How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[JonS]

1 hour ago, hcrof said:

So I agree a gun battery is likely to have faster effects on target, but a tank platoon needs to have line of sight on your target and has a max range of 3km or so. The grey zone in Ukraine is 20km wide so it is very unlikely that they will be in the right place at the right time.

In a static situation, which is essentially what we are seeing now, then sure. But if you're going forward then - assuming that "combined arms" is still a thing - then the tanks are going to be a lot closer.

[chris talpas]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

The thing I wonder about fully autonomous (well, ok; one of the things I wonder about with fully autonomous) is how much it's going to slow down the OODA loop. If I have a bunch of fully autonomous drones tooling around at the FEBA, they're likely working on yesterday's or last week's targeting data. When a new target pops up today, NOW, it's going to take a lot longer to get a fully autonomous drone squadron up and at 'em than calling up a gun battery or a friendly tank platoon to sort the problem out.

Given that these drones are going to have ranges of no more than a few hours, they will have returned to base if they survived and  be updated with the latest targets.

[JonS]

Is "no more than a few hours" an acceptable delay to engage a target of opportunity?

[poesel]

25 minutes ago, JonS said:

In a static situation, which is essentially what we are seeing now, then sure. But if you're going forward then - assuming that "combined arms" is still a thing - then the tanks are going to be a lot closer.

If drone units get to be 'proper' military units, then a drone platoon is no more than two trucks: one with a 10" container with an openable roof which is filled with drones and their docking bays. This one has to drive into range.
And another truck with communication, command and drone operators. This one just needs to be in com range (by relay) to the drones. They don't need to move that much.
Tracked or wheeled, they can deploy as fast as any mechanized unit.

A few billion $ will make a proper military grade equipment out of the hodgepodge setup we have now. Reaction time will be on par with artillery as you can start flying as soon as you know roughly where the target is. Artillery can't be stationary anymore, too.

[hcrof]

30 minutes ago, JonS said:

In a static situation, which is essentially what we are seeing now, then sure. But if you're going forward then - assuming that "combined arms" is still a thing - then the tanks are going to be a lot closer.

Sure, if you are talking about a concealed atgm or something that fires on your lead vehicle then that vehicle or formation had better respond quicker than indirect fire can provide. It was because of that I was trying to solve the tank problem since we all know that just a few modern weapons need to survive the initial bombardment/drone saturation to make an advance have a very bad day. 

I am convinced you can't hide a whole modern tank platoon but you might miss a cleverly concealed single vehicle or potentially dozens of javelins in foliage or buildings (especially urban). And they just need to slow you down enough for indirect fire to arrive so you need to have strong local overmatch to keep momentum.

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, JonS said:

Then the tank has been dead since the late 1970s - RAAM is very old tech.

Yes but when it is routinely targeted by drone based ISR that lets the gunners drop it a hundred yards in front of an advancing column, and adjust in real time to KEEP doing that, it becomes just wee bit more effective. War under the gaze of the all seeing eye is hard. It also does not favor things that weigh tens of tons and whose infrared signature can be seen from the moon. 

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, hcrof said:

So I better understand what you are saying now - you are going "all in" drones and think that the full range of autonomous systems will be here so fast that it is not worth investing in an intermediate platform. At this point none of us know the future but personally I would hedge: the current generation of land vehicles are all '80s vintage concepts with some add-ons bolted on, which are effectively obsolete already, and I think we need a replacement platform.

I agree fully autonomous flying drones are just around the corner, butcompanies like Anduril are already demonstrating a way to put up a protective bubble to deny/degrade enemy drone ISR within a certain area. This does not eliminate the drone threat, but it does increase the cost so they may not be as permanently dominant as they are today. Instead, you would need to fight for drone superiority and use that window of opportunity to defeat the enemy (i.e. put boots on the ground somewhere). 

UGVs are both much, much harder to automate than UAVs and also much more reliant of very comprehensive automation. Personally I don't see it happening in the next 10 years. Even if you can make UGV that can handle unpredictable muddy terrain at night, then identify a target which is extremely well camouflaged (see below) can you do this without sucking kWatts of power and draining the battery in just a few hours? I see that technology supplementing crew performance in crewed vehicles for a while before it hits the big time (i.e. aim assist, automatic flagging of potential threats, route suggestions etc.). 

