How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[FancyCat]

It seems clear to me that the West has been giving Putin time to consider his options, and having watch Putin literally doing nothing except double down and insist on escalating the conflict by continuing moves to keep Russia in the war, it's time to escalate to match.

[Field Oggy]

1 hour ago, Zeleban said:

I wonder if Britain still has Chieftain tanks?

No we don't.  I expect we will send a few Scimitar CVRTs.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Field Oggy

[Yet]

In my view Thomas cannot be a tank. His barrel is aligned vertical, which would make him Artillery or AD at best. 

[Grossman]

Scholz spoke by phone with US president Joe Biden on Thursday to co-ordinate the two governments’ positions. The US agreed to send Bradley fighting vehicles, while Germany is providing Marder infantry fighting vehicles and will also join the US in sending a Patriot missile battery to Kyiv. Source: London FT

[Haiduk]

@The_Capt @Battlefront.com @sburke

About Ukrianian losses. During ATO/JFO UKR Wiki had memory page, where due to official reports and local media reportages was gathering database of fallen soldiers of all military and volunteer branches. In novadays the stream of information is too high, many soldiers still unrecognized, missed, captured, so this makes new data entries difficult. 

Wiki count since 24th Feb up to 31st Dec - 4047 new entries. 

Though, from other side our losses also counts Russian OSINT source LostArmour. On 5th of Dec they issued summary from 24th Feb to 30th Nov, based on official UKR lists of posthumous awarding

Here theese data by month.  

...And by military branches

 

As we can see, overall 5166 of losses. And these are awarded only ones. Among them Armed Forces - 4367, National Guard - 575, State Border Guard - 169, State Emergency Service - 21, National Police - 34

To count unawarded fallen soldiers from our Wiki to add this number to LostArmour list is huge piece of work. But roughly I think we can add about 3000 of soldiers.

Also Zelenskiy after some POWs exchange told, that Ukraine turned back already 1350 of people (but not all they were militaries). Since he has said this we returned more 300 soldiers and civilians.

Also other infographic from LostArtmour - losses among UKR officers on 30th of November. But this list was made according differnet sometime unverified information and including all officers - awarded and unawarded.

  

So, LA claims in this list UKR lost 1501 officers: 62 colonels, 120 lt.colonels, 177 majors, 260 captains, 438 sen.lts, 288 lts, 78 jr.lts, 20 other officers of unknown rank, 53 retired officers, 5 foreign officers.

Also pay atatntion - in first table we can see 766 awarded fallen officers, and the second table gives to us total number of lost officers 1501, approx 1:2 ratio. I think among soldiers and sergeants this ratio should be bigger. In this case total number of UKR losses (KIA) could be around 13000-15000

Edited January 5, 2023 by Haiduk

[Beleg85]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Absolutely.  All war is sacrifice.  I use that term deliberately and it does not mean to simply be willing to "give something up".  Sacrifice actually means "to make holy" or "sacred".  This is a point Clausewitz completely missed.  War is extremely personal as we literally sacrifice people for something bigger.  The real question is just how much we believe in that "bigger" thing.  This is more than "cost", it is the fundamental changes that happen at both macro and micro cultural levels as a result of any war.

Ukraine is sacrificing - making holy costs - in defence of their ability to be free to chose their own future.  Russia is sacrificing - making unholy costs - in defence of some false vision/narrative being sold to them by a kleptocrate and his cronies to stay in power. Sacrifice negotiates with Certainty, now whose certainty is more righteous?

No society can withstand endless sacrifice without breaking.  However, when I see Ukrainian boys holding wooden rifles better than a lot of western soldiers, I can only see a society that has a pretty deep cultural zeitgeist right now - killing Russians.  The Ukraine that went into this war, will not be the one that comes out.  Russia and Putin have likely created a regional power pole in all this that will change the face of Eastern Europe, just to add to the bafflingly bad strategic outcomes they constructed in all this.   

However, after all that we are back to "when does it end?"  Well I think that is directly tied to the point when the Sacrifice gets close enough to the Certainty.  Kherson was painful.  There will be other operations that are just as painful.  Hell we may see a Ukrainian defeat before this is all over.  But to my mind, the average Russian's ability to "change the channel" is waning everyday - e.g. a lot of the middle-class Russian's left.  And the Russian Sacrifice-to-Certainty equation is very different then Ukraine's - time is not on Russia's side. 

