How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

Can you recommend a book on this little episode, because I think I am a history nerd, and I am clueless on this one. Comments that folks think I am clueless on everything are unnecessary, I know how you feel, you are only right half the time, and I am a stunning genius about socks. 

Hehe, I was not aware you were the initiator of Great socks Debate here, nothing against it. If you are interested in Great Smuta events, any good history of Russia in english language should mention it. There are many poems, operas and books in Russian about Boris Godunov, Maryna Mniszchówna and whole row of False Dmytry's (seriously, this woman recognized two "miraclously" survived tsars as prerenders to the throne and married them; later there was also a third and even fourth).

About battle of Klushino, History Mache channel get it just about (not entirely) right;:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwYpeZ0fJjw

Books and sources in English may be difficult to find; Norman Davies in his God's Playground have several pages about it. There are undoubtedly also some specialist articles in english, can search tomorrow if you have some specific topics in mind.

46 minutes ago, chrisl said:

There's a blast from the past.  About 10% of those 400 years ago I did a report on False Dmitry in a high school Russian History class.

Yup, definitelly very dramatic period of history. Bloody and gory even acording to standards of that times and place. And apparently crucially important from the point of view of modern Tsars- XVI/XVII cent. was formative period for relations between Russian society and its Kremlin masters. If we want to answer questions like "Why Iranian schoolgirls appear to have more civil courage than most Russian men" one would need to do very deep dive into Russian history.

32 minutes ago, acrashb said:

And, to keep this a bit more war-oriented, apparently the Switchblades made in part with natural-gas created energy and possibly natural gas-created plastics are doing good work in Ukraine:

Interesting. There was a lot of discussions about Switchblades/Phoenix Ghosts at the start of the conflict, but now they seem almost completelly forgotten. There were barely 3-4 videos of their use I am aware of; they are almost entirely overshadowed by small copters.

Edited October 7, 2022 by Beleg85

[cesmonkey]

 

[TheVulture]

Putin gets a tractor from Lukashenko as a 70th birthday present. Perhaps they think, based on what everyone has seen in Ukraine, that this is the way to start restocking the Russian tank stocks.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63176124

 

[acrashb]

23 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Interesting. There was a lot of discussions about Switchblades/Phoenix Ghosts at the start of the conflict, but now they seem almost completelly forgotten. There were barely 3-4 videos of their use I am aware of; they are almost entirely overshadowed by small copters.

Cool name / new weapon system / much secrecy == Wunderwaffe == "lot of discussions".

Then it dies off in favour of the latest thing.  Either Switchblades had a less strategic impact than HIMARS - likely - and/or the use of Switchblade has been obscured because of OPSEC, and because it could be readily obscured given the smallest Switchblade weighs 5.5 pounds all in and M31A1 GMLRS has about 200 pounds of HE alone.

[chuckdyke]

Nice if they bunch up like that. Even our animations spread out sensibly. At least more sensibly than this. Or they followed a path concerned about mines?

 

[Calamine Waffles]

5 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Yes, we have (though there are several versions of MRE and some w/o heaters), but Ukrainains are always Ukrainans - if situation allows to cook, soldiers prefer to eat "fresh home meal".  Also civil volunteers supply troops with home-made borshch in cans, varenyky and other food, which are cooking other volunteers. This is not big part of food supply, but soldiers have access to different sources of food, including "shtat" field kitchens

Around the beginning of the war Steve1989 did a review of the Ukrainian MRE and he had some good things to say about it
 

 

[sburke]

55 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

Putin gets a tractor from Lukashenko as a 70th birthday present. Perhaps they think, based on what everyone has seen in Ukraine, that this is the way to start restocking the Russian tank stocks.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63176124

man is he punking Putin?

[Jiggathebauce]

13 minutes ago, sburke said:

man is he punking Putin?

Right? It's more something I would expect Zelensky to send to Putin

[Probus]

2 hours ago, poesel said:

(the numbering is off due to quoting - Germany is 8th)

A bit off-topic, but at 4x the size, the US uses 10x the gas compared to Germany. I thought we were squandering the stuff. What is the US doing with it?

Zeppelins!

[FancyCat]

3 hours ago, Twisk said:

It is impressive size of Russian production. Also important that Russia has larger surplus than United States. Almost double surplus to trade. Gives good idea of shortfalls that can happen. If I am understanding nordstream 1 is destroyed so all or most natural gas flow to Europe from Russia is now ended?

German consumption alone is nearly all U.S. surplus!

 

(This is gas but....also about the cause of the war)

There are pipelines thru Poland and Ukraine that still bring gas to Europe, part of the reason why Poland and Ukraine strongly opposed Nord Stream was the risk of Russia skipping Poland and Ukraine and supplying their customers in Western and Central Europe without paying transit fees to Poland and Ukraine and in the event Poland and Ukraine wished to impose costs to Europe or to Russia, (say in the event of invasion....) the fear was Nord Stream would facilitate Western Europe betraying Poland and Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe with Russian gas flowing via Nord Stream.

While this is a reason for Poland or Ukraine to destroy Nord Stream, such a risky action that if discovered would destroy relations in Europe combined with Ukraine being absolutely fine with the gas flowing to Europe even as Ukrainian and Russians war on Ukrainian soil indicates that Ukraine understands the need for Europe to get their gas and is fine with letting it thru. (As long as Ukraine gets its portion of the transit fees, a very large amount ofmoney)

As for why shipping LNG can't occur to make up for Russian loss like from the U.S, from February but still applies,

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/brimming-european-lng-terminals-have-limited-space-more-gas-2022-02-17/

The capacity of ship based LNG is maxed out, and infrastructure projects to bring online additional terminals take time.

