How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

I guess that would be these people:

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/06/how-end-russias-war-ukraine/fallacy-6-russias-defeat-ukraine-will-lead-greater-instability

https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/our-people/department/russia-and-eurasia-programme-122

Annette Bohr
Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme

Kateryna Busol
Former Academy Associate, Russia and Eurasia Programme

Keir Giles
Senior Consulting Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme

John Lough
Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme

Orysia Lutsevych
Deputy Director, Russia and Eurasia Programme; Head of the Ukraine Forum

James Nixey
Director, Russia and Eurasia Programme

James Sherr
Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme

Simon Smith
Chairman, Steering Committee, Ukraine Forum, Russia and Eurasia Programme

Kataryna Wolczuk
Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme

The place was originally owned by a Canadian that should tip everyone off:

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

I do not care if they have Jesus himself on the board, on this one they are advocating playing pretty fast and loose with what most consider a dicey situation.  Honestly if we want to remove the political risk dynamics within Russia and firmly believe that Russia will back down in a nuclear confrontation then the answer to end this thing in 24 hours is pretty simple - screw ATACMs; give Ukraine nuclear weapons...that is where these absurd lines of thought take us.

Edited June 28, 2023 by The_Capt

[keas66]

Interesting ?

 

[kevinkin]

Zombie Apocalypse -> Russian style:

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-convict-wagner-crime-108e410835e4bf27ac3192cd7f945b39

[kimbosbread]

10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Sure, but until someone figures out how to produce PGMs in the quantity needed to hold a huge front like this over a prolonged time, dumb munitions will remain the backbone.  Theory and reality often don't play nice together.

I can see smart mines being used like other PGMs in that they are used for the most important tasks while the dumb mines are used everywhere else.

Steve

An autonomous, more durable version of the fpv drones we’ve been seeing fits the bill I think. If it’s fixed wing, 1 hour endurance for a decent payload, just standard camera and gps and mobile phone class processor is enough. A few thousand dollars, maximum. The fpv drones being used are in the hundreds IIRC.

As you point out, making this more durable is important, even for an expendable munition, but that’s gonna just decrease the payload a bit and drive up the cost a bit, but not to prohibitive levels.

[DesertFox]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

 

 

Yup, deliberate.

 

 

[sross112]

16 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Same applies to ground based.  Wanna have a drone mine pick itself up and move it in 1.5m of snow?  How about during mud season while it's raining?  What happens to all those electronics if someone sets fire to the field?  All those little joints are going to complain at -15c if they aren't pretty robust.  And yes, wind affects things on the ground as well as the air.

Don't get me wrong, I am thinking swarms will be a big problem.  I just don't see how it is economically feasible to build all condition drones, air or ground, to substitute for dumb mines.

Steve

Reading the bolded sentence about fire, would Napalm clear a lane through a traditional minefield? I know you can't drop it on people, but on an empty field should be fine and that is what we are mostly seeing with breaching operations. With PGM accuracy the collateral damage would be able to be mitigated from anything errant.

Would the heat from the fire detonate or disable the mines under a Napalm strike? 

 

[kimbosbread]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Russian defeat must be engineered in a manner where it can negotiate with that defeat without blowing itself up.  This has led to an incremental pressure approach, which frankly we are still not sure will not result in a sudden failure anyway but it seems to be the best plan available.

Hopefully does not include Chernobyl 2.0.

58 minutes ago, Butschi said:

The defectors are really few and far in between. It is true that the big tech companies are now calling for regulation themselves but that is more a mix of advertising (look, our AI I so good we ourselves don't even know what it is capable of!) and raising thresholds for entering the market (large companies will find it easier to employ enough people to make sure the company is compliant with regulations).

Hobbyists can build a lot of this stuff too. Cat’s out of the bag with so much of the tooling being open sourced. South Park guys recently raised a bunch of money to focus on deepfakes, which will be epic. Brave new entertaining world!

And of course the EU will regulate it or complain a lot and then be surprised in a decade when this new market is all US/Eastern Europe/China as usual.

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, sross112 said:

Reading the bolded sentence about fire, would Napalm clear a lane through a traditional minefield? I know you can't drop it on people, but on an empty field should be fine and that is what we are mostly seeing with breaching operations. With PGM accuracy the collateral damage would be able to be mitigated from anything errant.

Would the heat from the fire detonate or disable the mines under a Napalm strike? 

 

I seriously doubt that it would.  Napalm has little blast pressure as it is basically gelled gas.  So now we are down to heat.  Surface laid mines might get scorched, if you hit really lucky maybe even detonate a few.  But buried mine systems would pretty be much immune.  Napalm is pretty hot but doesn’t really last that long.

