How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

 

[Eddy]

22 minutes ago, billbindc said:

I would very strongly suggest reading up on the February insurrection in Paris of 1934 or Troublesome Young Men by Lynn Olson just for a quick starter. Britain was ruled by appeasers who frankly admired the fascists for their anti-Bolshevism and that was pretty universally true of the right in France as well.

In other news, the view of this war from the other side isn't particularly rosy either:  

https://www.thedailybeast.com/shocking-reality-of-ukraine-blowback-hammers-putin-at-home

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/putins-unsustainable-spending-spree

 

Thanks Bill for posting the Foreign Affairs article. As suspected all is not well in the Russian economy. I actually think the situation is worse than is outlined in the article, especially concerning Russian income from oil and gas. On that note, it looks like the Saudis may have thrown in the towel on maintaining the oil price: 

Oil drops sharply as Saudi price cuts overshadow Middle East tensions (ft.com)

If you're unable to read the article (I can never work out the FTs free to read policy) the Saudis are no longer cutting oil production but instead are looking to maintain there own market share by dropping the price of the oil they produce. As the article headline states, this has already driven down oil prices and will continue to do so. Which for the purposes of this thread means less money for Russia.  

[Bulletpoint]

By now, we all began thinking FPV drones are amazingly powerful weapons, and yes, against vehicles, they do seem to be making a big impact. But how many casualties do they actually cause against infantry?

Every day, there are about 7-10 new videos of drone attacks killing infantry on both sides - many more videos from the Ukrainian POV though. But since these attacks due to their nature are pretty much always filmed, what if those 7-10 videos are pretty much the whole story of all succesful drone attacks that day?

In that case, "only" maybe 20-30 casualties are caused by drone attacks. Bad if you're on the receiving end, but not a lot compared to the hundreds of thousands of troops killed in this war by all kinds of weapons.

So what I'm trying to get at here is that our perception of drones as game-changing weapons might be skewed by a strong selection bias.

Anyone here saw some credible estimates of the scale of casulties caused by drones (FPV kamikaze + grenade drops) compared to other weapons?

How many drone attacks fail and therefore never get shown?

 

[LongLeftFlank]

3 hours ago, JonS said:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/08/welsh-tidy-mouse-tidying-for-fun-scientists-builth-wells?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

 

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Yeesh, dude...what a man does in the privacy of his own home...I draw the line at small rodents though.

 

 

[kimbosbread]

24 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

So what I'm trying to get at here is that our perception of drones as game-changing weapons might be skewed by a strong selection bias.

Think of a drone as a very cheap, accurate long-range NLOS ATGM, but for anything you want to attack.

Instead of a $100k Javelin, you pay $2-3k, and of course they are smaller, lighter, easier to produce, have much longer range, can loiter and/or chase their targets around (including into tunnels and around corners) and will in short order be autonomous. If that’s not a game changer, I don’t know what is.

EDIT: That’s just for the kamikaze variant.

Edited January 8 by kimbosbread

[Carolus]

8 hours ago, Butschi said:

You can't really argue that by supplying Ukraine with weapons we are in fact prolonging the war. And there are people who think that war, for whatever cause, is bad, ergo supplying weapons is bad. 

And I think forcing this form of slow euthanasia on another nation is quite disgusting and will not deign to adress it.

I am a pacifist, I grew up as one and was taught to be one. I value pacifism and consider it incredibly important for human society.

I also know that as soon as an idea starts killing more people than it saves, it is time to stop pursuing that idea. That is not something I will argue with anyone about, full stop.

People have also completely lost the ability to distinguish between opinion and fact. If someone thinks that Ukraine would fare better with diplomacy is not an opinion, it's a claim about reality which runs contrary to observed reality. Calling something wrong an "opinion" is an attempt to give it far more weight than it deserves.

Quote

I really don't like it when people accuse everyone who isn't entirely on board with total war against Russia as being pro-Russian. 

Good. And I don't like when people make things up about what was said in a conversation when it wasn't said, and this is the case here since that is not what I wrote. I have not mentioned a "total war" against Russia and I distinguished between pacifist-minded people and pro-Russia types. 

I also disagree in general with your position of protecting the enemies of the West that exist within the West to the max or consider them inconsequential, which you have expressed several times in this thread. I find that incredibly naive and dangerous. That is an opinion where we will have to agree to disagree.

Quote

As it should in a democracy.

