How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, riptides said:

In the current landscape and positioning of forces in Ukraine, yes,

But if one gets behind the landscape, I'd say not.

 

Still won’t matter even if the UA had open road.  Infantry cannot protect the tanks. Hell they can barely protect themselves.  Combined arms is still a thing but what appears to constitute it has changed.  It is now Unmanned, infantry and Artillery (Rockets et al).  
 
I noticed this spring 22.  When that whole BTG got wiped out on a river crossing.  Infantry cannot reasonably sweep ATGMs kilometres from that bridge head.  And even if they could, they could not stop UA drones from seeing the crossing and dialling in artillery to kill it..and that is what happened.  Tanks and heavy vehicles are too hot, too visible and take too much logistics to keep in motion when an opponent can see and hit at these sorts of ranges. 

Now in the last year we have gone from seeing drones largely do ISR and dropping grenades to becoming loitering munitions able to target individual enemy vehicles and soldiers.  If they can do that at scale they may wind up replacing artillery.

Perhaps in urban areas we may see the old combination.  But frankly I am not even sure there.  The entire UAS system becomes the weapon. And we are still in early days.   

[Vet 0369]

7 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I was talking about those individual jet packs,

 

Riiiight! I can see it now, a full Battalion  of infantry, sky lined in the air like a shooting gallery! I thin it was Bell that developed a personal hovercraft back in the 1950s that they tested with live, fully geared Soldiers. It actually worked, and they called it a “Flying Jeep”or something. A lot of really influential people loved it and envisioned using it for Infantry assaults, at least until a grizzled old Senior NCO said “Are you out of your effing minds? There is nothing I’d like better than to have a line of infantry flying in the air towards me that couldn’t even return fire for suppression!”

As I see it, you couldn’t even have a base of fire, or suppression from artillery because of the possibility of friendly fire casualties. There was a reason that the DoD abandoned the concept 60 to 70 years ago.

Even the favorite of the U.S.M.C, vertical envelopment, would be next to impossible in this environment!

[Vet 0369]

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

That is because they do not work anymore.

Armor cannot support infantry as it get detected too far out.  This is why we keep seeing them pushed forward in 1 & 2s to snipe, and then blown up.  So basically more infantry mobile guns.

Infantry cannot protect armor.  ATGM are reaching out to 3-5kms.  UAS are everywhere.  And guns when linked to UAS/ISR are dropping the sky on them before they even reach direct fire distance.  Infantry cannot sweep the ranges needed to protect that armor...and they cannot fly.

I might have bought the RA "forgetting this" (which would be odd as they demonstrated it in 2014).  But the UA has been feeding troops into western training for nearly 2 years.  And officers into our war colleges for nearly a decade.  The UA simply did not "forget".  In fact they tried it last May-Jun and it failed.

The combined arms team is broken and no one knows how to fix it.

Fair point!

[Maciej Zwolinski]

13 hours ago, Zeleban said:

. Many new Ukrainian officers are so-called "jackets" - this is the name regular Soviet officers gave to reserve officers - ordinary citizens who graduated from a civilian higher educational institution with a military department at that university. For example, at the law school where my friend studied there may be an artillery department that trained artillery platoon commanders. The preparation was very minimal (a friend told me that they had an 85 mm D-44 cannon as a training tool).

Is this a military department a new thing? When we had a compulsory military service  under communism and a few years thereafter once you finished your studies, you were conscripted and sent to an oficer candidate school instead of a line unit somewhere in a forest garrison, as happened to the guys without higher education. I thought it was a universal model for post-Warsaw Pact militaries.

[Sojourner]

48 minutes ago, Vet 0369 said:

Riiiight! I can see it now, a full Battalion  of infantry, sky lined in the air like a shooting gallery!

Cannon fodder?

[billbindc]

9 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I was talking about those individual jet packs, but of course they would have to upscale production dramatically.  Heavy lift UAS could be used for resupply and medivac - but again...not ready at scale.  