It isn’t a question of either/or dumb mines or UGS-mine systems, it is both.  A UGS-mine system could effectively close lanes after a breach has an occurred.  Also UGS allows for far more effective use of EFPs as they can be sighted dynamically.  Smart mobile mines in combination with dumb mines is likely where this is going.  Add in small UGS with ATGMs with layers of UAS overhead and you get into a pretty hard denial scenario. 

[kimbosbread]

I think the cricket system I mentioned many pages back would work well for smart mines (and by smart, I don’t mean mobile, just has some circuitry and a battery, nothing complex). Don’t trigger the mine on the initial forces going by- trigger it later on, possibly coin flip each day!

[Yet]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

If the strongest democracy on Earth, arguably one of the strongest nations in the history of organized government.

uhhh.huh? i assume you mean 'the democracy with the strongest militairy power. 

Gerrymandering, unclear votingrules, strong unindependant media, decreasing the amount of voting stations in the areas of the city where your party isnt favourable, winner takes the state.

this is only a start... and we all know it. i dont think USA has the strongest democracy.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Yet

[billbindc]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Who the HELL wrote this?  Obviously it is nobody that knows anything about Russian history, authoritarian governments, or how Humans work.

The Russian government is full of self enriching, narcissistic criminals appointed by Putin.  They ALL have local power structures and they ALL have rivals within those power structures.  Those that feel they are too exposed to do it on their own, and think they can work with the new power system, will remain at their posts.  But someone within their more immediate circle might not, so a smooth transition of power is not guaranteed even if the existing Putin flunkies decide to throw in with the new power in the Kremlin.

In fact, the lack of strong institutional leaders is exactly what makes this situation so dangerous.  There won't be just one obvious choice to take over X region, there will likely be at least two murderous scumbags that think they should be the one exploiting the locals.  There be breakaways from Moscow's control, but then many of these places will turn into nasty warzones themselves.

The other thing this is that this problem has always existed in Russia, but the "Tzar's" strong hand keeps everything in check.  The ruling elites down to the local level rely upon Putin for their jobs, their lives, and their looted public funds.  That's the deal they made and they're fine with it as long as the gravy train functions.  So what happens when Putin is gone?  They're going to give up their gravy train ride?  No.  They are instead going to evaluate their options based on whomever gains control of the Kremlin.  If that takes too long or isn't someone they feel they can work with, what might said individual do with all that power and wealth he's about to lose?  Willingly hand it over to someone else?  Some might (i.e. flee), but history says many will not.  The ones that remain loyal to the Kremlin will then have to ward off challenges at their level by people who would rather have the job.  Some will be violently insistent about it too.

Even with Putin in charge Russia is on a razor's edge of violent collapse (1917) or partially controlled collapse (1990s).   With him gone, things will not be pretty.

Honestly, it amazes me what can get passed around by so-called experts.

Steve

There are some pretty smart Russia experts out there who think that this will ultimately allow Putin to purge the baddies and strengthen his government. They other point that they make is that with Prigozhin and Wagner out of the picture (maybe!) there is no alternative. I would argue that’s wrong…starting with the fact that nobody (including Prigozhin) imagined he could be the next Russian leader. The BLUF is that the essential conflict at the heart of the Russian system (a badly fought war, a dithering leader, lack of channels to peacefully redress same) hasn’t gone away and is unlikely to be resolved peacefully. 

[Grossman]

1 hour ago, DesertFox said:

Yup, deliberate.

 

 

Its abundantly clear Biden needs to provide longer range Himars and F15's. The Russians are showing no restraint whatsoever. And now targeting politicians, journalists going about their business in their own country. It has to stop.

[Harmon Rabb]

As always when I post these opinion polls I don't vouch for their accuracy.

Good news it true, Big jump in support in a short period of time. I'm curious if the attack on Kakhovka Dam had to do with the sudden increase in support.

[kraze]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The problem is that roughly 30% of the population believes anything they READ because they have defective information filters (combination biology and environment).  In the world of politics, all you need to do is fool some of the people some of the time and you win an election, get support for undermining democracy, and then do bad things.

Steve

Yes but you don't need deepfakes for that, just headlines. It's the lack of long attention span that gets exploited. Since they aren't reading anything past headlines anyway - no need to put any extra effort.

In fact I'd bet making a quality deepfake that looks believable enough for the masses is already far beyond where it gets into diminished results territory. After all russians tried to do a deepfake of Zelenskyy back in February of 2022 if you remember - it looked horribly uncanny and we are talking government with enough budget that has militarized IT.

[kraze]

4 hours ago, Butschi said:

That's probably because you didn't recognize it as deep fake.

It's really of no consequence how long it has been around. The technology is developing at what looks like an exponential rate. Sorry to say but "at least for a decade" says that you don't know much about the topic. Most of what constitutes modern "AI" (machine learning methods is a better word) hasn't even been around that long. Much of it not even half a decade.