No, the problem with you cutting up my post means that it is robbed of the overall context. I was talking about foreign propaganda, hybrid warfare, which has no place influencing a democracy.

Every nation has the right and I would actually say the duty to defend against foreign propaganda attacks. And many countries, including Germany, have laws to that effect, at least regarding the older, already known forms of foreign influence.

As with every new development, from rock music to internet, society and especially politicans need a bit of time to catch up, and it is the same with Russian (and increasingly also Chinese, though they are not as talented yet) hybrid war attacks.

I will now not talk about the worrying political and social situation in Germany anymore as it is now because it derails the thread too much. That does not mean others shouldn't or can't, but I personally will leave it unspoken, unless something very new and very significant related to the Ukraine War happens.

Edited January 8 by Carolus
typos

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, LongLeftFlank said:

... China is now a behemoth at making and pushing out stuff on demand, the likes of which the world hasn't seen since Colt's weapons wowed the smug Europeans at the 1851 Crystal Palace.

And that sheer capacity, while it isn't all-powerful, is a macro reality we need to factor into everything now, especially since we cannot at present collectively summon the will to match it.

For sure, it’s a tremendous risk for opponents of China.

Being able to build more ships and drones and artillery and whatnot in a year than we can build in a few decades, it’s a huge huge advantage. Not to mention literally all the pharmaceutical precursors, solar panels etc.

The problem they have is that our cost of building a missile to sink a ship going 150km across the strait of Taiwan will always be lower than the cost of them building a ship and all of the equipment on the ship. Even if they split the invasion force onto 30ft boats, it’s still cheaper to build some drones or el cheapo missiles to hit each of those boats vs the cost of boat, soldiers equipment and training. Where the comparison gets interesting is that we need to get the missile or drone with launching range, either before hand or on demand. And there are cheaper ways to deny the strait like mining the hell out of it.

Of course, if China would just split the 1m strong invading force into 100k zodiacs, that would be interesting. But they are still better off doing an unclaimed attack on the fabs (terrorism, fire, etc.)… would we care about Taiwan as much if the fabs were gone?

[dan/california]

42 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

For sure, it’s a tremendous risk for opponents of China.

Being able to build more ships and drones and artillery and whatnot in a year than we can build in a few decades, it’s a huge huge advantage. Not to mention literally all the pharmaceutical precursors, solar panels etc.

The problem they have is that our cost of building a missile to sink a ship going 150km across the strait of Taiwan will always be lower than the cost of them building a ship and all of the equipment on the ship. Even if they split the invasion force onto 30ft boats, it’s still cheaper to build some drones or el cheapo missiles to hit each of those boats vs the cost of boat, soldiers equipment and training. Where the comparison gets interesting is that we need to get the missile or drone with launching range, either before hand or on demand. And there are cheaper ways to deny the strait like mining the hell out of it.

Of course, if China would just split the 1m strong invading force into 100k zodiacs, that would be interesting. But they are still better off doing an unclaimed attack on the fabs (terrorism, fire, etc.)… would we care about Taiwan as much if the fabs were gone?

Except wrecking the fabs, and therefore convincing thereby workforce to move to some combination of Japan, South Korea, and The U.S. is a net strategic loss for China. And I suspect it would be one of the harder places in the world to do an unclaimed attack. All three countries would send all business class airliners with gift packs on every seat that included brand new passports. There would  be Gulf Streams or military evac planes for the really high value people.

[Butschi]

Such a nice and polite reply...

51 minutes ago, Carolus said:

9 hours ago, Butschi said:

You can't really argue that by supplying Ukraine with weapons we are in fact prolonging the war. And there are people who think that war, for whatever cause, is bad, ergo supplying weapons is bad. 

And I think forcing this form of slow euthanasia on another nation is quite disgusting and will not deign to adress it.

Had the West not supported Ukraine with weapons, the war would very likely have been over much earlier. Admittedly, the same could be said of supporting them with a lot more weapons than we are doing now. But anyway, if you thinks all war is evil and you prolong war then obviously you are doing evil. Btw. I never said that is my opinion, just that there are people who have this opinion. I really don't know how euthanasia fits into this because the concept has nothing to do with withholding help. You may find not helping others to kill disgusting, other people find the opposite disgusting.

1 hour ago, Carolus said:

I am a pacifist, I grew up as one and was taught to be one. I value pacifism and consider it incredibly important for human society.

I also know that as soon as an idea starts killing more people than it saves, it is time to stop pursuing that idea. That is not something I will argue with anyone about, full stop.

