How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, Letter from Prague said:

That would be my guess as well. It is easy to think "these guys think like us, except they're evil" but sometimes people of different cultures genuinely have different way of thinking and effectively live in different world from us.

Russians, at least the ruling class, really do live in a world split into Great Empires(tm) with their Spheres of Influence(tm) where smaller countries are effectively puppets. They don't understand smaller countries having a say in their fate at all.

In this mindset, wanting to negotiate with US is obvious - negotiating with Ukraine ... that's like a chess player saying they want to negotiate a draw and being told to negotiate it with not the opposing player, but with one of the chess pieces. Makes no sense.

That, and I think they also hate the idea of independent Ukraine so much, they would rather pretend it is controlled by the US.

....

I am pretty surprised they banned the "anti-war candidate". I was pretty sure it's a sham candidate that is there to get liek 2 % in an obviously rigged elections and be used as a "see! the Russian people rejected the anti-war candidate and that means they want the war!".

Makes me wonder how well they really control the elections (maybe the local politicians could interfere?) or something.

Somebody recently observed that Russia is the last remaining colonial empire and I think that sums things up pretty well. But the are a truncated one and without Ukraine they can't even kid themselves that they are the imperial Russia of yore. Thus, the war.

[dan/california]

8 minutes ago, Yet said:

raw elite meat? isnt that just Steak Tartare?

I love it, the 144th VDV regmt, quality rating Steak Tartare. This might need to be a thing in the new game.

 

[LongLeftFlank]

1. War within a war.

2. Tactical action (short clips)

3. Hmm, volunteer for mine clearing?

Bonus

 

Edited December 23, 2023 by LongLeftFlank

[Offshoot]

27 minutes ago, Yet said:

raw elite meat? isnt that just Steak Tartare?

I don't know, sounds more like a load of old tripe to me

[Yet]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

 

 

Edited December 23, 2023 by Yet
i take it back, research

[OBJ]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

 

 

Assuming they got it right, NYT article says senior defense official, just to be clear, not the Minister of Defense.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/23/world/europe/ukraine-defense-official-arrest.html#:~:text=The Ukrainian police have arrested,artillery shells for Ukraine's military.

I agree with the sentiment of punishing him, wonder if the Ukrainians have frontline penal battalions. This guy would be a great candidate for supervised mine clearance work. Paraphrasing another dictator, 'it takes a brave man to be a criminal in the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.'

Edited December 24, 2023 by OBJ

[alison]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Oh, well let me shut that down right away then.  There is no way to conduct a breach without securing the minefield first.  Even if you got a lane in, the follow on break out force has to traverse the obstacle and then bounce out.

This has been an interesting discussion to follow exactly because it fails to address the elephant in the room, which is that no one has managed to make any significant progress across unmined terrain either. Why would we expect advancing along a hypothetical cleared lane in a minefield to go any better than advancing along an actual clear lane?

Last year, some folks on this thread were doing back of the envelope math to show that the front is too wide to be effectively covered by artillery. In this scenario, even if every inch of the front was mined, the solution for an attacker would be to find the gaps and breach there. But it's looking like there are no gaps any more.

Perhaps drones and infantry anti-tank weapons have improved to the degree that the number of people required to hold each kilometer has been greatly reduced? The intuitive solution to this is to bring greater mass to bear. Even 10 guys with ATGMs can't stop 20 tanks. But then the attacker also needs 20 lanes, otherwise the traffic jam will inevitably give the defender's artillery time to target the area. Enter all these wacky ideas for rapidly clearing minefields.

Let's say that the Aerial Winch Kit 2000 is 100% effective. A squadron of AWKs just opened up 20 lanes in a weakly-defended area of the front. 20 tanks are ordered through, 10 of them are immediately destroyed by ATGMs. How long do the survivors have before artillery rains down on their heads? If the answer is "not long enough", then we're back at trying to figure out how to wipe out artillery at ever-greater distances, and the minefield is not the real problem.

Edited December 24, 2023 by alison
typo

[dan/california]

16 minutes ago, alison said:

This has been an interesting discussion to follow exactly because it fails to address the elephant in the room, which is that no one has managed to make any significant progress across unmined terrain either. Why would we expect advancing along a hypothetical cleared lane in a minefield to go any better than advancing along an actual clear lane?

