How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

As for why espouse the rhetoric of "total victory" by the West, well for one thing, aside from that brief stalling period, Russian peace demands and signalling has been maximal. No reason for the West to concede ground. As far as I'm aware of, we have terms from Russia being: the removal of the current Ukrainian government, the annexation of 4 regions into Russia, the blocking of Ukraine into NATO or EU, the demobilization of the Ukrainian military, the formalization of Russian sovereignty over Crimea. At least. There's that drunken idiot thinking of Odesa. Idiot or not, Russian rhetoric remains maximal.

There is no reason to speak rhetorically of anything less than the restoration of full Ukrainian territorial sovereignty over its 1991 borders and the intent of Western aid to support such goals. There is no reason to speak cautiously regarding Western weapons being used inside Russia as they end UN arms embargoes on North Korea and Iran and fire from Russia into all of Ukraine.

No reason to be cautious in rhetoric as Russian jamming affects the Eastern flank of NATO.

So this post and the one above it are what we like to call “losing the bubble”.  You have let your passion for Ukraine cloud objective strategic thinking to the point that you are proposing a denial of reality to insert one of your own that matches that passion.  In blunt terms, if you were on my staff I would be thinking you need a vacation and maybe a posting away for awhile.

1.  We cannot simply discount/avoid/wave away the risks of a full on Russian political and social collapse.  First off it is not “impossible” or even improbable given we have a rigid autocratic political mechanism that has been under significant strain for some time now.  Russia has collapsed in the past (twice in the past century and a bit) and can do so again.  

2.  The consequences of a Russian collapse cannot simply be waived away either.  At best we get a stable regime quickly grabbing power so that the centralized control apparatus stays in place.  That regime will need to 1) have clean enough hands to do an honest deal with, and 2) be supportive in stopping this war.  That is a tall order. Follow on scenarios of a Russian collapse and its impacts get worse from there and we have gone into them many times.  You are essentially so gripped with the Ukrainian cause that you have simply stated “ignore them” with neither proof or logic on why to do so beyond “well it hasn’t happened yet, so it will never happen”.

3.  By your metrics Ukrainian security is not guaranteed outside of a full Russian collapse and regime change.  Nothing would stop Russia from lobbing missiles even if it was forced back to 2014 lines.  So we are back to “we need a full Russian collapse to ‘win’ but ignore the consequences of that collapse because = ‘love Ukraine’.” That makes no sense nor does it address the scenarios where a collapsed Russia poses as greater risk to Ukraine than what they are dealing with now. 

4.  There are plenty examples of frozen conflict where an enduring peace and security were guaranteed: Korea, Cyprus and Former Yugoslavia, to name a few.  Like Israel right now, there is always risk of reemergence of warfare but we can manage that.  So immediately writing off any and all other peace scenarios is not only extremist narrative, it is dangerously reductive thinking.  This is not how high levels of diplomacy, defence and security or economics think about the world, it is how college students on a campus do.

5.  Your position and thesis essentially start with a conclusion and then build a logic model theory of success that only supports that conclusion.  Ukraine must have total victory, all other outcomes are defeats.  Further the West must support Ukraine in this venture to the point that it will risk the total political and social collapse of a nuclear power.  We are to sidestep all that risk for Ukraine.  What happens if we get to 2014 lines and Russia does not quit?  Do we need to go into Russia proper?  This nearly happened in Korea/China in 1950, this was how MacArther talked himself into nuclear weapons and a massive Chinese reaction.

6. We all support Ukraine and want a victory here.  But..and you really need to sit down and think about this…Ukraine is damned important, but it is not that important.  We are not going to start WW3 over Ukraine - even as we skirt around it.  We would be talking hundreds of millions of deaths, even if the thing stayed conventional.  We have 8 billion people on this planet and keeping them all alive takes a lot of energy and resources.  We built a highly complex and integrated system to keep the whole dance going.  One war breaks out between Ukraine and Russia and we already have people starving to death in Africa. Imagine a full on conflagration that drags in NATO. Iran and possibly China.  I am sorry but we could easily go with plan A, which was likely the plan on 24 Feb 22: continue to support Ukrainian resistance, fall back to NATO lines, drop a new Iron Curtain, and fund the hell out of NATO - in fact there are likely big winners in this scenario who know it.  We won the First Cold War, we can take our chances on a Second.

So, no, total 2014 lines are not the only victory in this war by a long shot.  In fact those territorial lines might not even mean victory if they were attainable.  We are very likely looking at a stop line, like in 2014, somewhere in the middle.  Then we will get some sort of shaky ceasefire that we will need to exploit, quickly.  We need to set the conditions to strategically deny Ukraine from Russia.  We know Russia can be deterred, this is why we do not have deep strikes into Poland happening.  We will need to move that deterrence line.  We will likely have to pound Russia until it drops its ridiculous negotiating position and we can land on something more reasonable.  Whether that will take a full on collapse is unknown, we can only hope if it does that we are looking at a soft collapse of political position and not social controls within Russia.

