How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[photon]

1 hour ago, hcrof said:

The vehicle swarm needs to protect itself from incoming artillery and drones. The key points if the "survivorability onion" are: speed to avoid being hit by indirect fires, extensive drone surveillance to destroy direct fires before they are a threat, a combination of simple radar with autocannons and "goalkeeper" drones for self defence (see the other thread for the maths) and mechanical redundancy to keep vehicles moving even after taking damage. 

Behold: the carrier battlegroup. I think this makes a lot of sense, and that the Big Blue Blanket that we saw in '44 and '45 is a non-crazy model for what a "mechanized" task force could look like in 5-10 years. To survive it needs:

1. Defensive ISR bubble that is bigger than the enemy's effective ISR/Strike range, which entails...

2. Ability to suppress the crap out of enemy ISR and fires in the same time zone, which entails...

2. Ability to concentrate effects from widely dispersed elements, which entails...

3. Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy, and...

4. Underway logistics, to avoid operational chokepoints and maintain tempo, which entails...

5. Lots of cheap, semi-disposable platforms.

We built that out with the United States Navy 2.0, and could totally do it again. The hard thing is that at sea, there were finitely many locations you had to suppress to preserve your defensive ISR bubble. Not so on land.

[Harmon Rabb]

Quote

NATO allies should lift restrictions that prohibit Ukraine's use of Western-supplied weapons against military targets inside Russia, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly said in a declaration adopted on May 27.

Some of the countries that supply the most military aid to Ukraine, namely the U.S. and Germany, are against Ukraine using their weapons to strike Russian territory due to fears this would lead to an escalation of the war.

Other partners, such as the U.K., have said that Ukraine has the right to use Western-supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russian territory.

NATO member states should "support Ukraine in its international right to defend itself by lifting some restrictions on the use of weapons provided by NATO allies to strike legitimate targets in Russia," the declaration said.

"Ukraine must be provided with all that it needs, as quickly as possible and for as long as it takes for it to win."

The declaration was approved by a majority of the 281 lawmakers in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and received support from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who said that "the right to self-defense includes hitting legitimate targets outside Ukraine."

"Ukraine can only defend itself if it can attack Russia’s supply lines and Russian bases of operation," the NATO Parliamentary Assembly President Michal Szczerba said.

Ukraine has repeatedly said that the restrictions meant Ukraine was unable to attack Russian forces as they were building up before crossing the border into Kharkiv Oblast in the renewed Russian offensive that began on May 10.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis criticized the restrictions on May 20, arguing that the decision was "dominated by fear of Russia" and that Ukraine "must be allowed to use the equipment provided to them so that they can achieve strategic objectives."

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on May 26 that Germany gave clear rules to Ukraine prohibiting the use of German weapons on Russian soil and that he sees no reason to change this.

 

 

Authors: Elsa Court, The Kyiv Independent news desk

Source: NATO Parliamentary Assembly supports Ukraine's right to hit targets inside Russia using Western arms (KyivIndependent)

[hcrof]

3 minutes ago, photon said:

Behold: the carrier battlegroup. I think this makes a lot of sense, and that the Big Blue Blanket that we saw in '44 and '45 is a non-crazy model for what a "mechanized" task force could look like in 5-10 years. To survive it needs:

1. Defensive ISR bubble that is bigger than the enemy's effective ISR/Strike range, which entails...

2. Ability to suppress the crap out of enemy ISR and fires in the same time zone, which entails...

2. Ability to concentrate effects from widely dispersed elements, which entails...

3. Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy, and...

4. Underway logistics, to avoid operational chokepoints and maintain tempo, which entails...

5. Lots of cheap, semi-disposable platforms.

We built that out with the United States Navy 2.0, and could totally do it again. The hard thing is that at sea, there were finitely many locations you had to suppress to preserve your defensive ISR bubble. Not so on land.

Ha you are right! I genuinely was not thinking about carrier operations but the concept is actually super similar.

[JonS]

5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The change is that everybody pulled their trainers out when the 2022 invasion happened in order to avoid the potential for sustaining NATO casualties.  Putting forces back in reintroduces that possibility and that is very significant.