Last year, some folks on this thread were doing back of the envelope math to show that the front is too wide to be effectively covered by artillery. In this scenario, even if every inch of the front was mined, the solution for an attacker would be to find the gaps and breach there. But it's looking like there are no gaps any more.

Perhaps drones and infantry anti-tank weapons have improved to the degree that the number of people required to hold each kilometer has been greatly reduced? The intuitive solution to this is to bring greater mass to bear. Even 10 guys with ATGMs can't stop 20 tanks. But then the attacker also needs 20 lanes, otherwise the traffic jam will inevitably give the defender's artillery time to target the area. Enter all these wacky ideas for rapidly clearing minefields.

Let's say that the Aerial Winch Kit 2000 is 100% effective. A squadron of AWKs just opened up 20 lanes in a weakly-defended area of the front. 20 tanks are ordered through, 10 of them are immediately destroyed by ATGMs. How long do the survivors have before artillery rains down on their heads? If the answer is "not long enough", then we're back at trying to figure out how to wipe out artillery at ever-greater distances, and the minefield is not the real problem.

No, but it makes all the other problems much worse. The details of the math matter here. If you have ten brigades and you utterly wreck two or three of them to get the other seven loose in yours opponents rear area, and they do enough damage that the enemy has to retreat tens or hundreds of miles, with mass surrenders and such. Then you have just achieved a major military success, albeit an expensive one. I have essentially just described the battle of El Alamein, which despite very high losses is considered a huge success for the British by almost everyone.

If you launch an attack with ten brigades and seven of of them get shredded, and the other three have to retreat, well you have just lost rather badly. I have just described the battle of Kursk, and NOBODY thinks the Germans won that one. They were both set piece attacks against prepared positions. One of them worked and one of them didn't, because the details matter, and the current beyond enormous minefields in Ukraine are very most definitely one of those details.

Edit: The basis of the current disagreement between the Ukrainian and U.S. militaries is that the U.S. thinks Ukraine could have achieved an El Alamein style victory if they had stacked everything into one maximum effort push instead of spreading out there efforts in hopes of finding a seam in the Russian defenses. The Ukrainians are absolutely convinced that if they had done that they would simply have would have had the same kind of disaster the Germans experienced at Kursk, and the Russians have recently demonstrated at Vuhledar and Adviika. Trying five times as hard in spot where the defense is truly solid, relative to what you can bring to bear, just gets five times as many people killed. So what we are talking about, with varying degrees of sanity, is how to move the math in Ukraine favor, just enough.

Edited December 24, 2023 by dan/california

[fireship4]

19 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The problem with this is if the line charge triggers a mine while being reeled in then the op is fooked.  They can cut the deployed part from the spool and detonate what they have, but they'll need to hook up another UV with a cable and try again.  On second thought, that might not be so bad as you can have a LOT of drones in reserve for the price of one engineering vehicle.

Perhaps it would be better to have a team of drones lay the entire charge in one go.  Or if the risk of severing the line in one spot is too high (remote triggers spaced along the charge might solve this) you might even have a larger team of drones each with something light like det. cord, that fly out a few feet apart and concievably create a path.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, alison said:

Perhaps drones and infantry anti-tank weapons have improved to the degree that the number of people required to hold each kilometer has been greatly reduced?

Yes, that does seem to be what's happened.  The persistent ISR allows a dispersed platoon to call for timely help, be it an ATGM team rushed by ATV or civilian vehicle or artillery sitting 10km in the rear, before the attack can get very far.  At the worst the defending platoon gets hammered and the attacking force takes some positions before getting itself smashed.

Coupling this new(ish) form of ISR with any type of PGM, including FPV drones, makes things even deadlier for the attacker.  Now a platoon under stress doesn't need a curtain of fire to keep its position, it only needs a couple of well placed hits for the attacker to be knocked off its game.

This is why the war has changed in nature since 2022.  The availability of both ISR and PGMs has increased for both Russian and Ukraine since the war began.  As that's happened we've seen less and less success for the attacker.  Mines are, as you say, appear to be more of a multiplier rather than the cause of the stalemated nature of the war.

Steve

[kimbosbread]

11 hours ago, OBJ said:

Wow, flying (gliding) snakes.

Taking this seriously, the idea of man imitating nature, how do you see the 'flying MICLIC' do the equivalent of, starting high up in a tree, 'suck in its abdomen and flaring out its ribs to turn its body into a "pseudo concave wing", all the while making a continual serpentine motion of lateral undulation parallel to the ground to stabilize its direction in midair in order to land safely.

