How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[sburke]

36 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I so don't care...just get them out of my f#cking basement.

Get off my feckin lawn, you and your whiny jobless, tik tok'n kid that thinks being an "influencer" is a real gig.  

[Battlefront.com]

OK, let's not reinforce every stereotype of wargamers being old and intolerant.  We all know we are, so why advertise it?  Not that it will scare anybody away.  The new generation doesn't know how to use a forum anyway, mostly because they don't know what they are. 

Steve

[The_Capt]

10 minutes ago, fireship4 said:

This thread!  I don't know how much can be said about this and that generation, the economics and culture was different, yes; who's had it easier?  Boomers, I've heard.  The cycle of dutiful sons and daughters to angry parents to resentful kids goes on.  The last few haven't had it easy in any case, though that might be a parochial view.  Those moving into the middle class in various countries might be doing alright. 

On a slight tangent, looking at the US age distribution, it's pretty flat compared to the others.

Ah, ok I see where you are going.  I think there are cycles and similarities but every generation is the same, as much as it is unique.  First lets frame this by situating that we are really talking about western world generations here as other cultures really have their own things going on.

Let's take GenX for example.  Every generation normally goes through its "rebelling against the establishment" of the generations before it, but there are plenty of counter-examples - WW1, WW2 and GenX - Cold War.  Those that survived these wars did rebel but there really wasn't much O2 left to rebel against. Major conflict generations have a different perspective than those that have largely existed in peace.  Doesn't mean we are always right, it just means we had a very different experience in many ways. GenX lost the "establishment" it was suppose to rebel against in 1989-91 and then got stuck with trying to build a new one for 30 years - more in common with WW1 and WW2 gens but without the massive war first.

We had successes and failures...many failures. The Millennials and whatever the hell they are calling the new ones never grew up in a mass existential conflict environment  - the closest they ever get is watching Oppenheimer.  They talk a good game on climate change and economic woes but they grew up with "bad things happening over there to other people." 

So they have an establishment to rebel against and eventually inherit...or do they?  I think the pandemic and now whatever this is turning to is going to rob millennials of their legacy. They are going to get stuck building whatever comes after what has really been 30 years of peace - I recognize the righteous zeal. But they are heading into a world very different than what they grew up in, much in the way we did but in reverse. We came out of existential conflict and into status quo building and had to try and learn a new calculus as the old ones did not work anymore.  In the same way the generations behind us are heading into existential conflict as status quos fall apart.

So "my thesis," if there really is one, is to not hold onto your "personal Jesus's" too hard because everything that made them Jesus in the first place is shifting under our feet.  And you can take that from a generation that has already been through this once. 

For example, social justice and liberal world order are damn fine things and I support them, but they are not going to drive Russia out of Ukraine nor put them back into a box until Putin dies - this is where we are now.  Finally back to my original position - drop the high handed zeal (we literally wrote the manual on it) and start looking at the world through some pretty pragmatic eyes.

[Carolus]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

You are free to hold onto your position all you like, but do not come in here and "missionary" someone who has been playing these games a lot longer and a lot closer to the heat that you ever will. 

I thank you for the offer of assuming a missionary position, but I prefer ginger midgets. The really beardy ones.

Other than that, I shall always continue to tell someone when they have an illogical position, no matter the person.

Quote

We have tolerated breaches of "non-aggression and potential genocide" before (see Rawanda, Yugoslavia, Syria and Sudan), so before one climbs on the soapbox, check your history books. 

Before anyone even begins to look at primary sources, students are usually sent to logic 101, where they hear that neither an appeal to authority nor an appeal to tradition holds much argumentative water.

Therefore, I will continue to respect the expertise in the areas you obviously have vast and specialised expertise in, but will speak up whenever someone dismissingly speaks in favor of mass death and suffering because they didn't like what someone belonging to the victim group said on an internet forum. I prefer to stick to logically sound and moral positions, and I think many people do regardless of occupation, age or background!