I've wondered several times how viable I would be fr the UN or the EU (/not/ NATO) to introduce a separation force (similar to the ones around Israel) along the uncontested pre-2014 borders, like the one along Belarus and - until a few weeks ago - round the corner and down past Kharkiv, and then down the river.

Putin would likely lose his rag, since he likely views, officially at least, the whole country as 'contested' regardless of whether there's currently fighting there or not.

From the non-Russian perspective, though, it would make it clear that smaller and smaller bits of Ukraine are still up for discussion. It would also extend the West's air and AD umbrella over most of Ukraine, preventing most missile activity.

Lot's of practical issues though - the seam between Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian forces would be /very/ fragile and delicate. Some of the non-Ukrainian forces /would/ die, even if 'only' from UXO. Putin would have a total **** about it, and Xi probably wouldn't be best pleased either. It would allow Ukraine to focus all it's forces on a smaller area, but so too would Russia. Etc.

Otoh, the areas inside the cordon sanitare could safely start to rebuild, and it'd be a super duper clear message from the West that, no; we are not going to let you 'renegotiate' this bit that you already tried and lost.

Edit: UN would be a non-starter due to Russia's (and probably China's) veto.

Edited May 27 by JonS

[Haiduk]

 

Edited May 27 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

 

Next S-400 gone? There is also information that a strike was at the building of former High military aviation Navigator school

  

 

[billbindc]

6 hours ago, ZellZeka said:

No, I’m just a Ukrainian very tired of this senseless war, just like this elderly resident of Volchansk, who tells the Ukrainian volunteers evacuating him that he does not consider the Russians his enemies. Unlike the Ukrainian government, which abandoned him. As in Bucha, the Ukrainian authorities made no attempt to evacuate civilians from the front-line city, forcing ordinary Ukrainians to suffer from the fighting.

 

“I’m not a Russian propagandist…but as in Bucha the Ukrainian government…”

Sure, Jan…

(or perhaps Ivan)

 

[billbindc]

4 hours ago, ZellZeka said:

No, there will be no tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths. There will be several dozen or hundreds of show executions, after which the rest will shut up. Look what happened in Kherson during the occupation. Thousands of residents attended rallies and protested against the occupation. But the Russians quickly identified the most active protesters, arrested them, after which all these protests quickly faded away. The Russians have very effective tactics for dealing with protesters that have been worked out over the years.

The best thing about letting this sovok stick around for a bit is that he illustrates exactly why Ukraine must fight and will win. 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, hcrof said:

I like the idea of projecting a bubble via air assault, I will have to think about how that works. I am thinking about using heavy lift drones as part of an air assault package but ran into the bubble problem...

Urban is its own thing - my 105mm tank would do well there as a high elevation HE chucker, especially if a swarm of black hornets could be used to flush the enemy out of hidden places first. 

On C4ISR I will leave that to the experts - I am far enough out of my lane as it is...

In terms of “bringing up mass to dig in” it is a mix of protecting the flanks/rear from infiltrating/stay behind enemy infantry, stubborn trench/bunker clearance and generally just having a plan for when the offensive culminates. I don't have an very good feel for the details of a large manoeuvre though so I would welcome feedback on what they should/shouldn't be doing. 

To my thinking the concept of "holding ground" may become antiquated on this sort of battlefield.  Rather than "dig in" I think we might see "Deny".  So rapidly deployable smart mines and screening forces, perhaps an Iron bubble not designed to move but to simply make offence costs too high.

[Butschi]

9 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Spent some more time surfing around YouTube - quite remarkable stuff in surveillance data collection.  It is made for YouTube consumption though:

Some of this is just downright creepy

 

 

I guess one takeaway here should be that nowadays everyone and their dog does AI. It's not an arcane art anymore. You can just buy the stuff from various companies.

For the drone discussion, I think the middle one is most worth taking a look at: Identifying and tracking different types of objects. Looks great and very stable. Some caveats: As far as I understand the description, the algorithm runs offline, i.e. on pre-recorded sequences. In that case you have a more or less infinite computing budget and no latency restrictions. And still, if you take a close look at the cars taking the left turn on the left side, the tracking stops immediately once the car is occluded by a few leaves. The range is also not so great, tracking stops roughly under the bridge... at maybe 100m?