Assuming you are not just putting me on, taking me for a ride

I was thinking as an alternative to a glide bomb that could be launched from your bog standard MLRS, or a cruise missile, or a plane, or whatever. Un-snake in the middle of the trajectory and you got a 10-30m long line charge that flies down to where it is supposed to go and boom. You could basically clear lanes from far away with one or two HIMARs, all at once without needing to concentrate equipment right at the border of the minefield.

[The_Capt]

6 hours ago, poesel said:

Yeah, wrong use of military terminology from my side. I was just talking about the act of removing the mines. Not about all the rest that is necessary for the actual breaching.

About the width of the cleared lane: IIRC it was supposed to be 8m or not? Even if fuzzy on the sides, that is more than two Leo 2s abreast.

So the MICLIC or other line charge may blow an 8m lane but you are going to drive down the centre of that lane.  This leaves 2m safety on either side but one can expect some possible holdouts.  When a safe lane gets traffic the vehicles are not on rails.  They can slip and jimmy depending on conditions.  One would never send 2 x MBTs abreast on an explosive breach.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, alison said:

This has been an interesting discussion to follow exactly because it fails to address the elephant in the room, which is that no one has managed to make any significant progress across unmined terrain either. Why would we expect advancing along a hypothetical cleared lane in a minefield to go any better than advancing along an actual clear lane?

Last year, some folks on this thread were doing back of the envelope math to show that the front is too wide to be effectively covered by artillery. In this scenario, even if every inch of the front was mined, the solution for an attacker would be to find the gaps and breach there. But it's looking like there are no gaps any more.

Perhaps drones and infantry anti-tank weapons have improved to the degree that the number of people required to hold each kilometer has been greatly reduced? The intuitive solution to this is to bring greater mass to bear. Even 10 guys with ATGMs can't stop 20 tanks. But then the attacker also needs 20 lanes, otherwise the traffic jam will inevitably give the defender's artillery time to target the area. Enter all these wacky ideas for rapidly clearing minefields.

Let's say that the Aerial Winch Kit 2000 is 100% effective. A squadron of AWKs just opened up 20 lanes in a weakly-defended area of the front. 20 tanks are ordered through, 10 of them are immediately destroyed by ATGMs. How long do the survivors have before artillery rains down on their heads? If the answer is "not long enough", then we're back at trying to figure out how to wipe out artillery at ever-greater distances, and the minefield is not the real problem.

Oh definitely on density.  This front should be far too wide to cover off with the troops the RA has.  Even with the minefield.  But UAS/ISR have changed the game.  The UA cannot move any forces in concentration without getting picked up and the lit up.  The RA should not be able to protect such a large frontage with so few troops…but they are.  I supposed it is only fair in hindsight as the UA stopped them with really insanely bad force ratios.

So here we are, the calcs are out the window.  In reality one might get 1 or 2 lanes, open for a window before scatterable mines close it.  In that time you have to transit roughly 30-40 vehicles for a conventional combat team F and A1, A2 ech.  A Battlegroup needs over 100.  At around 10-15 kms/hr it is going to take each vehicle about 2 mins to transit the obstacle.  Assuming double  spacings that is a train probably around 400m long per Cbt team.  So we are likely talking 10-15 mins per Cbt Tm accounting for stop and gos etc.  An entire BG is looking at maybe an hour using 2 safe lanes.

So if one cannot suppress the enemy guns and kill the ATGMs the odds of those two lanes getting blocked are extremely high.

As to open country.  Well I am not sure if there is any left.  And if there is, it is likely a kill zone.  From what we have seen anything large and hot that comes within about 10km of the front from either side gets picked up and hammered.  The entire problem of offence in this war right now is one of suppressing enemy ISR, guns and ATGMs well enough and in depth enough to get any freedom of manoeuvre.  Minefield are only driving the defence force density costs down…way down.

[kimbosbread]

Random thought: What’s up with Belarus and Lukashenka nowadays? Haven’t heard anything about those lately.

[MikeyD]

Gotta hand it to Luakshenko, he's managed to not fall out of any hospital windows despite dragging his heels on active war support. I guess his excuse now is 'But you've already taken all of our warfighting stocks!' I assume the Belarus army would be down to five artillery shells total by now.

