How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[poesel]

19 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

Interesting idea. Put out bids for large quantities of shells to be made to whoever, wherever that can make them.

 

I agree with him on the need of standardization. I guess it is not the lack of standards, but that there are too many of them. Probably national lobbying at its best.

Where I don't agree is the outsourcing part.
Firstly, manufacturing simple artillery shells is a simple manufacturing task. Any industrialized country can do that AND do a million other things. It is not clogging up any unreplaceable resources. If you calculate opportunity costs, it may not best the best choice, but you are still making money.
Secondly, if you strictly look for the market solution, our future shells will all come from south-east Asia. I don't need to spell it out why this will be an undesirable outcome.

Standardize the stuff and build it locally.

[hcrof]

22 minutes ago, poesel said:

I agree with him on the need of standardization. I guess it is not the lack of standards, but that there are too many of them. Probably national lobbying at its best.

Where I don't agree is the outsourcing part.
Firstly, manufacturing simple artillery shells is a simple manufacturing task. Any industrialized country can do that AND do a million other things. It is not clogging up any unreplaceable resources. If you calculate opportunity costs, it may not best the best choice, but you are still making money.
Secondly, if you strictly look for the market solution, our future shells will all come from south-east Asia. I don't need to spell it out why this will be an undesirable outcome.

Standardize the stuff and build it locally.

Why can't we do both? Build up a scalable national capacity but when we need to surge production to cover a crisis we outsource. 

We need shells in a hurry now, but hopefully won't in 10 years time. 

[The_Capt]

16 hours ago, Homo_Ferricus said:

Having been born in Moscow and raised in the culture, this is where my message is coming from; we on this forum have been taking a very logical and almost mathematical approach to calculating Russia's damage and preconcluding it's fate. We need to understand that, while certainly not limitless nor supernatural, there is a certain character of stubborn will and seemingly senseless perseverance in the face of opposition that can be conjured in the collective "Russian" when the circumstances are right. We've talked about it here before. As the war has continued Putin and the state are doing a fair job of galvanizing the public to rally around their identity, but its not all "master strategist Putin" pulling the strings. Microeconomies are popping up, local Russians are manufacturing their own cheese to replace imports, companies are cleverly outmaneuvering sanctions, entrepreneurs are exploiting openings, industries are slowly, painfully adapting and gaining confidence. And as all that goes on the average Russian begins to settle into the "us against them" mentality of besiegement. Early in the war western media called this "Putin's war" and blamed the Russian government. Slowly the messaging has changed, and now we believe every Russian to be responsible for what is happening. While I agree that this is true in a spiritual and philosophical sense, it also drives Russians deeper inward, hardening their resolve and pushing people to close ranks. Unfortunately the more defensive ordinary Russians feel, the more difficult it will be for them to mentally separate the state from the greater identity.

Young people are not excluded from this phenomena, including the bright minds. I can imagine some of the brights coming back home to Russia after living in an undignified mode of "otherness" and "humiliation" in places like Georgia, Armenia, Germany, Turkey, Kazakhstan etc. Having heard the call to return to family and rodina, sprung by the excitement of building something new at home while affirming their identities and standing up with dignity against their opponents.

Your reply to my points on Russian economic recovery make sense, though it's worth pointing out that macroeconomics is one of the lesser precise "sciences". I leave room for fated chance, unintended consequences and human ingenuity to change what looks like a logical outcome to us at the moment.

Of course we've discussed Russia being a pressure cooker and how everything can come crashing quite dramatically, but that's not the feeling in the air that I'm catching at this moment. Excuse me for this post that was less factual and more like pseudo-shamanic reading of my own tea leaves.

Slava Ukraini

 

Sorry guys yesterday was a wash out for me.  Want to ping this one…Yeesh.  So basically the Russian spin is that this is a “new novelty misery” compared to the old ones?  What a bizarre bunch.

I do think we need to avoid dehumanizing Russia and Russians.  Yes, there are going to be abhorrent examples of mothers celebrating the death of sons but keep in mind these are very likely designed to make us doubt if Russia could ever fail.

Russia appears to be a weird place and does have a unique culture, but they are human beings.  WW1 broke them.  The Afghan War broke them over time.  The Cold War broke them too.  Russia can be broken, the question is “how?”