This war will end when Ukraine and the West have won enough, and Russia has lost enough.  A lot of people post that "this war will end when Putin decides", or "it will end when Ukraine decides" - this is incorrect.  A war is a living breathing entity, it carries its own weight and influence.  History is filled with wars that should have stopped but didn't.  Or ones where the job was not finished but stopped anyway.  Wars have stopped on executive decision.  They have stopped on broader public decision.  They have also stopped because of weather events and eclipses.

In the end this war will end when it makes sense to end it. The "making sense" part is the hardest thing to determine as it is filled with relative rationality, emotion, power, culture, relationships and human failings/strengths.

Out of likes, but very worthy conclusions at every sentence. Especially about meaning of word sacrifice- we are very deep into absolute basics of human imagined community with it. And these are quite literally guts and bones of our kinsmen, send somewhere there to buy us favour of the sacrum (in this case- sole existence of our polity). Guys dying now at Kherson can be viewed like one giant Heavenly Sotnia, this aesthetic is btw. very visible in UA from at least the time when young brave folks were diyng fighting Berkut on the streets of Kyiv in 2014.*

Just a note to the UA sacrifices case- I would add a factor of Knowledge here. Current Ukrainian body count is somewhat virtual now. Mind that journalists- even before the war profession of relatively high risk in UA- are not working normally, almost every public info can be closed behind Military Secret clauses. Executive is very concentrated within relatively few hands, some strange things are happening with judiciary system (perhaps for the better in the end, we will see) and open access to information is very limited. A lot of these things are abslutelly understandable considering the circumstances (they may remind of, let's say, England in 40's) but they do block us from realistically assessing true cost, like this French source said- it is actually easier to count dead Russians than defenders.

So when people will finally sum up the casualties after the war (or even before its end), I am afraid cumulative effect may be quite shocking, and even influence its outcome. Who knows, perhaps it will even cause some wide-ranging political turbulance. In the context of wider question "Where is Ukraine going?" that stretches way beyond this war in temporal (and material) sense-it is in fact generational issue. It's possible people who will survive current ordeal may have a lot of backlashes "Was it worth it?" when struggling in normal life. HIstorically, we know how ugly things could come out of similar situation. In most pessimistic scenario some disgruntled veteran may even raise to role of local Coriolanus, using for example these ready-to-use narrations of Blood and Soil we saw recently at display by highest UA command. I very much doubt this will happen if West will not foock things up with Rebuilding, but we cannot exclude it. '"Just get of my Turf" mentallity is unfortunatelly rather widespread there as normal part of national psyche (sorry for anyone Ukrainian reading this, but very similar was here after '89), so if most active civic parts of UA society that would normally transcend this post-Soviet attitude became disenchanted/migrate/stay forever mentally at Bakhmut trenches, additionally frustrated by lack of opportunities in the country, these past sacrifices may have quite unpredictable outcome even years from now.

Just a thought from yours humble pessimisst-in-being.

* Btw. something very similar I am observing as being forming at official Kremlin/Russian nats narratives. In this case though, hard to tell how deeply rooted among wider population it is. Let's hope it's shallow enough not to transcend typical Russian opportunism.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Beleg85

[sross112]

12 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

So when people will finally sum up the casualties after the war (or even before its end), I am afraid cumulative effect may be quite shocking, and even influence its outcome. Who knows, perhaps it will even cause some wide-ranging political turbulance. In the context of wider question "Where is Ukraine going?" that stretches way beyond this war in temporal (and material) sense-it is in fact generational issue. It's possible people who will survive current ordeal may have a lot of backlashes "Was it worth it?" when struggling in normal life. HIstorically, we know how ugly things could come out of similar situation. In most pessimistic scenario some disgruntled veteran may even raise to role of local Coriolanus, using for example these ready-to-use narrations of Blood and Soil we saw recently at display by highest UA command. I very much doubt this will happen if West will not foock things up with Rebuilding, but we cannot exclude it. '"Just get of my Turf" mentallity is unfortunatelly rather widespread there as normal part of national psyche (sorry for anyone Ukrainian reading this, but very similar was here after '89), so if most active civic parts of UA society that would normally transcend this post-Soviet attitude became disenchanted/migrate/stay forever mentally at Bakhmut trenches, additionally frustrated by lack of opportunities in the country, these past sacrifices may have quite unpredictable outcome even years from now.

Just a thought from yours humble pessimisst-on-duty.

Always a possibility, but we are probably more likely to see a Post Traumatic Growth scenario than the focused on PTSD negative scenario. It is similarly done on the individual level and has been for 50 years. The better story is on the negatives, but the positive stories are way more prolific. 