And are the novel tanks so hot and easy to see? With Multi-spectral camouflage (Barracuda), rubber tracks, electric drive within 20km of the front line and movement at night to hide the dust cloud you are going to be hard to spot and hear (remember you also have your own drone bubble up to counter enemy drones). Yes radar can identify something moving, but you can move a bunch of dumb UGVs (or quadbikes) with radar reflectors at the same time to conceal your intentions. 

Better not to be stuck in 2035 with a bunch of guys with ATGMs and a wishlist for UGVs that have not arrived yet.

I am not saying it is 100% the correct answer (I am just a desk jockey in a civilian job) but its fun to game it out!

Bit of a gross oversimplification here. I am thinking of a new combined arms team of an integrated network of indirect fires, PGMs, unmanned systems and lighter fast moving infantry - all linked into an ISR architecture from ground to space. To my mind how much stripped down mechanized we retain will be negotiated over time. Investing billions in hot, heavy new platforms that will not provide demonstrable advantage is a bad strategy to my eyes. A better tank is like a better sword in WW1.

As to visibility, even if one can hide a vehicle burning hundreds of litres of fuel an hour just to keep systems going, one cannot hide its entire logistics chain (eg the fuel trucks carrying all that fuel).  This is the problem with the tank.  It is very large, loud (acoustic sensors are coming along as well) and made of hot metal - any number of ground FLIRs and systems are tailored to find these platforms, the problem is that the modern battlefield connected them all.

As to being caught out in 2035, well this war is pointing in the other direction.  The UA was down to “a bunch of guys with ATGMs and FPVs” and has held off the larger more conventionally armed opponent.  To my mind, I do not want to be stuck in 2035 with a bunch of high density, expensive, heavy metal that we have to spend billions more to try and keep alive while being cut to pieces by the system I describe above.  My best guess is that we will create C-UAS bubbles, out of other unmanned systems. But the role of mech remains largely in question.

The one thing we have not seen is anyone operationalize the new combined arms system into offence. How this will look I do not think we know yet. Will it be mech wearing an unmanned hat?  My money is, “no”.  My money is on doubling down on higher levels of massed precision until a sides bubble collapses. And then the new combined arms system will exploit that.

As to UGVs, well I am no expert, but considering the advances in robotics we have seen in the last 10 years, cheap lightweight unmanned ground systems that can deny an area are a certainty.  How autonomous is a detail.  I can say all this with a high level of confidence because the whole world is watching a nation that should not have lasted more than a few weeks hold off what was a world class military.  And they are not doing it with tanks or mech.  Every nation on earth that considers itself a power is going to be jumping on this race, there is too much to lose not to.

Edited May 12 by The_Capt

[chris talpas]

2 hours ago, JonS said:

Is "no more than a few hours" an acceptable delay to engage a target of opportunity?

There is nothing necessarily preventing you from providing updates while it is out.  Drone swarms could certainly have scouting drones creating a sensor mesh.  

Another potentially significant change to urban warfare would be that no longer one would need to level whole buildings to eliminate defenders, thus giving your side the advantage that cover provides vs. rubble when you take that position.

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, JonS said:

The thing I wonder about fully autonomous (well, ok; one of the things I wonder about with fully autonomous) is how much it's going to slow down the OODA loop. If I have a bunch of fully autonomous drones tooling around at the FEBA, they're likely working on yesterday's or last week's targeting data. When a new target pops up today, NOW, it's going to take a lot longer to get a fully autonomous drone squadron up and at 'em than calling up a gun battery or a friendly tank platoon to sort the problem out.

Yeesh, I do not even know where to start on this one.  Autonomous unmanned systems aren’t 21st century pigeons we send over the trees to see in a few hours. The whole thing is still hooked into an integrated C4ISR network. I mean if you deny that then the guns or anything else are just as useless.  

As to “calling them up”, well couple ways to do this much faster than guns. First is to do battlespace management as opposed to in the loop human targeting.  This would see a glorified JTAC building kill boxes and then assigning resources to them.  Fully autonomous UAS carry their own ISR and targeting abilities and would be let loose within a kill box. Deconfliction and prioritization are going to be tricky but nothing algorithms cannot solve in time.  This is basically a mobile flying minefield.  One can do it with both air and ground systems.  Or you let them off the leash in hunter killer mode and do sweeps along an entire frontage.  See something, kill it.  That nightmare is right around the corner.