Finally, framing the war the way you have supports Russia.  You are making this war nearly unwinnable via these maximalist rhetoric.  As such, a reader of this thread could easily walk away agreeing with you but arriving at a very different conclusion - unwinnable war = GTFO, because we have already seen this movie twice in the last 20 years.  Which is exactly what Russia wants.

You have narrowed down the acceptable narrative only to those ardent extremist viewpoints that agree with you.  By leaving no middle ground you violate a core component of war: negotiation.  There is no negotiation in your position and that immediately sets off warning bells.  We hear this everyday now coming from all sorts of corners over so many issues.  I vehemently disagree with your analysis, narrative and conclusions based on this fact alone.

Edited April 30 by The_Capt

[The_Capt]

10 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

All we have are anecdotes

The Podors are storming in columns in the Bakhmut direction!!!!! All the equipment is stupidly scalded with metal, from 5 units it was possible to destroy a tank and an armored personnel carrier. A lot of FPV was spent on one tank. Everyone laughs at their construction of barns, but in fact they work like hell

https://t.me/The_life_of_Predova/2241

Ok, let’s think about this for a minute.  Anyone who has played CM knows that a tank needs to do three things to be effective - move, target and shoot.  These giant sheds basically erode all three of those.  They can still move but I am pretty sure with some serious impacts as drivers situational awareness is worse and the fact they have a giant metal box on their tank is going to impact mobility.  Targeting must be a joke.  They cannot swing the gun sights and can only see a narrow window out the front. Situation awareness in that garden shed must be the worst. They are likely blasting nearly blind.  And finally shooting.  What sort of gunnery are they accomplishing with a giant box over top them?  They cannot move the turret more than a few degrees to the front, so they have basically become a mobile field gun….in a big metal box.

What these sorts of developments tell us is that the RA is more afraid of drones than they are of anything else, to the point that they are willing to drastically reduce the effectiveness of armor.  The fact they have to put garden sheds on their tanks is already a tactical victory.  It demonstrates just how far things have gone. They do not “work” beyond keeping whatever these vehicles have become alive for a few more minutes and raising the number of FPVs it takes to kill them. 

[cesmonkey]

 

[cesmonkey]

 

[kimbosbread]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

What these sorts of developments tell us is that the RA is more afraid of drones than they are of anything else, to the point that they are willing to drastically reduce the effectiveness of armor.  … They do not “work” beyond keeping whatever these vehicles have become alive for a few more minutes and raising the number of FPVs it takes to kill them. 

If all your opponent has is FPVs, is that not good enough? As I understand, Ukraine simply doesn’t have enough heavy weaponry capable of destroying “shed-on-tracks”. Previously small drones were good enough for wiping out all manner of vehicles, but this requires something with a more substantial amount of boom-boom, which is not available.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The fact they have to put garden sheds on their tanks is already a tactical victory.  It demonstrates just how far things have gone. 

I disagree that this is any sort of the victory. The Russians are not stupid, and realize that bolting sheds onto their tanks is a viable strategy for getting infantry to Ukraine’s defensive positions, and that’s all that matters to them. They believe they can seize 50-100m at a time, and make attrit the Ukrainian defenders, while being able to sustain the Russian effort.

EDIT: If it’s a victory at all, it’s for those who fetishize tanks, and point out what happens when you run out of fancy ATGMs.

Edited April 30 by kimbosbread

[dan/california]

16 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

If all your opponent has is FPVs, is that not good enough? As I understand, Ukraine simply doesn’t have enough heavy weaponry capable of destroying “shed-on-tracks”. Previously small drones were good enough for wiping out all manner of vehicles, but this requires something with a more substantial amount of boom-boom, which is not available.

I disagree that this is any sort of the victory. The Russians are not stupid, and realize that bolting sheds onto their tanks is a viable strategy for getting infantry to Ukraine’s defensive positions, and that’s all that matters to them. They believe they can seize 50-100m at a time, and make attrit the Ukrainian defenders, while being able to sustain the Russian effort.

EDIT: If it’s a victory at all, it’s for those who fetishize tanks, and point out what happens when you run out of fancy ATGMs.

 

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Ok, let’s think about this for a minute.  Anyone who has played CM knows that a tank needs to do three things to be effective - move, target and shoot.  These giant sheds basically erode all three of those.  They can still move but I am pretty sure with some serious impacts as drivers situational awareness is worse and the fact they have a giant metal box on their tank is going to impact mobility.  Targeting must be a joke.  They cannot swing the gun sights and can only see a narrow window out the front. Situation awareness in that garden shed must be the worst. They are likely blasting nearly blind.  And finally shooting.  What sort of gunnery are they accomplishing with a giant box over top them?  They cannot move the turret more than a few degrees to the front, so they have basically become a mobile field gun….in a big metal box.

