How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[JonS]

9 hours ago, The_Capt said:

My guess is that the trick to beating minefields in this war is not to focus on the minefield itself but those who are observing and covering it.

In other words, SOSRA? Especially the first S and the O?

[JonS]

48 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Right now without paywall. Worth reading.

 

 

Ouch. Some of those name-checks are going to sting.

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, DesertFox said:

Right now without paywall. Worth reading.

 

 

Yeesh, I do not even know where to start.  I hate it when "insiders" play the nomenclature game.  "It isn't Hybrid Warfare, its Grey Zone."  "It isn't Grey Zone it is 'Below the Threshold'".  "It isn't Great Power, it is 'Full Spectrum Power'".  Half of this is just trying to new label for the same thing but now you can claim re-branding rights - original thought is not any part of the discussion.

So a Great Power is now defined by "full spectrum" appears to be DIME+P (and no mention of C - culture), with a focus on capital M and everything to make that happen.  If this is the case there is a pretty strong argument that the US is not a Great Power, nor a Full Spectrum Power either because it is lacking in Political unity and will to actually employ all them pointy bits and accept sacrifice on the same level as China.

Further this completely misses the boat as to why Russia failed.  There is a level of facade, no doubt about that; however, as we have discussed numerous times here the entry cost of a war like this is so high that if the US and a coalition were fighting an enemy empowered and enabled like Ukraine we likely would not even start it in the first place.  Can you imagine 100k US soldiers dying in 16 months?  Last time that happened was WW2, not some sideshow intervention.

What is missing from this entire discussion is Opportunity.  Great/Full Spectrum (whatever) Power only counts if one has Opportunity to use it, or better yet create Opportunity to use it.  Further a more fulsome treatment of the subject has to look at the power to Deny opportunity.  We are democratizing both energy/kinetic and information based power at a terrifying rate - now small powers like North Korea can achieve a sort of relative power superiority within niches. 

So is Russia a "Great Power"?...well considering that we are not going all Iraq/Saddam on its a$$, I would say "yes" it is still in the club of nations that can deter the entire western world to a degree.  Further, Russia has (and likely will) go back to employing subversive power as a primary mode of making trouble, as going overt did not work out so well.  Or are we going to convince our selves that "no Russia is not a Great Power, so we can do all sorts of things as policy"?  Are we going to start treating Russia like we would Panama? 

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, JonS said:

In other words, SOSRA? Especially the first S and the O?

I was actually thinking more about R - to the point that their system fails to a level where A is viable.  OS are very hard to the point of being impossible so one had to erode the entire thing for a length of time.  The you are not breaching as much as pushing safe lanes in order to chase after a fleeing opponent.

[Lieutenant Ash]

Would thermobaric explosives provide enough over pressure to detonate a minefield?

Quick google search came up with this proposal which was looked at in the early 80's (sorry about the image,didn't know how to flip it right side up).The idea was to hit a minefield with thermobaric cluster bombs.

[billbindc]

16 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Yeesh, I do not even know where to start.  I hate it when "insiders" play the nomenclature game.  "It isn't Hybrid Warfare, its Grey Zone."  "It isn't Grey Zone it is 'Below the Threshold'".  "It isn't Great Power, it is 'Full Spectrum Power'".  Half of this is just trying to new label for the same thing but now you can claim re-branding rights - original thought is not any part of the discussion.

So a Great Power is now defined by "full spectrum" appears to be DIME+P (and no mention of C - culture), with a focus on capital M and everything to make that happen.  If this is the case there is a pretty strong argument that the US is not a Great Power, nor a Full Spectrum Power either because it is lacking in Political unity and will to actually employ all them pointy bits and accept sacrifice on the same level as China.

Further this completely misses the boat as to why Russia failed.  There is a level of facade, no doubt about that; however, as we have discussed numerous times here the entry cost of a war like this is so high that if the US and a coalition were fighting an enemy empowered and enabled like Ukraine we likely would not even start it in the first place.  Can you imagine 100k US soldiers dying in 16 months?  Last time that happened was WW2, not some sideshow intervention.

What is missing from this entire discussion is Opportunity.  Great/Full Spectrum (whatever) Power only counts if one has Opportunity to use it, or better yet create Opportunity to use it.  Further a more fulsome treatment of the subject has to look at the power to Deny opportunity.  We are democratizing both energy/kinetic and information based power at a terrifying rate - now small powers like North Korea can achieve a sort of relative power superiority within niches. 