Edited May 29 by Carolus

[Battlefront.com]

Right idea, but I think most here would agree it's the wrong answer:

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4691297-roger-wicker-calls-for-generational-defense-investment/

I haven't read his proposal in detail, but spending massive amounts of money on large numbers ships and aircraft isn't going to make the US and the world safer.  Spending less on the big sexy things and tons more on unmanned stuff is the way to go. 

Imagine what the US would have for unmanned systems if it had the budget allocated to a single ship.

Steve

[dan/california]

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Oooo, I think we could be great friends.  I will give you 1 - although there was that Great Wall thingy.  2. Was a matter of choice and there may be thesis there on how mass and armor were interlinked.  3. Is a really good point but I think its operationalization was outside the timeframe of the Middle Ages, in fact it likely was a driver for early Modern European dominance along with maritime power.

The interesting thing about heavily armored knights is that they went through exactly the same cycle we are watching heavy mechanized forces go through now. They kept getting heavier, more expensive, fewer, and less usable in many types of terrain. Pikes, better bows, halberds, and better tactics, used by better trained infantry, had made them far less important even before gunpowder changed everything. 

[holoween]

2 hours ago, Carolus said:

That can happen over occupied territory, though, right?

And what was protested against was specifically sniping Russian aircraft across the national border, not if an Su-35 or Su-24 is downed over Donetzk oblast.

If you want to exclude potential failed missiles being recovered by the Russians, that would limit AD use to not even cover the southern and eastern frontline, since you want to make sure it falls into Ukrainian controlled territory.

You also dont see them shooting down a whole lot behind the actual frontline so i can imagine this being the driving factor. Patriot is the only real ground air defense for the us and germany so having it invalidated by chance capture is problematic.

Id still prefer if the restriction wasnt there but there is at least some reasonable argument why it exists.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

There is always one in the crowd.

Two words - "Star Fort"

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

It was the armor thing that caught my attention.  Looking at the numbers, military mass at industrial was really invented in Asia. So they may have kept armor simpler for two reasons - mobility and production.  This is really interesting and directly linked back to this war - the nature of military mass. 

It actually makes for an interesting timeline. In europe they went for an interesting high low mix. Noblemen with the best armour and weapons they could buy and commoners with relatively low level gear though they often dont even get mentioned in chronicles. Once administration and weapons technology got to a point that large armies could be equipped to deal with the high quality stuff europe ran over practically everyone as they had both. Though usually still very much weighted to the quality side globally.

[Harmon Rabb]

Poland joins the club.

 

 

Faces of some of the Ukrainian Air Force pilots which will be flying Ukraine's F-16s.

[Letter from Prague]

Everyone knows GenX don't exist, there's only Boomers, Millennials and Zoomers. Stop this misinformation!!!!!!

...

I think Swedish "AWACS" going to Ukraine is pretty interesting.

If whoever provides Ukraine with ISR now pulled the support, they would be pretty screwed. Once this arrives, they have some safety margin for it. Makes me think Sweden is thinking forward in case there's changes in who the Commander in Chief in US is or something.

[The_Capt]

21 minutes ago, Carolus said:

Therefore, I will continue to respect the expertise in the areas you obviously have vast and specialised expertise in, but will speak up whenever someone dismissingly speaks in favor of mass death and suffering because they didn't like what someone belonging to the victim group said on an internet forum. I prefer to stick to logically sound and moral positions, and I think many people do regardless of occupation, age or background!

(And you start off with a diminutive sex joke..)

Ok, we are done here.  I have never promoted death and suffering nor genocide, the fact that you would leap to this pretty much pegs where you are coming from. I will continue to question behaviors and comments from a partner nation in a proxy war especially when they directly attack us or veer from our own interests.  If you want to wrap yourself in some priestly cloth that disallows all useful discourse in this direction, go throw in an application to be forum moderator.  Until then I will enjoy the silence of you being on my very short ignore list.  

[Battlefront.com]

Easy now folks, we are all singing from the same sheet music.  Let's not be over critical of each other's voices.