So basically one automates the entire OODA loop at a certain level.  There are variations of this - last mile etc, but the concept is essentially the same. Endurance is the other issue but here the individual platforms are more akin to ammunition. Ukraine and Russia are putting hundreds of thousands of these systems per month into the air right now, that is how they are solving for persistence.  Future systems could be hybrid, waiting on the ground pulling in solar power, while spotters fly up to illuminate and receive any new peer to peer targeting data.

Everyone seems to be getting all wound up on the platforms and hardware, this is a mistake.  The revolution is the impact data and processing is having.  Smart everything’s are hunting individual Russian soldiers down right now. Ukraine built an ad hoc JADC2 hooked into western C4ISR that is denying a bafflingly large frontage, ground and air, to a much more conventionally powerful opponent.  UAS are the new bullets, but it is the underlying C4ISR system that is going to shift warfare forever.  How long until we see unmanned guns?  Mortars?  ATGMs?  The combination of networking and cheap, light powerful forward data processing is the big “wow” here.  It is what makes what we are seeing with UAS possible.

Finally back to OODA loops.  So I think it is the other way.  The side clinging to human-in-the-loop down at too low levels is going to lose the OODA race.  Autonomous systems can detect and react faster than a human based system - it is why we invented missiles.  So while one side is happily holding onto the good old radio and gun crews, the other has already released loitering systems that can target and strike without the need for a human being.  Who do you think is going to win that race?

Edited May 12 by The_Capt

[Vanir Ausf B]

Deep State update on the Kharkiv situation. Rob Lee says the Russian force is primarily dismounted infantry.

• The situation continues to worsen. The enemy is gradually bringing more and more forces into our territory, infantry is constantly entering, advancing in groups to populated areas and trying to gain a foothold there, saturate and continue the movement. A small amount of equipment, artillery, aviation, as well as a large activity of UAVs and EW are present as support. The Defense Forces are trying to stop the enemy, causing damage. It is necessary to pay more attention to this region and finally establish communication or the enemy will have even more success, which will lead to very negative consequences.
• Although the main task of the enemy is to divert attention from other areas, without the introduction of reserves, the situation can become extremely dire. The enemy understands this and the current situation increasingly forces the Defense Forces to intervene in this area.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1789435627248791621

 

[The_Capt]

9 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

Deep State update on the Kharkiv situation. Rob Lee says the Russian force is primarily dismounted infantry.

• The situation continues to worsen. The enemy is gradually bringing more and more forces into our territory, infantry is constantly entering, advancing in groups to populated areas and trying to gain a foothold there, saturate and continue the movement. A small amount of equipment, artillery, aviation, as well as a large activity of UAVs and EW are present as support. The Defense Forces are trying to stop the enemy, causing damage. It is necessary to pay more attention to this region and finally establish communication or the enemy will have even more success, which will lead to very negative consequences.
• Although the main task of the enemy is to divert attention from other areas, without the introduction of reserves, the situation can become extremely dire. The enemy understands this and the current situation increasingly forces the Defense Forces to intervene in this area.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1789435627248791621

 

“Dismounted infantry”, now that is interesting.

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Yeesh, I do not even know where to start on this one.  Autonomous unmanned systems aren’t 21st century pigeons we send over the trees to see in a few hours. The whole thing is still hooked into an integrated C4ISR network. I mean if you deny that then the guns or anything else are just as useless.  

As to “calling them up”, well couple ways to do this much faster than guns. First is to do battlespace management as opposed to in the loop human targeting.  This would see a glorified JTAC building kill boxes and then assigning resources to them.  Fully autonomous UAS carry their own ISR and targeting abilities and would be let loose within a kill box. Deconfliction and prioritization are going to be tricky but nothing algorithms cannot solve in time.  This is basically a mobile flying minefield.  One can do it with both air and ground systems.  Or you let them off the leash in hunter killer mode and do sweeps along an entire frontage.  See something, kill it.  That nightmare is right around the corner.

So basically one automates the entire OODA loop at a certain level.  There are variations of this - last mile etc, but the concept is essentially the same. Endurance is the other issue but here the individual platforms are more ammunition. Ukraine and Russia are putting hundreds of thousands of these systems per month into the air right now, that is how they are solving for persistence.  Future systems could be hybrid, waiting on the ground pulling in solar power, while spotters fly up to illuminate and receive any new peer to peer targeting data.