My bet is that Ukraine has more of a USA 1950's scenario happen than going down into darkness of some sort. Though only time will tell.

edit: I will be the optimist-on-duty for the day!  

Edited January 5, 2023 by sross112

[sburke]

20 minutes ago, sross112 said:

My bet is that Ukraine has more of a USA 1950's scenario happen than going down into darkness of some sort. Though only time will tell.

edit: I will be the optimist-on-duty for the day!  

Ukraine will be rebuilding on a bedrock of national sacrifice and victory.  I expect it will be a couple decades before folks stop discussing the "greatest generation" similar as you noted to post war America.  Hell, we still call them the greatest generation.  There will be movies, books etc of individual and unit histories, war memorials. Folks will I am sure move into politics on their credentials of having fought and wanting to oust all the corruption that hindered the war effort etc.  In addition, Ukraine will take a very special place in the family of nations in their efforts.

As @The_Captnoted earlier, the power dynamics in Europe are going to change heavily with Eastern Europe playing a much stronger role.  All this does not bode well for Russia.  Poland and Ukraine will be the hardliners for Western Democracy right on their frontier.

[Beleg85]

2 hours ago, Twisk said:

Talking of sacrifice I did a quick comparison of WW2 against Ukraine's current population deaths (hopefully my math is good).

Country of comparison | equivalent Ukrainian losses to match
- U.S. | 131.200 KIA
- U.K. | 385.400 KIA

All countries below this lost great than 1%

- Italy| 4.551.00 KIA
- Ger. | 3.378.400 KIA

- USSR | 5.330.000 KIA

 

========

Then using the death reports from Wiki and taking the highest reported for civilian and military.

Ukraine has lost 46.000 people. These numbers are likely inaccurate but if we increase it by 1/2 69.000.  If this loss rate continues for the next year Ukraine will be at 140.000 which is equivalent to the U.S. losses during WW2 of .5%

Interesting quotations, albeit very hypothetical. And not counting lost territories and killed/translocated civilians, which USA in WW2 did not (or in fact, almost never from 1865 onward) endured.

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

So, LA claims in this list UKR lost 1501 officers: 62 colonels, 120 lt.colonels, 177 majors, 260 captains, 438 sen.lts, 288 lts, 78 jr.lts, 20 other officers of unknown rank, 53 retired officers, 5 foreign officers.

Also pay atatntion - in first table we can see 766 awarded fallen officers, and the second table gives to us total number of lost officers 1501, approx 1:2 ratio. I think among soldiers and sergeants this ratio should be bigger. In this case total number of UKR losses (KIA) could be around 13000-15000

Very high number of killed colonels and higher echelons... LostArmour, despite being Russian site, has good reputation, but they almost certainly are slightly inflating here. For example, who are Foregin Officers? Fallen identified soldiers of Foreign Legion or those imagined Brits who crossed the Dnieper at nights? If former is the case- I can feed you relatively solid information from PL reporters and volunteers that casualties are much higher in just this unit. Only part of soldiers of IL wishes to be ever in public during and after service, so official count of the fallen officers is also proportionally too low in this specific case.

Anyway, I seriously doubt overall lossess are so low, but this is separate very long topic. Let's hope you are right and casualties stay in this order of magnitude.

Btw., talking about higher echelons and these fresh soldiers being trained in the West to apparantly form new units, I am curious how AFU is finding experienced officer cadre for this corps of middle and high ranks. Sounds like quite interesting exercise in wartime mobilization, if indeed there will be 50k+ newly trained soldiers.

Edited January 5, 2023 by Beleg85

[Haiduk]

4 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

LostArmour, despite being Russian site, has good reputation

It HAD good reputation between the end of 2015 and 2019, when among their experts were also several UKR researches, writing about ATO. Though after 2020 they again returned to 2014 ura-propaganda-style, but some their information still worth to see at least to comparison

Edited January 5, 2023 by Haiduk

[Beleg85]

1 minute ago, Haiduk said:

It HAD good reputattion between the end of 2015 and 2019, when among their experts were also several UKR researches, writing about ATO. Though after 2020 they again returned to propaganda-style, but some their information still worth to see at least to comparison

Yup, I heard it also. But some Osinter-s still prefer it to Oryx when comes to quality and detailed info about Ukrainian material lossess. It is by the way interesting they managed to create respected internet community that had both Russians and Ukrainians on board, despite being at war.

[Artkin]

Chieftans incoming? 

