How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[hcrof]

I am starting to think that Ukraine almost has everything it needs to start pushing back the Russians. The F16s will arrive in a few months, assuming they can locally push back the russian air force, and more mobilised troops as well (I am assuming they continue to have adequate ammunition).

But in my opinion we are still missing a final piece of the puzzle, which would probably not suprise anyone here: an effective way to counter Russian observation drones. I think Russia relies on them more than ever due to the loss of trained forward observers and they are undeniably effective. If Ukraine can nullify them locally, that would allow them to do a bit of old-fashioned maneuver warfare and potentially take back territory (or at least aggressively corrode the Russians until they counter the counter). 

If they can't eliminate these drones then russian artillery stays in the fight, and even if Ukrainian counter battery is effective the Russians can still throw a lot of tubes and crews into the meat grinder...

 

[ArmouredTopHat]

2 hours ago, Twisk said:

Lets not forget the number of intact Russian vehicles that Ukrainian farmers were able to drive up to and tow away. Including SAMs

 

I think this was the moment for me as I viewed it that something really was going quite badly wrong for the Russians. That vast amounts of kit entirely usable outside of no fuel or minor issues were just abandoned all over the place. Running out of fuel 80km away from your supply dumps is bad enough but then not either guarding said vehicles or at least disabling / destroying them really told me something about the utterly chaotic organisation present during the initial Russian invasion. Its just embarrassing. 

Edited June 4 by ArmouredTopHat

[dan/california]

21 minutes ago, hcrof said:

I am starting to think that Ukraine almost has everything it needs to start pushing back the Russians. The F16s will arrive in a few months, assuming they can locally push back the russian air force, and more mobilised troops as well (I am assuming they continue to have adequate ammunition).

But in my opinion we are still missing a final piece of the puzzle, which would probably not suprise anyone here: an effective way to counter Russian observation drones. I think Russia relies on them more than ever due to the loss of trained forward observers and they are undeniably effective. If Ukraine can nullify them locally, that would allow them to do a bit of old-fashioned maneuver warfare and potentially take back territory (or at least aggressively corrode the Russians until they counter the counter). 

If they can't eliminate these drones then russian artillery stays in the fight, and even if Ukrainian counter battery is effective the Russians can still throw a lot of tubes and crews into the meat grinder...

 

 

On 5/31/2024 at 12:04 PM, Haiduk said:

Yeah, this is first video allowed to publishing. Reportedly there were several successfull interceptions of Orlan-10 and ZALA. UKR UAV community already have some developments of fast FPV interceptors, but by known reasons information about this doesn't issue. Now works are directed to get at least "beta-version" of interception complex (detection, guidance, drone-interceptor) to unload SHORAD from most tasks of drone hunting.  

Fully agree, one of the most important short to medium term questions in the war is if Ukraine can truly do this drone vs drone intercept thing at scale. Without Orlan/Zala class drones a LOT of the Russian C4SIR system breaks. And as The_Capt never tires of telling us C4SIR is the whole ballgame.

Edited June 4 by dan/california

[Battlefront.com]

52 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Russian training is very likely taking a serious hit but this vignette shows that the environment is making the Russians "suck harder". 

This is one reason Combat Mission shines.  Play any two scenarios with different quality troops and watch how different the results are.  It might not be a totally different outcome (e.g. mission failure), but it is likely that casualties will not be the same for either side.

To think that traditional military gaming doesn't take this into consideration.  I never agreed with the logic of that.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

52 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

I think this was the moment for me as I viewed it that something really was going quite badly wrong for the Russians. That vast amounts of kit entirely usable outside of no fuel or minor issues were just abandoned all over the place. Running out of fuel 80km away from your supply dumps is bad enough but then not either guarding said vehicles or at least disabling / destroying them really told me something about the utterly chaotic organisation presenting the initial Russian invasion. Its just embarrassing. 

And let's not forget often nobody came to their rescue (this was mentioned by Russians a lot at the time).  The reason for that, however, was a function of their invasion plan which left no room for error.  They simply didn't have the personnel or equipment to do everything they tried to do, not to mention bailing out components that got into trouble.  Add to this Russia's traditional piss-poor communications and lack of attention to logistics, and the disaster is very easily understood.  Cripes, they didn't even give their units post-Soviet maps, which was a particular problem since Ukraine changed the names of so may towns.  They got confused by roadsigns.  To be fair, these were sometimes deliberately confusing

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Oh, and I can't resist posting this one.  Relevant to the Russian driver discussion (this was posted March 31st, 2022):

[dan/california]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

Oh, and I can't resist posting this one.  Relevant to the Russian driver discussion (this was posted March 31st, 2022):

The Thing is Russia could have declared victory, and gotten a pretty good deal in March of 2022. Recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and bunch of small and medium sized stuff. Putin simply did not have the sense to settle for a small win, so he has ground the Russian military to rotting meat paste and rusting scrap metal instead.