Everyone seems to be getting all wound up on the platforms and hardware, this is a mistake.  The revolution is the impact data and process is having.  Smart everything’s are hunting individual Russian soldiers down right now. Ukraine built an ad hoc JADC2 hooked into western C4ISR that is denying a bafflingly large frontage, ground and air, to a much more conventionally powerful opponent.  UAS are the new bullets, but it is the underlying C4ISR system that is going to shift warfare forever.  How long until we see unmanned guns?  Mortars?  ATGMs?  The combination of networking and cheap, light powerful forward data processing is the big “wow” here.  It is what makes what we are seeing with UAS possible.

Finally back to OODA loops.  So I think it is the other way.  The side clinging to human-in-the-loop down at too low levels is going to lose the OODA race.  Autonomous systems can detect and react faster than a human based system - it is why we invented missiles.  So while one side is happily holding onto the good old radio and gun crews, the other has already released loitering systems that can target and strike without the need for a human being.  Who do you think is going to win that race?

Yes, exactly. We will see this in Ukraine in twelve months or less from hacked together civilian components. And stuff that is designed from the ground up for the job is not going to be very far behind.

 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

A better tank is like a better sword in WW1.

Worse, when the people advocating for the "better sword" are confronted by all the impracticality, the supporter says "not to worry, we will figure out a bunch of things that don't exist yet and those things will allow the sword to be as useful as a machinegun".

Today I had to move a 2 ton pallet of soil with my tractor, it was too heavy.  So I grabbed a shovel, spent an hour shoveling it to where it needed to be to get the weight down to a level the tractor could handle.  As I got to that level I realized I really didn't need the tractor and if I did want to use it I'd have to reposition a truck and trailer, then maneuver the tractor into a tight spot, and finally... wind up shoveling most of it anyway because it needed to be spread out.  So I kept shoveling and was done within an hour.

I think if some of the tank supporters were in my shoes they would have gone inside and started browsing websites to buy a bigger tractor only to find out that when it arrived, $80k and weeks later, that it wasn't able to fit in the space anyway.  Meanwhile, I finished the job in an hour with a $40 shovel.

The tank is effectively dead.  At least against any opponent that has internet access to Amazon and some explosives.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Interview with Victoria Nuland on her retirement from the State Department.  She had some interesting things to say about Russia and how to deal with it.  Nothing we haven't talked about dozens of times before, but really nicely put.  Boils down to you can't trust Putin and Putin's view of peace is "what's mine is mine, what's yours is negotiable":

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/05/11/victoria-nuland-state-department-diplomat-interview-00157408

Steve

[ASL Veteran]

Everyone said the tank was dead after the ATGM was first brought onto the battlefield.  Both sides in Ukraine still seem to want tanks in their inventory so they must think they are valuable for something.  To me, the main thing is that if you want your offensive to move at a pace that's quicker than the speed a man can walk, then you will need to have something to transport your infantry in.  If your infantry is riding in something, then there will be some incentive to have something that's more powerful than an IFV that you can either use against IFVs or to support an infantry assault.

We all know the old saying about your military preparing to fight the last war only to find out that it doesn't apply anymore, but at the same time I'm not certain how much of what's going on in Ukraine would be applicable to a US force in a peer to peer conflict.  Iran and Iraq fought for years and that was basically trench warfare - when the US fought Iraq the first time it looked nothing like Iran Iraq even though many military analysts thought it would.  How effective would drones be if the battlefield is fluid with mechanized forces advancing rapidly with an Airforce that has air supremacy?  I have to assume that the best military minds are working through the drone problem - if we assume that some sort of a technological or tactical counter can be created, then it seems like the tank is right back in business if you don't want your armies to advance at a walking pace.

I would assume that the Russian and Ukrainian armies operated in a similar way - at least when this whole thing started.  Perhaps that's a contributing factor in how things are playing out?

[chrisl]

4 hours ago, poesel said:

If drone units get to be 'proper' military units, then a drone platoon is no more than two trucks: one with a 10" container with an openable roof which is filled with drones and their docking bays. This one has to drive into range.
And another truck with communication, command and drone operators. This one just needs to be in com range (by relay) to the drones. They don't need to move that much.
Tracked or wheeled, they can deploy as fast as any mechanized unit.

A few billion $ will make a proper military grade equipment out of the hodgepodge setup we have now. Reaction time will be on par with artillery as you can start flying as soon as you know roughly where the target is. Artillery can't be stationary anymore, too.

Careful with those unit abbreviations...

 

[dan/california]

8 minutes ago, ASL Veteran said:

How effective would drones be if the battlefield is fluid with mechanized forces advancing rapidly with an Airforce that has air supremacy?