What these sorts of developments tell us is that the RA is more afraid of drones than they are of anything else, to the point that they are willing to drastically reduce the effectiveness of armor.  The fact they have to put garden sheds on their tanks is already a tactical victory.  It demonstrates just how far things have gone. They do not “work” beyond keeping whatever these vehicles have become alive for a few more minutes and raising the number of FPVs it takes to kill them. 

I am on The_Capt's side on this one. Armored vehicles that have had to preemptively blind themselves to stay alive the last five or ten kilometers have reduced their effectiveness by 80 or 90%. Also the counters to this are extremely obvious. Drones will get a little bigger, an optimized warhead will be developed, and last but not least all the home on jam experiments that have to be underway somewhere will ramp up into production. What tanks need to do to remain useful in the next turn of the cycle is rather less obvious, because as we have discussed any number of times, the just can't get any heavier, and a practical matter they are ALREADY to expensive

[kimbosbread]

11 minutes ago, dan/california said:

I am on The_Capt's side on this one. Armored vehicles that have had to preemptively blind themselves to stay alive the last five or ten kilometers have reduced their effectiveness by 80 or 90%. Also the counters to this are extremely obvious.

This is a hack to survive the current cycle. For the specific conditions the Russians face- numerically inferior enemy with lots of FPVs with small warheads, and lots of Russian meat and ****ty old armor- this works fine.

[The_Capt]

26 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

If all your opponent has is FPVs, is that not good enough? As I understand, Ukraine simply doesn’t have enough heavy weaponry capable of destroying “shed-on-tracks”. Previously small drones were good enough for wiping out all manner of vehicles, but this requires something with a more substantial amount of boom-boom, which is not available.

I disagree that this is any sort of the victory. The Russians are not stupid, and realize that bolting sheds onto their tanks is a viable strategy for getting infantry to Ukraine’s defensive positions, and that’s all that matters to them. They believe they can seize 50-100m at a time, and make attrit the Ukrainian defenders, while being able to sustain the Russian effort.

EDIT: If it’s a victory at all, it’s for those who fetishize tanks, and point out what happens when you run out of fancy ATGMs.

First off, we know that the UA has more than "just FPVs".  Even though supplies and ammunition of some natures, some critical were low, the entire UA did not run out of ATGMs, AT systems, landmines, direct fires and indirect fires.  Ukraine clearly does have weaponry to destroy "sheds-on-tracks" because we just saw video of exactly that.

What I did not see was a successful infantry assault, nor can a tank or IFV boxed in by a metal shed effectively provide fires support to infantry...because the entire freakin turret is in a giant box!  Russians have been stupid in the past, this entire bloody war is a monument to stupidity, but even if they are being clever now, this is desperate clever.  They are eroding expensive military capability on their own...Ukraine doesn't even need to do it for them.  They are doing so in the hope they can somehow take 100m at a time.  Which, btw is fine, so long as each 100m costs them 3-4 AFVs and platoon of infantry.  By the map it is 21km to Pokrovsk and 32 kms to Kostyantynivka, which are the closest things to actual operational objectives (immediate objectives mind you).  At this burn rate Russia will lose 6300 troops and 630 AFVs to get to Pokrovsk alone.  That is an entire Bde+.  And here is the the thing...they are not even advancing that quickly.  Their burn rate is actually much higher.

And here is another thing...if they can take Pokrovsk...they still have 236 kms to Poltava.  Which as a minimum is what they are going to need to do to cut the UA line in half and truly threaten it and Kharkiv - assuming they can somehow make a drive/link up with Sumy.

The problem we are having on this forum right now is the exact opposite of what all the experts had at the beginning of the war.  They were all looking macro and ignoring micro, we were not and saw things they missed.  Now we are all looking micro and extrapolating it up wildly to macro.  A few sheds on Russian tanks is not a sign that Russia has somehow solved for FPVs and now can make a Costco-garage-drive to freakin Kyiv.  It is a sign that they are running out of ideas, not cracking the code with some sort of mystic Russian military prowess. 

[dan/california]

5 hours ago, FancyCat said:

Guess precision took a hit...ugh. hey, great, a lesson for the future. Can we please just get 3rd party ammo sourced worldwide to Ukraine now? (I will assume with U.S aid unblocked this will resume, but a pox on certain European countries for insisting on EU based manufacturing at the expense of Ukraine.

https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116957/witnesses/HHRG-118-AS35-Wstate-PattD-20240313.pdf

 

It will require some real engineering, because gun launched anything requires real engineering, but there are already a ton of other ways to do terminal guidance out there. Furthermore the fact recon drones that can stand off a kilometer or five seem far far less susceptible to jamming makes all of those solution easier. Whether it is laser guidance, or literally passing a terrain image thru to the seeker in the shell, it is all just engineering, not radical scientific breakthroughs. A home on jam version of the Excalibur would seem rather useful as well. All of this more or less exactly parallels the gun vs armor race in WW2. If I am remembering something Steve wrote forever ago correctly, " As the war progressed, tanks that were one year old were at a significant disadvantage, and two year old tanks and guns were effectively obsolete". The more things change, the more they uhm don't.

