependent.  Ploughs and rollers are designed to work together in a team.  With their friends, explosive breaching and engineering vehicles.

So opposed minefield breaching is one of the hardest operations to pull off.  Right next to amphib on the difficulty scale.  You normally have multiple breach lane attempts that use the mechanical and explosive systems. Explosive systems still need to be proven after the breach, normally by rollers.  And engineer vehicles for complex obstacles like AT ditches or dragons teeth in the middle of a minefield.  Adding more systems ups the complexity a lot requiring a lot of training and skill to pull off in the time windows needed to be successful.

Breaches fail when the breaching teams fail.  However that is why multiple breaches are done…we expect half to fail from the outset.  Further based on density and cover, one has to scale the number of breaches to try and get a single success.  In Ukraine the densities are so high we are likely talking double NATO doctrine: so Cbt Teams are likely shooting for 4 lane attempts instead of 2.  

Of course this violates concentration of mass restrictions we are seeing on the modern battlefield.  So one either goes small platoon bites and infantry infiltration.  Or establish conditions for a major breaching op, and risk most of one’s breaching assets.  Establishing those conditions has proven to be the hard part.

Minefield breaching operations as we define them in NATO are failing because the battle space is denied to concentration of mass.  RA ISR can even pick up large concentrations of forces and pick out the breaching vehicles.  We have not created the defensive bubble to fix that.  So minefield breaching is not failing because of individual systems.  It is failing because land warfare as we know it is kinda broken right now.  Until we either fix it, or figure out a new way to do these things…we are kinda stuck.

+1.  Thank you.  Very interesting and informative to have a professional rebuttal to that guys presentation.  It seemed a bit off and now I know why. 

[cesmonkey]

10 hours ago, Tenses said:

For comparison you can get the famous 1MW airbone laser, which was supposed to destroy ICBMs in their boost phase from 500km range. From tests it was considered a success but after spending billions on that to the shock and awe of the constructors, they started to wonder how to get a boening in 500km range of launching ICBM. No comment on this part.  

I can think of several world hotspots where such a capability could be very useful at the moment that wouldn't require flying over enemy territory.

[Battlefront.com]

9 hours ago, Tenses said:

As all the new toys are described by "Power", so our "P" you don't really have to consider, if they have capacitors( which is rather obvious) or not. High energy devices, which work in bursts always have capacitors(like for example roentgen lamps).

With these lasers it is even better as usually when we talk about laser, it is described by effective Power. Unlike the usual way this is already describing how powerful is the laser beam itself, not how much juice is the device taking. So you don't get info on how much HP your new car have as for example 300HP might look a lot but only considering that you don't drive 20t IFV. You already have info on how fast it accelerates, omitting the useless stuff. 

In general I would not be too focused on how lasers warm the target as you don't know how highly focused they are and this is highly dependent on distance and weather. I would assume that in 300kW range you will get rapid ablation of the surface, whatever it is built from. For comparison you can get the famous 1MW airbone laser, which was supposed to destroy ICBMs in their boost phase from 500km range. From tests it was considered a success but after spending billions on that to the shock and awe of the constructors, they started to wonder how to get a boening in 500km range of launching ICBM. No comment on this part.  

Thanks to you, and others, for continuing the technical discussion about directed energy weapons.  Very helpful!

The last bit about the 1MW airborne laser fits right into this conversation.  The first question I'd ask anybody pitching a weapon system to me (if I were in charge, that is) would be:

"Sounds good, but how will it be employed?"

If the answer doesn't make any sense, then the system should be rejected until it does.  Period.

This is my major objection to *and* direct LOS system that is intended for large area denial to a range of aerial threats.  The further the distance that is supposedly covered by such a system, the less practical it becomes regardless of the capabilities of the weapon itself.  The fewer systems in the field, the less chance of overcoming those sorts of practical problems.