The question is can air supremacy be achieved by anybody, ever again. All of the issues that tanks are having have direct correlates with the challenges facing manned aircraft. And the whole world has watched Ukraines air defense system essentially stop the Russian Air Force cold, and Israel's system knock down essentially the entirety of a big missile strike. I think a LOT of countries are going to draw the lesson that a many layered integrated air defense system is a LOT more useful than actual aircraft. And those integrated air defense systems are going impose denial, or at least REALLY heavy casualties on even first tier air forces.

We will certainly learn more when Ukraine finally gets F-16s into the fight. But I am not expecting them to change the game all that much. I would love to be wrong.

[dan/california]

5 hours ago, poesel said:

If drone units get to be 'proper' military units, then a drone platoon is no more than two trucks: one with a 10" container with an openable roof which is filled with drones and their docking bays. This one has to drive into range.
And another truck with communication, command and drone operators. This one just needs to be in com range (by relay) to the drones. They don't need to move that much.
Tracked or wheeled, they can deploy as fast as any mechanized unit.

A few billion $ will make a proper military grade equipment out of the hodgepodge setup we have now. Reaction time will be on par with artillery as you can start flying as soon as you know roughly where the target is. Artillery can't be stationary anymore, too.

And I think a slightly larger series of trucks will carry, or more accurately distribute, rockets that have the approximate range and throw weight of 155 L52 guns. So instead of a SPG gun that has to spend 3/4 of its time running for it life, the only thing left for counter battery to hit will be some disposable rocket tubes. The truck that delivered them will have left minutes or hours before the rockets are fired, to go get more rockets.

Now this concept might not replace guns completely, but I will bet a gross of donuts that it is going to be an important part of the mix going forward. 

 

[chrisl]

24 minutes ago, ASL Veteran said:

Everyone said the tank was dead after the ATGM was first brought onto the battlefield.  Both sides in Ukraine still seem to want tanks in their inventory so they must think they are valuable for something.  To me, the main thing is that if you want your offensive to move at a pace that's quicker than the speed a man can walk, then you will need to have something to transport your infantry in.  If your infantry is riding in something, then there will be some incentive to have something that's more powerful than an IFV that you can either use against IFVs or to support an infantry assault.

We all know the old saying about your military preparing to fight the last war only to find out that it doesn't apply anymore, but at the same time I'm not certain how much of what's going on in Ukraine would be applicable to a US force in a peer to peer conflict.  Iran and Iraq fought for years and that was basically trench warfare - when the US fought Iraq the first time it looked nothing like Iran Iraq even though many military analysts thought it would.  How effective would drones be if the battlefield is fluid with mechanized forces advancing rapidly with an Airforce that has air supremacy?  I have to assume that the best military minds are working through the drone problem - if we assume that some sort of a technological or tactical counter can be created, then it seems like the tank is right back in business if you don't want your armies to advance at a walking pace.

I would assume that the Russian and Ukrainian armies operated in a similar way - at least when this whole thing started.  Perhaps that's a contributing factor in how things are playing out?

It's not really the drones that are killing the tank, it's the ISR.  Drones are (sometimes) the immediate part that blows it up, but the root cause is the ISR.

There are also ATGM crews on quads and motorcycles, artillery with PGMS, artillery that can precision-ish place AT Mines, standoff drones that can paint tanks for laser guided artillery,"smart" uncrewed roadside ATGMs, and eventually @The_Capt's roombas with AT mines, and gawd knows what else.  Probably palletized missiles full of air launched smart-ish EFPs  that you can push out of a transport plane 50 miles back and paraglide across the FEBA to catch them while they maneuver into place.  And their supply trucks, too.  

But the key is that you can't move anything the size of a bicycle without commercial systems seeing it within an hour or so. And some states can see if you moved a big-gulp cup, though without quite the same revisit rate.  Tanks are big and hot.  Even small tanks are big and hot.  Electric tanks are big and cold until you move them, but hiding even them from someone with spectral imaging capability isn't easy.  And the logistics tail for tanks will also be big and long and hot - you can't move things without leaving a heat trail.  So even if you make the tanks like Wonder Woman's invisible plane, the supply chain will lead you right to them.  Or the supply chain will get hit so that the tanks can't move.