If we want to talk about the high water mark of uniform unbreakable resistance, that would be WW2 Japan.  But those were pretty unique circumstances.  Russia is in a discretionary war.  Putin may have sold it as otherwise but even in the darkest hearts of Russia there will be a seed of doubt.  

My thinking is that the cost simply has not gotten high enough.  Macro-social structures can be incredibly resilient.  They are designed to survive the natural strains of too many underdeveloped primates trying to live in small places together.  21 month is not enough to break that unless there are some serious pre-crisis fractures in place.  And let’s not forget Priggy came damn close to accidentally couping the whole damn thing.

My money is that Russians will get sick of dying in another country well before Ukrainians get tired of dying for theirs.  Question is when?

[acrashb]

Lots of doom and gloom here.   Also, every once in a while someone complains about their X feed not providing sufficient coverage of the war.
Both issues may be solved by following the Ukrainian Front account.  This will help to drive more relevant posts to your account, as well as getting you the daily 'good morning world' posts followed by the equally marvellous 'good night world' posts:

 

[Beleg85]

In light of latest discussions about Russian replenishment equipment capabilities, it is worth to paste here Wolski's (one of PL analitics) post about tank production of both sides. Roughly translated but you can get the idea:

Yesterday, there was a discussion about what she posted in Le Monde by [...].

. The article mentions 600 tanks A YEAR in UWZ (T-72/90 family) and Omsk (T-80) And yes, it is possible. But not as the production of new machines, but as the production of new ones, the restoration of old ones and the renovation of shot machines recovered from the battlefield. After the collapse of the USSR at peace, in the best years UWZ could produce about 250 - 300 T-90S/T-90A tanks, where the main limit was the availability of W92 and W92S2, then - here there was a limit of about 250 tanks per year, and in 2A46M5 barrels with a bayonet connector which are incompatible with older guns Oska built about 60 T-80BWM per year.

Is it possible to double production on a war footing? In theory, in practice it didn't work out very well for the Russians. Otherwise, we would be talking about 1k+ machines delivered this year to MO FR together with renovated vehicles. And so we write "only" about the delivery of 600 tanks in 2023, including refurbished vehicles. Of course, La Monde forgot about Chita and other factories where the T-62M is currently manufactured using components from North Korea. It was planned to deliver 260-280 vehicles this year, but production, or rather reconstruction at the factory, is to be completed by about 130 tanks, and the target capacity will be achieved next year. As a result, we are talking about the fact that the Russian Armed Forces will receive about 700 tanks this year - new tanks, restored from warehouses and renovated after evacuation from the battlefield. The Russians have so far lost about 2,500 tanks in the war, and as you can see, within a year they managed to regain about 25-27% of the loss they suffered. This does not mean that they will be able to make up for all the losses by 2026 - for example, the process of restoring machines from warehouses is non-linear - in 2024 there will be a peak in capacity and then the pool of machines (capable of doing so) will begin to run out. Therefore, RUS is trying to expand the production of UWZ and Omsk because they know that from 2025 they will have to rely mainly on new tanks in the process of reproducing combat losses of armored weapons.

Personally, I estimate that in 2024, the RUS will be able to incorporate about 1,000-1,200 tanks of all categories into the Russian Armed Forces (new, recovered from warehouses, repaired after evacuation from the battlefield). Well, what does it look like in Ukraine? Ukrainians repair about 30 tanks a month recovered from the battlefield OUTSIDE Ukraine. Which is approximately 360 recovered machines per year. From T-64BW, for which there are no components, through T-72M1 to Leopard 2. Deliveries of new machines in 2023 and those contracted until the end of the year (including Leopard 2 and Abrams) will make up for the irretrievable losses from this year, including those from the failed offensive. Perhaps even slightly positive at the end of the year. Of course, this is only possible because Poland has donated over 350 machines to the UA in less than two years. And we can give another hundred (PT-91). But so far, the cars renovated in Ukraine + delivered by the West this year give a value approximately equal to the Russian 600-700 cars Yes, you read that right. Please make a note of this.

