How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Kraft said:

Hopefully the rate of these will increase.

 

 

We've seen these reports from time to time, but not in a while.  You know what else I miss seeing reports of?  Drunken and/or high soldiers shooting at each other.  And I'd give $100 more to my next Ukraine donation to see a report of TikTok Warriors getting into a firefight with Russian Army forces.  Man, I miss the good old days of Kherson, except for the fact that the bastards aren't there any longer.  Positive side to everything!

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, Fenris said:

This came up in my feed, I don't recall seeing it before.  Was broadcast 8 months ago apparently.  I've not heard anything else locally about this particular system.  They say each weapon system costs $1M so not exactly cheap but not particularly expensive either.  Would have to be in the right place at the right time - maybe have one of these trailing/at the back of your assault force to offer some protection.

 

Although I am vehemently opposed to big ticket solutions that only work in limited circumstances, sometimes there are situations where they are warranted.  Systems like this can NEVER be scaled up protect standard military assets and personnel, nor would they even be that effective.  However, sticking a couple of these around a Patriot battery or a Battalion CP is absolutely something I'd give a double thumbs up to. 

When assets are disproportionally important to the battlefield, limited in number, difficult to replace, and ridiculously expensive then there's a justifiable reason to spend millions in protection even if it only address a part of the threat spectrum.

Steve

[photon]

8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

When assets are disproportionally important to the battlefield, limited in number, difficult to replace, and ridiculously expensive then there's a justifiable reason to spend millions in protection even if it only address a part of the threat spectrum.

So, what are those assets right now? It's air denial systems, MLRS, and long-range SPGs, right? Basically your air denial and fires complex. Strategic EW systems?

[Harmon Rabb]

Quote

"On June 6, 2024, a special unit of the 9th Department of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine successfully struck a Russian raid tugboat of the Project 498 Saturn or Proteus off the coast of temporarily occupied Crimea," the statement said. It is noted that another vessel of the Russian invaders was destroyed in the waters of Lake Panske.

"The destructive fire damage was inflicted following a successful breakthrough of the occupiers' line of defensive barriers in the Black Sea," the DIU emphasized.

As Ukrinform reported, Andriy Yusov, spokesperson for the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, said that another enemy ship had been destroyed in the Black Sea last night.

Source: DIU releases video showing destruction of Russian tugboat Saturn (Ukrinform.net)

 

Edited June 6 by Harmon Rabb

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-detains-french-citizen-military-intelligence-espionage-investigative-committee-foreign/

Radio Free Europe first reported that the arrested individual is Laurent Vinatier, an academic specializing on Russia and the former Soviet Union affiliated with the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Swiss non-profit that works to prevent and resolve armed conflicts. “We are aware that Laurent Vinatier, an advisor at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD), has been detained in Russia,” HD told POLITICO in a written response. “We are working to get more details of the circumstances and to secure Laurent’s release.”

 

Anyone still in Russia that has a passport that would let the get out is bucking for an honorable mention by the Darwin Awards.

[Harmon Rabb]

Some of the folks who edit these videos sure do like Rammstein.

 

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.politico.eu/article/bmw-mercedes-vladimir-putin-russia-germany-france/

Berlin and Paris oppose EU efforts to stop luxury cars from reaching Russia via Belarus.

 

Unless every one of these cars has as epic suite of spyware, and a remote controlled bomb, this is inexcusable.

[mosuri]

Luckily this charming individual is no longer the chief of staff there, but the rot reached high in Moldova:

https://kyivindependent.com/moldova-ex-military-chief-gru/

 

[Battlefront.com]

27 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Some of the folks who edit these videos sure do like Rammstein.

 

These videos show why SOME form of large caliber, rapid direct fire weapon is needed on the battlefield.  There is no easy and/or practical way to deliver this sort of suppressive fire on such a large area in a rapid and directed manner.  Artillery is a close second, drones are not even in the running for the foreseeable future.  Helicopters and fixed wing strafing runs are not practical for a peer-to-peer fight, but in COIN they certainly can do this.

The question to ask is "how do we deliver this sort of suppressive fire that is survivable on the current and near future battlefield?". 

