How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Tux]

29 minutes ago, Holien said:

Gun boat diplomacy against an non peer threat...

Cheaper and a shot across the bows tends to make non peer ships stop...

Yup.  Guns don't even have to be fired to have an effect.

[holoween]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

The why do we still hear this mantra coming out of western militaries today?  We had a MGen declare this exact statement at the opening of an Operational Symposium last month.  I have heard this mantra as the primary reason to have tanks for years now.

I agree entirely that history - and this war in particular - clearly demonstrate that 100 years of worrying about tanks has created a world where tanks are being hunted into extinction by a multitude of systems.  I also think we have a cultural block we cannot get past.

Because its true.

Sounds paradoxical but isnt. If youre thrown into a random combat situation and have to deal with a tank and get to choose one weapon system to deal with it youll always choose a tank. Because it can do the job at any distance in any weather condition any EW and air defense situation in very short time.

But tanks cant be everywhere and in a lot of specific circumstances other weapons are more effective and importantly widespread.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, holoween said:

Because its true.

Sounds paradoxical but isnt. If youre thrown into a random combat situation and have to deal with a tank and get to choose one weapon system to deal with it youll always choose a tank. Because it can do the job at any distance in any weather condition any EW and air defense situation in very short time.

But tanks cant be everywhere and in a lot of specific circumstances other weapons are more effective and importantly widespread.

Ah, so here we are!  Except it is no longer really true.  If I were thrown into a random situation in combat, I want C4ISR to detect the tank before it can even get within range and coordinate precision fires to stop the tank before it can get into range.

Enter unmanned systems and PGM.  If I see an enemy with tanks, I want dispersed precision fires and unmanned systems right now, not another large hot 40 ton beasts that my opponent can also see and hit before they get within range.

So, no, I would not choose the tank. I am not saying I want zero tanks, but I would put them 4th or 5th on the priority list.  In fact tanks within my inventory would be specialized equipment.  Employed only in specific circumstances, the big one being, "only when my opponents C4ISR and unmanned bubble collapses."

Edited April 9 by The_Capt

[TheVulture]

2 hours ago, photon said:

You could maybe talk me into the main gun being useful for shore bombardment, but good gravy - if you're firing at hostile vessels, how many things have gone badly wrong by that point? I'm really curious when was the last time a ship fired its main gun at another ship in anger?

I wonder how much the F-4 Vietnam experience plays in to this (I'm probably mis-remembering the aircraft involved - apologies if so - and possibly this is one of those 'truisms' that turns out to be an urban myth or at least not quite as simple as usually described).  The F-4 was initially designed without a gun / cannon, since it had air-to-air missiles that would supposedly render the gun obsolete - anything dangerous would be destroyed by missiles (or destroy the F-4 by missiles) before they ever got close to gun range. Turns out that the anti-air missiles didn't perform as reliably as hoped, and they did find themselves in dogfighting range without a gun to fall back on.

New versions were quickly developed that did have a gun, and all US planes since then, including the F-35 which is very much meant to not be a dogfighter, still carry a gun, because the cost of including it is relatively small, and the downside of not having one if you happen to find yourself in a situation where it's the best option is comparatively large.

[cesmonkey]

 

[kimbosbread]

15 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Since China isn't prepping for a defensive war, but an offensive one, that's got to be causing some heartburn amongst senior Chinese military planners.  My guess is they previously thought they had a plan to defeat Taiwan faster than it could be reinforced, now they are wondering if they can take Taiwan out at all.  Not to mention fast.

Yeah, the calculus has definitely shifted. Plus Starship test flight 4 will be next month, and as soon as booster re-use works, the US can rebuild satellite constellations literally overnight. And presumably Kawaski and Hyundai can crank out jetskis by the thousands per months (sorry, USVs).

13 hours ago, Carolus said:

And considering the Chinese Navy training quality, they will be as bad in repsonse to these unusual small threats as the BSF.

I for one am excited to see what their damage control is like. Maybe they figure ok we can lose 400 ships, and land 400. The problem is no matter how good you are at building ships, USVs are way cheaper.

5 hours ago, Tux said:

I think you might be getting at energy efficiency.

I think the “energy” needs to include the computations needed to target and get a hit, plus the energy involved in logistics. Maybe training too. Under that metric, as we’ve discussed, FPV drones are literally almost zero energy.

[kimbosbread]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think the secret sauce for UVs comes down to four major components:

1. Massive production scale practicality (cost, size, resources, etc.)
2. Portability/Deployability to/from/on the battlefield
3. Ability to choose when/where to strike without aid of other systems (though they can make it even better)
4. Sufficient effect to destroy, or at least damage, pretty much anything it hits

5. Information Scalability. How easy is it to add new software capabilities on the fly to the entire fleet? 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, cesmonkey said:

 

I remember that seizure.  I'm surprised it wasn't sent already.