[Letter from Prague]

I see Russians are talking about a (Orthodox) Christmas ceasefire. I am thinking this is attempt to start freezing the conflict. I don't think the Ukrainians will let them, and I don't think anyone will care at this point.

[Sojourner]

For a little change of pace... hromadske pays a visit to 100th TD brigade guarding the northern border.

 

 

[cesmonkey]

Another confirmation of the Bradleys and Marders:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/01/05/joint-press-statement-following-a-call-between-the-president-joe-biden-and-the-chancellor-of-the-federal-republic-of-germany-olaf-scholz/

 

Quote

President Biden and Chancellor Scholz expressed their common determination to continue to provide the necessary financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support to Ukraine for as long as needed. To this end, the United States intends to supply Ukraine with Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and Germany intends to provide Ukraine with Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles. Both countries plan to train Ukrainian forces on the respective systems.

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3801081-us-germany-to-supply-ukraine-with-more-fighting-vehicles/

Quote

The Bradleys will be included as part of “another round of security assistance for Ukraine” anticipated on Friday, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters later on Thursday. 

 

Edited January 5, 2023 by cesmonkey

[Huba]

Apparently Ukrainian Buks are being modified to fire Sea Sparrows. I tip my hat to the ingenuity of people who are making that happen.

Now find a way to fire SM-2 or PAC2 from S300 launchers

Edited January 6, 2023 by Huba

[NamEndedAllen]

9 hours ago, The_Capt said:

You want that for a shooting war?  Look up Dunning-Kruger and then maybe have a cup of tea.  I am not sure what military operations you have been on or what generals you have served under but I would be fascinated to hear how you applied “percentage or a set of narrative labels defined by percentage ranges” to an active combat AO.

You do realize we are talking about managed chaos here?  The land of tacit knowledge and old fashion instinct?  In fact you missed “consequences” from your likelihood framework - ie “how important is this particular event, and then how likely is it to happen”, which is only one way to conduct a forecast assessment.  

Well this was fun but time to move on.

We are speaking about predictions and scenarios, yes? About regime change, about collapse, the outcome of the war. It’s surreal to be debating whether essentially intelligence estimates do or don’t include time frames and probability or uncertainty! And there have been some predictions in the forum that indeed do include a specific time frame.  Some have included a probability estimate such as “not likely”, or 50/50, or “very likely”. Now you seem allergic to the very idea. I read open source estimates and yes, analysts do routinely include these.  Otherwise their assessments are fairly useless to decision makers. Because simply saying, “Well, this could happen.” Or, “Here are a bunch of very well described possible outcomes, sir. No idea about their likelihood though.” We *always* want to know how likely something is! In diplomacy and war, extraordinary efforts are made to suss that out. Intelligence estimates, clearly included.

Consequences? I wasn’t posting a paper on the entire art of forecasting! Just a note on what often seems not present.  I don’t believe you are arguing for stripping out assessments of “within a month “, or “before the ground freezes.” Or in terms of a collapse, “this year “, or “spring”. Or accompanying those with one’s rating, whether 75/25, or high likely…whatever standardized form one is accustomed to in practice. The obvious flaw is that asserting that a major event will happen “some day” is near useless.

But yes, please do let us cease. We are talking at cross purposes and not constructively for the forum. In Washington, it was always clear that firing down wasn’t a good look. And for the record, I do prefer coffee.  

For reference::

“There is a critical need to produce actual figures (10%, 20%, 60% etc.) for our probability predictions in order to be able to check past performances. Obscure notions such as ‘low probability’ are not enough for lessons to be learned and might fail us in trying to achieve a genuine communication with the decision makers that have to use our Intelligence estimations.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02684520801977238 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228488886_The_Complexity_of_Intelligence_Estimates
 

A stripped down layout of scenarios with key column “Rough Probability” https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/157/Papers/Assessing Uncertainty in Intelligence.pdf
Appendix. NIE 11–18–90, The Deepening Crisis in the USSR, p.iv

Figure 1. Scenarios for the Next Year.

What We Mean When We Say: An Explanation of Estimative Language
https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2007/nie_terror-threat_2007-07.htm Intelligence judgments pertaining to likelihood are intended to reflect the Community's sense of the probability of a development or event. Assigning precise numerical ratings to such judgments would imply more rigor than we intend. The chart below provides a rough idea of the relationship of terms to each other. 

Many many more examples at least from the USA are available on line and often in various workplaces.

