How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Lille Fiskerby]

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

After taking Avdiivka they went on a fairly large scale offensive front wide and it seems Russia has benefited very little from it.

It is probably recon in force, the RA is looking for weak spots in the front line IMO.

[Beleg85]

Guys speculating that clip posted by one of Russian channels may show some top Western AA set near Pokrovsk (Sergiivka, 50kms from frontlines) being hit severly something large, probably Iskander.

The affected vehicles do not look eastern at all. It looks as if RUS got a column of some Western OPL set. A huge loss indeed.

And now two issues:

- again something flies with impunity 40-60 km deep into Ukraine and... transmits the image

- what is the legal distance in a column of vehicles?

 

Edited March 9 by Beleg85

[Carolus]

2 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Guys speculating that clip posted by one of Russian channels may show some top Western AA set near Pokrovsk being hit severly something large like Iskander.

The affected vehicles do not look eastern at all. It looks as if RUS got a column of some Western OPL set. A huge loss indeed.

And now two issues:

- again something flies with impunity 40-60 km deep into Ukraine and... transmits the image

- what is the legal distance in a column of vehicles?

 

I just saw this too. Some people say the debris looks more like PATRIOT trucks (so part of the German donation), not S300.

Edited March 9 by Carolus

[Beleg85]

11 minutes ago, Carolus said:

I just saw this too. Some people say the debris looks more like PATRIOT trucks (so part of the German donation), not S300.

Yup, unfortunatelly they do, but others say it my be one type of soviet launcher Certainly Russians didn't spared their big rocket on it.. Crew seem to feel way too secure so far behind frontlines. Unless these are decoys, but there is little chance looking at remains.

It's part of larger problem with much better Russian EW and deep recon drones platforms in recent months. We are way past the times when their kill chain took half of a day to digest info and find solution; at least when comes to these special strategic targets they improved visibly.

Edited March 9 by Beleg85

[Kinophile]

 

[kimbosbread]

Either better Russian ISR, or China’s helping out with satellite imagery en masse (Russia doesn’t have a modern electro-optical satellite operational IIRC).

One possible countermeasure I could see if building bomb-shelter like hides all over the defensive line, and once you are out of them, move every 30 minutes. Or make a lot of decoys.

EDIT: Or maybe most effective, a nation-wide ballistic missile launch alert, and as soon as you get this, all crews drive balls out to somewhere else.

Edited March 9 by kimbosbread

[mosuri]

14 hours ago, Kinophile said:

 

 

https://twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1766256716214100061?t=3Q7rTwMgjJ4ITNUn1qIT9g&s=19

I admit I couldn't believe russians would be so cavalier as to park numerous strategically important aircraft on an airstrip so close to front and thought it must be just a collection of scrap aluminum. Factory would be harder to relocate, but surely anything flyable that was worth protecting would have already flown out.

But happy to be wrong about that.

 

[panzermartin]

What a boom. I hope the crews were aware they had been located and targeted and had abandoned the vehicles. Those iskanders are probably the best ground to ground weapon Russia has. I remember earlier in the war they delivered accurate and deadly strikes like the one in the Kiev Mall where Grads were hiding.

They are indeed getting better at hunting down big pricey western assets. That patriot system could have had a few Su 34 kill rings painted already. But it took them remarkably long for a country they know every inch of, are scanning everyday, have agents inside and it's next to their borders. 

[Battlefront.com]

7 hours ago, Kraft said:

@Battlefront.com I think this is the highest quality upload of your favorite river crossing, sadly quite short and not while they attempted it, the carnage must've surpassed what any movie could ever portait.

 

Thanks for that!  Brings back old, and fond, memories   You can really see how the Russians scuttled almost a company's worth of tanks because they couldn't make the crossing.  As we discussed back then, the silty bottom of this river likely precluded "swimming" the tanks across.

I found the original source on YouTube.  Some interesting unrelated video clips that were edited out on the Reddit repost:

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Lille Fiskerby said:

It is probably recon in force, the RA is looking for weak spots in the front line IMO.

No doubt.  But in the past when they've done this they've been able to keep it up far longer.  Back in 2022 these sorts of attacks went on pretty much everywhere non-stop for several months.  Russia is either caring a little more about force preservation or it's already figured out it doesn't have the ability to keep going on with such mass scale recon in force ops.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Kinophile said:

 

Great YouTube video showing a view from the ground as well as how M-113s are scrapped.

Looks like a large portion of the park is ex-Italian M-113s and Leopard 1s.

Steve

[dan/california]

Not a military vehicle, but I suspect about 85% of the tech would be same for a military UGV. 

[Battlefront.com]

I just stumbled on this 40mm loitering munition that is definitely intended to be used in swarms.  It doesn't take much imagination to combine this existing system with the Hollywood video I posted a few pages ago.  Imagine a UGV with 50 of these getting into position while someone lazes a target with a customized impact pattern (think every point inside a zig-zag trench).

As a reminder, all of this tech exists today and it is professionally and purpose built for this sort of use.  As awesome as the volunteer based solutions Ukraine has been fielding may be, it's mostly COTS and therefore not as full featured as it otherwise could be:

https://www.defendtex.com/uav/

As this can be deployed by a cheap man portable launcher, this is viable for a regular squad.  Imagine in CMSF2 having a Marine squad able to nearly instantly pop a few of these over an enemy LMG gunner hiding behind a wall 500m away.  One shot one kill, most likely.

Steve

[Offshoot]

6 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Guys speculating that clip posted by one of Russian channels may show some top Western AA set near Pokrovsk (Sergiivka, 50kms from frontlines) being hit severly something large, probably Iskander.

The affected vehicles do not look eastern at all. It looks as if RUS got a column of some Western OPL set. A huge loss indeed.