Steve

[Maciej Zwolinski]

6 hours ago, Tux said:

Ju-87s were militarily next-to-useless but their psychological impact on the enemy was out of all proportion to the actual threat they posed, almost entirely due to the sirens that sounded as the early models attacked.

Where did you get the idea? They were very effective as tactical bombers, only vulnerable to interceptors due to low speed. Where the enemy air cover was absent or not effective, StuKas worked very well. 

[A Canadian Cat]

On 4/6/2024 at 1:45 PM, The_Capt said:

China is in a weird spot.  <snip>

And then they do not want Russia to completely fail and fall apart - see access to cheap energy.

That one I am not so sure of. Setting aside the darkness surrounding a full Russian state collapse, that you have appropriately pointed out, it seems to me that China is actually the one in a position to benefit from that. At least in their near border area they are in a place that the could take over (directly or by proxy) and stabilize huge portions of the country to their exclusive benefit.

Then considering the darkness that may result form a full state collapse China is also the one least effected by those concerns. They have far better and more ruthless control over what nerdowells get up to inside their country and given they could likely stabilize a large portion of the country for their benefit they might skate on the downside of a state wide collapse.

[dan/california]

 

[dan/california]

 

[billbindc]

9 hours ago, photon said:

Ok - those are all really good questions. Let me try and tackle them.

1. I have no idea. They're some sort of boundary case. But the creepy-crawly mines that @The_Capt has occasionally described seem like an attempt to save some of the time-energy curve to the last possible minute.

2. So, I'd say that what explosives to is they reserve available energy to be applied much later in the time-energy curve. With explosive weapons, the shell itself is not the thing that delivers effects, but the fragments and gasses. By retaining that energy until late, you can choose when to apply it for maximal effects. Think solid shot vs. mechanical time vs. proximity fusing for anti-aircraft guns. If you have a reserve of chemical energy to convert to kinetic, you can apply it in a much more precise and effective way.

3. Agree. My theory doesn't speak to this.

4. Agree.

5. So, a pulsed directed energy weapon would have (functionally) a zero time-energy integral, because the time to target is effectively instantaneous. If you need to hold the beam continuously, your time-energy integral will be large, you'll have a huge signature, and it's counter-fire time.

It's both retaining maximum option space as long as possible, and minimizing the time-energy integral to minimize signature. The launch of a drone is a lot harder to detect than the launch of a missile, which is itself harder to detect than a 155 firing. The much larger energy spike for the 155 means the whole system has to be much larger (to contain and direct that energy). The more gradual energy spike for the missile means you can use a smaller system to launch it. The effective non-existent energy spike for the drone means the launching system is basically non-existent.

This is how it’s done. Respectful, illuminating and useful. Thanks, lads.

Edited April 9 by billbindc

[dan/california]

 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, A Canadian Cat said:

That one I am not so sure of. Setting aside the darkness surrounding a full Russian state collapse, that you have appropriately pointed out, it seems to me that China is actually the one in a position to benefit from that. At least in their near border area they are in a place that the could take over (directly or by proxy) and stabilize huge portions of the country to their exclusive benefit.

Then considering the darkness that may result form a full state collapse China is also the one least effected by those concerns. They have far better and more ruthless control over what nerdowells get up to inside their country and given they could likely stabilize a large portion of the country for their benefit they might skate on the downside of a state wide collapse.

Maybe?  To my mind, setting aside the whole “loose nukes” problem which is definitely a global destabilizing issue, I think it is a question of good ole money.  With a functioning and weakened central Russia state apparatus, China can cut deals to access Russian energy with a macro organization that can still marshal the infrastructure and security to access that energy and sell it to China.

If Russia tumbles into a bunch of provinces/regions/warlords access to that energy gets a lot harder and more expensive.  China would have to negotiate with a bunch of goons of various levels of stability (and possibly in conflict with each other) to try and get the energy out of Russia and back into China.  Also smaller warlords cannot necessarily run oil and gas industries.  China might have to go all Africa and go in and do it themselves.  This all drives the access cost up.

China may be able to do some land grabs.  But these come with all sorts of problems, not the least of which are a bunch of angry Russians.  I think we have a fundamental flaw in our western thinking that nations invade other nations for resources.  I mean, “yes” technically it can still happen, but in this day and age it is far more advantageous just to have a target nation roll over and sell you the stuff while they also go to the trouble of taking it out of the ground too.  China has seen what “you break it you buy it” looks like from our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, so I am not entirely sure they are ready to jump on a colonial bandwagon.  Especially in a failed-state Russia - this is akin to trying to bathe a cougar, sounds like fun right up until the damn thing starts getting wet.  