Hasn't the U.S. already been developing, and maybe even building some multi mode seekers for some air launched munitions? Fitting those to GMLRS doesn't seem that hard. 

Edited April 30 by dan/california

[The_Capt]

3 minutes ago, dan/california said:

It will require some real engineering, because gun launched anything requires real engineering, but there are already a ton of other ways to do terminal guidance out there. Furthermore the fact recon drones that can stand off a kilometer or five seem far far less susceptible to jamming makes all of those solution easier. Whether it is laser guidance, or literally passing a terrain image thru to the seeker in the shell, it is all just engineering, not radical scientific breakthroughs. A home on jam version of the Excalibur would seem rather useful as well. All of this more or less exactly parallels the gun vs armor race in WW2. If I am remembering something Steve wrote forever ago correctly, " As the war progressed, tanks that were one year old were at a significant disadvantage, and two year old tanks and guns were effectively obsolete". The more things change, the more they uhm don't.

Hasn't the U.S. already been developing, and maybe even building some multi mode seekers for some air launched munitions? Fitting those o GMLRS doesn't seem that hard. 

I question stats like this.  The paper uses Jack Walting out of RUSSI, who are a pretty good bunch, but the ref in the paper is not a citation, it basically says "Jack said so".  So when was this in the war?  Excalibur rounds come with inertial guidance for just this reason - GPS jamming.  We know there have been continual upgrades and revisions to deal with the EW environment.  Are these rounds at 7% now?  Where did Jack get this number?

We know EW will remain a thing, but autonomy is the offset and it is accelerating.  The Excalibur round started development in the 90s and has been on the battlefield for nearly 20 years:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur

We need to really remember that a lot of the miltech we are seeing is actually one or two generations old. So this makes predictions even harder.  We do not know what is out there with respect to PGM and counters, nor what is on drawing boards.  My sense within the business is that cheap precise is accelerating, while the very expensive counters are behind the curve, but time will tell.

[dan/california]

8 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I question stats like this.  The paper uses Jack Walting out of RUSSI, who are a pretty good bunch, but the ref in the paper is not a citation, it basically says "Jack said so".  So when was this in the war?  Excalibur rounds come with inertial guidance for just this reason - GPS jamming.  We know there have been continual upgrades and revisions to deal with the EW environment.  Are these rounds at 7% now?  Where did Jack get this number?

We know EW will remain a thing, but autonomy is the offset and it is accelerating.  The Excalibur round started development in the 90s and has been on the battlefield for nearly 20 years:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur

We need to really remember that a lot of the miltech we are seeing is actually one or two generations old. So this makes predictions even harder.  We do not know what is out there with respect to PGM and counters, nor what is on drawing boards.  My sense within the business is that cheap precise is accelerating, while the very expensive counters are behind the curve, but time will tell.

All of this conversation reminds me of how the Spanish Civil war was the test bed for so much of what we saw from 1940 to 1945.

 

Edited April 30 by dan/california

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

My sense within the business is that cheap precise is accelerating, while the very expensive counters are behind the curve, but time will tell.

Yeah, people forget that the advent of cheap, powerful and energy efficient computing is upon us. This is what enables quadcopters to fly, cell phones to do all sorts of fancy image processing, etc.

Whenever someone questions cheap precision, I gotta wonder if they’ve ever touched a smartphone in the last decade.

[dan/california]

Better late than never...

[Yet]

so why does the West media count the war by square km territory (initiated by Zelensky, EU and Washington). 

i didnt hear press conferences about 'Ru already faced strategic defeat by all metrics'. Because pariah, Nato expansion, losses, real powers exposed, 

... and 'the only last metric to make Ru understand is square km'.

It is in Western/Ukr favour to keep portraying Ru to the masses as scary, big and winning. And there is one metric that serves that and that RU wont quickly run out of. 'square km taken from Ukr'. The only problem with this is that we want to be with 'winners'. Therefore part of the civilians is uninterested and start to not care or (worse) put all other issues closer to home first. 

Now it is up to the politicians and spindoctors to 'sell' the war by or making the enemy scarier, or by showing succes. Problem is that the Western (free, shock-based, commercial, critical) media has to catch it up and frame it for the crowds. It takes quite a shock or willpower and creativity to get it to land in John (and Jane) Doe's algorithms. 