Ugh no. If there was some deepfake legit enough - the target of it would've been up in arms about it defending themselves trying to disprove it. But nah. Uncanny valley is something Hollywood with its budgets has been battling for decades now - ironically the only "deepfake" that came closest was Rachel in BR2049 and even that one looked really off. We are talking visual artists that are absolute best on the planet. After all "AI" (in reality it's just a glorified finite state machine) can only iterate on what humans do.

Edited June 28, 2023 by kraze

[dan/california]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

With credentials like that these people should KNOW better than to make a statement like that.

Russia dissolving into civil war is not a "low probability event".  In fact, it seems that Putin himself fears it above all else.  Otherwise he'd have mobilized earlier last year and would have already mobilized a second time this year.

Steve

 

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Well, the other risk is labeling something LOW probability that is more likely to be HIGH probability.

The entire premise of Putin's "Power Vertical" is to keep things in balance with him at the top.  Remove him and... they expect balance to be maintained?  Not likely, even if the exact scenario can't be accurately predicted at this moment.

Again, these guys really need to look around with their eyes and minds more open to reality.  If someone detonated a tac nuke in Washington DC when all of government was there, and they all died, the US would break up into a MINIMUM of two groups of US States claiming they are going to rebuild without the other.  It is likely to be 4-5, but only 2 or 3 will emerge pretty much solid from the get go.  There will be internal fighting in all, though some way more than others.

If the strongest democracy on Earth, arguably one of the strongest nations in the history of organized government, would likely disintegrate if the central power disappeared, why would one of the least stable autocracies on Earth somehow come out unscathed?

Steve

 

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Weirdly my sense is that the liberal humanist are some of the loudest warhawks in this whole thing - saw something very similar back in Kosovo days.  They work very hard to convince themselves that the worse could never happen while at the same time try to down-play the consequences if it does.  All so they can uphold a doctrine of hard intervention to re-establish a global liberal human security centric order.  Responsibility to Protect kinda falls apart in a proxy war situation against a failing nuclear power.  We are in a nation or state security situation and a different set of calculations needs to be employed.

The risk when viewed through a probability/consequence lens might be LOW for probability (which I very much doubt, in fact I think it quite the opposite) but the consequences are EXTREME.  As in “worse than the war itself” extreme.  A risk assessment like that cannot be ignored or wished away.  Now it cannot hijack the proceedings either, it could have very well shut down any western response but instead a highly united incremental strategy was selected (or emerged).  This one is right up there with Russian nuclear response - sure we think it is pretty darn low but we are still not doing overt NATO strikes into the Russian homeland for a reason.

I am not saying either Steve or the The_Capt is wrong, in fact they are two of the smartest people on the entire internet on this subject. I do think two factors are not getting enough weight in the discussion. Putin won't live forever, so at some point there has to be  a new Czar appointed/crowned. Given his age, health, and expanding set of enemies that could be any moment, literally. The second factor is that the Russian economy has been deeply damaged by this war, and thus the supply of gravy to keep the hyenas fed is getting smaller, perhaps by quite a lot.

Thus the Russian regime is facing two relatively near term inevitabilities. They have to agree on a new leader, and they have to do it with a smaller stream of income to buy off the various interest groups. I am trying to advance at least the possibility that a long slow war makes these problems worse, not better. Giving Ukraine every single piece of gear it can physically make use of might force Putin to end the war while his regime has some semblance of state capacity, and agrees on who is in charge. 

Edited June 28, 2023 by dan/california

[Eddy]

20 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

As always when I post these opinion polls I don't vouch for their accuracy

True and what we are not seeing is any weakening of support from the 'West' either from governments or populations. IIRC support from populations has either remained stable, slightly declined or slightly increased, depending on the country. This is despite the near constant background noise from many media outlets that declining support is to be expected. The dog that didn't bark if you will.

As for the military support given to Ukraine, that seems to be increasing in both volume and earlier this year, capability.

Philips O'Brien has a theory that while Ukraine is perceived to be winning, the US public will by and large carry on supporting Ukraine. I don't think he means that they want to be on the winning team, more like given what's happened in the past wrt Afghanistan and Vietnam etc. they don't want costly support for regimes that are likely to fail. I'm not a US citizen and don't live there so I don't have an opinion but I'd be interested to hear whether O'Brien belief has any weight behind it from our US forum members.

Either way, given Russia's strategy is for Ukraine to fail, and the plan for that failure is for the 'West' to supporting it, it's heartening to see the continuation of support, both in governments and in large sections of different societies.    

[Haiduk]

Russian Su-25 was hit by Igla MANPAD of 10th mountain-assault brigade, but likely just damaged

 

[Seedorf81]

5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The problem is that roughly 30% of the population believes anything they READ because they have defective information filters (combination biology and environment).  In the world of politics, all you need to do is fool some of the people some of the time and you win an election, get support for undermining democracy, and then do bad things.