Edited January 6, 2023 by NamEndedAllen

[Beleg85]

Also, tomorrow quite symbolic event will take place, both in terms of culture and politics:

https://babel.ua/en/news/89001-for-the-first-time-the-head-of-the-orthodox-church-of-ukraine-epiphany-will-perform-a-divine-service-in-the-kyiv-pechersk-lavra-it-will-happen-on-christmas

One of main tools on Ukrainian domestic politics in Kremlin's box is melting down before our eyes. Lavra Pecherska stands higher in Orthodox imaginarium than Moscow churches.

If anybody will be in Kyiv and have occassion to visit it one day, it is worth a try btw.

Edited January 6, 2023 by Beleg85

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, Huba said:

Apparently Ukrainian Buks are being modified to fire Sea Sparrows. I tip my hat to the ingenuity of people who are making that happen.

Now find a way to fire SM-2 or PAC2 from S300 launchers

Truly excellent work on somebodies part. Doubly so since I think there are a fair few sea sparrows in inventory. It just makes it that much harder for the Russians to exhaust the available AA munitions.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

We are speaking about predictions and scenarios, yes? About regime change, about collapse, the outcome of the war. It’s surreal to be debating whether essentially intelligence estimates do or don’t include time frames and probability or uncertainty! And there have been some predictions in the forum that indeed do include a specific time frame.  Some have included a probability estimate such as “not likely”, or 50/50, or “very likely”. Now you seem allergic to the very idea. I read open source estimates and yes, analysts do routinely include these.  Otherwise their assessments are fairly useless to decision makers. Because simply saying, “Well, this could happen.” Or, “Here are a bunch of very well described possible outcomes, sir. No idea about their likelihood though.” We *always* want to know how likely something is! In diplomacy and war, extraordinary efforts are made to suss that out. Intelligence estimates, clearly included.

Consequences? I wasn’t posting a paper on the entire art of forecasting! Just a note on what often seems not present.  I don’t believe you are arguing for stripping out assessments of “within a month “, or “before the ground freezes.” Or in terms of a collapse, “this year “, or “spring”. Or accompanying those with one’s rating, whether 75/25, or high likely…whatever standardized form one is accustomed to in practice. The obvious flaw is that asserting that a major event will happen “some day” is near useless.

But yes, please do let us cease. We are talking at cross purposes and not constructively for the forum. In Washington, it was always clear that firing down wasn’t a good look. And for the record, I do prefer coffee.  

For reference::

“There is a critical need to produce actual figures (10%, 20%, 60% etc.) for our probability predictions in order to be able to check past performances. Obscure notions such as ‘low probability’ are not enough for lessons to be learned and might fail us in trying to achieve a genuine communication with the decision makers that have to use our Intelligence estimations.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02684520801977238 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228488886_The_Complexity_of_Intelligence_Estimates
 

A stripped down layout of scenarios with key column “Rough Probability” https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/157/Papers/Assessing Uncertainty in Intelligence.pdf
Appendix. NIE 11–18–90, The Deepening Crisis in the USSR, p.iv

Figure 1. Scenarios for the Next Year.

What We Mean When We Say: An Explanation of Estimative Language
https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2007/nie_terror-threat_2007-07.htm Intelligence judgments pertaining to likelihood are intended to reflect the Community's sense of the probability of a development or event. Assigning precise numerical ratings to such judgments would imply more rigor than we intend. The chart below provides a rough idea of the relationship of terms to each other. 

Many many more examples at least from the USA are available on line and often in various workplaces.

The problem here is that you do not know what you are asking for, but you seem very sure that you do.  You ask for specific metric language on assessments (percentages or word bubbles) on the outcome of this war, or we are somehow “weak”.  I am telling you that no such assessment exist in any meaningful way.  This is like trying to predict the weather in 3 months in detail.  We know it will be Spring in the northern hemisphere and we have almanacs based on historical trends but that is about it.  We will know better at the end of March what the weather is doing, until then we really have very broad assessments.

Glad you found some int academics that seem agree with you and would love to somehow reduce warfare down to nice clean percentages - shocking.  A lot of these articles are out of date and come from the 00’s when we had become enamoured by EBO and RMA.  Back then we were convinced we could “maths” our way through warfare and spent a lot of money trying to do it. Then Iraq and Afghanistan happened.  You want contemporary thinking on the subject go read https://books.google.com.ec/books?id=29JyEAAAQBAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions_r&cad=4

We might actually get to predictive analytics one day, a lot of debate on this. We in the military have been burned before so there is skepticism but advances in computing may make it possible in the future.  If anyone is throwing around percentages now, they are literally making it up.  How do you assign probability to human behaviour in conflict on this scale?  We do not even have the theories or data processing we would need to start tackling this in any meaningful way. I am not sure we will ever be able to do fully accurate predictive analytics, it is the shining city in military and intelligence circles as these authors you have pulled note.  You sure are not going to find it on the internet to somehow inform you on this war.  Deep in the bowels of places like Cambridge Analytica and Palinteer maybe and I don’t trust them either.