However, we have an elephant in the room here, which I have been writing about since November 2022 - the pool of Western machines that can be delivered is a finite value, and this year is only "saved" by surprisingly low UA irreversible losses. Unfortunately, the year 2024 will see an almost double increase in the reconstruction capacity of RUS and a significant decrease in the reconstruction capacity of UA (by over 1/3, how much more - it is debatable). However, what does the ANNUAL production capacity look like in the "West"? South Korea: 40 to 80 K2 (confirmed closer to 40) Israel: up to 100 Merkavs and Namers (approximately) Germany: 25-30 Leopard 2A7V USA: 180 in one shift in LIMA Yes, the US's production capacity is about the same as the rest of us combined. The above data is OSINT ofc - just read parliamentary interpellations, congressional reports, state senators', annual reports of companies, open statements of company presidents and directors, etc. Of course, the above may be increased: Lima produces 15 Abrmas per month and 5 Strykers, there is an option to produce 20 M1 m/c (240 per year) and when the second shift is launched: 33 vehicles per month (396 per year!). South Korea's capabilities are difficult to estimate, and KMW personally estimates it at double what it already has - although deliveries to Hungary and Norway indicate that there will be around 25 tanks per year there.

What's the moral in this for us? 1) In Abrams we trust because only GDLS has the appropriate production capacity 2) Licensed production of either M1A2SEPv3PL or K2PL should be launched in Poland, but care should be taken to ensure that it becomes the basis for a mobilization plan for renovations and distributed production based on components already produced in peacetime. And most importantly: I challenge the author of the fall of the Panzerwaffe (article)@WojenneH because Norbert wrote several epic articles about what happened to the Panzerwaffe in 1943 and 1944, that it collapsed.

What matters is not how much you produce/renovate, but how much you lose during this time and... whether your production base can be effectively attacked by aviation and production interrupted and disrupted. And at the end of this long entry, one more question: In the event of a NATO vs. Russia conflict, UWZ and Omsk would not stand in one piece for long . And the need to disperse production and hide it underground would quickly reach the scale of the Third Reich's needs in Russia in 1944. Unfortunately, Ukraine has no room for maneuver here and we are seeing a material war in its worst form.

[acrashb]

37 minutes ago, hcrof said:

Why can't we do both? Build up a scalable national capacity but when we need to surge production to cover a crisis we outsource. 

Because a crisis is the moment when extended and/or complex supply chains, particularly ones with a seaborne components, are most likely to be severely degraded.

2 hours ago, Kraft said:

The russian mind. 

While I don't doubt that Russian culture is materially different from Western culture, this particular picture could be emblematic of the Russian mind or, since we have also seen pictures of mothers / wives mourning more conventionally, it could be that Dimitry, in spite of his winning smile, was a son of a bitch and his wife is glad to start over with his cousin Mikhail.

Edited November 5, 2023 by acrashb

[Kraft]

33 minutes ago, acrashb said:

While I don't doubt that Russian culture is materially different from Western culture, this particular picture could be emblematic of the Russian mind or, since we have also seen pictures of mothers / wives mourning more conventionally, it could be that Dimitry, in spite of his winning smile, was a son of a bitch and his wife is glad to start over with his cousin Mikhail.

All good points of course and this is just an (-other) anecdotal picture from my biased sample, but I have followed the syrian conflict relatively closely over roughly 300k dead there I have not seen a single picture of such behavior, and zero from UA*. I remember half a dozen weird pictures like this from russians and Im not going through vk to find them

*with the exception of one nonfamily scumbag stealing sentimental patches from a pilots grave

Edited November 5, 2023 by Kraft

[Letter from Prague]

 

1 hour ago, poesel said:

I agree with him on the need of standardization. I guess it is not the lack of standards, but that there are too many of them. Probably national lobbying at its best.

Where I don't agree is the outsourcing part.
Firstly, manufacturing simple artillery shells is a simple manufacturing task. Any industrialized country can do that AND do a million other things. It is not clogging up any unreplaceable resources. If you calculate opportunity costs, it may not best the best choice, but you are still making money.
Secondly, if you strictly look for the market solution, our future shells will all come from south-east Asia. I don't need to spell it out why this will be an undesirable outcome.

Standardize the stuff and build it locally.

I am not so sure.

While we might see more wars like Ukraine son, so far it really looks like the next decisive "world war" will be between "West and Allies" and China - and while that one would have ground component for sure, I think the decisive parts would be questions like "can China effectively hit continental US and EU", "can the Allies effectively blockade China into submissions or will it have built enough energy and food capacity to avoid that", "can the allies replace ships faster than China can replace missile factories", and so on.