So is Russia a "Great Power"?...well considering that we are not going all Iraq/Saddam on its a$$, I would say "yes" it is still in the club of nations that can deter the entire western world to a degree.  Further, Russia has (and likely will) go back to employing subversive power as a primary mode of making trouble, as going overt did not work out so well.  Or are we going to convince our selves that "no Russia is not a Great Power, so we can do all sorts of things as policy"?  Are we going to start treating Russia like we would Panama? 

I'm more sympathetic to Phillip's idea that these things need revision once in a while (if only to induce media to be less slavishly devoted to crude narratives) but the idea that the US was a superpower from 1917 to 1941 is....oof. 

[Kinophile]

11 hours ago, strac_sap said:

They wouldn't detonate the old several hundred pound AT mines, but lighter ones and anti-personnel yes. I feel like this way it wouldn't be complete and you'd still need to plow, MICLIC etc.  And the little hounds would have given away your breach point in time for counter fire when you're still vulnerable finishing the breach. Just thinking out loud of course.

They dont need to be sent hours ahead,  they could be literally just physically ahead. At that point  the op is in progress and the enemy is aware - or dead. 

Edited June 29, 2023 by Kinophile

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, billbindc said:

I'm more sympathetic to Phillip's idea that these things need revision once in a while (if only to induce media to be less slavishly devoted to crude narratives) but the idea that the US was a superpower from 1917 to 1941 is....oof. 

Peace on the requirement for forward thinking...so lets see it.  It has been a brutally long time since I have read anything from these IR/FP types that got the blood pumping - of course that may be me, as the lights in the eyes go out in this line of work.

[Haiduk]

3 hours ago, DesertFox said:

 

 

The soldier, who dug up his comrade says him at the end: "Now you will have callsign "Mole" %)

[billbindc]

1 minute ago, The_Capt said:

Peace on the requirement for forward thinking...so lets see it.  It has been a brutally long time since I have read anything from these IR/FP types that got the blood pumping - of course that may be me, as the lights in the eyes go out in this line of work.

I've always been an area studies guy myself so it's never revved my engines much either. But this sort of thing *is* influential in how conflicts get explained to the public at large so we need to pay some attention. One need only look at how Mearsheimer is *still* being approvingly quoted by the Musk supplicants on Twitter to see that real world political implications come from what are often just very dry intellectual exercises in policy justification. Seen in that light, Phillips is attempting to lower the resistance to arming Ukraine and raise resistance to deferring to Russian interests. Call it another front in the war if you will. 

[Haiduk]

Russian TG:

Now contact line near Rabotino [ukr. Robotyne] is along this white line. UKR need to overcome just one field to reach northern part of the village

Edited June 29, 2023 by Haiduk

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, billbindc said:

I've always been an area studies guy myself so it's never revved my engines much either. But this sort of thing *is* influential in how conflicts get explained to the public at large so we need to pay some attention. One need only look at how Mearsheimer is *still* being approvingly quoted by the Musk supplicants on Twitter to see that real world political implications come from what are often just very dry intellectual exercises in policy justification. Seen in that light, Phillips is attempting to lower the resistance to arming Ukraine and raise resistance to deferring to Russian interests. Call it another front in the war if you will. 

Ya I got that part, it was weak reframing which does not really help beyond those who already agree with the position...hell I agree with the position and thought it off key.  There is no way we can park policy on "the is no such thing as Great Powers" - it is right up there with that Chatham House piece from yesterday.

Of course there are Great Powers, they would be the ones who deter, coerce and compel us be it above or below the waterline.  The questions are - how do we expand/sustain our option spaces while compressing theirs?  Quickly followed by "setting conditions to negotiate from positions of strength".  Russia, China and/or Mole People, that is the central issue.  What seems to break a lot of these policy types is the fact that we may need to renegotiate the RBIO in the process as the status quo appears to have fun off and joined the circus.

Back to Russia the issue to my mind is how do we defeat a Great Power without making things worse?  Carefully, it would appear.

Edit - to follow up, now the concept of Medium Power (one my nation seems to think is a thing) might be the idea worth tossing out.  I am beginning to think a state is either Great or Small, Medium really doesn't seem to mean anything beyond a collectivism dream that is starting to fray on the edges.

Edited June 29, 2023 by The_Capt

[DesertFox]

17 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Russian TG:

Now contact line near Rabotino [ukr. Robotyne] is along this white line. UKR need to overcome just one field to reach northern part of the village

 I would be surprised if they are not into the village this night. Tokmak is getting strikes for several weeks now on a daily basis, so I hope they can get through this mine ridden axis by next week.

[DesertFox]

Apparently on the move. Lets see what the next hours bring.