I will say that I find it a little sad that we have to keep having this discussion about extreme positions.  It is as wrong to say that the West should be doing everything right now and with no second thoughts as it is to suggest the West needs to stop doing anything because Putin said he'd crack out the nukes.  Neither position is logically defensible.

What that leaves us with is a huge swath of inbetween to discuss.  Just because someone is a little more or less in favor of any one particular thing for any particular reason is not reason to have ruffled feathers.

I'd bet that if we were to score us on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being do nothing because of fear of Putin and 10 being doing everything to defeat Putin, as a whole this Forum's participants would probably wind up at a 7 or 8.  We are way, way out of step with the rest of the societies around us, more so in some corners of the globe than others.  Arguing points that 8 or 9 isn't good enough is just pointless and counter productive.

Steve

[FancyCat]

So what states are left not supporting Western weapons being used on Russian soil? I think at this point its only Italy and the U.S against, and a whole lot of NATO states for it. While Germany is being cagey, still important shifts that can assist in Ukraine firing stuff into Russian lands. 

Quote

Important shift by Olaf Scholz: A person "familiar" with the German gov's position confirms to POLITICO's Berlin Playbook that the Chancellor did indeed mean with yesterday's remark that Ukraine could strike back with Western weapons on Russian soil.

2/ Scholz's spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit now on the record: Ukraine's "defensive action is not limited to one's own territory, but also includes the territory of the aggressor." "I had the impression that the Chancellor was not surprised by what Macron said."

3/ Journalists grilled Hebestreit whether and which German weapons could be used, but the Scholz spokesperson insisted: ""I can't tell you that because the agreement is confidential." He highlighted that weapons delivered by German have a lower range than arms by other countries

4/ It got a bit confusing: Confronted with a Scholz statement from May 2023 that German weapons would "only be used on Ukrainian territory," his spox said this was "a statement of facts" at that moment. He wouldn't say whether this had changed since (he claimed he didn't know).

5/ So what do the deliberately vague remarks by Scholz and his spox mean? The chancellor takes a page from Macron's "strategic ambiguity" playbook & leaves Putin guessing: German arms haven't been used against Russia so far, but this may be the case in the future. No more limits

 

[danfrodo]

So changing the subject a bit:  Now that we've had nearly 3 weeks to view the RU Kharkiv offensive, it looks like a very wasteful failure for RU.  Losses have been very heavy for them and they only advanced ~8km in two separated regions.  Not exactly blitzkrieg.  And this effort doesn't seem to have gotten RU any advantage in other areas by drawing off UKR forces in a way that has allowed RU to advance elsewhere -- quite the opposite, it seems to have drained RU operations across the rest of the front instead.  I am sure this is a drain on UKR resources but it's been quite profitable to UKR so far as far as destroying RU forces.  

Any other views on what's going on there?

[The_Capt]

14 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Easy now folks, we are all singing from the same sheet music.  Let's not be over critical of each other's voices.

I will say that I find it a little sad that we have to keep having this discussion about extreme positions.  It is as wrong to say that the West should be doing everything right now and with no second thoughts as it is to suggest the West needs to stop doing anything because Putin said he'd crack out the nukes.  Neither position is logically defensible.

What that leaves us with is a huge swath of inbetween to discuss.  Just because someone is a little more or less in favor of any one particular thing for any particular reason is not reason to have ruffled feathers.

I'd bet that if we were to score us on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being do nothing because of fear of Putin and 10 being doing everything to defeat Putin, as a whole this Forum's participants would probably wind up at a 7 or 8.  We are way, way out of step with the rest of the societies around us, more so in some corners of the globe than others.  Arguing points that 8 or 9 isn't good enough is just pointless and counter productive.

Steve

My main issue is that there is healthy and unhealthy self regulation.  We need to be able to confront obvious trolls or anyone pitching outright falsehoods, in either direction.  We have done that routinely and must continue to.