Now I am not military strategy mastermind like rest of the people here, and I'm sure lot of the lessons from Ukraine can be useful, but unless someone can make FPV drones go thousand kilometers, I'm not sure everything is directly applicable.

So while shells are important, I think decoupling "Western" supply chains from China and figuring out defense against millions of Shahed equivalents while making millions of ours might be better investment.

 

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Russia appears to be a weird place and does have a unique culture, but they are human beings.  WW1 broke them.  The Afghan War broke them over time.  The Cold War broke them too.  Russia can be broken, the question is “how?”

If we want to talk about the high water mark of uniform unbreakable resistance, that would be WW2 Japan.  But those were pretty unique circumstances.  Russia is in a discretionary war.

I think if we're going there, the Russo-Japanese war is even better example of Russia breaking itself in discretionary war.

EDIT: while I'm happy to see another Russian ship promoted into submarine, I was wondering why the Ukrainians bother with hitting them, since the grain corridor seems to be going well, the threat of the missiles seems to be enough to keep Russians at bay. Wouldn't it be better to 

I suppose maybe some of the ammo is just allotted to navy and they hit ships, or they want to have at least some good news.

But also I guess they are hitting Crimea while they still can - if they will be pushed to negotiate away the claim to Crimea soon, they will probably be forbidden to hit it with Western weaponry like mainland Russia.

Edited November 5, 2023 by Letter from Prague

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Beleg85 said:

In light of latest discussions about Russian replenishment equipment capabilities, it is worth to paste here Wolski's (one of PL analitics) post about tank production of both sides. Roughly translated but you can get the idea:

Yesterday, there was a discussion about what she posted in Le Monde by [...].

. The article mentions 600 tanks A YEAR in UWZ (T-72/90 family) and Omsk (T-80) And yes, it is possible. But not as the production of new machines, but as the production of new ones, the restoration of old ones and the renovation of shot machines recovered from the battlefield. After the collapse of the USSR at peace, in the best years UWZ could produce about 250 - 300 T-90S/T-90A tanks, where the main limit was the availability of W92 and W92S2, then - here there was a limit of about 250 tanks per year, and in 2A46M5 barrels with a bayonet connector which are incompatible with older guns Oska built about 60 T-80BWM per year.

Is it possible to double production on a war footing? In theory, in practice it didn't work out very well for the Russians. Otherwise, we would be talking about 1k+ machines delivered this year to MO FR together with renovated vehicles. And so we write "only" about the delivery of 600 tanks in 2023, including refurbished vehicles. Of course, La Monde forgot about Chita and other factories where the T-62M is currently manufactured using components from North Korea. It was planned to deliver 260-280 vehicles this year, but production, or rather reconstruction at the factory, is to be completed by about 130 tanks, and the target capacity will be achieved next year. As a result, we are talking about the fact that the Russian Armed Forces will receive about 700 tanks this year - new tanks, restored from warehouses and renovated after evacuation from the battlefield. The Russians have so far lost about 2,500 tanks in the war, and as you can see, within a year they managed to regain about 25-27% of the loss they suffered. This does not mean that they will be able to make up for all the losses by 2026 - for example, the process of restoring machines from warehouses is non-linear - in 2024 there will be a peak in capacity and then the pool of machines (capable of doing so) will begin to run out. Therefore, RUS is trying to expand the production of UWZ and Omsk because they know that from 2025 they will have to rely mainly on new tanks in the process of reproducing combat losses of armored weapons.

Personally, I estimate that in 2024, the RUS will be able to incorporate about 1,000-1,200 tanks of all categories into the Russian Armed Forces (new, recovered from warehouses, repaired after evacuation from the battlefield). Well, what does it look like in Ukraine? Ukrainians repair about 30 tanks a month recovered from the battlefield OUTSIDE Ukraine. Which is approximately 360 recovered machines per year. From T-64BW, for which there are no components, through T-72M1 to Leopard 2. Deliveries of new machines in 2023 and those contracted until the end of the year (including Leopard 2 and Abrams) will make up for the irretrievable losses from this year, including those from the failed offensive. Perhaps even slightly positive at the end of the year. Of course, this is only possible because Poland has donated over 350 machines to the UA in less than two years. And we can give another hundred (PT-91). But so far, the cars renovated in Ukraine + delivered by the West this year give a value approximately equal to the Russian 600-700 cars Yes, you read that right. Please make a note of this.