Edited April 30 by Yet

[FancyCat]

Quote

In a new update, the UK government confirmed that the MOD has delivered 50 AS-90 155mm self propelled howitzers to Ukraine. Britain has now supplied roughly 2/3 of its AS-90 fleet to Ukraine.

 

Given actual readiness rates, it’s likely that the UK has already delivered all of its operational AS-90s to Ukraine, and dipped into repairing disabled/inoperative units for delivery.

 

 

[dan/california]

22 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

 

 

This totally makes sense, because L39 barrels are all but obsolete. The first tier standard going forward is going to guns that shoot 45 or 50 kilometers with more or less normal ammunition, and double that with the fancy stuff. L52 barrels are just one of the things that are absolutely required to make that happen.

I am not saying they are useless in Ukraine BTW, I am saying all of the vehicles in the general class of L39 barreled SPGs are a rapidly wasting asset, and most of the ones that exist anywhere n NATO ought to be on the way to Ukraine. The manufacturing rate for newer systems obviously needs to go WAY up.

[poesel]

1 hour ago, Yet said:

so why does the West media count the war by square km territory (initiated by Zelensky, EU and Washington).

Because it is an easy-to-understand metric that is good to measure and visualize.

Single value metrics for complex systems usually suck. Better metrics are hard to understand unless you know what's going on. Since the public does not, its km^2.

[FancyCat]

article on Japan's ruling coalition seeking to loosen restrictions that may allow it to export to Ukraine. Hopefully Ukraine has a good embassy there to push it. 

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Defense/Japan-weighs-weapon-exports-to-nations-under-invasionhttps://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Defense/Japan-weighs-weapon-exports-to-nations-under-invasion

 

[TheVulture]

19 minutes ago, dan/california said:

This totally makes sense, because L39 barrels are all but obsolete. The first tier standard going forward is going to guns that shoot 45 or 50 kilometers with more or less normal ammunition, and double that with the fancy stuff. L52 barrels are just one of the things that are absolutely required to make that happen.

I am not saying they are useless in Ukraine BTW, I am saying all of the vehicles in the general class of L39 barreled SPGs are a rapidly wasting asset, and most of the ones that exist anywhere n NATO ought to be on the way to Ukraine. The manufacturing rate for newer systems obviously needs to go WAY up.

Not unrelated, but the UK army started receiving its first Archer artillery systems (L52) from Sweden in early 2023, so yes, they are basically shipping the AS-90s to Ukraine as they are being replaced in active service by new systems.

I believe Sweden have also sent some Archers to Ukraine, so they're getting some more modern systems too, not just stuff that's being retired. Archer I think is on a par with the French Caesars that are getting a lot of praise.

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, TheVulture said:

Not unrelated, but the UK army started receiving its first Archer artillery systems (L52) from Sweden in early 2023, so yes, they are basically shipping the AS-90s to Ukraine as they are being replaced in active service by new systems.

I believe Sweden have also sent some Archers to Ukraine, so they're getting some more modern systems too, not just stuff that's being retired. Archer I think is on a par with the French Caesars that are getting a lot of praise.

I really look forward to the comparisons between the two systems after the war. The Archer is an amazingly nice system, automated EVERYTHING. . The Caesar though hits a really nice sweet spot of having all of the tech it actually needs, but nothing that it doesn't. The Caesar pays for that with a slightly longer time to shoot and leave. Really interesting comparison to be made there if we ever get any real data.

 

Edited April 30 by dan/california

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, poesel said:

Because it is an easy-to-understand metric that is good to measure and visualize.

Single value metrics for complex systems usually suck. Better metrics are hard to understand unless you know what's going on. Since the public does not, its km^2.

I excuse the public a little bit.  Because when Ukraine took back huge amounts of land all pro-Ukrainian commentators lavished praise for land area.  But as we can clearly see, that didn't knock Russia out of the war, therefore the area itself wasn't all that important.  What was more important, at least to better analysis, was WHY Ukraine was able to retake so much land.  Russia's overstretched logistics, poor quality manpower, putting too many eggs in the Kherson basket, etc. were the real things to pay attention to.  But yeah... taking back a huge amount of land got all the headlines.

Steve

[fireship4]

 

14 hours ago, FancyCat said:

A frozen front line without a ceasefire is not a win for Ukraine or the West. A situation that presumably allows Russia to missile strike and drone attack into Ukraine's cities is one that will result in Ukraine's slow bleed out thru civilian morale collapse. I assume that a situation without ceasefire being agreed means ukraine is unable to threaten Russia with enough retaliation to bring Russia away from contently lobbing missiles. Mind you pre-2022 ceasefire and negotiations were in much different contexts than today. We have no idea what Russia's breaking point to begin negotiations to formalize a freeze is and not a form of surrender or Western loss.