Unfortunately, we keep seeing "that's easy!  We already have the [fill in blank with MBT/IFV name) to do all of this and more.  All we need to do is add some things we already have and then sometime later things that don't yet exist.  It will up the costs and degrade the performance while also not really addressing the problems, but what alternatives exist?". 

If industry doesn't have what is needed to fulfill the requirements, then we should be looking at all possibilities.  Not just something we already have that something, someday, can be bolted to.

Steve

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, photon said:

So, what are those assets right now? It's air denial systems, MLRS, and long-range SPGs, right? Basically your air denial and fires complex. Strategic EW systems?

Add to the list key logistics nodes and C4 infra.

[billbindc]

The hot take on this is "Why didn't we do this sooner?!?!" but the bigger story to me is that yet again it shows how little bandwidth the Russian army has to handle the demands of this war: 

 

Edited June 6 by billbindc

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, billbindc said:

The hot take on this is "Why didn't we this up sooner?!?!" but the bigger story to me is that yet again it shows how little bandwidth the Russian army has to handle the demands of this war: 

 

That could be the answer to “why didn’t we do this sooner”.  Biden’s play here appears to be to slowly boils this sh#tty little frog in a quagmire war.  It takes some sang froid to hold onto this strategy while so many people are dying but it looks like it was the plan.  I have been saying that the US and West have owned the escalation ladder since the outset of this thing.  We have far more strategic options in this arena than Russia.  Russia has slowly been compressed as we systematically erode its ability to wage war or force it into dilemma (eg mass mobilization).  My bet is the aim is to find a suitable off ramp and hope Russia takes it.

Now keep in mind the numbers on that graph are small, but IADs are also low density capability.

 

[billbindc]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

That could be the answer to “why didn’t we do this sooner”.  Biden’s play here appears to be to slowly boils this sh#tty little frog in a quagmire war.  It takes some sang froid to hold onto this strategy while so many people are dying but it looks like it was the plan.  I have been saying that the US and West have owned the escalation ladder since the outset of this thing.  We have far more strategic options in this arena than Russia.  Russia has slowly been compressed as we systematically erode its ability to wage war or force it into dilemma (eg mass mobilization).  My bet is the aim is to find a suitable off ramp and hope Russia takes it.

Now keep in mind the numbers on that graph are small, but IADs are also low density capability.

 

Add in the multiple indications that the Russians were caught off guard by the change in policy. I don't think that means that the Russians are stupid, to be clear. I think it means that resources are so stretched that they feel like they must take temporary advantages now even if that means it could lead to long term disadvantages later. It seems to me that that's not a sign of long term warfighting capability. 

[ArmouredTopHat]

35 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Add in the multiple indications that the Russians were caught off guard by the change in policy. I don't think that means that the Russians are stupid, to be clear. I think it means that resources are so stretched that they feel like they must take temporary advantages now even if that means it could lead to long term disadvantages later. It seems to me that that's not a sign of long term warfighting capability. 

I still do find it truly crazy that a pretty publicly declared adjustment to policy was not acted on sooner by the Russians. Soldiers in the field would of known this within hours. Which leads to the lack of redeployment orders to adjust to this all the more baffling. I get that its a pain to move some systems but for something like an S-300 to get hit days later despite the system being movable within the space of an hour or two is pure incompetence in my view. 

Edited June 6 by ArmouredTopHat

[The_Capt]

11 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

I still do find it truly crazy that a pretty publicly declared adjustment to policy was not acted on sooner by the Russians. Soldiers in the field would have known this within hours. Which leads to the lack of redeployment orders to adjust to this all the more baffling. I get that its a pain to move some systems but for something like an S-300 to get hit days later despite the system being movable within the space of an hour or two is pure incompetence in my view. 

Watched “Chernobyl” and the culture of denial and rigid @ss covering is likely alive and well in Putin’s Russia.  Maybe local commanders were not given authority to withdraw and didn’t want to get arrested if they did.  Maybe they simply were not told - so the soldiers in the field were kept in the dark.  Perhaps this is being highly “competent” in whatever military Putin has built.  They have rigid C2 structures, we know that.  But one has to admit, they are damned good at throwing people in one direction…repeatedly.