The problem is due to the chaotic nature of warfare you need to model all behaviour in order to have any hope of accuracy.  Right now Low-Medium-High is as best we can do and I would not even go that far on some points. Of course there are many methods to conduct this work - Capability Based, Assumptions Based, and Effects Based to name a few, but none have really replaced a roomful of human beings rolling all the factors around and going “boss, looks like it will go this way…maybe”.

Finally, predictive assessments like this are a trap in themselves.  If we believe them, then we make excuses for readjust resources etc. This crap get all sorts of attention when someone wants to risk manage for budgetary and political reasons but they do not really reflect reality.  The reality is that “knowing is impossible so double down on reacting”, which is expensive and inefficient - and bureaucrats hate inefficiency.

You keep searching the internet and see and you can find.  One of my side jobs is teaching warfare and operational planning at a joint staff college, so I am going to go with that.  My advice is that anyone spouting “percentages” or detailed predictions doesn’t know what they are talking about.  No one on open source has the level of data visibility to make hi resolution predictions.  And even those that do have access to the data are smart enough to know that the best they can do is Low- Med-Hi while assessing the consequences in line with likelihood - you know, just like ISW does it.  We can take broad swings, and have, they will be vague until they are not.  For example we called the Fall offensive before it happened and were also correct on the fall of Kherson before Xmas - Kharkiv was a surprise.  We have taken plenty of very wide estimates based on open source data we have - but that somehow means we are “weak” in strategic assessments according to you?

Here is a crazy idea, how about we just try and keep abreast of what is happening right now. That is tall enough order.  We can speculate and provide “best guesses” and frankly they are likely amongst the best you are going to find for free.  But just to keep you happy - There is a HI probability that Russia has lost this war, and a HI probability that Ukraine will achieve a level of victory we can live with.  The consequences of these two likelihoods is significant.  You can print that off and put it on your fridge now. 

 

[Battlefront.com]

15 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

We might actually get to predictive analytics one day, a lot of debate on this. We in the military have been burned before so there is skepticism but advances in computing may make it possible in the future.

We've had this discussion a few times, and I will remind the audience that as a sim guy I think we will get there, eventually.  However, the reason is by that time warfare will have returned to clunking people over the heads with wood and rocks.  Sure, there won't be computers to create predictive analytics, but if anybody with math skills survives to do some statistics, I think it is quite possible to predict outcomes for the wars of the day.

If society doesn't collapse, and we keep the ability to have complex social and military organizations with diverse weaponry... predictive analytics will continue to be a pipe dream.

Steve

[The_Capt]

12 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

We've had this discussion a few times, and I will remind the audience that as a sim guy I think we will get there, eventually.  However, the reason is by that time warfare will have returned to clunking people over the heads with wood and rocks.  Sure, there won't be computers to create predictive analytics, but if anybody with math skills survives to do some statistics, I think it is quite possible to predict outcomes for the wars of the day.

If society doesn't collapse, and we keep the ability to have complex social and military organizations with diverse weaponry... predictive analytics will continue to be a pipe dream.

Steve

I think we can get to a level of predictive analytical support that creates advantage.  But the human brain is really the only thing that can understand another human brain in context of human interactions, of which warfare is just one.  So pairing of man and machine will be important but any giant computer that spits out the answer is going to be very far off, if possible at all.

It is why it is called an art of war.

[LongLeftFlank]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

predictive analytics will continue to be a pipe dream.

Steve

In the year 2525.....

 

 

[Offshoot]

Preliminary reports of another long-range strike against a possibly large concentration of Russian soldiers in Havrylivka Druha, Kherson oblast, near the entrance to Crimea.

 

[Offshoot]

Russia found some new infantry.

Russian fleet loses another two flagships - intelligence source - https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3647091-russian-fleet-loses-another-two-flagships-intelligence-source.html

"According to available information, most of the high-quality components [needed for repair] are missing due to Russian defense factories being unable to produce them."

"It should be noted that the Admiral Kuznetsov is the only aircraft-carrying cruiser of the Northern Fleet,  while the Admiral Nakhimov is one of the three missile cruisers of the Northern Fleet."