How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[JonS]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I did read somewhere that someone has either built or is planning on building drones that can get an acoustical bearing.  Put a bunch of those up in a sector of front and it should allow for good detection and triangulation, would it not?

In principle, yeah, that should work. The trick with sound ranging is sensitive timing, and accurate survey of the sensors. That's so you know that all the sensors are hearing the same 'bang!', and then triangulate accurately based on the minute time differences of sound wave arrival at each sensor. A good gps chip in each drone would solve both problems. Oh, a pretty decent microphone would help a lot too.

The other tricks would relate to networking the sensors/drones, and accurate sound wave identification ("is that a D-30 firing, or the cannon on a T-62?"), but both of those are - I believe - largely solved problems, even if not in this specific application. And neither of them need to be solved on the drone - it could be handled at a remote datacentre in  say, Utah.

The drones themselves would be transmitting fairly constantly, which is inherently risky for the drones, but ... eh. War is a dangerous business.

Edited October 25, 2022 by JonS

[JonS]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

 Didn’t JonS and I lock horns over what exactly “modern combined arms” actually means?  

We did?

[Butschi]

3 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Ok, but why you assumed this is first war of its kind? This is basically the same army that participated in other wars, more or less symatrical. In all of them it underperformed at literally the same fields from last...well 100 years at least.

Because it was the first war during the last... well 100 years at least with drones, HIMARS, Javelin, NLAW, etc. Sorry if this answer is a bit flippant but I thought I had made it sufficiently clear that I wasn't talking about all the other wars that Russia participated in and in which it may or may not have sucked. I was specifically talking about this war because I think there are a lot of new concepts, etc. involved that haven't been there in previous wars, or at least not at this scale. As I said you may disagree, but really this assumption is not that unreasonable to make. Steve has brought up some very valid points contradicting it but it is not that all out stupid that you have to compare it to "flat social media".

[Beleg85]

2 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Because it was the first war during the last... well 100 years at least with drones, HIMARS, Javelin, NLAW, etc. Sorry if this answer is a bit flippant but I thought I had made it sufficiently clear that I wasn't talking about all the other wars that Russia participated in and in which it may or may not have sucked. I was specifically talking about this war because I think there are a lot of new concepts, etc. involved that haven't been there in previous wars, or at least not at this scale. As I said you may disagree, but really this assumption is not that unreasonable to make. Steve has brought up some very valid points contradicting it but it is not that all out stupid that you have to compare it to "flat social media".

Ok, sorry on my part if sounded too harsh. I just mean we shouldn't focus too much on formal expressions since we have entire board to explain in details what anybody means. Which is a blessing compared to usual social media, where by necessity people often simply misunderstand what they talk about.

[womble]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I did read somewhere that someone has either built or is planning on building drones that can get an acoustical bearing.  Put a bunch of those up in a sector of front and it should allow for good detection and triangulation, would it not?

 

Kinda like the "shot spotter" systems used in some US (maybe wider, but I don't think there are many places rich enough with enough gunfire events per annum to justify the investment) municipalities.

[dan/california]

For the Russia really does suck file...

[Sojourner]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

In other news... you know that US House of Reps "can't we just make peace" letter we were roasting yesterday?  Well, there was really no need for us to do that.  You see, it was all just a clerical error that caused a months old letter to be released without proper vetting.  Now that they realized that is the case, the letter has been formally withdrawn:

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3703331-progressive-caucus-withdraws-letter-on-ukraine-strategy-amid-blowback/

The odd part is at the end of the Democrat's announcement where they asked if we believed it and if so are we in the market to buy a bridge in NYC

Steve

More likely because Biden replied, "Thanks for your concern, I have a team of negotiators standing by."

 

U.S. 101st Airborne Division deployed near Ukraine's border

 

Sun, October 23, 2022, 4:00 PM

 

 

The 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, now headquartered in Europe for the first time since World War II. Charlie D'Agata joined America's most forward troops near Ukraine's border.

[Artkin]

Deleted:)

Edited October 25, 2022 by Artkin

[Letter from Prague]

 

[kevinkin]

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3703331-progressive-caucus-withdraws-letter-on-ukraine-strategy-amid-blowback/

Russian moles are everywhere still. Jayapal needs to know "The only way to nix it is to Terminix it."

[Fenris]

Inside a T-62 I believe

 

[MikeyD]

The first film I saw of an inside of a T62 was in a 1982(?) PBS special on the Red Army featuring a VERY young Steve Zaloga as 'weapons expert'. And here we have another interior video that's a duplicate of the one from 3 decades ago,

[Huba]

Here's an interesting, if unverified, claim regarding the "Wagner Line":

And also an important voice in the "russia sux' discussion:

Edited October 25, 2022 by Huba

[OldSarge]

27 minutes ago, Huba said:

Here's an interesting, if unverified, claim regarding the "Wagner Line":

And also an important voice in the "russia sux' discussion:

Well done, sir! Assuming the photo is authentic, the great Wagner line, the mighty AT barrier made from styrofoam! Next we will see the mighty Lego wall. None shall pass!

