How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[chrisl]

13 minutes ago, hcrof said:

I am sure the big space powers (US, China) can shoot down satellites all day, possibly even faster than they can be replaced. The issue is that debris cloud starts to destroy everyone else's satellites too so they will be really upsetting their allies if they do it. Even China needs to consider what the EU would think if they accidentally destroyed a bunch of European sats in a Pacific war. 

So by the time you are destroying satellites it is effectively WW3. 

Not just everyone else’s.  Nobody cares about those.  You start to take down your own.

but I’d expect that if you start doing that, someone will show up and start intercepting the asat launches before they get to orbit.

 

Edited July 11 by chrisl

[Haiduk]

3 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

As a question, do we know where the UA are sourcing the RPG-7 warheads? Are they making them in house or is that reliant on importation? 

Bulgaria is a huge manufacturer of Soviet-type ammunition and we import it sunce ATO times. But i believe USSR remained so huge legacy of "carrots" (PG-7 HEAT), that it can be used long time both in Ukraine and Russia.

[ArmouredTopHat]

7 minutes ago, chrisl said:

If you want to hit something in space you have to get to space.  We’ve been arguing about whether directed energy has enough effective range to do drones.

Sorry, to clarify I meant reaching orbit without the assistance of another system IE a weapon system capable of reaching orbit on its own. 

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

[Carolus]

14 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Other missile hits in Kyiv

Tall building - I think, it just turned out on the way of missile, which had flight route through it. Despite this several appartments were destroyed, there were killed and wounded.

Old "Khrushchovka" section just collapsed to the ground after direct hit of the missile. At least seven killed here, including three children.

And most painfull look - how six Russian missiles hit military plant Artem one by one. This was already foutrh or fifth attempt, but only now such huge impact.

Total number of dead in Kyiv -34. Today 2 y.o. boy from Okmadyt clinic has died

On this background the report of Air Force command looks very... unrealistic. 

Here their statistic (and strikes were not only on Kyiv in that day - Kruvyiu Rih with 10 killeld and Pavlohrad too)

1 Kinzhal - 1 intercepted

1 Zirkon - not intercepted

4 Iskander-M - 3 intercepted

13 Kh-101 - 11 intercepted (really?)

14 Kalibr - 12 intercepted (really?)

2 Kh-22 - not intercepted (Pavlohrad?)

3 Kh-59/69 - 3 intercepted.

Also there were reports about S-400 fragments indentified in Kyiv, but this wasn't reflected in this report. Either not confirmed, or...

You can see Kyiv was hit at last with 10-11 missiles, but Air Force Command report gives us only 6 "options". Shame. 

Experts found in Kh-101, which hit Okmadyt clinic mucj more western electronic components, than in previous versions. Air Force Command explains own failure, that missiles approached on extreme low altitude, so it was hard to detect them timely. 

Russian Kh-101 fly over Caspian sea to Ukraine

 

Heartbreaking.

All kinds of social media platforms are also just absolutely swarming with pro-russian denialists lately, too. Missile type this, missile type that. 

The boldfacedness must be part of the psychological warfare against Ukrainians. Even I feel wary when I see them and I am not involved.

Luckily this forum is keeping a high standard.

[zinz]

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/07/first-russian-navy-ship-seen-in-base-in-abkhazi-separatist-region-of-georgia/

Quote

A Russian Navy Ship has been observed in Ochamchire, in the Abkhazia separatist region. The Black Sea port may become an important base for the Russian Navy, acting as a safe refuge from the Ukrainian surface drones. It is officially Georgian territory however, making the move politically bold, and complicated.

 

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, holoween said:

Comparing the publically available data between the IDF and UA is not exactly straight forward.

The ukrainian units regularly posting videos get additional funding from donations brought in by the videos so they are heavily incentivized to publish as much as possible. They also have an easy time creating the videos from the drones video stream.

The IDF like practically all militaries doesnt want their troops filming so anyone creating videos is at risk of getting in trouble. They also have to put a dedicated camera on the vehicle and have to have it running at the correct time.

So even if fpv hitting a tank and aps intercepting a munition happened exactly the same ammount wed expect to see far more evidence of it publically of the former. So id suggest some caution when disregarding certain things purely based on posted video evidence.