[dan/california]

I reposted something from previous some how, sorry

Edited June 4 by dan/california

[ArmouredTopHat]

20 minutes ago, dan/california said:

The Thing is Russia could have declared victory, and gotten a pretty good deal in March of 2022. Recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and bunch of small and medium sized stuff. Putin simply did not have the sense to settle for a small win, so he has ground the Russian military to rotting meat paste and rusting scrap metal instead.

I really did believe he was going to do something of the sort, just abruptly declare victory in his SMO and push for withdrawal / ceasefire after it was clear things were not exactly going ideally. It would of at least given him a reasonable off ramp he could get to stick domestically while preserving his military. Instead he doubled down and annexed four more Oblasts without even actually controlling any of them fully, including one of the four -capitals- of the oblast itself (which was soon joined by a second with Kherson liberated) 

Any fleeting notion to me that Putin was playing some strange form of 4D chess well and truly died by that point. He really is just riding this sorry train ride until it reaches the wrecked bridge at the end of the railroad. 

Edited June 4 by ArmouredTopHat

[The_Capt]

10 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

I really did believe he was going to do something of the sort, just abruptly declare victory in his SMO and push for withdrawal / ceasefire after it was clear things were not exactly going ideally. It would of at least given him a reasonable off ramp he could get to stick domestically while preserving his military. Instead he doubled down and annexed four more Oblasts without even actually controlling any of them fully, including one of the four -capitals- of the oblast itself (which was soon joined by a second with Kherson liberated) 

Any fleeting notion to me that Putin was playing some strange form of 4D chess well and truly died by that point. He really is just riding this sorry train ride until it reaches the wrecked bridge at the end of the railroad. 

Give this as read:

https://static.rusi.org/202303-SR-Unconventional-Operations-Russo-Ukrainian-War-web-final.pdf.pdf

Especially from about page 14 on.  Weirdly the Russians had a far more detailed plan for occupation than they did for the initial invasion - they basically made a bunch of assumptions, that let to more assumptions, that became “facts” over time.  But for the occupation they had put in a lot of effort.  Their plans were brutal, as demonstrated on how they have been managing the occupied territories.   They had no intention of pulling back after making a point.  This was a full on grab, smother and control job from the get go.

There is a part 2 for this but I have not read it yet:

https://static.rusi.org/SR-Russian-Unconventional-Weapons-final-web.pdf

[ArmouredTopHat]

29 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Give this as read:

https://static.rusi.org/202303-SR-Unconventional-Operations-Russo-Ukrainian-War-web-final.pdf.pdf

Especially from about page 14 on.  Weirdly the Russians had a far more detailed plan for occupation than they did for the initial invasion - they basically made a bunch of assumptions, that let to more assumptions, that became “facts” over time.  But for the occupation they had put in a lot of effort.  Their plans were brutal, as demonstrated on how they have been managing the occupied territories.   They had no intention of pulling back after making a point.  This was a full on grab, smother and control job from the get go.

There is a part 2 for this but I have not read it yet:

https://static.rusi.org/SR-Russian-Unconventional-Weapons-final-web.pdf

Amazing work from Rusi as always. Makes you wonder if total annexation might have been the goal all along or a mix of Belarus style puppet government for central and western Ukraine while Russia gobbled up the rest. They certainly seem dead set of taking Kharkiv and Odessa given how much of their propaganda mentions it. 

[NamEndedAllen]

Poignant, graphic and horrific at the same time. Apologies if already posted.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/world/europe/ukraine-destruction.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

(may be pay-walled)

Edited June 5 by NamEndedAllen

[chris talpas]

On the topic of the future of tanks...

A number of pages back The_Capt had described what could be the love child of a tank and SPG.  Something that could operate in the direct and indirect fire mode with high mobility closer to the front than would be safe for regular artillery.

This fully illuminated battlefield has also been likened to the situation that exists in naval combat.

Thinking about how surface combatants evolved from primarily gun equipped to missile equipped, could a similar evolution work with the tank?