[FancyCat]

It would be great if Ukraine had the ammo to shoot everything it can see. One aspect underplayed was the ability of the American and to a lesser extent British and NATO logistics system to ferry equipment and armaments to Poland for inbound to Ukraine especially the rumored shipments from 3rd party countries. A scenario where Trump gets in office could see that logistics capacity be cut.

[hcrof]

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

 A better tank is like a better sword in WW1.

You accuse me of oversimplification then say this! I hope I don't need to explain that this is obviously not correct. 

So lets talk about ISR. I can't believe I am on this side of the debate for once but it does not allow you to identify everything within x km of your front line in y amount of time. I will break it down into several broad types:

- Ground based sensors carried by troops: very high detection rates within 2km of FLOT, but falls of rapidly after that

- Ground surveillance radars mounted on vehicles or aircraft: will detect all movement up to 150km from the platform but cannot identify what is moving. 

- Attritable drones flying over enemy forces: can be anywhere up to maybe 50km from FLOT. Will detect with quite high confidence up to 1km from the platform but falls off rapidly after that. Can be directed to "check something out" but can be lost.  

- Space based platforms: effectively infinite range but slow refresh times. Overall low chance of detection if you dont know what you are looking for, but you can look at everything at once so those low probabilities start to add up over time. 

As we see in Ukraine, sometimes a Ukrainian helicopter gets blown up on the ground like 50km from the front after being there for a few minutes, but yet food and ammo get to the trenches and casualties get out - using vehicles. 

So I don't thing we need to go so far as to say everything is dead if it goes near the front line so we should all resort to quadbikes - that is devolution and it would be irresponsible to open the next war like that (if that is actually true then there are plenty of civilian quadbikes around to allow you to adjust quickly).

Instead, vehicles need to: get stealthier, get in and out of the grey zone quickly, blend into civilian traffic on radar (i.e. dispersed) and be prepared to take casualties. They also need to stay mobile, even if damaged, since a static vehicle is a burning vehicle very quickly. 

So your force needs to make almost every vehicle based on a cheap common platform. Realistically we are looking at 8x8 vehicles and/or my electric skateboard concept from the other thread. Crew should be minimised and the number of hulls maximised, with modular systems so you can reconfigure damaged vehicles as needed. Tanks would remain a specialised arm held in reserve until needed. 

So we know what defanse looks like already from Ukraine, what does a the new offense look like? First a lot of random vehicle movements and radio transmissions, including from quadbikes with radios and radar reflectors to introduce ambiguity. Then you sanitise an area with drones and artillery and all your vehicles (mostly APC based, but with those quadbikes still cluttering up enemy sensors) coalesce into a swarm that looks like the Ukrainian Kharkiv offensive, protected by a bubble of defensive drones and mobile air defense. My novel tanks are introduced as part of the swarm to deal with key chokepoints such as villages/towns/bridges but platoons can be quite distributed since they have such long ranged weapons. Most of the destruction is caused by drones, with long range artillery and mobile mortars/105mm tanks able to concentrate fire quickly where required. As you start to outrun your own 155mm guns and supporting drone bubble, the drone carriers and 105mm tanks start to take over the heavy lifting. Eventually you run out of steam - your troops in APCs dig in and all the vehicles withdraw.

UGVs can be part of that mix but they have to be able to keep up with the fast moving swarm of the advance - in the near future I see them doing a "recon by boom" role, acting as the vanguard of the attack. But they can be directly controlled from another platform (see my Hunter/Killer concept from the other thread), not necessarily fully autonomous.  

 

[ZellZeka]

A residential building exploded in Belgorod. Pay attention to the timer in the video. This is the local time displayed on the CCTV camera. The explosion occurred at 11:21, accurate to the second. This happens when someone sets the clock mechanism to explode.

[poesel]

About the future state of Ukrainian refugees in Germany & Poland.

TL;DR: even though the Ukrainian state won't give out new passports to males of military age, they can legally stay.

Both articles in Ukrainian:

https://www.dw.com/uk/solc-pracevlastovanim-ukraincam-u-frn-nicogo-ne-zagrozue/a-69054852

https://www.dw.com/uk/mvs-polsa-prodovzit-timcasovij-zahist-dla-ukrainciv-bez-pasportiv/a-68928882

 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, hcrof said:

You accuse me of oversimplification then say this! I hope I don't need to explain that this is obviously not correct. 

So lets talk about ISR. I can't believe I am on this side of the debate for once but it does not allow you to identify everything within x km of your front line in y amount of time. I will break it down into several broad types:

- Ground based sensors carried by troops: very high detection rates within 2km of FLOT, but falls of rapidly after that

- Ground surveillance radars mounted on vehicles or aircraft: will detect all movement up to 150km from the platform but cannot identify what is moving. 