 

You know this is a fair point.  However, the scale of conflict is not even close and that has to count for something as well. The IDF is fighting a terrorist/insurgency.  It has done so for a long time, however by definition the intensity is much lower.  Ukraine is in the largest conventional peer war since Iran-Iraq, and the largest in Europe since WW2.  One has to accept the sample data is reflecting reality. The UA has put hundreds of thousands of FPVs into the field. Proportional to their field use we are probably seeing a small fraction on social media.  The IDF may be more restrictive, but Hamas and Hezbollah are not, neither are civilians so other data sources exist.

It is simply not credible to try and equate the use of Trophy to the use of FPVs (which was the crux of the situation) based on video evidence.  Or to suggest that the IDF is suppressing the effectiveness of a defensive system to such a degree that we are somehow not able to really understand its potential. The reality is the system has seen use, in a low intensity war. The reality of the unmanned space in Ukraine is a mountain of evidence from both sides, including an entire operational phase last winter.  To point to Trophy and selectively declare it a wide scale success, while saying “hey wait a minute” on FPV use in Ukraine is inconsistent and disingenuous.

[Carolus]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/07/10/destroying-russian-tanks-is-just-the-start-for-us-ai-drone-autopilot/

Article on a drone with AI guidance from the USA, already in use in Ukraine.

 

Edited July 11 by Carolus

[The_Capt]

8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

So what you are saying is all the Ukrainian sources we've read that attributed their ability to hold out to drones alone are insulting themselves?  And the Russian sources that corroborated this position were insulting themselves too? 

Did you fail to read the recent posted statement from a Ukrainian unit, when asked about artillery shell supply now, that they are quite pleased with it because they previously had ONE SHELL per day per gun?  Was this officer being insulting?

Would you have found it insulting if these same sources said that Ukraine managed to hold on because of tanks?  I doubt it.

The fact is that any strategic level assessment is going to have nuances and uneven cases to examine.  However, trends within that assessment should be evident.  And the evidence is that prior to this winter Ukraine relied heavily on artillery to keep the Russians at bay.  The evidence is that during this winter drones largely took over when shell supplies dwindled to levels too low to be strategically effective.

This is not just a couple of people on this Forum saying this, it is coming from multiple sources on both sides of the fight, borne out by subject matter experts.

It is not insulting to acknowledge what those sources say, it is insulting to dismiss them because they conflict with your personal point of view.

Steve

I have ignored the guy.  He declares in one post that artillery is still doing most the work.  And when I raise the fact that Ukraine did not have artillery and were using drones as an ad hoc replacement…now  artillery was “but one system”.

We know that the UA was in dire straights last winter. Short on just about everything due to hold ups in US Congress. What they did have was commercial FPV drones with RPG warheads, and undermanned infantry. The RA after Adiivka pushed hard and continuously along many fronts.  The daily losses for the RA were the highest in the war. I suspect they were hoping for a breakthrough. We know the reliance on FPVs was heavy because 1) the UA had little else for ranged fires and 2) the RA was reporting the threat and began a series of adaptations to try and counter.

The result: the RA were held back. The combination of C4ISR and unmanned systems superiority held - but it was a close run thing. The UA had to cede ground.

As to ArmouredTopHat - I call “agenda”.  The pattern of hijacking, wall-eyed assessment, cherry picking and now the time honoured “righteous indignation” along with some bizarre morale fall back position is a clear sign. This poster is not here to learn anything.  He is here to promote some sort of agenda. In a first for this thread, it does not appear to be political, which is nice for once.  I don’t know if he works for industry, or is going to try and build cred and then go political. Or maybe it is simply personal because, reasons.

Either way, I have added him to my ignore list for the simple reason that he has said everything he is going to say. Every post is a variation on repeated themes. Every angle coming from the same direction. This is not good counter-thinking or critical analysis - we have others like holoween for that. This is promotion of a position without evidence and countering every other one…because they are other ones.  It distracts from the main point of this thread which is an open-eyed, open source analysis of the war.

Now, I do not advocate banning - and I know Steve wouldn’t based on this alone - but I for one am turning him off and getting back to the war at hand.

[Edit:  and of course evidence of FPVs last winter because I would not want to “insult” :

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/04/24/why-is-russia-losing-the-fpv-drone-war/

https://en.defence-ua.com/analysis/detailed_fpv_drone_usage_statistics_show_russias_starting_to_outpace_ukraine-9361.html (this one is interesting as the RA got in the game as well).

https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/03/22/both-ukraine-and-russia-rapidly-increase-the-use-of-fpv-drones-challenging-conventional-trench-fortifications/

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/weathering-storm-western-security-assistance-defensive-ukraine

Edited July 11 by The_Capt

[ArmouredTopHat]

38 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

As to ArmouredTopHat - I call “agenda”.  The pattern of hijacking, wall-eyed assessment, cherry picking and now the time honoured “righteous indignation” along with some bizarre morale fall back position is a clear sign. This poster is not here to learn anything.  He is here to promote some sort of agenda. In a first for this thread, it does not appear to be political, which is nice for once.  I don’t know if he works for industry, or is going to try and build cred and then go political. Or maybe it is simply personal because, reasons.