Imagine the gun armament being the bushmaster of the Bradley or bofors of the CV90 giving you pretty good direct fire mayhem, but you use the other space to house a tank sized equivalent of a VLS cell.  You then equip it with a mix of missiles (ATGM, PGM, AA) that would not require LOS on target from tank.  How?  Add in its own drone(s) for surveillance and targeting akin to the helicopter on a ship.

Carrying the concept a bit further, could you have a few UGV's that tag along with it that are essentially mobile VLS systems that can be interfaced to your "tank".  Going with this approach you could even forgo the VLS on your tank and devote that to additional ISR ability.

Just thought I would throw out a potentially screwy idea.

 

Edited June 5 by chris talpas
added not requiring LOS

[MikeyD]

Tank design would change dramatically if we dropped fighting other tanks from the criteria. This idea isn't new, in WWII American tanks weren't meant to fight other tanks (doctrinally). That didn't work out very well because the other means of fighting them weren't sufficiently mature. Now another tank is the least of your problems. So, what would a non-tank-fighting tank in a highly asymmetric threat environment look like?

[ArmouredTopHat]

15 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

Tank design would change dramatically if we dropped fighting other tanks from the criteria. This idea isn't new, in WWII American tanks weren't meant to fight other tanks (doctrinally). That didn't work out very well because the other means of fighting them weren't sufficiently mature. Now another tank is the least of your problems. So, what would a non-tank-fighting tank in a highly asymmetric threat environment look like?

This is not quite accurate, at least according to official armoured force doctrine of 1942:

Medium tanks.-(a) The primary mission of medium tank units is to assist the attack of the light tank units, chiefly by neutralizing or destroying the hostile antitank weapons. When organized resistance is encountered, especially antitank guns, medium tank units will usually precede the light tank units for this purpose. The use of one or more platoons of medium tanks following the attack of light tank units for supporting fire will frequently be desirable. Tanks so employed, for short periods, should assume turret defilade positions from which they can bring direct fire to bear on hostile antitank weapons as they are found.

(b) Medium tanks also protect the light tanks against the attack of hostile tanks. When the enemy is composed of mechanized troops, a large medium tank component, if available, is held in the reserve.

Tank destroyers meanwhile:
 

Missions.-(a) The mission of the tank destroyer with the armored division is to assist either by offensive or defensive action in the protection of the division against hostile mechanized forces.

(b) The battalion may be used to-

1. Protect a bivouac, assembly area, or rallying point.

2. Guard an exposed flank.

3. Protect the rear of the division.

(c) The battalion may be used as a unit or companies may be attached to armored regiments or combat commands. Except when actually emplaced to protect a bivouac, assembly area, or rallying point, tank destroyer units should be held in mobile reserve, prepared to move promptly to any threatened area.

Straight from armoured force: https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/FM/PDFs/FM17-10.PDF

It is probably more accurate to say that tank destroyers battalions were designed to  counter large, concentrated armour actions, while the tanks were designed and required to pretty much fight everything they encountered if needed, but had particular focus on the neutralisation of anti tank assets in turn. 

Edited June 5 by ArmouredTopHat

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Amazing work from Rusi as always. Makes you wonder if total annexation might have been the goal all along or a mix of Belarus style puppet government for central and western Ukraine while Russia gobbled up the rest. They certainly seem dead set of taking Kharkiv and Odessa given how much of their propaganda mentions it. 

Before the war started, as in years before, a friend of mine in Kyiv would have this sort of discussion from time to time.  Since he helped me write the backstory for Black Sea, which unfolded almost exactly the same way in real life just as we were in beta testing, he and go back a ways.

In 2021 when things started to come to a boil we talked about the possibilities Putin would pursue.  We were convinced some sort of attack was going to happen, probably predicated by some flimsy pretext.  As things got closer to the actual invasion date we boiled it down to two likely scenarios:

1.  Limited invasion to take the rest of Donbas and to get a land bridge to Crimea, with large forces around Kyiv acting as a holding force (i.e. bluff)

2.  Try for destroying Ukraine entirely, occupy much of the East, and set up a puppet state.

Right up until a few days before we thought Putin would go for #1 because it was the smarter thing to do.  However, the intelligence being presented in public seemed like #2.  Especially the kill lists.  That really stuck with me as extremely relevant.  The political posturing by Russia was also very much framing things for #2.  But, we thought even if they were planning on #2 initially that the reaction of the West might have changed his mind to a more limited (#1) action.  Boy were we wrong.  We weren't convinced of #1 until a few days before the war.