But hey, could be China has done the math and thinks it might work out.  But I still lean toward China is looking to make lemonade out of Russian lemons at this point.

[JonS]

8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

In your mind, flip through all the weapons systems you can think of and count off how many do not fit these four categories and how many do.  I did this and I can't think of anything else that fits, but the pile of things that don't fit is massive.

Artillery fits all four, and handles the 50% haircut.

Edited April 10 by JonS

[Fenris]

Another area of development with this conflict - new ways to strike strategically

 

[Offshoot]

Given the recent discussion on weapon systems, here is an article on the Patriot, its success in Ukraine and how this is increasing demand for it and perhaps increasing its longevity

How Patriot proved itself in Ukraine and secured a fresh future

[chris talpas]

12 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I strongly suspect - even thought it is still quoted as a mantra - that this war is demonstrating that the best thing to kill a tank is not  another tank.  It would appear that artillery, ATGMs and FPVs are winning that particular argument quite well on their own.

I’m hoping that our own government will consider the lessons of this war before it spends what little money money is allocated to the military on replacing  tanks.

i hope your voice is heard and heeded.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

Artillery fits all four, and handles the 50% haircut.

Steve forgot a fifth one: logistical weight.  Guns are still big steel tubes with complex firing mechanics, towed or self propelled and heavy.  That is fuel, spare parts and a lot of heavy ammunition.  Not to mention human crew costs - but FPVs also come with crew costs as well, still not sure how these stack up against per-firepower compared to unmanned. Drones are not zero weight but do not need all that dense weight.  Makes them far more distributable and much lower support bill.  They are highly precise, more so than even artillery PGM - have not seen many 155 round make a U turn on a road to hit a tank from behind.  Ranges are comparable now, but may get longer for tac UAS over time.  FPVs can be massed produces cheaply, artillery ammo can as well but not the guns themselves.

 

[cesmonkey]

 

[dan/california]

14 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Hmm, not sure this tracks. They can be made less efficient through defensive manoeuver but naval warfare simply added volume.  Up until modern missiles they were the primary weapon system for ships of the line.  We still put them on ships for a reason.  A/C took primacy due to range, even thought they lost volume.  Missile offset with range and accuracy.

So naval gunnery expanded its options spaces through volume of fires effectively.  Firing many salvos to reduce defensive options.  This is how Jutland happened. 

Just pulling these metrics together - range, energy-time, composition, accuracy, volume, agility.  These are looking at lot like modern military High Level Military Requirements (HLMRs). To my mind these are the framework for an options space.

Precision as "small energy at the right time"  of "smart energy" really resonates.

The problem with battleships guns is that they can only be fired from a battleship. They are sort the poster child for somethig that is going to be few, expensive, and too valuable to lose. Where you can dump cruisse missiles out submarines, and other PGMs out submarines that are much harder to kill, or cheap surface vessels that could be praticlly disposable. The unbelievably expensive radar, defensive lasers, and who knows what else a surface ship will need to actually be survivable can go on a platform dedicated to staying alive, and providing C4SIR to the miisslie barges..

57 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Steve forgot a fifth one: logistical weight.  Guns are still big steel tubes with complex firing mechanics, towed or self propelled and heavy.  That is fuel, spare parts and a lot of heavy ammunition.  Not to mention human crew costs - but FPVs also come with crew costs as well, still not sure how these stack up against per-firepower compared to unmanned. Drones are not zero weight but do not need all that dense weight.  Makes them far more distributable and much lower support bill.  They are highly precise, more so than even artillery PGM - have not seen many 155 round make a U turn on a road to hit a tank from behind.  Ranges are comparable now, but may get longer for tac UAS over time.  FPVs can be massed produces cheaply, artillery ammo can as well but not the guns themselves.

 

Ranges for artillery and drones are just going to go up, and then up more. 

https://www.nammo.com/story/the-range-revolution/

100 km 155 is in late stage testing.

Perun covers current and near future drones here with his usual brilliance, was posted a few pages ago, but definitely worth your time if you haven't watched it yet.

What all of this adds up to is an ever expanding grey zone/no mans land in a more or less equal fight between first tier militaries, and probably vastly higher costs for a first tier power to take on a second, or third tier one. We are already at the point where both sides in Ukraine can barely bring a vehicles within 10km of the front, and they certainly can't stop moving in that  zone for more than a minute or two. Next year in Ukraine that could easily be twenty km instead of ten. In the next war, five or ten years from now it could easily be fifty.

 

Quote

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a60321607/army-towed-howitzers-going-extinct/

U.S. is at the point of trying to get rid of towed guns completely. They can't shoot far enough, or scoot fast enough.

