How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[poesel]

11 hours ago, Vet 0369 said:

How about we look at it on a contractual basis. Each member of NATO agreed to use a specific percentage of their budget (I don’t remember if it was GDP, Defense, or something else), and a number of NATO members reneged on that contractural agreement for decades.

The 2% are not a contractual agreement. In a 2014 meeting, NATO members agreed to move(!) toward the 2% by 2024 (for those below 2% of GDP).

Not a contract, not even about reaching the 2% - just moving towards it.

Btw, the 2% were 'invented' in 2002 when the Baltic States joined NATO, and the other members were afraid, they wouldn't invest enough.

For the record: I'm all for those 2%.

[The_Capt]

6 minutes ago, poesel said:

The 2% are not a contractual agreement. In a 2014 meeting, NATO members agreed to move(!) toward the 2% by 2024 (for those below 2% of GDP).

Not a contract, not even about reaching the 2% - just moving towards it.

Btw, the 2% were 'invented' in 2002 when the Baltic States joined NATO, and the other members were afraid, they wouldn't invest enough.

For the record: I'm all for those 2%.

If you want to get a reaction just say “we will spend 2% on defence, as soon as you spend 2% on stopping climate change”

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, poesel said:

The 2% are not a contractual agreement. In a 2014 meeting, NATO members agreed to move(!) toward the 2% by 2024 (for those below 2% of GDP).

Not a contract, not even about reaching the 2% - just moving towards it.

Btw, the 2% were 'invented' in 2002 when the Baltic States joined NATO, and the other members were afraid, they wouldn't invest enough.

For the record: I'm all for those 2%.

The more sensible thing for NATO to do, and I've been saying this for eons, is for all nations to come together and decide what a fully staffed force looks like.  This is then divided up amongst the partner states in a way that makes geographical and financial sense.  Each partner is obligated to keep their portion of the force to various standards (rapid response at the highest, reserves at the lowest).  Every year every single unit is evaluated to ensure it is meeting those standards.  If they fail then that country is obligated to correct for it.  Every 5 years or so the force structure should be reevaluated.

For some countries, like Germany, I think it would wind up saving them money.  For others, perhaps it might cost a little more.  If a country wants to spend more than what NATO requires (for example France and Britain have other obligations), that's perfectly fine.  Whatever the case is, NATO gets the force it needs and each country pays their fair share as determined by NATO and not individual member countries.

Steve

[Harmon Rabb]

34 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I strongly suspect Putin will do the exact same thing.  Ukraine will go down as a great Russian victory when they pushed back the Western powers and taught us all a lesson by taking back a strip of land south of the Dnipro.  Victory or defeat in any war is a meta stable human concept.  Both sides in anything but total destruction will claim victory.  The trick is to not forget the larger objective each said head at the outset and then judge accordingly.

 

Another war this war kind of reminds me is the Winter war. In the minds of a lot of people because a much smaller state like Finland still remained independent after it it won the war, but the truth is it also had to give up some territory in the east to the USSR. To this day I see memes related to that war.

Anyway, the part of your post I quoted I agree with and it is what really concerns me, I think we can agree that militarily this war was a disaster for Russia but internally it will be seen as a great victory. This concerns me because while Russia will not be invading anyone anytime soon after this, eventually they can rebuilt. Unlike Perun I'm no expert in military procurement so I don't know how long that will take. If the lesson Russians get from this is they can take territory by force what is to stop them from trying to do this again somewhere else, I'm thinking one of the former USSR central Asian republics where due to geography we will not be able to help them like we helped Ukraine.  Hopefully by that time we will do the right think and accept Moldova and Ukraine into NATO and close Europe to Russia. Don't think Putin or whoever may replace him in the future will try to "finish the job" if Ukraine is under the NATO flag.

To close this post up I will share my favorite Finnish meme, just to lighten this post up a little.

 

 

[Letter from Prague]

21 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Another war this war kind of reminds me is the Winter war. In the minds of a lot of people because a much smaller state like Finland still remained independent after it it won the war, but the truth is it also had to give up some territory in the east to the USSR. To this day I see memes related to that war.

Anyway, the part of your post I quoted I agree with and it is what really concerns me, I think we can agree that militarily this war was a disaster for Russia but internally it will be seen as a great victory. This concerns me because while Russia will not be invading anyone anytime soon after this, eventually they can rebuilt. Unlike Perun I'm no expert in military procurement so I don't know how long that will take. If the lesson Russians get from this is they can take territory by force what is to stop them from trying to do this again somewhere else, I'm thinking one of the former USSR central Asian republics where due to geography we will not be able to help them like we helped Ukraine.  Hopefully by that time we will do the right think and accept Moldova and Ukraine into NATO and close Europe to Russia. Don't think Putin or whoever may replace him in the future will try to "finish the job" if Ukraine is under the NATO flag.