Over the many years we talked about the possibility of a full invasion we figured the Russians would get their arses kicked.  Way too much obvious evidence of that, though apparently not obvious enough for a fair number of experts.  Certainly Putin didn't find it obvious

Anyway, the long way back to my point is that it was pretty clear from before the invasion that Putin wanted Ukraine permanently destroyed and some sort of puppet or weak rump state between Russia and NATO.  Not because of the military "threat", but because he needed to make an example out of Ukraine, get revenge for their rebuking of Russian control (unlike lap dog Luka), and of course to rape the country of all of its resources (including children).

Since that is what he wanted, and that wasn't what was being offered to stop the war in March 2022, he kept on going.  Because I have my wartime meme folder open already, I present to you this gem:

Steve

[Ithikial_AU]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is one reason Combat Mission shines.  Play any two scenarios with different quality troops and watch how different the results are.  It might not be a totally different outcome (e.g. mission failure), but it is likely that casualties will not be the same for either side.

If anyone wants to try this out play through the CMBN stock campaign "Road to Montebourg" and then again with the more 'realistic' version PaperTiger went back and recreated and to take advantage of units added to the game family after the base game. The big change for my mind was that most US non-airborne troops switched from 'regular' to 'green' to reflect the limited combat experience 4ID had at the time.

https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cm-battle-for-normandy-campaigns/the-road-to-montebourg-revised-for-v4-0/

[dan/california]

4 hours ago, chris talpas said:

On the topic of the future of tanks...

A number of pages back The_Capt had described what could be the love child of a tank and SPG.  Something that could operate in the direct and indirect fire mode with high mobility closer to the front than would be safe for regular artillery.

This fully illuminated battlefield has also been likened to the situation that exists in naval combat.

Thinking about how surface combatants evolved from primarily gun equipped to missile equipped, could a similar evolution work with the tank?

Imagine the gun armament being the bushmaster of the Bradley or bofors of the CV90 giving you pretty good direct fire mayhem, but you use the other space to house a tank sized equivalent of a VLS cell.  You then equip it with a mix of missiles (ATGM, PGM, AA) that would not require LOS on target from tank.  How?  Add in its own drone(s) for surveillance and targeting akin to the helicopter on a ship.

Carrying the concept a bit further, could you have a few UGV's that tag along with it that are essentially mobile VLS systems that can be interfaced to your "tank".  Going with this approach you could even forgo the VLS on your tank and devote that to additional ISR ability.

Just thought I would throw out a potentially screwy idea.

 

I totally think some version of this is where things are headed. The big variable is how much do you trust your com links with the UGVs. If you assume they are truly reliable com link the only thing I would have the manned command uint do is stay as far back, and as invisible as possible, let the robots die for their country. If you think the manned command unit has to push forward for reliable coms I would go with something approximating a Bradley with half of what is currently the troop volume taken up by VLS cells, and half of it a one or two man command center for the UGVs. That way the vehicle crew can focus on their very important job of keeping the vehicle alive. Obviously it would need APS, and all the similar bells and whistles. I like back and invisible better.

[MikeyD]

About the war's original objectives, I recall shortly after the war started there was an infamous film clip (I recall) of the president of Belarus giving a speech, when someone noticed the odd map being displayed behind him. It was of  Ukraine divided into three Russian sub-provinces and also included an annexed Moldova as well. So Ukraine as an entity would have ceased to exist and the surviving entities divided and weakened to make them powerless.

[FancyCat]

Half of Ukraine's power generation is out.

Quote

Ukraine has lost 9.2GW in power generation capacity since Russia's new airstrike campaign began in March. 1.2GW of generation was lost just in Saturday's attack, & infrastructure for transporting gas from underground storage facilities was badly damaged.

 

[FancyCat]

From said FT article. Needless to say, this is not conductive to Ukraine's survival. Either the West provides enough air defense to defend the energy production system, and/or provides it the offensive weaponry to stop these missile attacks or Ukraine will be forced to escalate with their own efforts at Russian grids, other valuable targets despite Western worries/fears in a effort to preserve Ukraine's future. It should be obvious that the West needs to get ahead of said inbound escalatory actions. (As visualized by other statements of Ukrainian resolve and mettle)

Quote

One Ukrainian government official described Saturday’s assault as “devastating” while another said it was likely to mean that by winter residents would be spending a vast majority of their day without electricity.