It is therefore essential to define win in terms of a maximal, seeking quick as possible goal, in order to best pressure Russia towards peace, to best prep western governments to aspire and support Ukraine with maximum aid and long term awareness of potential Russian renewal. (Things like arguing over ammo procurement should have never become a issue to the result now where the West looks weak as hell as Russia makes gains and can argue it can make strategic gains eventually, if our goal is to stop the war, anything that allows Russia to convince itself it can win is a failure)(lack of urgency is a failure)

The slow drip of aid, the reactive position of the West to Russia, is a failure. At every step, Russia has escalated, has increased its capabilities, has continued to bet that it can exhaust the West. Instead of providing offramps, Russia sees it as Western weakness to take advantage of.

The fear of Russian collapse, which characterized many foreign policy doves including Jake Sullivan in the Biden administration has resulted in the measures Russia has taken advantage of. It's necessary to no longer concern with Russian collapse (which I don't think has ever been a possibility in hindsight, if you forgot, at every step of escalation Russia has sought to warn of Russian collapse (I include nuclear weapons use as a collapse scenario, as only a hard pressed Russia would want to open Pandora's box) and right now it looks like Russia was stalling (obviously). If anything we need, the West needs to concern itself with Ukrainian collapse and to operate accordingly to prevent it. Accordingly, we must signal to Russia that it's maximal goal is impossible. Certainly the present situation indicates Russia still looks for its maximal goal. Holding up aid for months is certainly not helping the mindset of a dictator who started the full scale invasion in the delusion it would succeed quickly and painlessly.

What does disregarding Russia's potential collapse mean in reality? Well for one thing, the restrictions on Western weapons use in Russia, Germany acting oh so scared of hurting Russian land with a missile as cluster munitions land in Odesa and France being exceedingly selfish procuring ammo are just some behaviors that Putin may be able to take solace in.

 

14 hours ago, FancyCat said:

As for why espouse the rhetoric of "total victory" by the West, well for one thing, aside from that brief stalling period, Russian peace demands and signalling has been maximal. No reason for the West to concede ground. As far as I'm aware of, we have terms from Russia being: the removal of the current Ukrainian government, the annexation of 4 regions into Russia, the blocking of Ukraine into NATO or EU, the demobilization of the Ukrainian military, the formalization of Russian sovereignty over Crimea. At least. There's that drunken idiot thinking of Odesa. Idiot or not, Russian rhetoric remains maximal.

There is no reason to speak rhetorically of anything less than the restoration of full Ukrainian territorial sovereignty over its 1991 borders and the intent of Western aid to support such goals. There is no reason to speak cautiously regarding Western weapons being used inside Russia as they end UN arms embargoes on North Korea and Iran and fire from Russia into all of Ukraine.

No reason to be cautious in rhetoric as Russian jamming affects the Eastern flank of NATO.

 

12 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So this post and the one above it are what we like to call “losing the bubble”.  You have let your passion for Ukraine cloud objective strategic thinking to the point that you are proposing a denial of reality to insert one of your own that matches that passion.  In blunt terms, if you were on my staff I would be thinking you need a vacation and maybe a posting away for awhile.

1.  We cannot simply discount/avoid/wave away the risks of a full on Russian political and social collapse.  First off it is not “impossible” or even improbable given we have a rigid autocratic political mechanism that has been under significant strain for some time now.  Russia has collapsed in the past (twice in the past century and a bit) and can do so again.  

2.  The consequences of a Russian collapse cannot simply be waived away either.  At best we get a stable regime quickly grabbing power so that the centralized control apparatus stays in place.  That regime will need to 1) have clean enough hands to do an honest deal with, and 2) be supportive in stopping this war.  That is a tall order. Follow on scenarios of a Russian collapse and its impacts get worse from there and we have gone into them many times.  You are essentially so gripped with the Ukrainian cause that you have simply stated “ignore them” with neither proof or logic on why to do so beyond “well it hasn’t happened yet, so it will never happen”.

3.  By your metrics Ukrainian security is not guaranteed outside of a full Russian collapse and regime change.  Nothing would stop Russia from lobbing missiles even if it was forced back to 2014 lines.  So we are back to “we need a full Russian collapse to ‘win’ but ignore the consequences of that collapse because = ‘love Ukraine’.” That makes no sense nor does it address the scenarios where a collapsed Russia poses as greater risk to Ukraine than what they are dealing with now. 

4.  There are plenty examples of frozen conflict where an enduring peace and security were guaranteed: Korea, Cyprus and Former Yugoslavia, to name a few.  Like Israel right now, there is always risk of reemergence of warfare but we can manage that.  So immediately writing off any and all other peace scenarios is not only extremist narrative, it is dangerously reductive thinking.  This is not how high levels of diplomacy, defence and security or economics think about the world, it is how college students on a campus do.