Either way, I have added him to my ignore list for the simple reason that he has said everything he is going to say. Every post is a variation on repeated themes. Every angle coming from the same direction. This is not good counter-thinking or critical analysis - we have others like holoween for that. This is promotion of a position without evidence and countering every other one…because they are other ones.  It distracts from the main point of this thread which is an open-eyed, open source analysis of the war.

Now, I do not advocate banning - and I know Steve wouldn’t based on this alone - but I for one am turning him off and getting back to the war at hand.

Well, that's one way to shunt what was initially an very good first impression to why the hell did I even bother taking the time of day to respond to this person in the first place. Truly Disappointing. 

A true cherry on top being that I must have an agenda rather than daring to have my own opinions on a subject. I am sure Rheinmetall is so desperate that they sent me as an agent onto a video game forum to drum up support. 

Edited July 11 by ArmouredTopHat

[chuckdyke]

David Fletcher of the tank museum. Had a pearler, if you disagree with me you better keep it for yourself. 

[ArmouredTopHat]

This continues to be very vexing

[ArmouredTopHat]

Some interesting information on the Polish K2 acquisition which seems to be taking on board a number of notes from the Ukraine war. 

[cesmonkey]

 

[The_Capt]

There are Chinese troops training in Belarus?  Huh?

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/china-tells-nato-not-to-create-chaos-in-asia-and-rejects-label-of-enabler-of-russia-s-ukraine-war-1.6959540

[Carolus]

21 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

There are Chinese troops training in Belarus?  Huh?

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/china-tells-nato-not-to-create-chaos-in-asia-and-rejects-label-of-enabler-of-russia-s-ukraine-war-1.6959540

That was announced a few days ago. Joint exercises near the Polish border.

It got the BRICS crowd very excited.

[TheVulture]

South Korea has announced that Hanwha Aerospace is starting mass production of Block-I, a cheap laser anti-drone system: https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-news/industry/hanwha-starts-producing-block-i-laser-weapon

The claimed cost per shot is around $1.50, although given that research costs have been over $50M, and the manufacturing contract is another $75M (rounding up slightly), then at $1.50 is somewhat misleading. But like the UK dragonfire, its another claimed attempt at a low-cost lasre anti-drone system, and one that might end up in Ukraine in short order given South Korea's deals with Ukraine (and Poland) already.

Quote

South Korean firm Hanwha Aerospace started production on 11 July of a new anti-aircraft laser weapon, the country's Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) announced.

DAPA said the start of production follows a contract it signed with Hanwha Aerospace in late June to produce the ‘Laser Based Anti-Aircraft Weapon Block-I' for the Republic of Korea (RoK) Armed Forces. Under the contract, which is valued at KRW100 billion (USD72.5 million), deliveries of an unknown number of systems will start later in 2024.

“This laser anti-aircraft weapon (Block-I) is a new-concept future weapon system that neutralises targets by directly irradiating them with a light-source laser generated from an optical fibre,” DAPA said. “[The system] can precisely strike small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and multicopters at close range.”

DAPA said the Block-I system is “silent, does not require ammunition, and can be operated only with electricity”. It said the cost of a single firing of the weapon is about KRW2,000. [About $1.50]

 

Edited July 11 by TheVulture

[keas66]

Sarcastosaurus's last few emails this week  have been diving into  problems  at the top of the command chain in Ukraine . Makes for some uncomfortable reading  .

[Carolus]

Quote

We remind you that hybrid operations against Allies may reach the level of an armed attack and may force the North Atlantic Council to invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty," NATO members added.

Some "subliminal messaging".

I wonder which NATO states got so angry about the Russian arson attempts that they wanted to have this included in the summit statement. The US must have okayed it.

Edited July 11 by Carolus

[holoween]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

You know this is a fair point.  However, the scale of conflict is not even close and that has to count for something as well. The IDF is fighting a terrorist/insurgency.  It has done so for a long time, however by definition the intensity is much lower.  Ukraine is in the largest conventional peer war since Iran-Iraq, and the largest in Europe since WW2.  One has to accept the sample data is reflecting reality. The UA has put hundreds of thousands of FPVs into the field. Proportional to their field use we are probably seeing a small fraction on social media.  The IDF may be more restrictive, but Hamas and Hezbollah are not, neither are civilians so other data sources exist.