Let's scale back from the large area denial systems for a sec and look at something like the new Stryker DE M-SHORAD vehicle covered in an article this month:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a45500360/army-first-laser-unit/

The system is designed to offer short range protection for a maneuver force or local operation, such as river crossings or defense breaching.  I think it will do a pretty good job against a wide range of targets.  However, there's a limited number of these vehicles and, last I knew, they were a BRIGADE level asset.  Meaning, there aren't that many and therefore most of the brigade most of the time has no protection from them.

Then there's the cost.  The Pentagon spent $1.2b on missile based AD Strykers back in 2020. How many?  28.  That's $43 million per vehicle (obviously further serial production costs are far less):

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/10/02/army-inks-12-billion-deal-equip-strykers-short-range-air-defense-weapons.html

So these systems, both the conventional and the directed energy, have major flaws in dealing with cheap drones.  Even though they are far more practical than the big systems we've been talking about, they are also too expensive and produced in too small numbers.  Not only does this mean a huge expense for completely inadequate AD coverage, but they also don't do squat against a $1000 drone armed with a munition flying at ground level.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

18 minutes ago, MOS:96B2P said:

+1.  Thank you.  Very interesting and informative to have a professional rebuttal to that guys presentation.  It seemed a bit off and now I know why. 

Heh... in my defense I made the mistake of posting that BEFORE watching more than a minute of it.  By the end I was thinking "uhm, this wasn't very good and The Capt is going to make mincemeat out of it".  But I decided to leave it up anyway for discussion.

In my defense, this guy's channel is usually pretty good.  Having said that, I think this video is an example of someone going beyond his range of knowledge and not doing the work necessary to have an informed presentation.  We have seen a lot of this in the past few years, that's for sure.

On a funny note, at the end he pimped 3 books.  I have one of them sitting on my desk.  Didn't connect the dots until this video!

Steve

[kimbosbread]

7 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

So these systems, both the conventional and the directed energy, have major flaws in dealing with cheap drones.  Even though they are far more practical than the big systems we've been talking about, they are also too expensive and produced in too small numbers.  Not only does this mean a huge expense for completely inadequate AD coverage, but they also don't do squat against a $1000 drone armed with a munition flying at ground level.

And there we have it. Tens of millions vs thousands, literally 3-4 orders of magnitude asymmetry in cost, not to mention sustainment and training. And all that money won’t handle the threat flying super low, which it does.

EDIT: On the other hand, this probably makes MIC twiddle their nipples.

Edited October 25, 2023 by kimbosbread

[dan/california]

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

You are baiting me, right?  “Why they fail” is because this guy has zero idea what he is talking about.  Maybe less than zero.  As in, people lose knowledge just by watching his video.

Starting with the flail is the first hint.  A flail is for admin and rear area clearances.  I know some militaries still have them on assault vehicles but everyone in the business agrees they are dumb.  On the modern battlefield the flail is suicide anywhere but clearing parking lots for Bde HQ.  

Minebots - IED work, not for combat clearing.  At least not yet.

Rollers.  Ok, these are not designed to work in isolation.  In fact it is his entire problem.  Minefield clearing is a team sport.  This guy is pointing to player positions and trying to figure out which one is best at “playing football”.  Plough and rollers are the primary breaching systems.  Rollers are designed to 1) detect a minefield, normally through a strike, and 2) prove a minefield after a plough tank has done a breach.  

Every plough tank can only clear a safe lane “that every one must follow”.  Sorry bald YouTube guy we have yet to invent an area clearance plough.  Ploughs are at the center of mechanical breaching.  But they are also tricky and terrain dependent.  Ploughs and rollers are designed to work together in a team.  With their friends, explosive breaching and engineering vehicles.

So opposed minefield breaching is one of the hardest operations to pull off.  Right next to amphib on the difficulty scale.  You normally have multiple breach lane attempts that use the mechanical and explosive systems. Explosive systems still need to be proven after the breach, normally by rollers.  And engineer vehicles for complex obstacles like AT ditches or dragons teeth in the middle of a minefield.  Adding more systems ups the complexity a lot requiring a lot of training and skill to pull off in the time windows needed to be successful.