However, we have an elephant in the room here, which I have been writing about since November 2022 - the pool of Western machines that can be delivered is a finite value, and this year is only "saved" by surprisingly low UA irreversible losses. Unfortunately, the year 2024 will see an almost double increase in the reconstruction capacity of RUS and a significant decrease in the reconstruction capacity of UA (by over 1/3, how much more - it is debatable). However, what does the ANNUAL production capacity look like in the "West"? South Korea: 40 to 80 K2 (confirmed closer to 40) Israel: up to 100 Merkavs and Namers (approximately) Germany: 25-30 Leopard 2A7V USA: 180 in one shift in LIMA Yes, the US's production capacity is about the same as the rest of us combined. The above data is OSINT ofc - just read parliamentary interpellations, congressional reports, state senators', annual reports of companies, open statements of company presidents and directors, etc. Of course, the above may be increased: Lima produces 15 Abrmas per month and 5 Strykers, there is an option to produce 20 M1 m/c (240 per year) and when the second shift is launched: 33 vehicles per month (396 per year!). South Korea's capabilities are difficult to estimate, and KMW personally estimates it at double what it already has - although deliveries to Hungary and Norway indicate that there will be around 25 tanks per year there.

What's the moral in this for us? 1) In Abrams we trust because only GDLS has the appropriate production capacity 2) Licensed production of either M1A2SEPv3PL or K2PL should be launched in Poland, but care should be taken to ensure that it becomes the basis for a mobilization plan for renovations and distributed production based on components already produced in peacetime. And most importantly: I challenge the author of the fall of the Panzerwaffe (article)@WojenneH because Norbert wrote several epic articles about what happened to the Panzerwaffe in 1943 and 1944, that it collapsed.

What matters is not how much you produce/renovate, but how much you lose during this time and... whether your production base can be effectively attacked by aviation and production interrupted and disrupted. And at the end of this long entry, one more question: In the event of a NATO vs. Russia conflict, UWZ and Omsk would not stand in one piece for long . And the need to disperse production and hide it underground would quickly reach the scale of the Third Reich's needs in Russia in 1944. Unfortunately, Ukraine has no room for maneuver here and we are seeing a material war in its worst form.

Accept for the part where tanks don’t seem to matter anymore.  The material war is in artillery, UAS, PGM and C4ISR.  Not sure we should be investing billions in tanks at all to be honest.  I cannot find a single operational level result that happened on the backs of tanks.  In fact back in Mar 22, the RA had all the tanks and it got them exactly nowhere.

If the UA is going to continue with operational offensives they are going to need to come up with a way to do it without tanks.  Or find a way to eliminate all the things the RA can do to stop their tanks.  If the UA decides it is time to hold and let the RA continue to break its hands, then they need things that will kill tanks…which is no longer another tank.

If we are going to do material warfare let’s make sure we are talking about the right materials.  It would take one side or the other pulling off an operational level breakthrough, that they can sustain.  To even put tanks back on the board.  For C4ISR and UAS this is a very different picture and Ukraine is not on the back feet.

The problem we are seeing now is that the political narrative machine has gone into overdrive because Ukraine fears the West will lose interest.  There is some truth there but I am afraid it is creating a lot of noise as opposed to actual analysis.  

Edited November 5, 2023 by The_Capt

[Beleg85]

31 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Accept for the part where tanks don’t seem to matter anymore.  The material war is in artillery, UAS, PGM and C4ISR.  Not sure we should be investing billions in tanks at all to be honest.  I cannot find a single operational level result that happened on the backs of tanks.  In fact back in Mar 22, the RA had all the tanks and it got them exactly nowhere.

 

Worth to note that Wolski is normally firmly in the "tankers' camp, claiming that warfare did not change substantially and drones/isr/precision is just new addition to mechanized forces or, at the most, danger countered by super airforce. It seems to be prevalent view in top brass and around-military circles here, just like in other NATO armies. Too eager pointing toward fundamental changes new technology brings to the battlefield is often considered amateurish, lacking depth or (worse) following empty intellectual fashion. Argument of Ukrainian September Kharkiv offensive often pops up in these discussions.

They do realise of course warfare is evolving, but I don't think they fully get level of tactical and operational repercussions yet.