It is simply not credible to try and equate the use of Trophy to the use of FPVs (which was the crux of the situation) based on video evidence.  Or to suggest that the IDF is suppressing the effectiveness of a defensive system to such a degree that we are somehow not able to really understand its potential. The reality is the system has seen use, in a low intensity war. The reality of the unmanned space in Ukraine is a mountain of evidence from both sides, including an entire operational phase last winter.  To point to Trophy and selectively declare it a wide scale success, while saying “hey wait a minute” on FPV use in Ukraine is inconsistent and disingenuous.

The conflicts Israel has been in have certainly been sufficient to make a judgement on the combat effectiveness of the APS. The weapons its supposed to counter (rpgs and atgm) are abundant in the conflicts theyve been in and it has also been in the most challenging environment for countering those threats.

And PFVs effectiveness is entirely unrelated. Noone doubts their effectiveness in general the questions really revolve around pinning down precisely how effective and finding out in which situations they arent as effective to inform how to possibly counter them.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Timely paper from RUSI by Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds

Tactical Lessons from Israel Defense Forces Operations in Gaza, 2023

The sporadic anti-tank guided missile and persistent RPG threat – often manifesting from a 30–50-m distance from IDF vehicles – posed a challenge for active protection systems (APS). Where APS had either been turned off, did not have a sufficient line of sight between the sensor and the threat, or had already been expended, hits were achieved on IDF vehicles. Nevertheless, while Hamas believed that APS could be defeated with close engagements, this problem was resolved through software updates. In most cases, APS proved effective, although the distance between armour and infantry for APS to be fielded safely also offered Hamas fighters the opportunity to come in extremely close proximity to some vehicles. Nevertheless, it was found that having pairs of vehicles operate in intimate support helped to increase their survivability, as the APS could often overlap and thereby increase the magazine depth to protect the vehicles.

Edited July 11 by Vanir Ausf B

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, holoween said:

The conflicts Israel has been in have certainly been sufficient to make a judgement on the combat effectiveness of the APS. The weapons its supposed to counter (rpgs and atgm) are abundant in the conflicts theyve been in and it has also been in the most challenging environment for countering those threats.

I challenge this without further data. Looking it online the operational history notes perhaps two dozen cases over about ten years.  Even if we assume it is twice that, that is pretty sporadic.  And then there has really been not been much on the details of the threat.  How many of these were advanced ATGM systems, and how many were older? The fact that the RA is using 30 year old tanks keeps getting brought up as rational, how old are those Hamas and Hez AT systems?

The one area the IDF does have the high ground on is urban terrain, I would concede that.

My problem with Trophy and all APS is that trying to prove a defensive system works because "we want it to" is really dangerous. If APS were being used as much as FPVs in this war we would have a much better dataset to pull from.  And a contemporary environment around them. To extrapolate from IDF small war/COIN operations to peer high intensity long duration combat is introducing too many error points.

8 minutes ago, holoween said:

And PFVs effectiveness is entirely unrelated. Noone doubts their effectiveness in general the questions really revolve around pinning down precisely how effective and finding out in which situations they arent as effective to inform how to possibly counter them.

I would argue that the exact same issues surround APS - "pinning down precisely how effective and finding out in which situations they aren't as effective to inform how to possibly counter them."  However, some have leapt past this and made some dangerous assumptions.

Let me underline something here - FPV/UAS dominance is not a good thing. When military theories break stuff like the Fall of France '40 happen. The only way to make it worse is to start wishing away these impacts and hiding in the sand. Grabbing IDF employment of APS and dragging it into this war simply makes no sense.  APS might work, we are going to see more of them because that is all we have right now. But wrapping ourselves in some warm blanket of "it will all be ok" is a bad idea.

Anyone who has been in combat will tell you to "become the mouse" - Herbert was onto something there.  The mouse is always afraid and aware. Never sticks its neck out unless it has to and never assumes it is safe.  That is what makes combat so exhausting. You never really sleep. Everything is a threat, all the time. You are looking everywhere at once. And through all that you still have to get the job done. There is no such thing as "paranoia" in combat; everything really is out to kill you. "God I hope this all works" is pretty much the mantra soldiers live by. This is what the thousand yard stare is all about...exhaustion: when a soldier just stops caring and looks at nothing. Time to rotate them off the line at that point.