Breaches fail when the breaching teams fail.  However that is why multiple breaches are done…we expect half to fail from the outset.  Further based on density and cover, one has to scale the number of breaches to try and get a single success.  In Ukraine the densities are so high we are likely talking double NATO doctrine: so Cbt Teams are likely shooting for 4 lane attempts instead of 2.  

Of course this violates concentration of mass restrictions we are seeing on the modern battlefield.  So one either goes small platoon bites and infantry infiltration.  Or establish conditions for a major breaching op, and risk most of one’s breaching assets.  Establishing those conditions has proven to be the hard part.

Minefield breaching operations as we define them in NATO are failing because the battle space is denied to concentration of mass.  RA ISR can even pick up large concentrations of forces and pick out the breaching vehicles.  We have not created the defensive bubble to fix that.  So minefield breaching is not failing because of individual systems.  It is failing because land warfare as we know it is kinda broken right now.  Until we either fix it, or figure out a new way to do these things…we are kinda stuck.

It is the ability of various artillery, and soon if not now drone, deployed systems to throw mines into a lane even before the clearance has finished that makes the problem almost completely unsolvable. 

Edited October 25, 2023 by dan/california

[Battlefront.com]

7 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

The Ukrainian Konstantin Mashovets begins his post today with:

https://t.me/zvizdecmanhustu/1342

 

The "why now" question is a good one, but first I'd ask the question "why at all?".  Russia has tried fully active frontline offensives many times in the past and it has never resulted in much of anything but lots of failed local attacks.  Of course it does stress out Ukraine's ability to act as it wishes to, which might be the intended purpose of this one.  That said, it seems Russia is concerned about manpower regeneration yet it still deliberately wastes manpower. 

I see three possibilities, possibly overlapping, that Russia believes:

1. it has sufficient manpower currently available and isn't concerned about near term replacement
2. there is a critical need to arrest Ukraine's ability to conduct attacks at the most local level all the way through to strategic
3. it is time to force Ukraine to the negotiating table and "one big push" should be enough to cause that to happen.  Baked into this is a concern that time is not on Russia's side

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

15 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

And there we have it. Tens of millions vs thousands, literally 3-4 orders of magnitude asymmetry in cost, not to mention sustainment and training. And all that money won’t handle the threat flying super low, which it does.

EDIT: On the other hand, this probably makes MIC twiddle their nipples.

There's been long standing talk in the corporate world of having payscale ratios whereby the highest paid worker can only earn X more than the lowest paid worker.  There are MANY good arguments in favor of this strategy, including return to shareholders.  Obviously the corporate world hasn't adopted this because those decisions are made by the people earning 1000s of times more than the lowest paid worker and/or boardrooms full of people who believe this is somehow beneficial.  Which means rather sensible guidelines to have more efficient and effective use of capital is thwarted by power and greed.

The same thing exists in the defense contracting world.  Just imagine if defense contractors were only able to sell systems to governments that did not exceed a certain threshold of cost to threat ratio.  One can make a pretty strong argument that a $1,000,000 system that can defeat multiple $1000 threats concurrently and under battlefield conditions is worth the investment.  But a $43,000,000 system that can't?  Bzzzzt.

Let's also keep in mind that one of the defense industry's big justification for these huge ticket defenses is that it is protecting hugely expensive stuff.  "Well, a $43m investment to protect $1b worth of equipment is small potatoes!".  But that gets us to asking the other question which is "why do we have $1b worth of equipment that can't protect itself from a $1000 drone?".  Or put another way, if we can't afford to protect expensive equipment, then maybe we should not be so dependent upon expensive equipment in the first place.

Steve

[Sojourner]

But what is the threat-cost of a $1,000 drone that can destroy a $5,000,000 tank, or a school + 20 children, or ...
The point isn't merely to trade hardware for hardware (although that is a factor) but rather to prevent/minimize the damage that enemy hardware can do to you.

