How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

4 minutes ago, Hapless said:

@dan/california Seen as though I was eyeballing it.

Having to re-read it to edit this post down only makes it sound crazier.

Thanks!

 

 

[White2Golf]

Appreciate the comments.   Lurk Mode: Re-engaged.

[mosuri]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Any aircraft Russia loses are good to see, but Tu-95MS are the real prize.  A quick search shows that Russia may have as few as 60 of these in total.  They probably have some older mothballed airframes they can put back into service, but even 2 or 3 represents a statistically meaningful decrease in readiness levels.

Steve

The twitter post above also claims "several strategic aviation pilots among the dead" which is an excellent addition.

I do not know which resource is more under pressure, the bears or their pilots, but whittling down both of those hard to replace assets is great news.

Waiting for Peskov to start claiming that attacks on russian strategic aviation are a nuclear strike red line in 3, 2, 1...

[danfrodo]

31 minutes ago, White2Golf said:

Appreciate the comments.   Lurk Mode: Re-engaged.

I didn't read it, so I'll go ahead and comment 

Let's say UKR did cut off and destroy a lot of RU forces.  We know now that Putin is impervious to losses -- he just throws more at the problem, though of course quality in men/equip/training going down continually w this approach.  UKR was not capable of a big offensive operations, so wishing they had done so seems kinda silly.  They won thru some very good active-defensive actions against an overextended enemy.  

[The_Capt]

47 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

If his point was that Ukraine needed to have done better in Feb-April 2022 in order to head off a protracted war, which arguably is to Russia's advantage (i.e. they do have more stuff), that's fine.  I don't think it's particularly relevant unless one can point to specific examples of where Ukraine could have done something vs. wouldn't it have been nice if it had.

If that is his point then he is definitely not a SME in this business.  It was a small miracle that Ukraine survived Feb-Apr ‘22 and managed to repel those initial Russian assaults.  Somehow crushing the RA to the point they would never come back is not a reasonable expectation given conditions.  The RA was severely damaged and still pivoted down south. To attrit the RA past the point where they could do that, given the depth of reserves in Russia, means that the only way to effectively knock Russia out of the war in the first three months militarily would have meant offensives into Russia itself.  Ukraine did not have the capability nor allied support for such an operation.

As to “strategy” vs “tactics” - the first one is about theory, the second about application. The middle, operational, is about keeping those two in the same room and on speaking terms.  Not sure how that applies here.

[MikeyD]

15 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

As to “strategy” vs “tactics”

That brings to mind the old saying attributed to Omar Bradley 'Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics'. That's the big Ukrainian victory. The Russian plan (after their failed coup de main) was to simply run Ukraine out of artillery shells, anti-tank missiles and aircraft then move in, winning by default. But Ukraine didn't run out of artillery shells, ant-tank missiles and aircraft. Russia had done all those costly meat assaults in vain. 

[Ts4EVER]

But logistically, isn't Russia still in advantage?

[hcrof]

31 minutes ago, Ts4EVER said:

But logistically, isn't Russia still in advantage?

Depends on if you isolate the war away from the west's support of Ukraine. Lots of Russia supporters don't/can't grasp that even if Ukraine can't win outright, it won't lose as long a even a few western countries keep the flow of supplies going. I don't think Russia has a plan for that. 

[Battlefront.com]

28 minutes ago, Ts4EVER said:

But logistically, isn't Russia still in advantage?

At the national level, beyond this battlefield?  Sure.  And that was never in doubt.  But at the time of these early battles the question was "will Russia go all in, or settle for something less".  Nobody had a sure answer, though from a Western standpoint the logic was to go for a cease fire.  Obvious Russian logic is different.  To say the least.

On the battlefield at the time, however, one of the biggest failings of the Russian offensive was how crap their logistics were.  They have definitely improved since then, by quite a bit.  I've previously given the Russians kudos for keeping the Kherson bridgehead going despite enormous stress.  Fortunately for Ukraine, that stress caused the opportunity at Kharkiv because Russia didn't have the ability to pull off both while Ukraine did.