To solve the minefield problem one basically needs to isolate the breaching area (including bridgehead), conduct the breach, amass and breakout - that it the traditional doctrinal approach.  Problem is - how do you isolate an area when your opponent can see pretty much everything?  So sweeping enemy drones, attrition of guns are a must.  But one has to go in and take out all those ATGM teams linked into the drones and guns.  For that I think we need massed offensive drone swarms.  Or a lot of precise artillery. 

Once you can isolate an area you then need to move really quickly.  Even the RA is moving fast by warfare standards.  You do not have hours to rally up at the bridgehead and charge out - you have minutes.  This means any crossing is a bouce-crossing, which has significant challenges of its own.

What I think we are landing on is "it doesn't exist yet".  So next question: "Can it be built for this war?" 

^{_{Armitage ran a large hand back through his cropped brown hair. A heavy gold bracelet flashed on his wrist. `Leningrad, Kiev, Siberia. We invented you in Siberia, Case.'
`What's that supposed to mean?'
 Screaming Fist, Case, you've heard the name.'
`Some kind of run, wasn't it? Tried to burn this Russian nexus with virus programs. Yeah, I heard about it. And nobody got out.'
He sensed abrupt tension. Armitage walked to the window and looked out over Tokyo Bay. `That isn't true. One unit made it back to Helsinki, Case.'
Case shrugged, sipped coffee.}}

[Battlefront.com]

The NYT seems to be on a "glass half full" streak this week.  Here's a long article on the benefits Russian oligarchs and Putin buddies have reaped from stealing the property of Western companies seeking to sell out after sanctions hit:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/putin-companies-economy-boycott-elites-benefit-ukraine-war.html

The article almost completely focuses on the short term positives for Russia with only a tiny bit discussing the long term harm.  The small part mentioned is that Western companies are going to be very wary of getting back into the Russian markets later on because Russia so overtly stole corporate assets.  Businesses don't like investing billions only to have someone else say "nope, sorry, that's ours now".  While true, it didn't touch upon the more glaring long term problems:

What are the chances that all these Putin flunkies are going to keep these companies viable?  They're hyper capitalists, seeking to draw out as much short term cash out of these companies as possible.  Few will reinvest what is necessary to keep them going.  They also lack Western business practices that the companies internal structures are founded on.  It's like replacing the brain of a Human with that of a chimp.  The body might still look Human, and maybe even move kinda like one, but when it is faced with a complex task/challenge it probably won't go well.

Even more problematic for Russia is that many of these businesses are now state owned.  Talk about cutting out competition!  Especially in such a corrupt and potentially violent business environment.

Sure, Russia's coffers might be filling up a bit more quickly with all these thefts than it would have otherwise.  Short term.  Long term?  We can just look at the Soviet Union to get an idea of what the long term looks like.  Would have been nice of the NYT article to at least mention that.

Steve

[dan/california]

24 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

The NYT seems to be on a "glass half full" streak this week.  Here's a long article on the benefits Russian oligarchs and Putin buddies have reaped from stealing the property of Western companies seeking to sell out after sanctions hit:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/putin-companies-economy-boycott-elites-benefit-ukraine-war.html

The article almost completely focuses on the short term positives for Russia with only a tiny bit discussing the long term harm.  The small part mentioned is that Western companies are going to be very wary of getting back into the Russian markets later on because Russia so overtly stole corporate assets.  Businesses don't like investing billions only to have someone else say "nope, sorry, that's ours now".  While true, it didn't touch upon the more glaring long term problems:

What are the chances that all these Putin flunkies are going to keep these companies viable?  They're hyper capitalists, seeking to draw out as much short term cash out of these companies as possible.  Few will reinvest what is necessary to keep them going.  They also lack Western business practices that the companies internal structures are founded on.  It's like replacing the brain of a Human with that of a chimp.  The body might still look Human, and maybe even move kinda like one, but when it is faced with a complex task/challenge it probably won't go well.

Even more problematic for Russia is that many of these businesses are now state owned.  Talk about cutting out competition!  Especially in such a corrupt and potentially violent business environment.