Edited October 25, 2022 by OldSarge

[Huba]

8 minutes ago, OldSarge said:

Well done, sir! Assuming the photo is authentic, the great Wagner line, the mighty AT barrier made from styrofoam! Next we will see the mighty Lego wall. None shall pass!

Even if these are indeed made of concrete, on every available picture this blocks just sit there on the ground without being fixed to it. Somebody in the comments made some beer mat math that showed that these weigh less than 500kg - all you need to get the out of the way is a couple guys with a crowbar and some rope some lifting experience, or a car with towing bar.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Huba

[NamEndedAllen]

3 hours ago, Sojourner said:

More likely because Biden replied, "Thanks for your concern, I have a team of negotiators standing by."

This was brilliant! There should be an award of the day for it!!

[OldSarge]

More NASAMS are on their way to Ukraine.

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2022/10/25/ukraine-bound-nasams-are-in-us-hands-now-raytheon/

 

[chrisl]

51 minutes ago, Huba said:

Here's an interesting, if unverified, claim regarding the "Wagner Line":

And also an important voice in the "russia sux' discussion:

Time to go back and look at the loaded trucks dropping them off a little more closely to see how loaded they look.

[Huba]

Just now, OldSarge said:

More NASAMS are on their way to Ukraine.

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2022/10/25/ukraine-bound-nasams-are-in-us-hands-now-raytheon/

 

I was just about to post it. If they are saying it out loud, it means that the systems are probably in place. This is great news indeed. I'm sure Ukraine will keep even better OPSEC here than it does with HIMARS, but I'd really like to see some pictures to get an idea about what setup Ukrainians got.

[danfrodo]

37 minutes ago, OldSarge said:

More NASAMS are on their way to Ukraine.

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2022/10/25/ukraine-bound-nasams-are-in-us-hands-now-raytheon/

 

Great news.  And hopefully there will soon be sanctions on Iran if it keeps sending weapons to a terrorist state.  I suspect there's a lot of lobbying and threatening going on. And I suspect after the US election Biden admin will be taking a more public hard line against both RU and Iran.

[akd]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

Here's an interesting, if unverified, claim regarding the "Wagner Line":

I like Toblerone Line more than Wagner Line.  Ukrainians are gonna eat it up in one sitting.

Edited October 26, 2022 by akd

[dan/california]

Have I mentioned the importance of winning this thing before the bad guys find somebody with a clue? This would be example B, with the Iranian drones being example A. If the CIA wanted to get off its rear end I sure these gentlemen might be open to an offer from the Ukrainian side as well. The Chechens in Ukraine seem well treated and reasonably integrated, There is no reason these guys couldn't be too. The more I think about I more upset I am someone on the good guys side didn't have the idea first.

Edited October 26, 2022 by dan/california

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, chrisl said:

Time to go back and look at the loaded trucks dropping them off a little more closely to see how loaded they look.

Look at how many pyramids there are and the load rating of the truck...

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Huba said:

Here's an interesting, if unverified, claim regarding the "Wagner Line":

 

With Russia, it doesn't have to be believable for me to think it could be true

I wouldn't put it past Wagner to fake these things.  Concrete is expensive on this scale.  I just found an article that said that Russia managed to find a source that was willing to sell them enough to last until 2024, but it's unclear if they've taken delivery.

In any case, these things are utterly useless.  I already posted my observations about them being easily moved (I move things like this every so often, and it isn't difficult even with 1 person), so they are there for show only.  For sure they aren't dug in and I doubt they used rebar.

Refreshing my memory about Siegfried Line's dragon teeth reminded me that after the war they had to be blown up because extracting them was too difficult.  And some remain as nobody got around to it.  So, the Germans built them correctly and we know that didn't stop the Allies.  Russia's pointy ones are pretty pointless

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

An interesting ISW report came out today.  Well, they usually are interesting so there's that   The first part focuses on messaging conflicts between Putin and Kadyrov, Prigozhin and the MoD.  Towards the bottom, though, is the thing that I wanted to highlight.  Specifically, Russia is still grabbing men off the street as part of the partial mobilization that is supposedly complete.  Two things about this.

First, this is typical Kremlin bald faced lies.  People are complaining about how horrible the partial mobilization is?  Simple fix is to tell them it's over and continue doing the same things as before.  Problem solved!

Second, Russia continues to target ethnic minorities, guest workers, and pretty much anybody else they can get their hands on.  Deferments are ignored, which isn't surprising as the rule of law in Russia is superficial.

Combined this indicates that Russia is still desperately short on manpower and yet it seems to be worried about additional blowback from the incompetence of the partial mobilization.

Steve