Steve

I READ this and I believe it.

But wait... should I?

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/drone-detecting-deadly-landmines-could-help-ukraine

The researchers have been in Oklahoma for two weeks setting up grids of mines and munitions to train a drone-based, machine-learning-powered detection system to find and identify harmful explosives without the need for people to do so, Scientific American magazine reported on Wednesday.

"It's not easy to find places where you can lay dormant mines and fly drones. We're trying to automate the detection of different types of landmines, anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines, and we're doing this through remote sensing and drones," the researchers said.

 

Someone needs to write these guys a blank check, or something close to it. Finding is only the very first step to actually breaching, but it an important one.

[Eddy]

Ever wondered how artillery shells are made? Oh just me then. Anyway

 

 

[dan/california]

 

[TheVulture]

From the Independent (UK newspaper owned by Alexander Lebedev, and these days of dubious reliability IMHO. Caveat emptor) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-russia-putin-wagner-group-latest-news-b2365501.html:

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko said he persuaded Vladimir Putin not to “wipe out” Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, in response to what the Kremlin cast as a mutiny.

While describing his Saturday conversation with Putin, Lukashenko used the Russian criminal slang phrase for killing someone, equivalent to the English phrase to “wipe out”.

“I also understood: a brutal decision had been made (and it was the undertone of Putin‘s address) to wipe out” the mutineers, Lukashenko said, according to Belarusian state media.

“I suggested to Putin not to rush. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘Let’s talk with Prigozhin, with his commanders.’ To which he told me: ‘Listen, Sasha, it’s useless. He doesn’t even pick up the phone, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone’.”

Edited June 28, 2023 by TheVulture

[Haiduk]

On 6/27/2023 at 1:58 AM, Battlefront.com said:

This means that if Ukraine can take a decent sized footprint on the left bank they could possibly repair the bridge.  Maybe not to take heavy armor and vehicles across, but maybe at least enough for light and medium trucks and, of course, soldiers on foot.

No, we can't repair bridge now, because need heavy vehicles on the bridge and personnel, which will be potential targets.

The bridgehead supplies by boats

Here is probably next landing party prepares itself to crossing

Next info is a summary from Russian TG for three days. UKR sources keep tough OpSec.

- UKR troops landed on dachas near Antonivskyi bridge, when unit, which guarded this area was completely unprepared. Russian troops just returned recently here after the flooding  - during evacuation when the dam was blown up, they lost almost all NV equipment, so they didn't spot approaching of the assault group in the night. UKR forces attacked from the flank and wiped out a company - only 24 men survived and could retreat.

- next attempts to throw UKR group in 50 men into Dnipro by attacks of Shtorm-Z units were failed.

- Attempts of units of 7th air-assault division to attack also were unsuccessful. UKR side from more tall right bank has total LOS and fire control over single road to bridgehead, which goes through Konka river bridge (indeed it's a part of Antonivskyi bridge). UKR use artilelry, mortars and ATGMS from right bank. Russians lost at least 4 BMD and one BTR-80, several paratroopers were captured. Russian artillery forced to change positions comtinuously due to UKR counter-battery fire, so it have too few time to fire at UKR bridgehead. 

Here is a height profile of bridge area

- UKR forrces supply bridgehead with boats, which sailing under bridge constructions and this makes difficult to hit them with artillery. Also boats are enough speedy and they can't be spoted timely. 

- Russian aviation was busy in other areas, so first strike on bridgehead with gliding bombs took place only yesterday. Russian troops asked to hit bridge supports on left bank, remained bridge decks and the hotel near the bridge, held by Ukrainians. But UKR had a time to move to Pravdyne (39 km W from bridghead) and to Sadove (9 km NE from bridgehead) areas S-300 batteries and closed the sky. So Russian pilots likely were nervous and badly missed. Guided bombs had 4 km of undershot and hit Oleshky outskirts. S-300 heavy covered with EW assets, MANPADS, AA-guns, so all attempts to spot their positions and hit with Lancets hadn't success. 

- in present time UKR trops increased the number of personnel on bridgehead to 120 men, but they still no have heavy weapon. As if their single AGS and 82 mm mortar were destroyed. 

- Dachas on the left bank near the bridge now similar to "layer cake" - UKR positions interspersed with Russians. UKR dont't gathered in one pile, they are disperced. 

- As if UKR troops are preparing several other crossing points, 93rd mech.brigade arrives to Kherson (it's true, yesterday there was a report about death of recon of this brigade, who fought as far as 2014)

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by Haiduk

[Jiggathebauce]

So Prig was upset that Putin wasn't talking to him for months, but Putin couldn't get Prig to talk to him this past weekend? Someone's lying.