This is, like above, an inversion of who is guilty. No, pacifists don't kill people and the idea doesn't, either. If the whole world was full of pacifists there would be no war (and we wouldn't have this conversation...). The non-pacifists kill people, the pacifists just refuse to use violence in order to help (which is not the same as refusing to help, btw.).

You are basically saying you are a pacifist as long as being a pacifists doesn't cost too much - at which point you support violence. So you are really not a pacifist. You just like peace (who doesn't!) which is not the same.

1 hour ago, Carolus said:

People have also completely lost the ability to distinguish between opinion and fact. If someone thinks that Ukraine would fare better with diplomacy is not an opinion, it's a claim about reality which runs contrary to observed reality. Calling something wrong an "opinion" is an attempt to give it far more weight than it deserves.

But IMHO you do the same. You don't know how Ukraine would fare with diplomacy because you don't have a cristal ball and you can't look into the future or alternate realities. As long as that is the case you can make an educated guess, draw on experience or whatever but what you say is not a fact, just an opinion. But you claim it is reality.

1 hour ago, Carolus said:

I have not mentioned a "total war" against Russia and I distinguished between pacifist-minded people and pro-Russia types. 

True, I deliberatly used "total war" to emphasize my point. Because, no, you did not distinguish the way you say.

Quote

There are those who recognize this war for what it is and support continued and growing weapon sales, donations and deliveries.

There are those who recognize that Russia did a bad, but surely just accidentally, and while some rifles and small-arms ammo is okay, it is more important to get back on good terms again with the peace-loving and unfairly maligned Russians (who defeated Hitler and brought prosperity to Eastern Europe etc.).

And then we have the third group, who actively wants "Peace Deal Yesterday" in order to "save Ukrainian lives from the CIA proxy war" or to stop supporting the "Kiyv Nazi regime." 

So you basically said there are those who support weapons deliveries and various degrees of either pro-Russians or conspiracy theorists or whatever - or in short, saying there is only one reasonable opinion, which is yours.

1 hour ago, Carolus said:

I also disagree in general with your position of protecting the enemies of the West that exist within the West to the max or consider them inconsequential, which you have expressed several times in this thread. I find that incredibly naive and dangerous.

OAre you referring to me saying that 20% AfD means 80% non-AfD? That is a fact and I am not protecting anyone. I also didn't say it is inconsequential. I said, several times, that this is really bad in itself. But I refuse to give those morons more credit than they are due. As I've also written several times, they are elected for a lot of reasons. Being pro-Russian is only one of a lot of more important items.

 

 

[chris talpas]

14 hours ago, Seedorf81 said:

How did you come to the conclusion that Wagner is out of the fight? Perhaps the name doesn't mean as much as it did, but there are still loads of "Wagnerian" Russian troops/specops in Africa, and they most likely haven't turned into "people-loving-softies".

Ukraine army high command is smart enough to not let snipers "dick around" anywhere, I think.

Russia is still a serious presence in Africa, and they're trying to get even more influence. And in some cases with - for us, probably - surprising succes. This is Wagner in CAR, for instance:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67625139

And recent Russian influence in Burkina Faso:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67833215

Seems to me there's still some work to do for Ukrainian snipers.

Maybe taking some inspiration from the British in ww2 going after their numerically stronger enemy in Africa where they could press their logistical advantage, albeit at a much smaller scale.  Has the strategic benefit of introducing friction into Russia’s African operations.

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

Except wrecking the fabs, and therefore convincing thereby workforce to move to some combination of Japan, South Korea, and The U.S. is a net strategic loss for China.

Taiwan has a very strategic location, so fabs aside there is lots of value for China. Whether it’s worth fighting a war over, well, that’s Winnie the Flu’s decision to make.

In terms of workforce, Taiwan has very low pay. In the past, China got a bunch of Taiwanese engineers because pay in China in the high-tech sector was quite good, especially for people they want to poach.

[quakerparrot67]

On 1/4/2024 at 7:28 AM, The_Capt said:

Put ‘em on wheels and ship them overland.  Irony.

Just read about the Ottoman doing just that to take Constantinople yes, it would be sweet irony.