[dan/california]

33 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

Gotta hand it to Luakshenko, he's managed to not fall out of any hospital windows despite dragging his heels on active war support. I guess his excuse now is 'But you've already taken all of our warfighting stocks!' I assume the Belarus army would be down to five artillery shells total by now.

The man is as hard to get rid of as a bad roach infestation, and less pleasant to have around.

 

Edited December 24, 2023 by dan/california

[Haiduk]

"Archer" at the work

 

[zinz]

https://mastodon.social/@noelreports@mstdn.social/111634878535688765

After the downing of three Su-34s, the Russians suspended the use of tactical aircraft and guided air bombs," spokeswoman for the Operational Command center South, Nataliya Humenyuk said.

[OBJ]

11 hours ago, alison said:

This has been an interesting discussion to follow exactly because it fails to address the elephant in the room, which is that no one has managed to make any significant progress across unmined terrain either. Why would we expect advancing along a hypothetical cleared lane in a minefield to go any better than advancing along an actual clear lane?

Last year, some folks on this thread were doing back of the envelope math to show that the front is too wide to be effectively covered by artillery. In this scenario, even if every inch of the front was mined, the solution for an attacker would be to find the gaps and breach there. But it's looking like there are no gaps any more.

Perhaps drones and infantry anti-tank weapons have improved to the degree that the number of people required to hold each kilometer has been greatly reduced? The intuitive solution to this is to bring greater mass to bear. Even 10 guys with ATGMs can't stop 20 tanks. But then the attacker also needs 20 lanes, otherwise the traffic jam will inevitably give the defender's artillery time to target the area. Enter all these wacky ideas for rapidly clearing minefields.

Let's say that the Aerial Winch Kit 2000 is 100% effective. A squadron of AWKs just opened up 20 lanes in a weakly-defended area of the front. 20 tanks are ordered through, 10 of them are immediately destroyed by ATGMs. How long do the survivors have before artillery rains down on their heads? If the answer is "not long enough", then we're back at trying to figure out how to wipe out artillery at ever-greater distances, and the minefield is not the real problem.

Thanks @alison, as you point out, the minefield is only part of the problem. I think you listed a number of the other problems well.

Edited December 24, 2023 by OBJ

[The_Capt]

So reviewing ISW and it hits upon particular peeve of mine with respect to western strategic mindset:

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/high-price-losing-ukraine

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/high-price-losing-ukraine-part-2-—-military-threat-and-beyond

If you read these toe pieces what jump out is how binary the analysis it.  We either fully liberate Ukraine and somehow live in a safer world - the impacts on Russia of a total defeat and possible follow on impacts of that on regional security are not explored.  Or we lose Ukraine entirely.  The analysis of losing Ukraine entirely is solid and I do not dispute.

What I dispute is the lack of any negotiation space.  All war is negotiation.  Most wars in history have ended in some form of negotiated end-state.  We tend to highlight and fixate on the maximalist wars because they had very “hot” impacts and make for good drama.  But most wars end somewhere in the middle - no one gets 100% of what they wanted.

So a major shortfall in the west has been a clear articulation of strategic end-states.  I am not proposing we give Russia “outs” or off-ramps but we have not even painted a vision of what a post-war order will look like.  What are our conditions for renormalization with Russia?  What is the post-war reconstruction plan?  How quickly can Ukraine be pulled into NATO?  What do we plan to do in the event of a Russian collapse?  The sum total of western declaration has been “support Ukraine to the end” without defining what that end in fact is or is not.  By failing to do this we tie victory to the map and not human conditions.  That is dangerous as we know the map may not demonstrate what we need to win, nor does it indicate a loss.

Now I strongly suspect that this thing has been mapped out by staffs in the backfield and all we hear is the party line.  However, this war may end with a complete Russia failure.  The RA may turn around and March on Moscow.  A military coup in Russia is not good news.  The last time it tore the country apart.  This time it could make things worse not better.  The absolute military victory being championed by ISW (and others) will very likely mean complete chaos in Russia itself.  We have never had a nuclear power completely fall apart below the state level.

Many simply go “meh, we will deal with it.” But then lose their minds when we ask “well what if we wind up with less than we want”.  This is called strategic scope eye: a dangerously singular focus on one certainty while neglecting the rest of the problem.