What we do not need are echo chamber police that reduce your noted spectrum from 1 to 10, to “only 8-10!  All other numbers are -12 and support genocide!”  At that point we really do become an insular echo chamber where original thought goes to die.

This sort of behaviour smacks of the contemporary cancel culture and gotcha politics we are plagued by in the modern age. I do think we are all on the same side but I should be able to push back on a Ukrainian poster who is basically crapping on the US, and express frustrations with a partner who at times appears to be misaligned with ourselves. Further I should be able to do so without someone throwing insults and down-explaining the larger situation when I think I have clearly demonstrated that I know more than they do.

I am going to go cool off now but if we become a Ukrainian fanboys club in here then I fear we will lose what has made this venture worthwhile - an objective attempt to understand.

[dan/california]

4 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

So changing the subject a bit:  Now that we've had nearly 3 weeks to view the RU Kharkiv offensive, it looks like a very wasteful failure for RU.  Losses have been very heavy for them and they only advanced ~8km in two separated regions.  Not exactly blitzkrieg.  And this effort doesn't seem to have gotten RU any advantage in other areas by drawing off UKR forces in a way that has allowed RU to advance elsewhere -- quite the opposite, it seems to have drained RU operations across the rest of the front instead.  I am sure this is a drain on UKR resources but it's been quite profitable to UKR so far as far as destroying RU forces.  

Any other views on what's going on there?

I think the entire Russian plan assumed that U.S. aid wasn't coming, and then they launched it before they were ready because they were trying to make real gains before the aid showed up. They failed, expensively.

 

[billbindc]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

There is always one in the crowd.

Two words - "Star Fort"

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

It was the armor thing that caught my attention.  Looking at the numbers, military mass at industrial was really invented in Asia. So they may have kept armor simpler for two reasons - mobility and production.  This is really interesting and directly linked back to this war - the nature of military mass. 

Star forts are quite impressive...and came after the medieval era was well over. 

Your point remains accurate. Medieval Europe was a backwater militarily.

[dan/california]

10 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Star forts are quite impressive...and came after the medieval era was well over. 

Your point remains accurate. Medieval Europe was a backwater militarily.

It was a backwater period, the way it then soared to almost complete world dominance in the course of two or three hundred years is one of histories great discontinuities, perhaps te biggest one since writing.

[Battlefront.com]

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

What we do not need are echo chamber police that reduce your noted spectrum from 1 to 10, to “only 8-10!  All other numbers are -12 and support genocide!”  At that point we really do become an insular echo chamber where original thought goes to die.

Correct.  Orthodoxy to a single minded concept is never healthy.  It's why Zeleban was allowed to remain here (both times) as it is healthy for us to remember a) not everything is going great within Ukraine and b) some are buying into defeatism not because they are pro-Russia is that they are pro-Easy Answer.  At some point it becomes a distraction and unproductive and we need to move on.  Sometimes it requires a bit more of my involvement to achieve that than other times.

22 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I am going to go cool off now but if we become a Ukrainian fanboys club in here then I fear we will lose what has made this venture worthwhile - an objective attempt to understand.

Not to worry.  I won't let that happen.  Too much good here.

Steve

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/us/pentagon-ammunition-ukraine-russia.html

To keep Ukraine’s artillery crews supplied, the Pentagon set a production target last year of 100,000 shells per month by the end of 2025. Factories in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., together make about 36,000 shells per month. The new General Dynamics facility in Mesquite, Texas, will make 30,000 each month once it reaches its full capacity.

 

 

Quote

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/world/europe/blinken-ukraine-weapons-russia.html

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken suggested on Wednesday that the Biden administration could be open to tolerating strikes by the Ukrainian military inside Russia, saying that the United States would “adapt and adjust” its stance based on changing conditions on the battlefield.

 

 

Quote

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/business/mark-dougan-russia-disinformation.html

In 2016, Russia used an army of trolls to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. This year, an American given asylum in Moscow may be accomplishing much the same thing all by himself.