- Attritable drones flying over enemy forces: can be anywhere up to maybe 50km from FLOT. Will detect with quite high confidence up to 1km from the platform but falls off rapidly after that. Can be directed to "check something out" but can be lost.  

- Space based platforms: effectively infinite range but slow refresh times. Overall low chance of detection if you dont know what you are looking for, but you can look at everything at once so those low probabilities start to add up over time. 

I am afraid it may be so.  Ok, so ISR.  You are listing a series of systems here but are missing the punchline.  You are also missing a few key ones but the theme is still there.  ISR is an extension of the “Internet of things” and everything being a sensor.  So in this war we have seen cellphones, gas station security cameras, GoPros and of course UAS commercial cameras.  It has created a cloud of sensors that are layered and can see well back behind an opponents lines.

Next is military ISR, which you list some components, however you missed operational ISR which is long range stand off UAS or manned of varying types with very expensive ISR sensors.  As to space based, we are way past long refresh times.  Modern western forces have access to real time space based ISR data and its resolution is mind blowing, we have known this for some time now.

Ok, the punchline - it is all connected and can be processed in real time.  Having a bunch of ISR systems in isolation of stovepiped is going to leave lags and gaps.  Having an integrated network all plugged into together gives us what we are seeing in Ukraine - no gaps and near real time, all the time.  Further one cannot simply take out one set of sensors because the others cover off.  “Well food and ammo is still arriving” well yes it is but Ukrainian soldiers are also disembarking and walking in the last 5kms because pushing vehicle too close is very dangerous.  Oryx shows the number of logistics vehicles the RA has lost.

We essentially have an illuminated battlefield right now and it is not going anywhere.  This has pushed forces to spread out and be highly distributed.  Every time a side concentrates forces they are spotted and engaged - we have seen this on both sides repeatedly.  Basically a side needs to either erode or remove an opponents ISR, or someone run out of munitions for anything to work.  Currently tanks are staying back kms and providing indirect fire support or pulling forward for sniping (and often dying doing so).

1 hour ago, hcrof said:

Instead, vehicles need to: get stealthier, get in and out of the grey zone quickly, blend into civilian traffic on radar (i.e. dispersed) and be prepared to take casualties. They also need to stay mobile, even if damaged, since a static vehicle is a burning vehicle very quickly. 

Well first of all using civilian traffic as cover for military operations is unethical and illegal.  Vehicles “getting stealthier” is hand waving.  You are talking about taking a 30 ton mass of metal that runs on small explosions - pushing exhaust out, with a high EM and acoustic signature on top of that. And we are talking ten years from now.  The new tank platoon would be challenged to survive now, let alone in ten more years of ISR development.  Your new tank platoon does not solve for the ISR problem.  It is focused on solving for the drone problem - which frankly I am not seeing either.  Adding “more armour where FPVs hit” is counterintuitive because FPVs can hit anywhere.  That would be why Russian are putting barns over their tanks. Regardless unless your new tank platoon is invisible it is still going to suffer the same issues the current tanks have - easily detectable once they are put into any concentration. 

2 hours ago, hcrof said:

So we know what defanse looks like already from Ukraine, what does a the new offense look like? First a lot of random vehicle movements and radio transmissions, including from quadbikes with radios and radar reflectors to introduce ambiguity. Then you sanitise an area with drones and artillery and all your vehicles (mostly APC based, but with those quadbikes still cluttering up enemy sensors) coalesce into a swarm that looks like the Ukrainian Kharkiv offensive, protected by a bubble of defensive drones and mobile air defense. My novel tanks are introduced as part of the swarm to deal with key chokepoints such as villages/towns/bridges but platoons can be quite distributed since they have such long ranged weapons. Most of the destruction is caused by drones, with long range artillery and mobile mortars/105mm tanks able to concentrate fire quickly where required. As you start to outrun your own 155mm guns and supporting drone bubble, the drone carriers and 105mm tanks start to take over the heavy lifting. Eventually you run out of steam - your troops in APCs dig in and all the vehicles withdraw.