[poesel]

17 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

https://www.sandia.gov/app/uploads/sites/194/2022/01/VanArsdallPulsedPower072984p.pdf
 

 

 

16 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Kinda makes sense:

 

That is where math meets reality.

P = W / t

Double W and you double P - easy. Unfortunately not.
The P on the left side represents a real machine (an engine, a laser, ...). It has a maximum power output which is limited by its construction (the CCs you have in a combustion engine or the heat dissipation in a laser to name some restraints). If you try to go beyond that power, you won't get it in the best case or destroy it in the worst.

So P is fixed. What happens when you add to W is this:

t = W / P

t gets bigger. Meaning you can drive or shoot longer.

Where caps help in the laser scenario is, that they can release a lot of energy in a short time. Much more than batteries or a diesel generator. If your laser can take that power - good! But just adding caps won't make the laser more powerful (in the sense of: more output power).

This ends my basic physics' lesson to not further derail this thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(physics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy

[kimbosbread]

11 minutes ago, Sojourner said:

But what is the threat-cost of a $1,000 drone that can destroy a $5,000,000 tank, or a school + 20 children, or ...
The point isn't merely to trade hardware for hardware (although that is a factor) but rather to prevent/minimize the damage that enemy hardware can do to you.

We can build a lot more $1000 drones than you can buy systems to defend various targets. If one of your systems can only cover say a 1km radius, well… good luck.

[Battlefront.com]

13 minutes ago, Sojourner said:

But what is the threat-cost of a $1,000 drone that can destroy a $5,000,000 tank, or a school + 20 children, or ...
The point isn't merely to trade hardware for hardware (although that is a factor) but rather to prevent/minimize the damage that enemy hardware can do to you.

See the last paragraph of the post just above yours.  But I'll rephrase it...

If we can not realistically protect a $5m MBT from a $1000 drone, then question why we should have MBTs in the first place (as we have been doing here)?  Throwing good money after bad just because bad already exists isn't a great strategy for using limited resources.

The same goes for civilian infrastructure.  The US has billions of points of failure for its infrastructure, ranging from huge ones (Hoover Dam) to power sub stations outside a water treatment plant in Genericville USA.  No one thing will protect them, but I can sure as Hell state that $50m laser defense systems will have zero impact on drone threats.  So we should already be looking at more practical solutions for drone threats.

Whatever solutions might be developed for protecting civilian infrastructure will likely be applicable to military capabilities.  Pour billions of R&D into solving for civilian instead of squandering that same amount of money producing inadequate solutions for even a fraction of the military's needs.

Steve

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, poesel said:

 

That is where math meets reality.

P = W / t

Double W and you double P - easy. Unfortunately not.
The P on the left side represents a real machine (an engine, a laser, ...). It has a maximum power output which is limited by its construction (the CCs you have in a combustion engine or the heat dissipation in a laser to name some restraints). If you try to go beyond that power, you won't get it in the best case or destroy it in the worst.

So P is fixed. What happens when you add to W is this:

t = W / P

t gets bigger. Meaning you can drive or shoot longer.

Where caps help in the laser scenario is, that they can release a lot of energy in a short time. Much more than batteries or a diesel generator. If your laser can take that power - good! But just adding caps won't make the laser more powerful (in the sense of: more output power).

This ends my basic physics' lesson to not further derail this thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_(physics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy

Kinda feels like you are fixating on a single factor here to try and prove a point.  And missed the OPs point, which was that one can field more powerful systems that can destroy UAS faster by adding more energy and/or releasing what you have faster.  Quick output capacitors enable the fielding of more powerful systems.  True, but then one is dragging more capacitors around which adds to weight and profile...and cost.

Adding capacitors will enhance other military factors such as endurance, but also come at a cost.  In summary, having a big giant laser running around the battlefield to shoot down bird sized UAS that can each kill a tank is not workable for a lot of reasons.