Sure, Russia's coffers might be filling up a bit more quickly with all these thefts than it would have otherwise.  Short term.  Long term?  We can just look at the Soviet Union to get an idea of what the long term looks like.  Would have been nice of the NYT article to at least mention that.

Steve

The biggest short term effect is every corporation that isn't busting sanctions, and probably a lot of them that are, is going to demand cash in advance to ship much of anything to Russia. That matters when you are heading towards a cash crunch anyway.

 

[dan/california]

The two coolest things I found today.

[Battlefront.com]

The Brad video reminds us why everybody wants to still believe heavy IFVs can survive the challenges that face them.  When one gets into position it can do vastly more than anything else.  Now it faces two problems; surviving the ride into position then surviving the ride from it.

Steve

[dan/california]

They need to pull these guys out and put them in charge of the course for the whole army.

[dan/california]

9 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

The Brad video reminds us why everybody wants to still believe heavy IFVs can survive the challenges that face them.  When one gets into position it can do vastly more than anything else.  Now it faces two problems; surviving the ride into position then surviving the ride from it.

Steve

I fully agree with this. In a related question does anybody have a video of a CV-90 doing the same kind of tree line shred? I am very curious about the performance of the bigger gun.

The  long term question is what is the smallest UGV that can carry a Bushmaster, and enough ammo to justify itself? Or will little flying bombs make even that unworkable.

Edited December 19, 2023 by dan/california

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, dan/california said:

I fully agree with this. In a related question does anybody have a video of a CV-90 doing the same kind of tree line shred? I am very curious about the performance of the bigger gun.

The  long term question is what is the smallest UGV that carry a Bushmaster, and enough ammo to justify itself? Or will little flying bombs make even that unworkable.

I suspect flying bombs will make even that unworkable.  The Bushmaster is not a small piece of equipment and there has to be some hefty mass to absorb the recoil.  By the time you're done piecing one together it's not going to be significantly smaller (from a targeting perspective) or maneuverable than a Brad.

Steve

[Zeleban]

4 hours ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

Is this a military department a new thing? When we had a compulsory military service  under communism and a few years thereafter once you finished your studies, you were conscripted and sent to an oficer candidate school instead of a line unit somewhere in a forest garrison, as happened to the guys without higher education. I thought it was a universal model for post-Warsaw Pact militaries.

This was common practice in the USSR. Here is a quote from Wikipedia:

Since the 1960s, there were military departments at universities in 497 of the approximately 890 universities operating in the post-war USSR (at the very end of the 1980s, the number of military departments was reduced to 441)

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/identifying-russian-vulnerabilities-and-how-to-leverage-them

Strategies for addressing today’s Russia should resemble the containment strategy first set out in the 1940s, which was designed to apply steady and forceful counter pressure to a regime whose paranoia and insecurities represented a clear danger to the West, just as the Putin regime does today.

 

I generally agree with the points they do make. They great flaw is that they don't emphasize that many of these weaknesses depend greatly on the extent to which Russia loses in Ukraine, and is seen to lose.

 

[Carolus]

13 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

So the question remains... at what point does Russia simply not have enough of these fancy systems to maintain some form of edge over Ukraine?  I keep thinking "soon".  Someday I'll be correct!

Steve

There was a post about a Chinese EW vehicle being spotted at the front and destroyed by a Ukrainian drone.

There was even a rumor that a Chinese officer was killed in a baracks bear the frontline who was conducting training for Russian crews.

I would not be too surprised to see some mixed units soon - Russian drivers with a Chinese EW container with Chinese operators or at least an officer on the back of their truck. It would be easy to deny since these vehicles stay reasonable far away from the trenches and if they get blown up there is usually nothing left to be taken prisoner.

The Chinese government knows very well how to make corpses disappear, they do it to several thousand civilians each year which are executed next to the official death penalties. They usually end up in the concrete under these empty Chinese skyscrapers. So they would have no problem telling a family that their PLA buddy had a heroic yet tragic driving accident during an exercise in Mongolia.

Edited December 19, 2023 by Carolus
typos and mistakes

[Haiduk]

8 hours ago, danfrodo said:

Disheartening.  Can UKR buy chinese drones?  With EU/US money?  I suspect will go to the highest bidder.