Edited November 5, 2023 by Beleg85

[kimbosbread]

46 minutes ago, Letter from Prague said:

Now I am not military strategy mastermind like rest of the people here, and I'm sure lot of the lessons from Ukraine can be useful, but unless someone can make FPV drones go thousand kilometers, I'm not sure everything is directly applicable.

 Drones can already do that, on gasoline engines (100kmh for 12-24h). The only limitation on range is the LOS control link. If you use satellite or go autonomous, that limitation goes away.

13 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

If we are going to do material warfare let’s make sure we are talking about the right materials.  It would take one side or the other pulling off an operational level breakthrough, that they can sustain.  To even put tanks back on the board.  For C4ISR and UAS this is a very different picture and Ukraine is not on the back feet.

I keep on thinking about these videos of fortification clearing, one tree line at a time. How do you break through these in a less-small-unit-action-intensive way?

I assume bringing up a tanker truck and just pumping gasoline or sewage into a trenchline is not possible, and drone mounted flamethrowers or thermobaric grenades aren’t available in the quantity needed. What about tear gas?

[acrashb]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Accept for the part where tanks don’t seem to matter anymore.  The material war is in artillery, UAS, PGM and C4ISR.

It may take a while for that reality to sink in at NATO, based on this post touting an MBT and not drone infrastructure.  My concern is that it will remain a fringe view for too long, due to inertia, group-think and the sunk-cost fallacy.

43 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

 What about tear gas?

Police can use tear gas, armed forces cannot.

[Letter from Prague]

44 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

 Drones can already do that, on gasoline engines (100kmh for 12-24h). The only limitation on range is the LOS control link. If you use satellite or go autonomous, that limitation goes away.

That's the big ones, though. Those are basically cheap cruise missiles. Now cruise missiles getting really cheap might be also transformative is the air defense can't be scaled up, but my understanding was that most of the "new world" is because of small battery powered drones used for real-time ISR and the cheap even smaller suicide drones.

[The_Capt]

46 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Worth to note that Wolski is normally firmly in the "tankers' camp, claiming that warfare did not change substantially and drones/isr/precision is just new addition to mechanized forces or, at the most, danger countered by super airforce. It seems to be prevalent view in top brass and around-military circles here, just like in other NATO armies. Too eager pointing toward fundamental changes new technology brings to the battlefield is often considered amateurish, lacking depth or (worse) following empty intellectual fashion. Argument of Ukrainian September Kharkiv offensive often pops up in these discussions.

They do realise of course warfare is evolving, but I don't think they fully get level of tactical and operational repercussions yet.

Heh, oh yes the internal battle lines are drawn up.  If one looks at Kharkiv that was not an armoured breakthrough.  It was Corrosive Warfare culmination resulting in an RA operational collapse - it redefined what RA over-extension meant.

The attitude of "new addition to mechanized warfare" died as an idea North of Kyiv.  With respect to new technology history actually demonstrates the exact opposite.  We far more often discount the impact of emerging technology or simply try and cram it as an add-on to existing systems (MG batteries anyone?).  Actually seeing emerging technology and getting out in front of it is very rare.  With this guy's attitude AirLand Battle would have never happened, Saddam would have delivered crushing losses on the Allied coalition and Ukraine would have fallen in a month.

At Kharkiv it was Light forces that led the breakout while heavy shored up the shoulders.  This year we have watched both sides try larger armored heavy offensives and failed.  Why do we suppose that is happening?  The standard answer from the conservative camp is "well the Ukrainians and Russians are doing it wrong"...after nearly two years?

What we have is a bunch of old men, or scions of old men, who are deeply invested in the old conventional system.  They have built entire careers out of it.  RMA never happened.  Precision Fallacy.  Edges vs Core.  They are stuck in a cognitive prison of their own making.  I have had a sinking suspicion something was very different since Feb '22.  When I saw that UAV chase down a single RA soldier, I was pretty much sold that we are no longer in Kansas anymore. 

[cesmonkey]

Podcasts | The Telegraph
Day 618. During the Ukraine: the latest team's recent trip to the United States, David Knowles and Francis Dearnley spent a fascinating morning at the Institute for the Study of War, where they interviewed a number of analysts and experts about all manner of subjects to do with the war in Ukraine. 

One of those conversations was with Senior Fellow of the ISW, retired Lieutenant General James Dubik, where the group discussed Dubik's initial assessment of the war and what lessons the US military can learn from Ukraine.