Asked what the damage would mean for the months ahead, one of the officials put it bluntly: “We should prepare for life in the cold and the dark.”

“If no measures are taken, according to our modelling, then probably the population will have only two to four hours of electricity [per day] in January,” said Dodonov.

 

[LongLeftFlank]

55 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

From said FT article. Needless to say, this is not conductive to Ukraine's survival. Either the West provides enough air defense to defend the energy production system, and/or provides it the offensive weaponry to stop these missile attacks or Ukraine will be forced to escalate with their own efforts at Russian grids, other valuable targets despite Western worries/fears in a effort to preserve Ukraine's future. It should be obvious that the West needs to get ahead of said inbound escalatory actions. (As visualized by other statements of Ukrainian resolve and mettle)

 

So be it then. Kursk NPP is well within range of domestically produced Ukrainian stuff that go boom. You don't even need to hit the reactors to take it offline.

http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/national_energy_grid/russia/graphics/russian-energy-grid-2002-europe.jpg

How long now before drones start carrying long strips of (conductive) graphene and draping them onto Russian transmission lines? as NATO warplanes played around with in Serbia several decades ago.

http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/national_energy_grid/russia/graphics/Soviet_Electric_grid_82.jpg

 

Edited June 5 by LongLeftFlank

[LongLeftFlank]

13 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The aim here is not to create "and all drone force" or "all APS c-drone force." and have them play smash-smash until one side wins.  The aim here is to evolve our land warfare systems to best effect. 

So I for one would stop investing in heavy metal...period.  We can find way to repurpose the metal we have, and yes, that will include protections for it.  But heavy metal - and here I am talking armor, IFVs and AFVs will need to be re-rolled to a greater or lesser degree.  So what do I want?

- C4ISR - best in the world.  I want a fully illuminated battlefield in real time that can integrate all my shooters in a cloud-like concept.  I see targets early and can pull from that cloud just in a self-healing network of offensive systems.  From sub-surface, surface, air, space and cyber - I want See, Hear, Understand superiority.  With that I can beat just about anyone.

- Precision (see C4ISR).  I want a precision based force.  300 bullets means 300 kills.  I want that precision linked and able to swing on a dime to bring massed precision to any point on the battlefield.  I want to be able to melt an opponents operational system in quick time from front end to industry.

- Unmanned (see Precision and C4ISR) - I want humans doing what they do best - battlespace management.  I want fewer of them but they are the owners of the nodes, not mass.  Mass needs to be machine based because it is 1) sustainable as dead metal has much less effect on human will, 2) cheaper in the longer term (humans are very cheap in the short), 3) much less prone to errors and friction.  I want unmanned to be the front edge of battle. I want it armed with Precision and ISR.

- Fires.  Strike is not going anywhere.  If someone told me I have 5B dollars..."where do you want it?"  A good slice would be into over-the-horizon fires - guns, missiles and loitering.  I do not want an "unmanned force" - I want a Firepower Force.  See it, kill it, repeat.  I want to use fires as manouevre.  

- Infantry.  Not for mass but there is a reality that people will be needed forward. Likely paired with machines but the human brain is still the most powerful processor in the universe (that we know of) and war is still all about people.  I want light, fast and dispersed infantry.  Crawling into everything like sand up the bikini, and they can take the machines with them.

All of that means Denial at worst and crushing corrosive warfare at best.  I would take that up against any military on the planet right now.  I do not care if an opponent comes at me with f#cking dragons with wizards on them; I will be able to see and hit from so many different angles that there is no force protection in existence that will allow them to advance.  Wrap your tanks in bubble wrap, I will hit logistics back to the break rooms. Further that advancing would be capable of terrifying offensive effects.   

I want mass precision beats everything.

Now I am not going to get that, but I want investments to take us in that direction and not backwards.  Why?  Because there is a lot more evidence coming from this war, and the ones before it, that this is the direction where things are heading. More than any way we have fought in the past. As a student of military history, I can see the writing on the wall - we are looking at a shift, again. We will continue to negotiate with the future, everyone does, but we can at least be smarter about it. 

(evidently, this too is a UL)

Steve @Battlefront.com can you special flag that post somehow so folks don't miss it?

Edited June 5 by LongLeftFlank

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

(evidently, this too is a UL)

Steve @Battlefront.com can you special flag that post somehow so folks don't miss it?

Now I have to get that floppy hat…

[cesmonkey]