So, no chance to identify a tank a kilometer away partly hidden by bushes or trees. But, again, this video is old (2017) and we probably can do better today.

[MSBoxer]

1 hour ago, photon said:

Behold: the carrier battlegroup. I think this makes a lot of sense, and that the Big Blue Blanket that we saw in '44 and '45 is a non-crazy model for what a "mechanized" task force could look like in 5-10 years. To survive it needs:

Similar to what I said back in August of '22

"So are we talking about an armored formation similar to a carrier task force with..."

[hcrof]

16 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

To my thinking the concept of "holding ground" may become antiquated on this sort of battlefield.  Rather than "dig in" I think we might see "Deny".  So rapidly deployable smart mines and screening forces, perhaps an Iron bubble not designed to move but to simply make offence costs too high.

Maybe "dig in" is a bit strong, but I think infantry with a radio and some ATGMs have some life in them yet, especially if they are covering some sort of obstacle. But they desperately need protection from fpv drones hunting them down once they are discovered...

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I really like where this is going.  I think the future is light, fast and dispersed as far as human crewed platforms are concerned.  I think we may see deeper human-machine pairing with a future platoon as 70-80% unmanned systems.  I am still not entirely sold on direct fires but the counter-point is that these organizations may come into close contact, so some DF will be a requirement.

To this we need to add a new form of Air Assault. Instead of lobbing light human units, air assault needs to become an air projectable version of what you have here.  Air Assault allows for rapid projection of bubbles in depth.  

I think that if heavy survives it is going to become a niche capability for specific problems - like urban warfare.  Here we will likely see more demolition SPG as opposed to tanks.  Keeping in mind one is going to have to isolate and then encapsulate an enemy hard point before you can bring heavy to bear.

The most important piece of this entire thing is C4ISR.  What we will also need is a c-C4ISR concept.  This may be a combination of cyber, EW and precision strike.  It will be critical to sustain C4ISR superiority.

One thing I am still not sure of is that if one’s offensive bubble manages to break an opponents, what is the use of “bringing up mass to dig in”. It might just be better to keep pushing the bubble or echeloning bubbles in a next-gen form of manoeuvre warfare.

Regardless, this is the genesis of a pretty interesting wargame.

The tankettes need to be truly small, and expendable. The minimum set of tracks that can carry a 40mm AGL, and a thirty caliber machine gun. You might even want to go light enough that they carry either a grenade launcher or a machine gun., not both. With some semblance of electronic fire control the 40mm would even provide a modest indirect fire capability. That is enough to take out most unarmored targets and force anything bigger to shoot back. Anything bigger that does shoot back, and as many other targets as possible should be referred to the fires complex. The task of the tankettes is recon by some combination of fire, and death. They need to roll off of production lines that require almost zero human labor in the direct production processes. The tankettes themselves should be thought of as munitions, not a piece of capital equipment.

[The_Capt]

28 minutes ago, Butschi said:

I guess one takeaway here should be that nowadays everyone and their dog does AI. It's not an arcane art anymore. You can just buy the stuff from various companies.

For the drone discussion, I think the middle one is most worth taking a look at: Identifying and tracking different types of objects. Looks great and very stable. Some caveats: As far as I understand the description, the algorithm runs offline, i.e. on pre-recorded sequences. In that case you have a more or less infinite computing budget and no latency restrictions. And still, if you take a close look at the cars taking the left turn on the left side, the tracking stops immediately once the car is occluded by a few leaves. The range is also not so great, tracking stops roughly under the bridge... at maybe 100m?

So, no chance to identify a tank a kilometer away partly hidden by bushes or trees. But, again, this video is old (2017) and we probably can do better today.

My honest guess is that drones will become integrated systems with human and machine pairing.  So a swarm could consists of standoff C2/ISR drones with human operators   These would be higher end costs and well protected, and come with all the fancy sensor integration.  Then with that a flight of autonomous that would be given a target and released to engaged by the C2 node and essentially treated like ammunition.  In some circumstances the attack drones could be FPVs for more precise work.  This would give a set of “last mile” options that could sidestep EW and leave humans just enough in the loop.  