 

[cyrano01]

On 10/6/2022 at 7:04 PM, dan/california said:

 

 

 

When your calvary is sabering their artillery, you are winning. As true now as it was 500 years ago.

 

The Light Brigade would like a word, Crimea - first time around.

[LongLeftFlank]

1.  Interdiction. Ilovaisk is a very important rail stop just behind Donetsk city (40km to front)

(SpecialKhersonCat):  Locals claim that the explosions were in the area of railway station.  Also, some sources state that “mobilized Russians lived in railway cars who were trained near Ilovaisk.  Near the cars were tanks with fuel and ammunition.

2.  About these actions on the 'frozen front' in front of Donetsk.

3.  What airdefence drinking?

 

Edited October 8, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[sross112]

Ran across this article about Spain sending more M113s to Ukraine. Seems from recent videos that they are being used a lot and now that they have had them for awhile one would hope more would be found and sent. As prolific as the Gavin it was you'd think there should be quite a few that could be brought out of storage from around the world.

https://en.topwar.ru/199968-ispanija-pristupila-k-otpravke-na-ukrainu-partii-snjatyh-s-konservacii-bronetransporterov-m113.html

edit: I believe the vast majority of straight APCs were taken out of service quite awhile ago but there were so many AA, AT, command and other specialized vehicles you'd think some of them would start appearing.

Edited October 8, 2022 by sross112
Triggered Splinty

[Splinty]

6 minutes ago, sross112 said:

Ran across this article about Spain sending more M113s to Ukraine. Seems from recent videos that they are being used a lot and now that they have had them for awhile one would hope more would be found and sent. As prolific as the Gavin was you'd think there should be quite a few that could be brought out of storage from around the world.

https://en.topwar.ru/199968-ispanija-pristupila-k-otpravke-na-ukrainu-partii-snjatyh-s-konservacii-bronetransporterov-m113.html

edit: I believe the vast majority of straight APCs were taken out of service quite awhile ago but there were so many AA, AT, command and other specialized vehicles you'd think some of them would start appearing.

Please don't ever call a 113 a Gavin again. Speaking as a former mech infantryman, no one EVER in the history of the track called it that except for some random internet guy.

[chuckdyke]

1 hour ago, Splinty said:

Please don't ever call a 113 a Gavin again.

Recycling Bin should be OK then. Some militaries named them as such.

[dan/california]

HOLY BLEEP, you have to check the picture!

Might not be enough to drop it, but holy bleep!

[LongLeftFlank]

8 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Recycling Bin should be OK then. Some militaries named them as such.

Ha, when you google 'Purple Heart box' it takes about 3 pages to get something relevant.

[Harmon Rabb]

1 minute ago, dan/california said:

HOLY BLEEP, you have to check the picture!

Might not be enough to drop it, but holy bleep!

Happy birthday Vlad.

[chrisl]

6 minutes ago, dan/california said:

HOLY BLEEP, you have to check the picture!

Might not be enough to drop it, but holy bleep!

Rail bridge or road?  Ideally they hit the rail first and leave one road lane open for a while.

[FancyCat]

 

[chrisl]

Another view says road span and apparently shows it buckled and in the water, but also the rail bridge on fire.

(ninjaed by seconds because I was staring at the picture too long trying to sort out what's going on with the road)

Edited October 8, 2022 by chrisl

[LongLeftFlank]

20 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Another view says road span and apparently shows it buckled and in the water, but also the rail bridge on fire.

(ninjaed by seconds because I was staring at the picture too long trying to sort out what's going on with the road)

Wow, they not only hit 2 spans but seem to have immolated a fuel/POL train crossing one!  14 flammable cars, that ain't going out soon.  This is a WTC melts structural steel kind of fire.

Hold my beer!

 

Edited October 8, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[sburke]

18 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

 

Happy Birthday Vlad, Lukashenko is gonna be pissed that all he got you was a tractor.

Edited October 8, 2022 by sburke

[FancyCat]

Magnificent video. Hey, there's still a road span fine. Sounds like a great evacuation route....

 

[chrisl]

20 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Wow, they not only hit 2 spans but seem to have immolated a (fuel/POL? munitions?) train crossing one!

Hold my beer!

I kind of wonder if it was more effective than planned.  That it's a burning fuel train isn't a surprise - if they have an insider they could put a GPS triggered bomb on a fuel car far from the bridge, without necessarily even knowing approximately when it would get there, and set a train on fire on the tracks.

I read an article a while back - I don't recall if it was linked here or I found it on search - that pointed out that the bridge is poorly constructed. I may have found the article because I was digging around and the bridge was built way too fast to believe that there was complete engineering done for the seabed mounts.  

Here's a link to the 2017 article I'd read before: Russia’s Crimea Bridge Could Collapse Anytime

And a second article from 2018: Kerch Strait Bridge to "snap in one moment": Expert explains "point of no return"

Looking at the pictures in the OSINT post it's hard to sort out how many places the road is collapsed. The first picture shows two steep "ramps" but the ones that show the rail bridge burning up close show a supported span that's ramping down to one of the landfalls and that's had several of the road spans collapse.

edit: now I see it's the same road span, but the steep ramps are later in time after the spans have fully dropped.  From the buckling of the steel on the rail span it looks like burning fuel might have blown out the side of the tank car onto the road span, and the heat from the fuel (and maybe burning asphalt surface?) weakened the road supports enough to drop.  They look blackened in the Andrew Perpetua post.

Edited October 8, 2022 by chrisl