[sburke]

7 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Watched “Chernobyl” and the culture of denial and rigid @ss covering is likely alive and well in Putin’s Russia.  Maybe local commanders were not given authority to withdraw and didn’t want to get arrested if they did.  Maybe they simply were not told - so the soldiers in the field were kept in the dark.  Perhaps this is being highly “competent” in whatever military Putin has built.  They have rigid C2 structures, we know that.  But one has to admit, they are damned good at throwing people in one direction…repeatedly.

Well I look at Florida's response to climate change and honestly denial it seems is a pretty human thing to do when you don't want to hear bad news.  Don't look up.

[dan/california]

3 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Watched “Chernobyl” and the culture of denial and rigid @ss covering is likely alive and well in Putin’s Russia.  Maybe local commanders were not given authority to withdraw and didn’t want to get arrested if they did.  Maybe they simply were not told - so the soldiers in the field were kept in the dark.  Perhaps this is being highly “competent” in whatever military Putin has built.  They have rigid C2 structures, we know that.  But one has to admit, they are damned good at throwing people in one direction…repeatedly.

Not one step backwards, or else, can be extremely effective. It can also be very brittle, and very expensive. We have seen vast amounts of evidence for the expensive part. We have only seen real hints of the brittleness in the initial Kharkiv collapse, and Prig's rebellion. But the possibility of wider cracks hasn't gone away. Maybe the third time one breaks open we will be willing to stick a hydraulic chisel in it and actually try to break the whole Russian army. Or at least threaten to do so convincingly enough that Putin gets a very short flying lesson, and the new guy develops an urge to talk sense.

[sburke]

Russia's biggest energy company says it'll take it at least 10 years to recover gas sales lost because of the Ukraine war (yahoo.com)

Gazprom, Russia's state-owned energy giant, likely won't recoup pre-war gas sales for a decade, research commissioned by the company said.

"The main consequences of sanctions for Gazprom and the energy industry are the contraction of export volumes, which will be restored to their 2020 level no earlier than in 2035," the study said, seen by the Financial Times.

By that year, gas exports to Europe will barely average a third of the volumes sold before 2022, when Moscow invaded Ukraine. Although Europe has long been the primary hub for Russia's gas, the war triggered a wave of retaliatory sanctions, upending trade with the West.

Gazprom was among the suppliers hit hardest by the measures. In early May, the firm disclosed a net loss of $6.9 billion in 2023, marking its first annual decline in over two decades.

The future doesn't look much brighter.

The study predicts that Gazprom's role in Russia's energy sector is fleeting, as the firm's dependence on pipelines will lose ground against liquified natural gas exports. What's more, the company will need considerable state funding to scout out alternative markets for its product.

Hope lies in the development of the Siberia-2 pipeline, a major proposal to connect Russia with China's market.

So far, the pipeline deal is stalled over disagreements about pricing and supply, but even if the project does come online, the added exports won't make up for lost European revenue, as Beijing has been buying Russian gas at a deep discount.

The buildout of pipelines pits Gazprom against another issue: sanctions have cut Russia off from necessary supplies to develop the infrastructure.

The report noted that Gazprom will struggle to increase export capacity if it has no access to western-made turbines, which are necessary to move gas through pipelines.

Developing turbines domestically will take five years and 100 billion rubles, a big undertaking for a firm that's already struggling financially.

Instead, the best solution would be to embrace LNG, diversifying away from pipeline exports and finding buyers beyond China, the study said. That's no easy transition for Gazprom either, as it has no technology to produce LNG at larger capacity.

[cesmonkey]

Quote

“We will announce the sale of Mirage 2000-5s” on Friday during Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to France, the French president said in an interview on TF1 and France 2, at the end of a day of commemorations of the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, to which the Ukrainian president was invited. 

 

Edited June 6 by cesmonkey

[Eddy]

And 

https://mstdn.social/@noelreports/112571158457621894

Quote

In addition, Macron announced that France aims to train a 'French brigade' of 4,500 Ukrainian soldiers and to equip them in order to let them 'defend their soil'.

 

[ArmouredTopHat]

37 minutes ago, sburke said:

Russia's biggest energy company says it'll take it at least 10 years to recover gas sales lost because of the Ukraine war (yahoo.com)

Gazprom, Russia's state-owned energy giant, likely won't recoup pre-war gas sales for a decade, research commissioned by the company said.