Unless we are talking about the Chinese who are likely working on hunter killers that can sanitize a kill box with zero human interaction and frankly do not care about risk to collateral.  It is only a matter of time, and I am thinking 5-10, not mid century (by then the horrors of nano should be upon us, but I will thankfully be in the ground).

[hcrof]

9 minutes ago, dan/california said:

The tankettes need to be truly small, and expendable. The minimum set of tracks that can carry a 40mm AGL, and a thirty caliber machine gun. You might even want to go light enough that they carry either a grenade launcher or a machine gun., not both. With some semblance of electronic fire control the 40mm would even provide a modest indirect fire capability. That is enough to take out most unarmored targets and force anything bigger to shoot back. Anything bigger that does shoot back, and as many other targets as possible should be referred to the fires complex. The task of the tankettes is recon by some combination of fire, and death. They need to roll off of production lines that require almost zero human labor in the direct production processes. The tankettes themselves should be thought of as munitions, not a piece of capital equipment.

I think very small ugvs will have a place but as more static/defensive assets like a mobile turret or smart mine. But if they are very small they can't handle rough terrain or basic obstacles like a fence, and are too slow to keep up with larger vehicles. 

My ideal tankette is car sized and use a lot of commercial automotive components, but also a reasonable sensor and firepower package so would cost a few hundred thousand dollars. Not cheap, but definitely attritable. But the cargo carrier would be even cheaper (like $100k max) and could potentially deliver half a dozen of your small ugvs to a critical point as a kind of infantry weapons team.

[Fenris]

2 hours ago, Haiduk said:

 

Very interesting, haven't seen much vision like this.  Looks almost like high velocity direct fire, so tank kills?  Any more details?

[danfrodo]

5 hours ago, Viko said:

Let me guess, you only welcome people here who say things you like?

Viko, I think you are mistaking things.  This person was blaming murder victims for their own murder.  That's not an 'opinion' it's just ridiculous propaganda.  Maybe he thinks life would be just great under Putin -- he can choose that any time he wants.  He can go to Poland then Belarus then RU or the occupied territories.  Of course, he would immediately be thrown into the front line of Putin's war of aggression and he'd probably be dead pretty quickly.  Which he would deserve.

Anyone who showed up on this site and said "at some point UKR will probably be facing a stalemate where further war is just not worth it".  That would be an actual opinion a person could back up. Saying that UKR should have or should now capitulate because it's Ukraine's fault for all the ongoing murders is sick and twisted and only shills and RU nationalists could possibly believe such nonsense.  It's basically like saying the jews were responsible for the holocaust because they didn't leave europe in time.  

I think that there's a really good chance UKR never gets its land back and will someday have to negotiate a treaty giving Putin lots of land.  And guess what, I won't be banned for that.  Or mocked or abused.  It's really hard to see how UKR gets its territory back without some level of RU collapse or military mutiny.   But I remain hopeful while also seeing just how improbable a complete UKR victory looks right now.  

 

[Fenris]

Quote

Another over-the-horizon radar ‘Voronezh-M’ in Orsk, Orenburg region was attacked by drones. Sources say that Ukrainian drones covered more than 1.800km, setting a new record. The consequences of the damage are still being clarified.

 

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Viko said:

If you've already turned on tyrant mode, then don't stop. To be honest, over time this forum became less and less informative for me. This is just some kind of sandbox for Steve and his minions, so I won't lose much from this ban

The only reason this thread has value is because it is managed to ensure we have conversations that matter.  I've been moderating this Forum for 27 years and there's always someone that has a problem with my decisions.  Which is why I am always transparent as to why someone gets banned.  I stated the reasons are:

1.  Suspected of previously being banned

2. Pushing a narrow agenda without showing any interest in engaging in discussion/debate.  Otherwise known as "Trolling".