 

The NYT seems to feel the urge to be useful today. If only it hit them more often...

[TheVulture]

49 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

So changing the subject a bit:  Now that we've had nearly 3 weeks to view the RU Kharkiv offensive, it looks like a very wasteful failure for RU.  Losses have been very heavy for them and they only advanced ~8km in two separated regions.  Not exactly blitzkrieg.  And this effort doesn't seem to have gotten RU any advantage in other areas by drawing off UKR forces in a way that has allowed RU to advance elsewhere -- quite the opposite, it seems to have drained RU operations across the rest of the front instead.  I am sure this is a drain on UKR resources but it's been quite profitable to UKR so far as far as destroying RU forces.  

Any other views on what's going on there?

I think Perun's analysis hads some pretty plausible suggestions, that it's probably some combination of (in varying degrees)

* a soon to close window of opportunity of Ukraine having limited support and mobilisation issues

* a propaganda push, supported by a media/ online push of "Russia is on the offensive again and Kharkiv is about to fall" 

* the big purge/ reshuffle in the military means that lots of new guys in post want to prove that they are indeed the right guy for the job: look at their proactive can-do attitude unlike the previous losers

* unreliable internal reporting meaning that high command had a much rosier picture of the forces available to them than was actually the case

* wanting to be seen to do something in response to the cross border raids into Belgotod by the Russian volunteer legion last year

 

Edit: one more point I forgot.  Since the question is "why Kharkiv and why now?", one more answer on the "why Kharkiv" point is that most Russia  support assets : artillery, supply bases etc are inside Russia, and thus can't be hit with the most effective systems that might actually threaten them,  since NATO supplied systems can't be used to hit targets over the border. If they tried the same in the donbass, ask the artillery, air defences,  radar etc would be on Ukrainian territory and be fair game.  So Russia gains a degree of impunity by operating from the Russian border.

Although the attack might have been a trigger  for  most NATO countries to reconsider that stance, so possibly the net result is another strategic own-goal by Putin.

Edited May 29 by TheVulture

[holoween]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gk7D_TliAuE

[FancyCat]

Quote

Blinken seems to signal an openness when asked if the US will allow Ukraine to use US-provided weapons to strike military targets inside Russia. He notes "at every step along the way, we've adapted and adjusted as necessary. And so that's exactly what we'll do going forward."

 

[Vanir Ausf B]

Comments by some Ukrainian crews on the M1 Abrams tank. This is anecdata, obviously.

• Poor protection vs drones: “Its armor is not sufficient for this moment. It doesn’t protect the crew. For real, today this is the war of drones."
• Condensation is a powerful enemy?: "They also complain of how, in rain or fog, condensation can fry the electronics inside the vehicle."
• Ammunition performs poorly in the  anti-personnel role: “What we have is more for direct tank-to-tank fights, which happens very rarely. Much more often we work as artillery. You need to take apart a tree-line or a building. We had a case when we fired 17 rounds into a house and it was still standing.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/soldiers-ukraine-us-supplied-tanks-120146535.html

Edited May 29 by Vanir Ausf B

[JonS]

12 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

Condensation is a powerful enemy?: "They also complain of how, in rain or fog, condensation can fry the electronics inside the vehicle."

Huh. I suppose spending 30 ... no, nearly 40 years designing and optimising kit for the sandbox will do that to your procurement system.

When was the last time a div-sized M1-equipped unit was based in Germany?

Edited May 29 by JonS

[FancyCat]

Let us marvel again that should someone be told at the beginning of the war that Ukraine would have F-16s, 2!!! AWACS aircraft from NATO, they would be called crazy, insane, absurd, idiotic and yet today, rendered all the above, false.

Let us also marvel at the fact that the leadership shown by many of the NATO members truly is outstanding, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Baltics, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, absolutely fantastic, Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal, even Kosovo, I'm missing names but end of the day, the contributions to Ukraine, are wonderful, a clear sign of support for the alliance, and Ukraine's acceptance into it in the future.