Contributors:
David Knowles (Host). @djknowles22 on Twitter.
Francis Dearnley (Assistant Comment Editor). @FrancisDearnley on Twitter.

with Lt. Gen. James Dubik (Retired) (ISW Senior Fellow). @ltgrdubik on Twitter.
 

[sburke]

29 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

What we have is a bunch of old men, or scions of old men, who are deeply invested in the old conventional system.  

Get off my tank, hippie.

Saw a post on reddit.  Some guy was trying to use his Apple watch at checkout and it wasn't going through.  Old guy in line behind him says "c'mon "future boy", get it moving." 

Edited November 5, 2023 by sburke

[dan/california]

36 minutes ago, Letter from Prague said:

That's the big ones, though. Those are basically cheap cruise missiles. Now cruise missiles getting really cheap might be also transformative is the air defense can't be scaled up, but my understanding was that most of the "new world" is because of small battery powered drones used for real-time ISR and the cheap even smaller suicide drones.

They are two sides of the same coin, cheap precision that breaks all the assumptions that legacy systems are built around.

28 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Heh, oh yes the internal battle lines are drawn up.  If one looks at Kharkiv that was not an armoured breakthrough.  It was Corrosive Warfare culmination resulting in an RA operational collapse - it redefined what RA over-extension meant.

The attitude of "new addition to mechanized warfare" died as an idea North of Kyiv.  With respect to new technology history actually demonstrates the exact opposite.  We far more often discount the impact of emerging technology or simply try and cram it as an add-on to existing systems (MG batteries anyone?).  Actually seeing emerging technology and getting out in front of it is very rare.  With this guy's attitude AirLand Battle would have never happened, Saddam would have delivered crushing losses on the Allied coalition and Ukraine would have fallen in a month.

At Kharkiv it was Light forces that led the breakout while heavy shored up the shoulders.  This year we have watched both sides try larger armored heavy offensives and failed.  Why do we suppose that is happening?  The standard answer from the conservative camp is "well the Ukrainians and Russians are doing it wrong"...after nearly two years?

What we have is a bunch of old men, or scions of old men, who are deeply invested in the old conventional system.  They have built entire careers out of it.  RMA never happened.  Precision Fallacy.  Edges vs Core.  They are stuck in a cognitive prison of their own making.  I have had a sinking suspicion something was very different since Feb '22.  When I saw that UAV chase down a single RA soldier, I was pretty much sold that we are no longer in Kansas anymore. 

I keep coming back to the U.S. apparently going ahead with a new manned scout helicopter. That is serious head in the sand denial.

[_Morpheus_]

K-2 Night bombers. All vehicles were destroyed in one night. 
No way that you could hide from this drones with such thermal cameras. 
 

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by _Morpheus_

[dan/california]

Never a bad night to watch a Russian ammo dump burn.

Edit: A ~120 kilometers behind the front, Where the Russian border meets the Sea of Azov

Edited November 5, 2023 by dan/california

[cyrano01]

6 hours ago, poesel said:

I agree with him on the need of standardization. I guess it is not the lack of standards, but that there are too many of them. Probably national lobbying at its best.

Where I don't agree is the outsourcing part.
Firstly, manufacturing simple artillery shells is a simple manufacturing task. Any industrialized country can do that AND do a million other things. It is not clogging up any unreplaceable resources. If you calculate opportunity costs, it may not best the best choice, but you are still making money.
Secondly, if you strictly look for the market solution, our future shells will all come from south-east Asia. I don't need to spell it out why this will be an undesirable outcome.

Standardize the stuff and build it locally.

Yes, you would have thought that the dangers of outsourcing strategic production would have been underlined both by the Ukraine war and before that Covid where getting hold of PPE (masks, overalls etc.) and vaccines on the international market suddenly got very difficult as national interest cut off free trade.

If you want to step up domestic shell production you have to be prepared to commit resources to doing so and there are limits to which Western governments will do that when they don't see an immediate existential threat.

Oddly enough I recently went to a local history talk (I'm in North West England) which touched on this very problem historically. The great munitions shortage of 1915 led to huge chunks of the local economy in this area, mostly textiles manufacture,  being re-purposed to make military supplies. Local cotton mills were converted to churn out components for 18 pdr shells and Stokes mortar bombs.

 

Short of that sort of national ecenomic mobilisation there are always going to be hard limits on the willingness to invest in munition production with theprospect of closing it down as soon as demand falls.