5.  Your position and thesis essentially start with a conclusion and then build a logic model theory of success that only supports that conclusion.  Ukraine must have total victory, all other outcomes are defeats.  Further the West must support Ukraine in this venture to the point that it will risk the total political and social collapse of a nuclear power.  We are to sidestep all that risk for Ukraine.  What happens if we get to 2014 lines and Russia does not quit?  Do we need to go into Russia proper?  This nearly happened in Korea/China in 1950, this was how MacArther talked himself into nuclear weapons and a massive Chinese reaction.

6. We all support Ukraine and want a victory here.  But..and you really need to sit down and think about this…Ukraine is damned important, but it is not that important.  We are not going to start WW3 over Ukraine - even as we skirt around it.  We would be talking hundreds of millions of deaths, even if the thing stayed conventional.  We have 8 billion people on this planet and keeping them all alive takes a lot of energy and resources.  We built a highly complex and integrated system to keep the whole dance going.  One war breaks out between Ukraine and Russia and we already have people starving to death in Africa. Imagine a full on conflagration that drags in NATO. Iran and possibly China.  I am sorry but we could easily go with plan A, which was likely the plan on 24 Feb 22: continue to support Ukrainian resistance, fall back to NATO lines, drop a new Iron Curtain, and fund the hell out of NATO - in fact there are likely big winners in this scenario who know it.  We won the First Cold War, we can take our chances on a Second.

So, no, total 2014 lines are not the only victory in this war by a long shot.  In fact those territorial lines might not even mean victory if they were attainable.  We are very likely looking at a stop line, like in 2014, somewhere in the middle.  Then we will get some sort of shaky ceasefire that we will need to exploit, quickly.  We need to set the conditions to strategically deny Ukraine from Russia.  We know Russia can be deterred, this is why we do not have deep strikes into Poland happening.  We will need to move that deterrence line.  We will likely have to pound Russia until it drops its ridiculous negotiating position and we can land on something more reasonable.  Whether that will take a full on collapse is unknown, we can only hope if it does that we are looking at a soft collapse of political position and not social controls within Russia.

Finally, framing the war the way you have supports Russia.  You are making this war nearly unwinnable via these maximalist rhetoric.  As such, a reader of this thread could easily walk away agreeing with you but arriving at a very different conclusion - unwinnable war = GTFO, because we have already seen this movie twice in the last 20 years.  Which is exactly what Russia wants.

You have narrowed down the acceptable narrative only to those ardent extremist viewpoints that agree with you.  By leaving no middle ground you violate a core component of war: negotiation.  There is no negotiation in your position and that immediately sets off warning bells.  We hear this everyday now coming from all sorts of corners over so many issues.  I vehemently disagree with your analysis, narrative and conclusions based on this fact alone.

 

FancyCat, edited for concision:

• A drawn-out war is bad for Ukraine.
• We don't know what might bring Russia to ceasefire negotiations.
• The best way to bring them to the table is to fight to win the war.
• Russia will keep the war going if it is to their advantage.
• The west is not fighting to win, Russia is taking advantage of Western lack of commitment.
• Russia is using Western fears of Russian collapse and nuclear war to it's advantage, actively promoting such a narrative for it's benefit rather than because it is a realistic one.
• Russia seems to be pursuing maximal goals.  The west must signal that these cannot be achieved.
• Why should the west make concessions as Russia does not.  Russia does not offer a negotiation, rather demands surrender, disarmament and fomalisation of annexed land

 

The_Capt, edited for concision:

Preamble: You are ignoring reality. The best becomes the enemy of the good. We have a phrase for that in Army.

1. The Russian regime might collapse.
2. This would be a risk.
3. You think the only way to win is for the Russia to collapse.
4. Russia doesn't need to collapse for there to be peace.
5. You think Ukraine must have total victory and anything else is defeat.  This is holding you back.
6. (6.1) WW3 would be bad, Ukraine is not worth that.  War is costly.  We can simultaniously support Ukrainian resistance and pull back to a new iron curtain behind which could sit a well funded NATO.
7. (6.2) Maximal goals are not the only form of victory. We are looking at a ceasefire scenario with half of Ukraine in Russian hands.
8. (6.3) We must fight to achieve a better negotiating position, this might require Russia to collapse.
9. (6.4) Your argument helps the enemy, by making the war unwinnable, and might encourage people to give up support if it does not achieve total vicory.  This is what Russia wants.