I think Russian logistics are now adequate for what is expected of them.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Cross posted with hcrof.  If we expand the view beyond Ukraine and Russia, as hcrof just did, then nope... nationally Russia is at a massive disadvantage in every aspect other than the willingness to lose a lot of people without so much as a societal "that's too bad" shrug.

Steve

[Ts4EVER]

I mean obviously NATO can easily outspend and outproduce Russia, at least long term, but is this actually going to happen? It seems the political will to do that is not that secure.

[photon]

4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think Russian logistics are now adequate for what is expected of them.

Do you have a sense of how they're accomplishing this? It seems like they're doing things that need a big logistical footprint - still firing lots of shells, still using massed armor (?!). But I haven't seen as many videos in the thread of hits on Russian near-front logistical nodes. Just not newsworthy? Or are they more dispersed? How is their supply of trucks and fuel vehicles holding up? Do we have satellite shots of depos like we do for tanks? For a while they were using civilian vehicles for logistics. Has that eased?

[hcrof]

7 minutes ago, Ts4EVER said:

I mean obviously NATO can easily outspend and outproduce Russia, at least long term, but is this actually going to happen? It seems the political will to do that is not that secure.

Russia is spending over 6% of it's GDP on the military right now, which is a very heavy burden. A handful of NATO countries spent a comparable amount of money in Afghanistan every year for 20 years without much effort. 

I have not got the numbers to hand but NATO is not breaking a sweat right now financially, so even if big players like the US pulled out (doubtful, even with trump in charge IMO) they still have the resources to keep going. In a few years industry will catch up to the financing and then NATO can supply Ukraine indefinitely. 

[Haiduk]

6 hours ago, Kinophile said:

 

Possibly 4 airfields 

 

There is an opinion TG Kremlin Secrets (more literally Kremlin Snuffbox) is UKR PsyOps channel, so it may contain classical 40% of true and 60% of lie. 

[The_Capt]

26 minutes ago, photon said:

Do you have a sense of how they're accomplishing this? It seems like they're doing things that need a big logistical footprint - still firing lots of shells, still using massed armor (?!). But I haven't seen as many videos in the thread of hits on Russian near-front logistical nodes. Just not newsworthy? Or are they more dispersed? How is their supply of trucks and fuel vehicles holding up? Do we have satellite shots of depos like we do for tanks? For a while they were using civilian vehicles for logistics. Has that eased?

This is a bit of an unknown right now.  We saw how the RA had to dramatically shift its logistical system when HIMARs were introduced in the Fall of ‘22.  I suspect that the UA is still using them and other long range strike assets to keep RA logistics hopping but we really do not see a lot on this from open source.  The RA cannot really use mass above the company/Bn level right now, so I suspect they are under pressure from deep strike on any massing of logistics as well.

My guess is that the Russians have spread out and thinned out in order to defend a really long front line.  And they only concentrate in small bursts to keep pressure on limited tactical objectives.  If one looks at Oryx we can see that Russia has lost around 3200 logistics vehicles (including 175 fuel trucks!).  That number is higher than tank losses.  So clearly the UA has been effectively targeting logistical lines to effect.

Finally, this is one of the primary reasons I suspect that we are not seeing Russian breakouts.  To do so would mean creating and protecting a long support line, which will likely be cut to pieces by long range strike assets.  This could actually expose any break out force to being cut off and wiped out.  Both sides in this war have taken the safer path of incremental bites in hopes the other side folds back.

 

[Haiduk]

Interesting episode of repelling of Russian armored attack on Terny on 2nd of April. I posted this video and you may pay attantion on the tank with pile of boxes on the turret. As became knowingly this was Tsar-EW-tank, inteded to supress all possible frequencies of UKR FPVs.