Cheers,

Rob

[LongLeftFlank]

4 hours ago, Eddy said:

Oil drops sharply as Saudi price cuts overshadow Middle East tensions (ft.com)

If you're unable to read the article (I can never work out the FTs free to read policy) 

 

 

Edited January 9 by LongLeftFlank
try it now

[G.I. Joe]

9 hours ago, JonS said:

Weirdly, it wasn't. NZ drew down its ground forces in the Pacific in order to sustain The Div in Italy. Plus of course the massive commitment to the RAF in Britain (across all the Commands). I'm not sure where the weight of the Navy was - that might've been the Pacific.

Despite the way MacArthur screwed them over, I think the Aussies played the long game much better there.

I stand corrected...thank you. I must admit to being rather unfamiliar with New Zealand Army operations in World War II. From my usual airpower-centric lens, I'm familiar with how active the RNZAF were in the PTO, but am not at all surprised if Bomber Command operations in Europe took up the bulk of the RNZAF's personnel commitments.

[Carolus]

France will deliver 85 SCALP.

Deep strike might be a way to overcome denial, because whatever is causing that denial needs fuel, ammo, food or water. 

@Butschi : I see that the misunderstandings continue in a baffling way. For the sake of good faith I assume it is misunderstandings, not deliberate distortion. Instead of making a lengthy response here and ruin the thread for readers more, I could try to give an explanation via PM, if you care for it.

 

[Bulletpoint]

10 hours ago, kimbosbread said:

Think of a drone as a very cheap, accurate long-range NLOS ATGM, but for anything you want to attack.

Instead of a $100k Javelin, you pay $2-3k, and of course they are smaller, lighter, easier to produce, have much longer range, can loiter and/or chase their targets around (including into tunnels and around corners) and will in short order be autonomous. If that’s not a game changer, I don’t know what is.

EDIT: That’s just for the kamikaze variant.

I know all that.

What I'm saying is: Are the uploaded FPV / grenade drop videos just a few examples of many more such succesful attacks? Are several hundred troops on both sides really killed by drones each day? Or are the uploaded videos pretty much all there is?

In the latter case, the real drone casualty numbers would be just 10-20 a day. Nothing war changing.

Drones still have a big impact against vehicles and supply depots, and as artillery spotters, but that's a different thing.

My question is about the direct attacks on infantry. I am starting to think they are a bit like WW2 strafing runs. Scary, they do kill a few people, big impact on morale, but not really a factor in winning or losing the war.

[Ales Dvorak]

13 hours ago, dan/california said:

 

Looks a little strange cocktail. ( lots of editing. cuts: 0:26, 0:29, 1:05, 1:23, 1:37, 1:44 )

On his YT  he mentioned only things from 0:29 - 1:05.  Why?

https://www.youtube.com/@dejannbericc

And your other post:

One guy speaks Russian fluently and other guys are masked. How do you know they're Serbs?

Edited January 9 by Ales Dvorak

[Carolus]

Maintenance hub for Leopard 1 being organized in Western Ukraine by Flensburger Fahrzeuggesellschaft (the company is responsible for the refurbishment of the Leopard 1s which were sent to Ukraine) to train Ukrainian personnel as mechanics and to avoid having to transport a damaged tank back to another country for maintenance or repairs.

 

 

Edited January 9 by Carolus

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

I know all that.

What I'm saying is: Are the uploaded FPV / grenade drop videos just a few examples of many more such succesful attacks? Are several hundred troops on both sides really killed by drones each day? Or are the uploaded videos pretty much all there is?

In the latter case, the real drone casualty numbers would be just 10-20 a day. Nothing war changing.

Drones still have a big impact against vehicles and supply depots, and as artillery spotters, but that's a different thing.

My question is about the direct attacks on infantry. I am starting to think they are a bit like WW2 strafing runs. Scary, they do kill a few people, big impact on morale, but not really a factor in winning or losing the war.

Hard to tell as to specific targets but trend appears upward in overall use:

https://en.defence-ua.com/industries/ukrainian_fpv_drones_massively_outnumber_russian_ones_on_the_frontline_what_can_russia_do_about_it-8145.html

And production

https://kyivindependent.com/minister-ukraine-already-produced-50-000-fpv-drones-in-december/

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-produce-million-fpv-drones-next-year-minister-2023-12-20/

It looks like Ukraine has already figured that swarming is the game changer.  My bet is that with numbers like these direct use against individual infantry will continue to rise.  We have likely been seeing the beginning of a trend on social media.  If they can get even modest Pk numbers out of this many systems it may just be able to break the deadlock.  But we will have to see if Ukraine can really produce or buy at this level.  And if they can whether or not Russia can counter.

One thing does seem pretty clear - unmanned systems are not a novelty act.  They stand ready to replace more than one system on the battlefield.