And unless Russia get kicked out of Ukraine or Russia collapses as a nation, this is completely correct lesson.

Not only are the Russians (the citizens) completely fine with doing things that way, looking at Western nations letting them go in for vacations and Western companies happily trading with Russia, the West is fine with Russia doing things this way as well, just not openly.

I guess I'll go tell my friend it's actually fine she will never see her parents again and that her younger brother will be used as cannon fodder for Russia in a few years, because it's just a small strip of land after all, no biggie.

[billbindc]

7 hours ago, sburke said:

Well technically speaking the cold war did have some hot fronts.  One could make the argument that Vietnam and Korea were both part of the cold war.

Korea is a good point. I think you could argue that Vietnam was a diversion from the main event. But in any case, the great majority of the conflict that was the Cold War was not fought with American troops or even fought militarily at all.

[akd]

3rd Separate Assault Brigade guys in a very bad place at the front:

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by akd

[Harmon Rabb]

 

Quote

in our military doctrine, to break through the kind of defenses we see in southern #Ukraine, you need an air advantage, and much more. We did not provide that to the Ukrainians," former CIA chief Gen. David Petraeus said in an interview with the BBC The military criticized the slowness of the West and said that it was delays in arms deliveries that caused the failure of the AFU counter-offensive. "There was a delay in making decisions on Abrams, a delay with Leopard. We delayed cluster shells that could have been very useful, ATACMS. And finally, Western-style airplanes." He also pointed to Western mistakes that he believes indirectly led to the war in Ukraine. "Putin decided that he could escape responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine because we did not take sufficient measures after the occupation of Crimea."

At this point I feel General Petraeus and General Hodges can do a podcast on this war together. They seem to have similar views.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Harmon Rabb

[Kraft]

9 minutes ago, akd said:

3rd Separate Assault Brigade guys in a very bad place at the front:

 

Just as a side note, this was posted on a Personal channel ~2 months ago. The official release cut out some parts, including one WIA being treated from one of the shells landing nearby and the KIA and WIA in the other trench from the FPV drone at 6:16.

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, Harmon Rabb said:

This concerns me because while Russia will not be invading anyone anytime soon after this, eventually they can rebuilt. Unlike Perun I'm no expert in military procurement so I don't know how long that will take. If the lesson Russians get from this is they can take territory by force what is to stop them from trying to do this again somewhere else, I'm thinking one of the former USSR central Asian republics where due to geography we will not be able to help them like we helped Ukraine.  Hopefully by that time we will do the right think and accept Moldova and Ukraine into NATO and close Europe to Russia. Don't think Putin or whoever may replace him in the future will try to "finish the job" if Ukraine is under the NATO flag.

Well there is the lesson the Russians will tell themselves, and then there is the hard political lessons.  Despite funding and providing safe haven to cross-border terrorism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian_raids), the USA never invaded Canada again.  The costs were simply too high.  They had plans for it until the beginning of WW2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red#:~:text=War Plan Red first set,reinforcement to the Canadians—the).  We were basically Ukraine in this whole equation.

Instead the US realized that they could get what they wanted (i.e. Canadian resources) through trade and cultural immersion.  We were far more valuable as a trading partner than any conquest would have provided.  Once we were fully pulled into the US orbit we essentially became a pseudo-vassal state (client state has also been used, in the end it really doesn't make a difference).  The US got us on the cheap without all the bother of having 40 million democrats mess up the US system.

Will Russia walk away with the same lesson?  Doubtful, at least under this regime.  The lesson will likely be that hard power plays are potentially a lot more expensive than initial sticker price.  Putin might go all NK and try to double down on hard power but are the Russian people in the mood for that?  What is their appetite for another military adventure in the Stans? - last one did not go well either.

My bet is the Putin Regime bet the house on this bloody war and knows they came damned close to losing it.  My bet is that there will be attempts at detent and rapprochement after this war is over.  But they will be bilateral and targeted.  Putin knows our greatest weakness in the west is unity.  So he will pick away at Turkey and other states he thinks he can see cracks in.  Make side deals and try to unravel the opposition.  That way if he does do another end-run somewhere far away-but not too close to China, we will be more divided.

Will Russia learn anything from this war?  That is the question we are really asking.  I simply do not know to be honest.  I doubt it will be "zero", but it may also be the wrong lessons for "reasons".  I guess we will have to see.

Edited December 2, 2023 by The_Capt

[The_Capt]

16 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

 

At this point I feel General Petraeus and General Hodges can do a podcast on this war together. They seem to have similar views.