So we need to stop cherry picking our data here and look at it all.  Right now we know EW works...to a point, but it is not enough to stop hundreds of strikes per week. Cope cages and barns don't really work. Guns shooting into the air do not work. APS has not been seen on this battlefield by either side really. ATGMs still work. Artillery definitely works. FPVs/drones are definitely working. ISR is working. Manoeuvre is not working. Air works but is stand-off.  Cyber is out there but has not been decisive in any measurable way. Infantry still work, but they are stressed and their vehicles do not survive long.  Tanks do not work as intended.  They are lobbing shells and coming forward to snipe but in their main role as the steel tip of manoeuvre they do not work. Logistics works but I suspect it has made some major shifts.

This battlefield has not gone static because the Russians or Ukrainians have forgotten how to employ combined arms.  it has gone static because the way we used to do combined arms does not work there. So what do they do now?

[The_Capt]

15 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

Timely paper from RUSI by Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds

Tactical Lessons from Israel Defense Forces Operations in Gaza, 2023

The sporadic anti-tank guided missile and persistent RPG threat – often manifesting from a 30–50-m distance from IDF vehicles – posed a challenge for active protection systems (APS). Where APS had either been turned off, did not have a sufficient line of sight between the sensor and the threat, or had already been expended, hits were achieved on IDF vehicles. Nevertheless, while Hamas believed that APS could be defeated with close engagements, this problem was resolved through software updates. In most cases, APS proved effective, although the distance between armour and infantry for APS to be fielded safely also offered Hamas fighters the opportunity to come in extremely close proximity to some vehicles. Nevertheless, it was found that having pairs of vehicles operate in intimate support helped to increase their survivability, as the APS could often overlap and thereby increase the magazine depth to protect the vehicles.

It is really hard to find hard data on this.  Do an internet search and you get a lot of Raphael ads and industry spin doctoring.  "Thousands of lives" and "hundreds of times" comes up.  We can say that the system has not been tested in the environment of Ukraine nor in a war of this intensity and threat levels.

Beyond that, sure it is an APS system that has worked in Israel and probably worked well.  How well and against what threats is vague.

[chrisl]

5 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Sorry, to clarify I meant reaching orbit without the assistance of another system IE a weapon system capable of reaching orbit on its own. 

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

That's just a rocket.  It's been done with one launched from a fighter jet, too.

College rocketry classes don't quite get stuff to orbit, but it's not far from that.  But nobody is set up to send hundreds of rockets up to intercept satellites in large numbers (hundreds to thousands) and as already described by @hcrof - it's a self-destructive kind of thing.  If you have the capability to do it in that quantity, you probably have a lot of incentive not to, too.  

[chrisl]

3 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Well, that's one way to shunt what was initially an very good first impression to why the hell did I even bother taking the time of day to respond to this person in the first place. Truly Disappointing. 

A true cherry on top being that I must have an agenda rather than daring to have my own opinions on a subject. I am sure Rheinmetall is so desperate that they sent me as an agent onto a video game forum to drum up support. 

You might do better if you read back through the whole thread and get yourself up to date on everything that's been discussed, including the changes in doctrine over time on both sides due to resource changes.  It's all been covered in a lot of detail, multiple times.  As things change it's sometimes useful to revisit them, but it gets old when it gets into stuff that's already been addressed repeatedly.  You can make it easier by just reading every third page (and in between when there are exchanges that span multiple pages).  Or maybe if you want to advocate for massive multiparameter AI fits you could see if ChatGPT will give you credible and accurate summaries on various topics.

[FancyCat]

Orban is due to meet with Trump following visiting Moscow. Optics arent great tbh.

Uh...on one hand sure, German artillery shells are killing Russians in Ukraine, on the other hand....I suppose the SBU will be looking at Russian executives more closely now.

Quote

 US intelligence discovered earlier this year that the Russian government planned to assassinate the chief executive of a powerful German arms manufacturer that has been producing artillery shells and military vehicles for Ukraine, according to five US and western officials familiar with the episode.

The plot was one of a series of Russian plans to assassinate defense industry executives across Europe who were supporting Ukraine’s war effort, these sources said. The plan to kill Armin Papperger, a white-haired goliath who has led the German manufacturing charge in support of Kyiv, was the most mature.

When the Americans learned of the effort, they informed Germany, whose security services were then able to protect Papperger and foil the plot. A high-level German government official confirmed that Berlin was warned about the plot by the US.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/us-germany-foiled-russian-assassination-plot/index.html