Most of our FPV and small recon drones like DJI are Chinese. But our charity funds and volunteers are buying them mostly through mediators in EU and other countries,when Russia now can order any drone directly on Chinese factories by dozen thousands 

We gradually increasing production of drones by own design - for example "Magyar" uses almost only Ukrainian drones,but most of spare parts in these drones also produce in China. 

[Seedorf81]

Dutch newsprogramme yesterday: (Link in next "update"-post.) My summary/translation, so mistakes on me.

 

Former Wagnercolonel Igor Salikov arrived in the Netherlands. He wants to testify at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Served in Russian army, later in Wagnergroup. Fought in different African countries as well as in Syria. Also "involved" in Russian actions against Ukraine, 2014 and 2022.

Witnessed many crimes and stated (wrote a deposition for the ICC) where the orders came from. Straight from Russian ministry of defense and sometimes directly from the office of Vladimir Putin. Also testifies that GROe and FSB were heaviliy involved in illegal operations.

Salikov was involved in Ukraine since 2014 and stated that part of his job was to support the separatists. In Donetsk the referendum was "a forgery", that only succeeded because of "bribery, blackmail and fraud". He also mentions the blatant lies that soldiers were told before the 2014 invasion in Ukraine/Crimea.

Furthermore:

- killing/murdering of civilians,

- laying mines on purpose in civilian area's (Many children dead because of that.),

- Torture and killing of prisoners of war,

and, most important I think, he witnessed the abduction of the Ukrainian children in februari 2022. "Convoys of FSB cars and vans, filled with children." (According to Yale-universiy about 6000 children were abducted.)

 

Reason for his defection seems to be that he was ordered to execute civilians, but refused to do that. Was about to be court-marshalled for that, but managed to flee Russia. "Lost faith in Russian cause".

Of course, credibility, and possible own warcrimes, from this former colonel need to be investigated. His account of the FSB abduction of children was corroborated by other witnesses, it seems.

Follow-up: The importance of his testimony lies in him possibly being an "insider witness" (ICC phrase) with knowledge of "The chain of Command".

 

Edited December 19, 2023 by Seedorf81
info on website added

[Seedorf81]

Update on Wagnercolonel Salikov:

 

He was in Donetsk-region when MH-17was shot down. He says that some form of competition was going on between the Wagner-group and the separatists.

A few weeks before the downing of the MH-17, the Wagnergroup had shot down a Ukrainian army-plane in Luhansk-region and they got a lot of credit for that.

So, according to Salikov, the separatists decided that they had to shoot down a Ukrainian plane too, but through mistakes/stupidity they shot down MH-17.

(I never heard of this competition-story, so could be that he 's a credible source.)

https://eenvandaag.avrotros.nl/item/voormalig-wagner-officier-in-nederland-om-zich-bij-strafhof-te-melden-bevelen-voor-oorlogsmisdaden-kwamen-rechtstreeks-uit-het-kremlin/

Edited December 19, 2023 by Seedorf81

[The_Capt]

10 hours ago, Vet 0369 said:

Riiiight! I can see it now, a full Battalion  of infantry, sky lined in the air like a shooting gallery! I thin it was Bell that developed a personal hovercraft back in the 1950s that they tested with live, fully geared Soldiers. It actually worked, and they called it a “Flying Jeep”or something. A lot of really influential people loved it and envisioned using it for Infantry assaults, at least until a grizzled old Senior NCO said “Are you out of your effing minds? There is nothing I’d like better than to have a line of infantry flying in the air towards me that couldn’t even return fire for suppression!”

As I see it, you couldn’t even have a base of fire, or suppression from artillery because of the possibility of friendly fire casualties. There was a reason that the DoD abandoned the concept 60 to 70 years ago.

Even the favorite of the U.S.M.C, vertical envelopment, would be next to impossible in this environment!

I am pretty sure some old NCO said the same thing about Air Assault back in the day too.  No base of fire beyond what door guns can try to deliver and all nicely lined up in the sky.  “Sending troops by those damned whirly bird things!?”  In many ways helicopter assault is more dangerous than what we are talking about here.  Tac aviation is very visible and has specific systems designed to defeat it.