 

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by cyrano01

[cyrano01]

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Accept for the part where tanks don’t seem to matter anymore.  The material war is in artillery, UAS, PGM and C4ISR.  Not sure we should be investing billions in tanks at all to be honest.  I cannot find a single operational level result that happened on the backs of tanks.  In fact back in Mar 22, the RA had all the tanks and it got them exactly nowhere.

 

 

This, absolutely in spades. Historians hat on...<hyperbole> responding to the demands of the Ukraine war by stepping up tank production would be akin to responding to the British 1915 shell shortages by increasing production of cavalry sabres and lances. </hyperbole>

Edited November 5, 2023 by cyrano01

[Haiduk]

46 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Never a bad night to watch a Russian ammo dump burn.

Edit: A ~120 kilometers behind the front, Where the Russian border meets the Sea of Azov

Some more videos of firework in Sedovo.

Russian TG also claimed except ammo dump, repair base, were helicopters also stood was hit.

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

Recent huge flash in the Sun caused Aurora Borealis in southern latitudes, so it can be seen in Ukriane too even in Odesa oblast.

Red evening sky caused many jokes about Russians used nuke %) 

Soldiers pose on background of such rare phenomena  (though this is second Northern Light in this year in Ukraine - first was in spring)

[chrisl]

5 hours ago, Letter from Prague said:

 

I am not so sure.

While we might see more wars like Ukraine son, so far it really looks like the next decisive "world war" will be between "West and Allies" and China - and while that one would have ground component for sure, I think the decisive parts would be questions like "can China effectively hit continental US and EU", "can the Allies effectively blockade China into submissions or will it have built enough energy and food capacity to avoid that", "can the allies replace ships faster than China can replace missile factories", and so on.

Now I am not military strategy mastermind like rest of the people here, and I'm sure lot of the lessons from Ukraine can be useful, but unless someone can make FPV drones go thousand kilometers, I'm not sure everything is directly applicable.

Like the various US/NATO high altitude drones with ~12+ hour dwell times and long range that can be controlled from Florida while they fly anywhere in the world?  And are armed with guided missiles?  They're not quite disposable-cheap at current prices, but many (if not most) of the tech needed to enable them has come down in cost since they were developed and could be a lot cheaper if produced in large quantities.  You'd probably want to have the driver a little closer to the theater, and maybe have a high altitude relay instead of space relay for latency, but it's very doable.

 

Quote

EDIT: while I'm happy to see another Russian ship promoted into submarine, I was wondering why the Ukrainians bother with hitting them, since the grain corridor seems to be going well, the threat of the missiles seems to be enough to keep Russians at bay. Wouldn't it be better to 

I suppose maybe some of the ammo is just allotted to navy and they hit ships, or they want to have at least some good news.

But also I guess they are hitting Crimea while they still can - if they will be pushed to negotiate away the claim to Crimea soon, they will probably be forbidden to hit it with Western weaponry like mainland Russia.

Eliminate most of the Russian vessels from the Black Sea and there's not a lot of point to them holding Crimea, other than national pride.  

 

 

[Haiduk]

Russians issued a video of strike on Zarichne village were award сeremony of 128th and partially 65th brigades had to be. All, what could be violated was violated:

- mass gathering in the village, close to frontline

- no security mesures - among settlers could be Russian informators

- soldiers parked own pick-ups directly near the place of ceremony

- no AD cover, Russian drone was circling free around, spotting the best moment for strike.

Some sources claims this was not Kh-59m but Iskander-M or Iskander-K

As result 28 killed, 53 wounded. Among killed - one of best and experienced artilleriman of AFU captain Dmytro Myliutyn, who fought since 2014 and passed Debaltseve.

This episode could be remained "unseen" like many others, like a strike of Tornado-G at 77th air-assualt brigade during their alignment in close rear of Bakhmut about two months ago. But several soldiers, who "dare" to take it to the public and spreading this information by known volunteers, forced authrities to move their as....s. Minister of Defense Umerov ordered to establish a commitee to investigate this incident and president Zelenskiy today made a statement that "Sovietism" and stupid soviet bureacracy in army have to be eliminated. It's too bad nobody knows how to do this if as soldiers say among 30-year old officers  and even younger alot of idiots with Soviet-style command and "old good traditions" how to fu....k personnel. 

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by Haiduk