"The main consequences of sanctions for Gazprom and the energy industry are the contraction of export volumes, which will be restored to their 2020 level no earlier than in 2035," the study said, seen by the Financial Times.

By that year, gas exports to Europe will barely average a third of the volumes sold before 2022, when Moscow invaded Ukraine. Although Europe has long been the primary hub for Russia's gas, the war triggered a wave of retaliatory sanctions, upending trade with the West.

Gazprom was among the suppliers hit hardest by the measures. In early May, the firm disclosed a net loss of $6.9 billion in 2023, marking its first annual decline in over two decades.

The future doesn't look much brighter.

The study predicts that Gazprom's role in Russia's energy sector is fleeting, as the firm's dependence on pipelines will lose ground against liquified natural gas exports. What's more, the company will need considerable state funding to scout out alternative markets for its product.

Hope lies in the development of the Siberia-2 pipeline, a major proposal to connect Russia with China's market.

So far, the pipeline deal is stalled over disagreements about pricing and supply, but even if the project does come online, the added exports won't make up for lost European revenue, as Beijing has been buying Russian gas at a deep discount.

The buildout of pipelines pits Gazprom against another issue: sanctions have cut Russia off from necessary supplies to develop the infrastructure.

The report noted that Gazprom will struggle to increase export capacity if it has no access to western-made turbines, which are necessary to move gas through pipelines.

Developing turbines domestically will take five years and 100 billion rubles, a big undertaking for a firm that's already struggling financially.

Instead, the best solution would be to embrace LNG, diversifying away from pipeline exports and finding buyers beyond China, the study said. That's no easy transition for Gazprom either, as it has no technology to produce LNG at larger capacity.

If its one thing that might get Putin to have a fatal falling accident from a tall building in Russia, its the oligarchs realising that they are going to be bleeding money for little return for decades. Provided Putin doesn't stop killing them first of course. 

[Harmon Rabb]

1 hour ago, cesmonkey said:

 

I'll be honest back in the summer of 2022 I was not sure I fully trusted Macron, I know I was not the only supporter of Ukraine who felt that way.

These days all I have to say is Viva Macron!!!

How things have changed in the last few years.

 

[Letter from Prague]

2 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

If its one thing that might get Putin to have a fatal falling accident from a tall building in Russia, its the oligarchs realising that they are going to be bleeding money for little return for decades. Provided Putin doesn't stop killing them first of course. 

I don't know about that. As per people who now better (like Galeev), unlike their Western counterparts, Russian oligarchs don't really have any political power. They own companies and investments and take care of those, but in doing so act as "living purses" for the actual Siloviki. It's actually Putin's money.

[ArmouredTopHat]

 

30 minutes ago, Letter from Prague said:

I don't know about that. As per people who now better (like Galeev), unlike their Western counterparts, Russian oligarchs don't really have any political power. They own companies and investments and take care of those, but in doing so act as "living purses" for the actual Siloviki. It's actually Putin's money.

We have seen just from the Prigo thunder run episode how potentially brittle Putin's regime is. We know for a fact that some troops ordered to stop Wagner refused to do so. All it takes is the right combination of dominos falling. I would agree though that any removal would probably be done by the military (Its a famous thing in Russia)

[Eddy]

3 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

 

To give some background to this announcement the current training pipeline for future Ukrainian pilots is this:

1. Basic training is done in the UK on Grob Prefect T1
    (At the same time there is language training and also training in G simulators to get used to the nest step)
2. Initial fast jet training is done  in the UK on a Beechcraft Texan T1 ( a turboprop aircraft)
 
3. Advanced fast jet training is done on Armee de l'Air Alpha Jets

As neither the French or the British have F16s, there is no existing pipeline from moving from Alpha Jets to F16s.

There is, however, an existing pipeline for moving from Alpha Jets to Mirage 2000s

This, I think, indicates a longer term, more mature approach to providing capability to the Ukrainian Air Force. It's a more thought out announcement that President Macron trying to get Brownie points.

(There's a load of bollocks on socials about Mirage 2000s only being provided to launch Scalp/Storm Shadow. The Mirage 2000-5 is a lot more capable than that. It's no F35 but it's no Su 24 either)