The fire base would be all those drones that are currently mauling the front lines right now.  We are talking about upscaling what SOF is already testing.  Sending a bridgehead force across a 500m minefield to try and secure the far bank - so think recon in force.  We may be a few years from full on battalion assaults.

Of course we could just keep sending them the old fashioned way - in all that steel that keeps getting blown up.  To my mind it is not application of the concept that is the problem.  It is production. Those systems are in early prototype stages right now.  Trying to get enough to sustain offensive operations is not likely going to be viable.

A supporting option would be UGVs to penetrate the minefield and then support infantry crossings.  This would be mutually supporting systems.  Of course our biggest problem may simply be complete lack of imagination or realization of just how much technology has changed the modern battlefield.

[Joe982]

I feel that Ukraine must destroy the Kerch bridge and recapture Crimea. Only then Putin will negotiate.

I think the Ukrainian offensive failed due to mine fields. And nothing else.

I am from Sydney Australia. Apart from a few ski trips around the world I am not familiar with snow.

So, if a mine field is covered with a meter of snow, what happens if tanks or infantry pass over it?

/

 

 

 

[The_Capt]

Just now, Joe982 said:

So, if a mine field is covered with a meter of snow, what happens if tanks or infantry pass over it?

Standard procedure is to blow up.  AT mines need maybe 100-200 pounds of pressure to detonate.  An AFV comes in at 30-40t.  Snow is not really going to do much.

Now AP mines are going to behave differently.  Toe tappers might not function. But I suspect bounding ones will still work.

[The_Capt]

7 hours ago, dan/california said:

They need to pull these guys out and put them in charge of the course for the whole army.

Well you see the problem is that all those Russian tanks and APCs were not being manoeuvre-y or combined armsie enough.  That is because manoeuvre and combined arms are so complicated that the RA could not possibly figure them out.

Now link those two guys to UAS who can see all that hardware from 10kms away and tell the ATGM team exactly what field to be in.  You heard the guy in the video “we stopped the column”.  Two men and a single Javelin system.  

[The_Capt]

8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I suspect flying bombs will make even that unworkable.  The Bushmaster is not a small piece of equipment and there has to be some hefty mass to absorb the recoil.  By the time you're done piecing one together it's not going to be significantly smaller (from a targeting perspective) or maneuverable than a Brad.

Steve

If one wants simple fire suppression an AGL would be a much better choice.  Smaller and lighter but packs enough punch.

Edited December 19, 2023 by The_Capt

[Zeleban]

40 minutes ago, Joe982 said:

I feel that Ukraine must destroy the Kerch bridge and recapture Crimea. Only then Putin will negotiate.

I think the Ukrainian offensive failed due to mine fields. And nothing else.

I am from Sydney Australia. Apart from a few ski trips around the world I am not familiar with snow.

So, if a mine field is covered with a meter of snow, what happens if tanks or infantry pass over it?

/

 

 

 

 

Our famous Ukrainian sapper, who maintains a blog on YouTube dedicated to mines, claims that snow is a serious problem for the detonation of anti-personnel mines. Deep snow can also be a problem for the detonation of anti-tank mines, when a large amount of snow, when driven over by a wheel, is compacted around the fuse.

Moreover, burying an anti-tank mine too deeply in ordinary soil, when the fuse does not protrude above the surface of the ground, can also cause the anti-tank mine to fail to fire when even a tank caterpillar hits it. He describes the Taliban tactics, when an anti-tank mine installed in this way exploded not under the wheel of the lead vehicle in the column, but under the wheel of the middle car, after the wheels of the cars in front gradually pushed through the edges of the hole in which the mine was installed. In this way, an ambush on the convoy was simulated (the convoy thought that it was a shot from an RPG and not a mine explosion, since the first vehicles in the convoy passed without being detonated). Thus, the movement of convoys was greatly slowed down and logistics were disrupted

 

Edited December 19, 2023 by Zeleban