 

I feel simply summarising the main points of the exchange as I have here should suffice as a critique.  It took me an hour or so.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, fireship4 said:

 

 

 

 

FancyCat, edited for concision:

• A drawn-out war is bad for Ukraine.
• We don't know what might bring Russia to ceasefire negotiations.
• The best way to bring them to the table is to fight to win the war.
• Russia will keep the war going if it is to their advantage.
• The west is not fighting to win, Russia is taking advantage of Western lack of commitment.
• Russia is using Western fears of Russian collapse and nuclear war to it's advantage, actively promoting such a narrative for it's benefit rather than because it is a realistic one.
• Russia seems to be pursuing maximal goals.  The west must signal that these cannot be achieved.
• Why should the west make concessions as Russia does not.  Russia does not offer a negotiation, rather demands surrender, disarmament and fomalisation of annexed land

 

The_Capt, edited for concision:

Preamble: You are ignoring reality. The best becomes the enemy of the good. We have a phrase for that in Army.

1. The Russian regime might collapse.
2. This would be a risk.
3. You think the only way to win is for the Russia to collapse.
4. Russia doesn't need to collapse for there to be peace.
5. You think Ukraine must have total victory and anything else is defeat.  This is holding you back.
6. (6.1) WW3 would be bad, Ukraine is not worth that.  War is costly.  We can simultaniously support Ukrainian resistance and pull back to a new iron curtain behind which could sit a well funded NATO.
7. (6.2) Maximal goals are not the only form of victory. We are looking at a ceasefire scenario with half of Ukraine in Russian hands.
8. (6.3) We must fight to achieve a better negotiating position, this might require Russia to collapse.
9. (6.4) Your argument helps the enemy, by making the war unwinnable, and might encourage people to give up support if it does not achieve total vicory.  This is what Russia wants.

 

I feel simply summarising the main points of the exchange as I have here should suffice as a critique.  It took me an hour or so.

Thanks for that!

Honestly, I'm seeing nothing new here.  We've been debating these same points since the war started.  It boils down to which side one thinks benefits from, or is harmed by, either a prolonged war or a prolonged cease fire (similar to 2015-2022). 

I've certainly looked at this many, many times and the answer is never simple.  However, I have always believed and continue to believe that time works the most against Russia.  The simple reason is this... Russia wants to be an empire.  A nation can not be an empire if it is stalled out in one place to the extent it can't do anything else. 

Putin seems to understand what lots and lots and lots of pre-war analysts have long understood, which is that Russia is in steep decline on all measures typically used to evaluate empires.  Since Russia is disinterested, if not openly hostile, to addressing the reasons for its decline, it's looking for inexpensive and quick ways to reverse the trend lines.  Ukraine has been neither inexpensive nor quick.

Ukraine, on the other hand, is actively working towards a long term stable national way of life.  It has a lot of countries seeking to help it do so.  If the war stalls out or Ukraine has to agree to unfavorable terms, it still has those opportunities. 

Think of West Germany.  It lost half of its lands and a good chunk of its population for decades.  Despite everything the Soviet Union did to keep that as the status quo, it ultimately failed because the Soviet Union and its puppet allies were inherently unstable while the society of West Germany and its allies were not.

Time is still not on Russia's side.  It is an empire built on deliberately controlled chaos.  It will not survive long term because unstable systems never do.  Ukraine is building a stable system, ergo it has much better prospects for long term survival.

Steve

[chrisl]

On 4/28/2024 at 1:51 PM, Haiduk said:

Reportedly Ukrianian forces became to use almost noiseless night FPV drones. Here is UKR drone slowly follows for two Russians and despite the range is no more 15-20 m and this is a night, Russians don't hear it.

 

Drones the size of the smaller FPV drones are remarkably quiet and hard to spot.

I was cycling up in the mountains this weekend and we suddenly heard the whirrrrrr of a drone as it zipped by about 50 feet overhead.  We didn't hear it come in, and once it was across the road maybe another 100 feet further it was inaudible.  There was a stiff crosswind, but that was literally the only source of noise to mask the drone - the only traffic to speak of was the pickup truck that showed up shortly afterward that shot ahead of us and parked to land the drone on the hood.  We didn't see the drone again until it was landing on the hood, even though it was broad daylight and we knew where the person controlling it was sitting.

[Kraft]

12 hours ago, poesel said:

Because it is an easy-to-understand metric that is good to measure and visualize.

Single value metrics for complex systems usually suck. Better metrics are hard to understand unless you know what's going on. Since the public does not, its km^2.

Even putting losses into the equation is not really happening.

I dont think Ive heard a single take on the difference between the near collapse of the russian front in 22 when they left brigades worth of intact equiptment to flee with civilian vehicles to the ww1 style mass casulties forward inching we have now where the only thing captured is ruins and rubble.

I saw a 7 minute video of a russian walking through his position yesterday. Every 2-3meters you'd see a russian lying in the earth. I counted more than 100 dead bodies and even more left behind gear indicating people that were recovered there, dead or alive.

The pg13 ones that dont need to be blurred that showcase the insane amount of burnt tank columns dont make it to the outside media either. 

If it was really about "shock-media" in the west Id think they'd play those sorts of Videos @Yet

Edited May 1 by Kraft