If you were objective you'd notice that I showed sympathy with ZellZeka's perspective and defended his opinions.  As I did when he was posting here as Zeleban.  I bent over backwards to keep him here, but he chose to ignore the rules and so we are where we are.  Which I still find a real pity because before Zeleban started buying into Russian promoted defeatism he was a valuable member of this thread.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I am assuming you guys did some IP sleuthing…careful with them VPNs though.  Zeleban makes sense, the guy was banned in Jan and this new guys account pops up right around the same time.  If it was Zeleban his narrative has deepened.  I was willing to buy into fatigue but claiming Bucha wasn’t criminal or somehow the Ukrainian government’s fault is crossing a line.

To be fair to Zeleban, there was a lot of blame heaped on the shoulders of the government for failing to do something different with military and civilian preparations for the war.  Some of it is definitely "Monday morning quarterbacking" that happens after any action of any sort (sports, politics, gambling, whatever), so not unexpected.  Some of the criticism, however, has legitimate roots to explore.  Proactively evacuating a few million civilians based on a war few believed was coming, however, is not one of them. 

Anybody in the US who has seen how populations in hurricane prone coastal areas handle a "mandatory evacuation" know what I am talking about.  I've seen plenty of examples of people who ignored the government and then turned right around and blamed the government for not coming to rescue them when they are trapped sitting on their rooftop.

I wish people would think critically before being a critic.

Steve

[Fenris]

Thread with info re retro fitting US glide bombs on UKR Fulcrim/Flanker airframes.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1794353722895778097

Hopefully the UKR AF will be able to start lobbing these in large numbers soon.  As it says, these are a plentiful and relatively cheap weapon.

First tweet about it a few days ago

 

 

Edited May 27 by Fenris

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Haiduk said:

 

I really, really, really wish people would just post footage without editing to make it look more exciting.  About 1/2 the hits shown in this video are the same ones taken from different angles.  Yet it is still interesting.  The hits seem to be directional, all coming from the "right" side of the screen, with something carrying through the destroyed vehicle.  Direct fire from a tank?

Steve

[danfrodo]

1 minute ago, Fenris said:

 

With a big portion of the RU AWACs being damaged/downed a few months ago, I wonder if these have taken on more significance as a substitute?  

[sburke]

5 hours ago, Viko said:

This is just some kind of sandbox for Steve and his minions, so I won't lose much from this ban

I think Steve has more hair, but.... who doesn't love minions?!

 

[The_Capt]

9 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

To be fair to Zeleban, there was a lot of blame heaped on the shoulders of the government for failing to do something different with military and civilian preparations for the war.  Some of it is definitely "Monday morning quarterbacking" that happens with any that happens, so not unexpected.  Some of it, however, has legitimate roots to explore.  Proactively evacuating a few million civilians based on a war few believed was coming, however, is not one of them. 

Anybody in the US who has seen how populations in hurricane prone coastal areas handle a "mandatory evacuation" know what I am talking about.  I've seen plenty of examples of people who ignored the government and then turned right around and blamed the government for not coming to rescue them when they are trapped sitting on their rooftop.

I wish people would think critically before being a critic.

Steve

I also think that before Bucha many believed the Russians would act with some semblance of legal restraint.  The idea that they would line people up in the street and execute them, or that the level of war crimes would reach these heights was simply not believable.  It definitely is now, and we know from captured plans and documents that the Russian actually planned systematic torture and executions as a form of stabilization and control - likely thinking to get out ahead of an insurgency.

I also think most thought the most likely COA was a Russian land grab in the south as an extension of where things got left off in 2014.  A full country invasion was still an outside option.

I think it is fine to come here and criticize Ukraine when merited (I just did on the strikes on nuclear radars).  But then there is being completely upside down on the issues.  Russian occupation horrors are still to fully come to light.  We already know about children being forcibly deported and men pressed into service.  God knows what hellish stories are still out there.  For Ukraine this war is existential in just about every sense of the word.  Putin is a spiteful little dictator that was pre-planning brutality before this war.  How do people think he will react after getting pants by Ukraine and made to look the fool?  And how do people Russia is going to behave after losing 100k troops?  Ukraine cannot lose this war because what will come next will likely be medieval for them.