 

Edited April 10 by dan/california

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, dan/california said:

 

Interesting that we're starting to see reports of non-payments surface again.  It seemed that was settled last year.  If there is a new trend forming, it could be a sign of financial stress.  We definitely need more tea leaves than this to conclude anything, so I'm simply mentioning it to keep an eye on.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, JonS said:

Artillery fits all four, and handles the 50% haircut.

Sorry Mr. Cannoncocker, I thought of artillery pretty much straight away and it fails all four.

1.  Massive production scale practicality (cost, size, resources, etc.)

Artillery is expensive to produce and not easy to build.  Plus, we just saw that Ukrainians are concluding that towed artillery is not survivable with the threat of drones, so SP artillery is what they're looking for.  That's even more expensive.  Something like a PzH 2000 is €1.7m each.  How many drones could you purchase with that money?  Lots.  And you'd have them faster than a single PzH 2000 I bet.

2.  Portability/Deployability to/from/on the battlefield

Artillery is cumbersome and has a long logistics tail.  Very delicate supply chain too.  Add to this the trend towards SP and it gets worse (transport to/from the battlefield goes way up).

3.  Ability to choose when/where to strike without aid of other systems (though they can make it even better)

Artillery can not inherently choose its own targets and at least doctrinally isn't given a free hand to do smash whatever it spots with them.  While artillery is now more independent than it used to be, thanks to drones and ubiquitous communications methods, it is still far away from the red leg equivalent of Magyar taking care of business.

4.  Sufficient effect to destroy, or at least damage, pretty much anything it hits

Good score on this one, until one asks the question "how much does it cost to assure a hit?".  Just for the munition alone we're talking $100k.  How many FPVs can $100k purchase and how many things can those FPVs take out of action compared to the one Excalibur shell?  10x? 20x?  Whatever the case is, it's some number followed by an X.

 

Then there's the whole counter ability.  There are many ways to knock out a piece of artillery and when it is knocked out it has a significant effect on the battlefield because they are so powerful.  There is no such equivalent counter to drones.  You can kill a drone team and its stash of drones, but due to the other factors there's likely a replacement to be had far sooner than for the artillery piece.

That said, I think of all the legacy combat equipment out there artillery has the strongest case for staying relevant well into the future.  If I was a nation making investment decisions I'd favor artillery over tanks any day of the week.

Steve

[chrisl]

12 hours ago, Tux said:

Cultural block, 100%.  Once a weapon system has achieved such an exaggerated cultural profile the system itself almost becomes a psychological heuristic towards achieving the effects associated with its success.  As far as I can see it gets even worse once people start assuming they want to apply certain effects because that's what their favourite weapon system can do, because then you've blinded yourself to the possibility of the system's obsolescence.

It takes time and energy to occasionally reconsider what effects you want to apply and then work backwards to establish the best way to actually achieve that.  It always blows people's minds when you do it well, though.

I think what photon is admirably trying to do is observe the new, successful weapon systems in Ukraine and, instead of just deciding that "dronez rule every1 must has dronez!", extract the secret sauce of their success in more general, physical terms.

Unfortunately I (so far) think that the e-t profile and/or integral of same is a red herring; I think it's an emergent property of weapon systems that are able to lean into precision vs. brute force, rather than a deterministic property that can be used to decide the effectiveness of a weapon.

I think the first couple paragraphs of your response are a version of the "XY problem" that's usually a form of: non-expert asks expert "how do I do X" or "can you help fix my thing that's supposed to do X", when the only reason they're doing X in the first place is that they really want to do Y and X is the only way they know how to do it.  An expert will tell them how to do X.  A system engineer will poke at their brain for a while to understand why they want to do X and figure out that the real goal is Y, and there are three other ways Z, A, and B to do Y that are all more effective and less hassle.

I don't think the energy thing is a red herring, so much as system energy comes in complicated ways.  Energy arguments are very useful in all sorts of things, including physics based sensors, function of biological systems, logistics, and weapons systems.  For a given volume you can pack in some amount of energy if you're working with readily available sources - petrochemicals, batteries, and high and low explosives are probably the main ones here.  How you choose to spend that energy is a discriminator among systems.

Artillery, for example, uses most of it in two big (and short) bangs - one of propellant to get the shell moving, and another to make a mess at the other end.  But with modern ISR, electronics, sensors, and control systems you can use some of the energy of that initial propulsion bang to maneuver the shell in the air - either to extend its range or to fine guide itself to a target.  But you have to be careful spending that, because every maneuver to change direction costs you some of that energy.  Hypersonic missiles have the same limitation - sure, they go stupid fast.  But every time you try to change direction of something going that fast you have to stick a finger out in the wind and use up some of that energy (and speed).  And the maneuvering cost is very non-linear in how fast you're going, so a just few maneuvers at high speed gets very expensive.  And pretty soon you just look like another dumb glide or ballistic missile and get shot down by some borrowed Patriot system.