Not sure what "air advantage" means anymore to be honest.  Let alone if we could build it in the Ukraine.  I if was going to spend a few billion on it, I would likely double down on small, longer range unmanned systems and deep fires.  I mean all an aircraft really does is carry the "boom", suck up data and try to deny the same to the enemy.  If you can do that other ways cheaper and faster that might create what they are referring to.

I think the idea of "more, better expensive western kit" is fundamentally flawed.  First we cannot produce that equipment in the numbers this war would need.  Second, Ukraine could not field it for years - eg a full SEAD suite.  Third, Ukraine would be challenged to sustain it.  Fourth, it still might not work.  I mean keep pushing what we have, sure.  Better than nothing.  But we get into the "one more Abrams" trap.  We need to start thinking about hacking this war from a Ukrainian perspective and stop projecting "how we would do it" onto them.

[Kraft]

12 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Not sure what "air advantage" means anymore to be honest.  Let alone if we could build it in the Ukraine.  I if was going to spend a few billion on it, I would likely double down on small, longer range unmanned systems and deep fires.  I mean all an aircraft really does is carry the "boom", suck up data and try to deny the same to the enemy.  If you can do that other ways cheaper and faster that might create what they are referring to.

I think the idea of "more, better expensive western kit" is fundamentally flawed.  First we cannot produce that equipment in the numbers this war would need.  Second, Ukraine could not field it for years - eg a full SEAD suite.  Third, Ukraine would be challenged to sustain it.  Fourth, it still might not work.  I mean keep pushing what we have, sure.  Better than nothing.  But we get into the "one more Abrams" trap.  We need to start thinking about hacking this war from a Ukrainian perspective and stop projecting "how we would do it" onto them.

Im conviced the only way to really win this is completely outproduce russia in the drone department. If the monthly fpv strikes happened per week/..day across the front, the war would quickly become unsustainable, even in the manpower department. 

If there is a drone or three for every little hideyhole, no trench can be held and reinforced and the mines dont matter all that much anymore.

Bonus point Id get to watch a lot more russians blow up instead of the occasional F16 flyby.

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by Kraft

[kimbosbread]

3 minutes ago, Kraft said:

Im conviced the only way to really win this is completely outproduce russia in the drone department. If the monthly fpv strikes happened per week/..day across the front, the war would quickly become unsustainable, even in the manpower department. 

If there is a drone or three for every little hideyhole, no trench can be held and reinforced.

Bonus point Id get to watch a lot more russians blow up instead of the occasional F16 flyby.

 

And make them autonomous, at least at some level (hunting trains and loitering 40km behind enemy lines and waiting for trucks or military vehicles) . The Nvidia SBCs seem super well suited to this.

The guy in the hidey hole doesn’t matter as much if half of the men and equipment coming to the front lines are destroyed before they ever gets there.

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, Kraft said:

Im conviced the only way to really win this is completely outproduce russia in the drone department. If the monthly fpv strikes happened per week/..day across the front, the war would quickly become unsustainable, even in the manpower department. 

If there is a drone or three for every little hideyhole, no trench can be held and reinforced and the mines dont matter all that much anymore.

Bonus point Id get to watch a lot more russians blow up instead of the occasional F16 flyby.

 

I would double down with UGVs and start looking at fully autonomous/semi-autonomous fleets.  Ukraine right now are the world leaders on military use of unmanned systems.  Reinforce this and lean into corrosive warfare by unmanned.  Problem is range and volume more than C4ISR.  I find it hard to believe that if we can produce billion dollar high tech stealth aircraft, we cannot solve for these issues for cheap unmanned systems. 

[Letter from Prague]

Building cheap crap at enormous scale and building gucci crap are usually two very different skillsets and manufacturers tend to focus on one or the other.

West kind of wants to the the latter, at least in the last decades, which China is pretty good best in the world at the former and getting better in the latter. That should make people nervous if the answer to future wars is "cheap autonomous drones at enormous scales".

(Though not to sound to negative, a lot of Western companies are pretty good at scaling as well, like Amazon and Walmart, just not necessarily at scaling manufacturing.)

[Zeleban]

Demonstration of the level of underground fortifications on the Surovikin Line, which Russian civil construction firms erected in just six months. While in the Avdeevka area, we didn’t bother to do anything like that even in 9 years. But Ukrainian construction companies are engaged in “cutting” the budgets allocated for construction in Kyiv. A good demonstration of who actually strives for victory and who is engaged in corruption, as in peacetime

[danfrodo]

2 hours ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Another war this war kind of reminds me is the Winter war. In the minds of a lot of people because a much smaller state like Finland still remained independent after it it won the war, but the truth is it also had to give up some territory in the east to the USSR. To this day I see memes related to that war.