We should absolutely support Ukraine.  We should push them as much  as we can.  We must bring them into a collective defence umbrella - it is the only proven deterrence to Russian aggression.  We must rebuild Ukraine.  We must also map out what renormalization with Russia would look like.  What are the enticements /inducements?  

Finally “victory” may be a continuing work in progress.  We may have to accept partial victory now and work to a broader one later.  And accept Russia is going to do the same.  I keep coming back to this, in the middle victory spaces: there is “declared victory” and there is “real victory”.  Russia can declare whatever it wants.  Putin could be pushed back to pre-22 lines and still cry victory because he held onto Crimea and Donbas.  He will definitely crow and declare total victory if he holds onto what he has right now.  So freakin what?  Russia failed to achieve its strategic goals - undeclared and declared.  

As to “real” Ukrainian victory: if Ukraine is in NATO and seeing hundreds of billions in reconstruction as it is being fast-tracked into the EU in 2025 - how is that not a strategic victory?  By 2030 Ukraine could be an Eastern European powerhouse with a larger economy and military industrial base (as it schools the entire western world on how to fight a modern war) than it had before the war.  Russia will likely be sulking and planning…much as it has for the Baltics for decades. But it will be doing it under sanctions as a Chinese satellite.  It may not even be a great power by that point.  It ability to project regional threats will be diminished.  It will face a decision to renormalize with the west or continue to decline.

Is all that going to be a massive strategic defeat if we are stuck at the current conflict lines?  Was Korea a major strategic defeat for South Korea?  We have to deal with NK but we have shown we can…for years.  Is all this a major Russia strategic victory?

This is the problem with binary end-states, they ignore the realities of war.  The reality is that parties enter into the conflict with a certainty - a version of reality without doubt.   Those certainties are in collision and irreconcilable with the opponent.  The “war” is that violent collision.  As it progresses, a third certainty is created and each party must negotiate with it. War is as much about negotiation with oneself as an enemy.

To be clear, I am not advocating withdrawing support to Ukraine in any way shape or form.  I am not arguing appeasement with Russia.  What I am asking is that if we have run out of military option space - what are we willing to live with inside that third certainty?

[Haiduk]

Russian assault group made attempt to approach the area in Krynky, holding by UKR forces. But single FPV drone, which hit Russian BMP and killed a soldier, completely broken motivation of Russian assault group to continue their task, so they retreared, abandoning own dead comrade and BMP.

Russian armored column in three tanks (one of them is T-90M), 3 BMP-2 (later one more BMP-3 appeared as abandoned) was stopped and disabled during a movement by FPV attacks of Adam UAV group. Infantry had a time to disembark and scatter in the tree-plants around. 

Question about wide usage of FPV drones and establishing of "shtat" UAV units in battalions and companies was put on Zelenskiy press-conference. As result, main "engine" of FPV direction in Ukriane - Serhiy Sternenko had a meeting with representatives of MoD and General Staff. Looks like only after presidental kick and social resonanse in media about FPV effectivenes and how "cabinet generals" interfere to rise effectiveness of troops, process has moved frorward from dead point. Sternenko write, it's too early say this is a victory, but at least he and some UAV aces presented own vision of strike drone usage conception (FPVs, grenade drops, night bombers etc), own vision of how should look UAV units inside battalions and companies etc. As he says, he has seen interest in eyes of military, so he has big hope this will be implemented in solutions and will not drown in bureaucracy and endless approvals

[Aragorn2002]

For as far as possible under these grim circumstances: Happy Christmas, Ukraine. You are not forgotten and that isn't going to happen either. Personally I will be thinking of those cold, tired men in the snowy, wet trenches, fighting not only for their country, but for the whole free West.

May God give you victory, peace and justice in the coming year and smash and humiliate your enemies. Amen.

Edited December 24, 2023 by Aragorn2002

[Haiduk]

Variant of UKR jet payload

 

[Harmon Rabb]

5 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

For as far as possible under these grim circumstances: Happy Christmas, Ukraine. You are not forgotten and that isn't going to happen either.

May God give your victory, peace and justice in the coming year and smash and humiliate your enemies. Amen.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year and whatever other holidays you folks may celebrate on this forum, and more importantly to the AFU personnel fighting the good fight.

 

Edited December 24, 2023 by Harmon Rabb

[Zeleban]

Merry Christmas everyone!