 

Next the story about this:

It's Russian armored column has came. Our FPVs were falling down like flies on all frequencies, because on leading tank the EW-monster drove. Mad Max is relaxing here. On the pallet Russians assembled monsterous construction from everything equipment that they had. Three panels of patch-antennas 800/900/2.4/5.8 around and to all this were added blocks on 700-1000 ranges. Upper on some planks and around. All this was tied with ropes. On the armor also was mounted generator and batteries. There was too hard for our pilots, but quess if it kept EW the tank? No. Our brave pilots from the row of units hit them. Further with other armor became much easier.

 

And describing of the same episode from DeepState.

Before the column moved at 14:00, Russian TOS-1A has driven forward for preliminary bombarding of our positions, but was timely spotted and hit. 

At 16:00 we spotted th ecolumn of 6 tanks, coming from Zhytlivka direction. It's interesting that Tsar-EW tank moved in the head of column. It was destroyed later, you can see photos in Flash's TG. This Frankenstain was destroyed by the drone of 60th mech.brigade with additional homing (meant "machine eye"?). Two more tanks were hit by FPVs of 63rd mech.brigade. 

The moment of Tsar-EW was hit bt drone

In parallel way, the movement of column turned out in shooting range. 12th NGU regiment "Azov", 95th air-assault brigade, 21st mech.brigade, 60th mech.brigade, 63rd mech.brigade started to heap on Russians with everything what was possible. As result from 6 armors only 1 could flee. 

Since some time katsap box arrived to embark scattered infantrym bvut was destroyed too. 

Next day, 3rd of April next TOS-1A came forward, but again was destroyed by "Azov"

On 4th of April one more tank was destroyed here. 

 

 

Edited April 5 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

Satellite images of Yeysk airbase. For 5th of April we can see presumably one damaged aircraft

 

 

Edited April 5 by Haiduk

[poesel]

6 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

This Frankenstain was destroyed by the drone of 60th mech.brigade with additional homing (meant "machine eye"?). Two more tanks were hit by FPVs of 63rd mech.brigade. 

I guess this is the AI part: an optical system that can track the tank with a camera. Probably the operator needs to point out the target once and then it is autonomous. No amount of EW can defeat that (unless you can fry the drone with microwaves).

[Haiduk]

It's unclear what exactly hits small drone on the video, but it's claimed unknown drone hit one of several working radars in Transnistria, which could track our aircraft in Odesa oblast and to share information with Russia

Transnistria allegedly has some P-12 (?) radars, but maybe western sources confused P-12 and P-18, because P-12 is very old stuff, adopted as far as in 1958 and even later upgrades are not younger that the end of 60th. I doubt this old sh..t could be kept in working conditions.

 

 

Edited April 5 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

First combat usage of haeavy octocopter with mounted machine-gun. Before we could see experiments, but lookls like more than year was need to complete works and test the system in real combat

 

[Haiduk]

Israeli ballistic missiles on the road. US intelligence warned Israel that Iran may strike between 5th and 10th of April.

 

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, Ts4EVER said:

I mean obviously NATO can easily outspend and outproduce Russia, at least long term, but is this actually going to happen? It seems the political will to do that is not that secure.

However it certainly seems to be hardening. 

[Haiduk]

MERA (meat ERA) did own work, BMP is survived after assault %)

 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

At 16:00 we spotted th ecolumn of 6 tanks, coming from Zhytlivka direction. It's interesting that Tsar-EW tank moved in the head of column. It was destroyed later, you can see photos in Flash's TG. This Frankenstain was destroyed by the drone of 60th mech.brigade with additional homing (meant "machine eye"?). Two more tanks were hit by FPVs of 63rd mech.brigade. 

Are we talking fully autonomous when they say "machine eye"?

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, poesel said:

I guess this is the AI part: an optical system that can track the tank with a camera. Probably the operator needs to point out the target once and then it is autonomous. No amount of EW can defeat that (unless you can fry the drone with microwaves).

And the lead tank was basically screaming "shoot me first! shoot me first!" on every frequency.  Anything using its radio for target homing instead of communication will make a beeline toward it.  So if it wasn't an optical/AI drone, it could have been an anti-radiation drone.