 

[alison]

Do these in production models all need to be one pilot, one drone, or can a single pilot realistically control a flight or even a squadron already? I am trying to imagine how swarming will work if the gimmick is simultaneous attacks. Even if the autonomous drones are smart enough to hold formation en route to the target, I imagine at some point for the swarm to be effective we're going to need human pilots to do the final run. At least, that's the impression I get from the videos we have seen released so far.

Are there any games out which simulate this kind of mission already? I've seen a bunch of FPV drone sims on Steam, but they seem more focused on one pilot, one drone setup. Real-time strategy games with fully-autonomous units have been around for years, but to me that still feels a bit sci-fi. I'm imagining some kind of mission control view showing tiled windows of drones en route with on-screen anomaly tracking, a bit like high tech CCTV setups, and then the ability to jump in to first-person control (or assign pixeltruppen to do so) as required. Is that even representative of real world tech yet?

[Kinophile]

11 minutes ago, alison said:

Do these in production models all need to be one pilot, one drone, or can a single pilot realistically control a flight or even a squadron already? I am trying to imagine how swarming will work if the gimmick is simultaneous attacks. Even if the autonomous drones are smart enough to hold formation en route to the target, I imagine at some point for the swarm to be effective we're going to need human pilots to do the final run. At least, that's the impression I get from the videos we have seen released so far.

Are there any games out which simulate this kind of mission already? I've seen a bunch of FPV drone sims on Steam, but they seem more focused on one pilot, one drone setup. Real-time strategy games with fully-autonomous units have been around for years, but to me that still feels a bit sci-fi. I'm imagining some kind of mission control view showing tiled windows of drones en route with on-screen anomaly tracking, a bit like high tech CCTV setups, and then the ability to jump in to first-person control (or assign pixeltruppen to do so) as required. Is that even representative of real world tech yet?

It definitely feels like the very next step, achievable this year and does what you note, that the drones need to be freed to be properly effective at scale.

The pressure of war is driving the tech along faster and faster. The AI is there already to autonomously target and destroy, there's videos from the Russians doing so, so I doubt UKR is far behind. 

 

Edited January 9 by Kinophile

[Kinophile]

Taking bets on its life span. 

I say Six months. 

 

[The_Capt]

20 minutes ago, alison said:

Do these in production models all need to be one pilot, one drone, or can a single pilot realistically control a flight or even a squadron already? I am trying to imagine how swarming will work if the gimmick is simultaneous attacks. Even if the autonomous drones are smart enough to hold formation en route to the target, I imagine at some point for the swarm to be effective we're going to need human pilots to do the final run. At least, that's the impression I get from the videos we have seen released so far.

Are there any games out which simulate this kind of mission already? I've seen a bunch of FPV drone sims on Steam, but they seem more focused on one pilot, one drone setup. Real-time strategy games with fully-autonomous units have been around for years, but to me that still feels a bit sci-fi. I'm imagining some kind of mission control view showing tiled windows of drones en route with on-screen anomaly tracking, a bit like high tech CCTV setups, and then the ability to jump in to first-person control (or assign pixeltruppen to do so) as required. Is that even representative of real world tech yet?

I honestly don’t really know.  Right now China is leading on fully autonomous systems.  I really have no idea where Ukraine stands on all this.  They definitely have the legal right to go fully autonomous as there is no global ban on these sorts of systems - a lot of noise and policy hand-wringing but no treaties or CCW legalities (they are definitely not happy but no international laws have been passed and likely won’t be: https://disarmament.unoda.org/the-convention-on-certain-conventional-weapons/background-on-laws-in-the-ccw/)

So off the top of the old bean, I am betting we will see a hybrid system first.  Human control inserted at some point.  Or we could see a human controlled system with AI wingmen.  My sense is that fully autonomous kicks in on then last mile of track - at that point the system becomes like a fire and forget ATGM.  But whether AI is able to chase a Russian soldier around a tree remains to be seen (but we are in early 2024, by next Xmas it could be the norm).  1 for 1 is likely unsustainable when talking about a million drones.  Obviously they won’t all be up at once but even 5k per day is a lot of operators and EM.

At those scales drones etc could start to replace artillery, but I suspect it will be a combo system until the end of this war at least.

Edited January 9 by The_Capt

[Kinophile]

Taking bets on its life span. 

I say Six months. 

 

[Kinophile]

 

Edited January 9 by Kinophile