Anyway, the part of your post I quoted I agree with and it is what really concerns me, I think we can agree that militarily this war was a disaster for Russia but internally it will be seen as a great victory. This concerns me because while Russia will not be invading anyone anytime soon after this, eventually they can rebuilt. Unlike Perun I'm no expert in military procurement so I don't know how long that will take. If the lesson Russians get from this is they can take territory by force what is to stop them from trying to do this again somewhere else, I'm thinking one of the former USSR central Asian republics where due to geography we will not be able to help them like we helped Ukraine.  Hopefully by that time we will do the right think and accept Moldova and Ukraine into NATO and close Europe to Russia. Don't think Putin or whoever may replace him in the future will try to "finish the job" if Ukraine is under the NATO flag.

To close this post up I will share my favorite Finnish meme, just to lighten this post up a little.

 

 

This should be in forum post hall of fame.  Great one.  

[LongLeftFlank]

Big if true, but aware that I am citing just one (aggregator) source here, will try to find corroboration elsewhere. But Teplinski is a paratrooper, and VDV is his go to, as they have been since the start of the war.

...And maybe you heard it here first, but if pushed to extremis, VDV might also become the next Wagner!  They've never been totally in the Stavka chain of command -- that's by design from Khrushchev's day -- and they control the Tula-Ryazan and Ivanovo logistical hubs either side of Moscow. Plus Pskov, which sits in the Novgorod lakes region, adjacent to both the Baltics and Petersburg.

At what point do Teplinski and the sailor shirt lads (Spetsnaz, PMCs, GRU) start wondering why they have been shedding buckets of blood to shore up Putin's aging KGB alumni association and the Petersburg mafiyas, plus the bloody heathen Chechens? They've got their own mafiyas, btw.

There are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your Deep Battle doctrine. 

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by LongLeftFlank

[Kinophile]

 

 

[LongLeftFlank]

4 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

 

 

 

[Harmon Rabb]

Good stuff Germany. Ukraine will need these air defence assets for the winter.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Harmon Rabb

[poesel]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The more sensible thing for NATO to do, and I've been saying this for eons, is for all nations to come together and decide what a fully staffed force looks like. 

...

An initiative to create a European Army is underway since 1950, which, depending on the specific proposal, would create something similar than yours - except sans NATO. Of course, this has created some criticism from (amongst others) Jens Stoltenberg (obviously) and DT (funnily, as usual).

The English article is a bit terse:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_army

The German one explains it in all its glorious detail:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europaarmee

Why hasn't it come into existence? Well, following is a graphic that shows the existing military structures in Europe and I think, this is explanation enough:

[Letter from Prague]

European army is a impossible idea unless EU turns into USA.

The raison d'être for French armed forces is to manage post-colonies in Africa, in Balkans the point is being ready if **** starts again, in Greece it's defence from Turkey, in the east it's about defence from Russia and its puppets, and elsewhere it is some mix of jobs program, subsidy for domestic weapon manufacturers and "it's tradition I guess" / "we need to have have at least something useful since we're in alliance".

You can't bring those completely distinct objectives into a coherent force. Poland is not going want its soldiers chasing coups in West Africa, while France has no interest in KFOR and Ostalgic Germany unlikely to explicitly arm up to fight Russia. And I'm not even going to talk of Hungary and Austria and Slovakia.

Ain't gonna work from a command angle, because we can't even align on what the mission would be.

What could work - and this is Perun's idea, I'm not that smart - is to at least create shared procurement and research and some other strategic capability alignment, since that is currently quite a mess.

[LongLeftFlank]

1 minute ago, Letter from Prague said:

European army is a impossible idea unless EU turns into USA.

The raison d'être for French armed forces is to manage post-colonies in Africa, in Balkans the point is being ready if **** starts again, in Greece it's defence from Turkey, in the east it's about defence from Russia and its puppets, and elsewhere it is some mix of jobs program, subsidy for domestic weapon manufacturers and "it's tradition I guess" / "we need to have have at least something useful since we're in alliance".

You can't bring those completely distinct objectives into a coherent force. Poland is not going want its soldiers chasing coups in West Africa, while France has no interest in KFOR and Ostalgic Germany unlikely to explicitly arm up to fight Russia. And I'm not even going to talk of Hungary and Austria and Slovakia.

Ain't gonna work from a command angle, because we can't even align on what the mission would be.

What could work - and this is Perun's idea, I'm not that smart - is to at least create shared procurement and research and some other strategic capability alignment, since that is currently quite a mess.

Interesting, and I don't disagree.

Where do Czechs seem to be leaning these days?

[billbindc]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

There are options for manipulation for competing powers in this.  In fact there is a not so radical idea that Taiwan is no more than bait to grab US attention while China continues to push westward, not eastward.

 

Is this a public facing argument being made anywhere? I’d love to read it.