[zinz]

55 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

The "why now" question is a good one, but first I'd ask the question "why at all?".  Russia has tried fully active frontline offensives many times in the past and it has never resulted in much of anything but lots of failed local attacks.  Of course it does stress out Ukraine's ability to act as it wishes to, which might be the intended purpose of this one.  That said, it seems Russia is concerned about manpower regeneration yet it still deliberately wastes manpower. 

I see three possibilities, possibly overlapping, that Russia believes:

1. it has sufficient manpower currently available and isn't concerned about near term replacement
2. there is a critical need to arrest Ukraine's ability to conduct attacks at the most local level all the way through to strategic
3. it is time to force Ukraine to the negotiating table and "one big push" should be enough to cause that to happen.  Baked into this is a concern that time is not on Russia's side

Steve

Option 4 would be that Putin and therefore all the lower levels need good news from the front. In Russia just defending in an offensive war doesn't cut it. 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

It is the ability of various artillery, and soon if not now drone, deployed systems to throw mines into a lane even before the clearance has finished that makes the problem almost completely unsolvable. 

And here we stand on the edge of the unknown.  Doctrine says establish air superiority, EW superiority, kill enough artillery and then storm the gates.  But looking ahead, very few long range ATGMs that do not miss, fully autonomous UAS and minefields with legs that can self re-seed could stop any conventional breach technology we currently have.  This is before PGM deep fires get involved.  I guess hover tanks would work, or teleporters, but we are having enough trouble with capacitors right now.

And we are back to multi-domain, multi-dimensional Denial. 

[kimbosbread]

6 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

But looking ahead, very few long range ATGMs that do not miss, fully autonomous UAS and minefields with legs that can self re-seed could stop any conventional breach technology we currently have. 

Given that everything will have chips, and conductors, some sort of way to wipe out all electronics/conductors in an area has to be an evenue of exploration. EMP, or a giant high power 2.4GHZ beam, or thunderstorm with heavy rain, or something like that.

Or (in a sci-fi-ish way) as a measure of shielding, give an attacking force a thunderstorm to cover them, with heavy rain to mess with small UAVs.

[Billy Ringo]

To complicate things further: technology, AI, etc. are all advancing at such an accelerating rate that we don't even know what questions to ask or threats to combat that will need to be addressed 1-3 years in the future.  Much less 3+ years away.

Edited October 25, 2023 by Billy Ringo
gramerr

[dan/california]

58 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

See the last paragraph of the post just above yours.  But I'll rephrase it...

If we can not realistically protect a $5m MBT from a $1000 drone, then question why we should have MBTs in the first place (as we have been doing here)?  Throwing good money after bad just because bad already exists isn't a great strategy for using limited resources.

The same goes for civilian infrastructure.  The US has billions of points of failure for its infrastructure, ranging from huge ones (Hoover Dam) to power sub stations outside a water treatment plant in Genericville USA.  No one thing will protect them, but I can sure as Hell state that $50m laser defense systems will have zero impact on drone threats.  So we should already be looking at more practical solutions for drone threats.

Whatever solutions might be developed for protecting civilian infrastructure will likely be applicable to military capabilities.  Pour billions of R&D into solving for civilian instead of squandering that same amount of money producing inadequate solutions for even a fraction of the military's needs.

Steve

Quote

 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/war-on-the-rocks/id682478916?i=1000632587316

 

A conversation withe the Commandant of the Marine Corps that includes a very extensive discussion of wargaming. Including the ability they give to learn and iterate new ideas before spending billions.

Could I be so bold as to point out that BFC is in a literally unique place with regard to changing the discussion of drones and really expensive combat vehicles. Release the next game with appropriate point values for for both things, and the discussion will change overnight.

[acrashb]

We saw in the video of the RA soldier being chased around some trees that you can't run from small UAVs.  I posited that you can't hide either.