I have heard this before and it still does not make sense to me.  If you are able to “sanitize” an area large enough and create a bubble able to stop enemy drone swarms, then what so we need tanks or heavy vehicles for?  Simply keep “sanitizing” and pushing this bubble.  Why introduce heavier forces?  Ah yes, choke point and hard points.  But you already have the resolution to find, fix and destroy down to individual ATGM teams and small bird sized UAS…what possible choke point and hard point can still remain with that level of superiority?

Now as you outrun your bubble or it begins to fail you will run directly into an opponents new bubble.  Your tanks will be detected and engaged over the horizon, and denied until you can create another bubble superiority.  So what was the point of the tanks?

Your new tanks are really just the repackaged old ones.  And do not to appear to really address the environmental shifts that are impacting them. They are still highly visible to this new environment.  They are heavy and hot, even with a new fancy paint job and track configuration. They still need a long heavy logistics tail.  And their range for direct fires is too short.  The only contribution I can see is perhaps as support platforms to keep pushing that bubble but there may be other cheaper ways to deliver this.  I simply do not see you new tank platoon doing any better on an RA minefield problem than what we already have, unless we build an entirely new offensive system able to do a lot of what you are describing, but at that point we really do not need a tank anymore.

Now this will be an evolution.  We will do exactly what you are proposing, try and hold onto the old equipment, we always do. Worse we will desperately try and make the old system work.  But the writing is on the wall. The game has changed again (you know, it was going to happen eventually, warfare always shifts.  Why did we think that a platform built and designed a century ago would somehow survive the last century of technology development?). So what the new game has yet to fully emerge, but my money is not on large concentrated heavy - now with backwards facing crew.  It is on mass precision through highly distributed clouds/bubbles.  Now when those collide between peer forces we are going to see what modern manoeuvre looks like.  This means a new front edge combined arms team.  And the race is already on to design and build it.

[The_Capt]

7 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

Everyone said the tank was dead after the ATGM was first brought onto the battlefield.  Both sides in Ukraine still seem to want tanks in their inventory so they must think they are valuable for something.  To me, the main thing is that if you want your offensive to move at a pace that's quicker than the speed a man can walk, then you will need to have something to transport your infantry in.  If your infantry is riding in something, then there will be some incentive to have something that's more powerful than an IFV that you can either use against IFVs or to support an infantry assault.

We all know the old saying about your military preparing to fight the last war only to find out that it doesn't apply anymore, but at the same time I'm not certain how much of what's going on in Ukraine would be applicable to a US force in a peer to peer conflict.  Iran and Iraq fought for years and that was basically trench warfare - when the US fought Iraq the first time it looked nothing like Iran Iraq even though many military analysts thought it would.  How effective would drones be if the battlefield is fluid with mechanized forces advancing rapidly with an Airforce that has air supremacy?  I have to assume that the best military minds are working through the drone problem - if we assume that some sort of a technological or tactical counter can be created, then it seems like the tank is right back in business if you don't want your armies to advance at a walking pace.

I would assume that the Russian and Ukrainian armies operated in a similar way - at least when this whole thing started.  Perhaps that's a contributing factor in how things are playing out?

You know it is funny, the military conservative crowd really has basically the same three arguments:

- Ukraine War is an anomaly.  A “real” war with the US will be “different”.

- Someone will figure out this drone/ISR thing and we will be back to where we started.

- We will need to keep doing it the old way because there is no new better way.

Ground forces do not advance as fast as you can move people.  They move as fast as one can deliver effect and see.  The core of ground warfare is pulling away from the human being.  At its core is a complex system of ISR and automation.  We already see this in air and maritime domains - when was the last time two warships had to board each other and cross swords on the quarter deck?  The days of the dogfight are now competitive sensing and launching long range missiles 100+ kms away from each other.  Why the land domain thinks it is any different is beyond me but “unless my infantry can still press the bayonet it is not land warfare.”  

Land warfare is evolving. It is what warfare does. The worst answer to it is “let’s spend a ridiculous amount of money preserving the old system”. Spend a ridiculous amount of money on a new system that can keep up. The reality is that direct fires are becoming secondary and the exception, not the rule.  Indirect and over the horizon precision fires are becoming the primary mechanism through which ground warfare is fought. Hell, the signs were there for years as we know artillery and indirect fires are the primary effect component in ground warfare for decades.

This entire tank-thing is simply pressure being put on direct fires by systems that can engage, when plugged into a modern C4ISR architecture, at ranges with which direct fire systems cannot compete.  And here is the thing, I think they may have been right - those that said the tank is dead with the advent of the ATGM. It just took us 40+ years to realize it.