And now two issues:

- again something flies with impunity 40-60 km deep into Ukraine and... transmits the image

- what is the legal distance in a column of vehicles?

 

Six hours later and this twitter post has been deleted. From the link still showing (https://t.co/DmPZ389pGD) is this rebuttal

Quote

A critical item that is missing if these are patriots would be Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck which is what transports M901 Launching Stations

 

Edited March 9 by Offshoot

[dan/california]

44 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I just stumbled on this 40mm loitering munition that is definitely intended to be used in swarms.  It doesn't take much imagination to combine this existing system with the Hollywood video I posted a few pages ago.  Imagine a UGV with 50 of these getting into position while someone lazes a target with a customized impact pattern (think every point inside a zig-zag trench).

As a reminder, all of this tech exists today and it is professionally and purpose built for this sort of use.  As awesome as the volunteer based solutions Ukraine has been fielding may be, it's mostly COTS and therefore not as full featured as it otherwise could be:

https://www.defendtex.com/uav/

As this can be deployed by a cheap man portable launcher, this is viable for a regular squad.  Imagine in CMSF2 having a Marine squad able to nearly instantly pop a few of these over an enemy LMG gunner hiding behind a wall 500m away.  One shot one kill, most likely.

Steve

This is also the perfect form factor for the final layer of a defensive onion. a vehicle could mount MANY launch tubes for this, and a fair few of them would not overburden a squad. So if they can work out a seeker head that tracks other drones it would be by far the best last ditch CUAS option I have seen.

More broadly it is the very leading edge of what is coming. We haven't seen anything yet.

Edited March 9 by dan/california

[Beleg85]

13 minutes ago, Offshoot said:

Six hours later and this twitter post has been deleted. From the link still showing (https://t.co/DmPZ389pGD) is this rebuttal

https://twitter.com/wolski_jaros/status/1766460369357168921

He modified after consultations. More discussions here, sorry but have little time to translate now. Mandarins on the matter seems to disagree, except that these are likely MAN KAT trucks (which could also be used outside Patriot battery) and that convoy was likely carrying some rocket assets; some afterexpolsions are visible, reportedly (I don't see any though).

Russian claim in clip in not necessarly valid, description could be made by anyone and TASS and other ragencies claimed Patriot. I guess we will need to wait, probably milnets close to AFU circles in many coutries will have valid rumours in incoming weeks.

What is concerning and Wolski is right about is that we have plenty more videos with precise Russian strikes deep behind Ukrainian lines in last weeks/months, where they fly pretty unmolested with their drone assets.

[FancyCat]

One thing that needs reinforcing, the west does not have nearly enough equipment to match it's financial potentials. Takes time to rebuild but the production lines need to cut their teeth via supplying Ukraine.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

One thing that needs reinforcing, the west does not have nearly enough equipment to match it's financial potentials. Takes time to rebuild but the production lines need to cut their teeth via supplying Ukraine.

Which is why China probably wants this war over as soon as possible.  It waffled for a while trying to find a middle ground while it hoped Russia would just win and be done with it, but now?  Anybody with a bit of smarts within the Chinese leadership should be thinking "not great that the West was woken up by someone other than us".

Steve

[Fenris]

Some good vision here of Challenger 2 on the training range.  Includes an example of one of the things that the reporter says is an issue fielding this vehicle in Ukraine when it gets bogged in a ditch.  He comments at the end re mobility and maintenance being the main problems they've been facing.

 

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Anybody with a bit of smarts within the Chinese leadership

Unfortunately many of these have been taken out by purges, corruption charges and/or are keeping their mouth shut unless it’s something ol Winnie the Flu absolutely wants to hear.

Downside of being an authoritarian dictatorship is that there is little self-correction. An oligarchy has competing factions at least!

[MSBoxer]

3 hours ago, FancyCat said:

One thing that needs reinforcing, the west does not have nearly enough equipment to match it's financial potentials. Takes time to rebuild but the production lines need to cut their teeth via supplying Ukraine.

Sounds a lot like something the evil orange man said years ago.  You can argue about his motivation, but not the accuracy of the statement.

[OldSarge]

8 minutes ago, MSBoxer said:

Sounds a lot like something the evil orange man said years ago.  You can argue about his motivation, but not the accuracy of the statement.

Well, A broken clock is correct twice a day!

This war has exposed the weakness of the U.S. supply chain in a peer to peer conflict as well - 155mm shells, Javelins, microprocessors, etc. And like the European's we're looking into ways to shore up our weak points.

I can see why Xi isn't too happy with Vlad, he surely doesn't want to see both the EU and the US ramping up when his own economy is in a slump.

[Kinophile]

The hanger was certainly struck, atvleastvtwo drones,but any damage inflicted inside is unknown. Lack of fire signatures (no smoke, no discoloration in roof, no damaged/burnt debris outside, no significant EMS presence) raises questions. Still, damage can be significant without fire but currently unknowable. 

UPDATE, Official Claim but no visuals yet:

 

Edited March 10 by Kinophile

[Kinophile]

Interesting 

Quote

Most BMP-2 are the BMP-2(K)  (Gray in the graph below). in July the BMP-2(M)s started showing up, yellow in the graph. It remains in small numbers, so perhaps only one or two batches came to the front.

Then the BMP-2 675-SB3KDYs started showing up from October 2022, (Blue) numbers are not large but have slowly grown, suggesting that all/most the BMP-2 output from the referbishment facilities are BMP-2 675-SB3KDYs. This vehicle has extra armour. 

Then in November a new 'thing' appeared. It's like a BMP-2 675-SB3KDY, (Green) it has the brackets for the armour to attach to, but, it does not have the armour. 

 

Edited March 10 by Kinophile

[Kinophile]