This relatively well-hidden RA soldier gets knee-capped:
 

Of course there are counter-measures like chicken wire on all the gaps in your cover.  But that adds friction to the whole thing, cost, and is vulnerable to counter-counter measures.  Like a small UGV with good loiter time, waiting for someone to emerge from cover.

[dan/california]

Is there some law of physics that prevents the creation of gps guidance kit for 122mm rockets? Seems like someone should have have done that by now.

[The_Capt]

13 minutes ago, acrashb said:

We saw in the video of the RA soldier being chased around some trees that you can't run from small UAVs.  I posited that you can't hide either.

This relatively well-hidden RA soldier gets knee-capped:
 

Of course there are counter-measures like chicken wire on all the gaps in your cover.  But that adds friction to the whole thing, cost, and is vulnerable to counter-counter measures.  Like a small UGV with good loiter time, waiting for someone to emerge from cover.

I think the SOB got a little more than kneecapped based on the size of the explosion.

[dan/california]

1 minute ago, The_Capt said:

I think the SOB got a little more than kneecapped based on the size of the explosion.

The way the guy who came over to check out what had happened just sort of shrugged was pretty informative. That unit has clearly been bleeding out in that trench system so long they have gone numb.

[LongLeftFlank]

28 minutes ago, acrashb said:

We saw in the video of the RA soldier being chased around some trees that you can't run from small UAVs.  I posited that you can't hide either.

This relatively well-hidden RA soldier gets knee-capped:
 

Of course there are counter-measures like chicken wire on all the gaps in your cover.  But that adds friction to the whole thing, cost, and is vulnerable to counter-counter measures.  Like a small UGV with good loiter time, waiting for someone to emerge from cover.

When you put your hand in a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend's face... you'll know what to do.

Yeah, first step back awkwardly from the mess and then step gingerly over the poor bastard.

P.S.  Ex USSF operator TTG, who has been carrying on the Turcopolier blog since the passing of Col Pat Lang (RIP sir!), had an interesting post on the North Korean ammo resupply and the artillery balance generally 

https://turcopolier.com/comparative-ammunition-expenditures/

In addition to the poor Russian logistics system as the “HerrDr8” analyst notes, barrel wear has had a massive effect on the Russian rate of fire. Given the initial fire rates, the Russians must have been going through barrels at an astronomical rate. Overhead imagery of storage lots of self-propelled artillery shows the barrels have been removed from the majority of pieces still in those lots.

Counter-battery artillery and missile strikes and ubiquitous drone strikes have dramatically reduced both the artillery pieces available and the ammunition for those pieces in the last few months. 

Edited October 25, 2023 by LongLeftFlank

[Maciej Zwolinski]

37 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

And here we stand on the edge of the unknown.  Doctrine says establish air superiority, EW superiority, kill enough artillery and then storm the gates.  But looking ahead, very few long range ATGMs that do not miss, fully autonomous UAS and minefields with legs that can self re-seed could stop any conventional breach technology we currently have.  This is before PGM deep fires get involved.  I guess hover tanks would work, or teleporters, but we are having enough trouble with capacitors right now.

And we are back to multi-domain, multi-dimensional Denial. 

How about fighting electronics and computers with raw high explosive power - putting a rocket engine & rudimentary guidance kit on a couple of CBU-55-type devices, establishing local EW superiority over a corridor say 15 km long just to protect them on the way and firing a salvo of thus-created GLHMEB (Ground Launched Huge Motherf***ing Explosive B****ard)  towards the enemy trenches?

According to Wikipedia, a CBU 55 was dropped only once in Viet Nam, it managed to create a 4-acre fireball and kill 250 Charlie (or Charlies? Was it ever pluralised)? It would clear mines, fill in trenches, throw dragonteeh around and suffocate Russians left, right and center. A can of instant desert. Somewhat similar shock and awe effect to the one achieved in WWI by mining under the enemy trenches and blowing up whole corridors filled with TNT. Just without waiting for weeks.