 

 

[Bulletpoint]

3 hours ago, chris talpas said:

Actually while not quite keeping up with Moore’s law GPU performance (what AI is running on) is doubling every 2.5 years

https://www.lesswrong.com/out?url=https%3A%2F%2Fepochai.org%2Fblog%2Ftrends-in-gpu-price-performance

I would agree that cpu performance increases are far more incremental 

 

 

Thanks, yes I was primarily talking about CPUs.

But when it comes to GPUs, as I understand it, performance is mostly increasing because of economies of scale - chips are still getting smaller and more efficient, yes, but the main thing relevant to AI is that mass production makes the cost of each individual chip less and less.

And since GPUs perform parallel processing, we can combine more and more individual chips to get more and more performance per dollar, but this also means bigger and bigger data centres eating up more and more electricity. It won't make your average phone able to run better AI by itself, because power and space remain very lmited inside the phone.

For this reason, it's not quite Moore's Law, because that was about the number of transistors we are able to inexpensively place in the same area doubling, not about the total calculations we can do per dollar in a data centre doubling.

Anyway, sorry for derailing the thread. All this is only marginally relevant to Ukraine.

[Butschi]

1 minute ago, Bulletpoint said:

Thanks, yes I was primarily talking about CPUs.

But when it comes to GPUs, as I understand it, performance is mostly increasing because of economies of scale - chips are still getting smaller and more efficient, yes, but the main thing relevant to AI is that mass production makes the cost of each individual chip less and less.

And since GPUs perform parallel processing, we can combine more and more individual chips to get more and more performance per dollar, but this also means bigger and bigger data centres eating up more and more electricity. It won't make your average phone able to run better AI by itself, because power and space remain very lmited inside the phone.

For this reason, it's not quite Moore's Law, because that was about the number of transistors we are able to inexpensively place in the same area doubling, not about the total calculations we can do per dollar in a data centre doubling.

Anyway, sorry for derailing the thread. All this is only marginally relevant to Ukraine.

GPUs are great for all sorts of tensor manipulation which can also be nicely parallelized. Realizing that this whole AI/machine learning business can be rephrased as tensor manipulations and thus calculated on a GPU is one of the major reasons AI stuff has sky rocketed so much. GPUs are not just "more parallel" now but also more specialized towards specific operations.

[billbindc]

13 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Ya I got that part, it was weak reframing which does not really help beyond those who already agree with the position...hell I agree with the position and thought it off key.  There is no way we can park policy on "the is no such thing as Great Powers" - it is right up there with that Chatham House piece from yesterday.

Of course there are Great Powers, they would be the ones who deter, coerce and compel us be it above or below the waterline.  The questions are - how do we expand/sustain our option spaces while compressing theirs?  Quickly followed by "setting conditions to negotiate from positions of strength".  Russia, China and/or Mole People, that is the central issue.  What seems to break a lot of these policy types is the fact that we may need to renegotiate the RBIO in the process as the status quo appears to have fun off and joined the circus.

Back to Russia the issue to my mind is how do we defeat a Great Power without making things worse?  Carefully, it would appear.

Edit - to follow up, now the concept of Medium Power (one my nation seems to think is a thing) might be the idea worth tossing out.  I am beginning to think a state is either Great or Small, Medium really doesn't seem to mean anything beyond a collectivism dream that is starting to fray on the edges.

How do we defeat a Great Power that has nuclear weapons? We don't. Instead, we help put it in a position in which it perforce defeats itself.  

[Haiduk]

15 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Apparently on the move. Lets see what the next hours bring.

 

 

Mashovets writes Russia threw into the battle there PMC "Potok" ("Stream") and "Fakel" ("Torch") of Gazprom. On the northern flank already was invoilved PMC "Veterany" of Shoigu. All these PMCs are just cosplay of Wagner, having poor effectiveness. "Potok" already appeared on Bakhmut direction several months ago, but after first clashes and artillery hits abandoned positions. Russian milbloggers wrote, that as commander of this PMC was appointed employee of Gazprom, retired police officer, who had some security duties in this company. He had no skills in military like and most of commanders of lower levels, personnel had poor training, so first fight they failed in several days, reveiving scorn from Wagners

Edited June 29, 2023 by Haiduk

[Bulletpoint]

1 minute ago, Haiduk said:

Mashovets writes Russia threw into the battle there PMC "Potok" ("Stream") and "Fakel" ("Torch") of Gazprom.

Crazy times we're living in. In my country, the gas company will only send a bill, not an army to take over the country.

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, billbindc said:

How do we defeat a Great Power that has nuclear weapons? We don't. Instead, we help put it in a position in which it perforce defeats itself.  

There we go...write that in a FP article.

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

The soldier, who dug up his comrade says him at the end: "Now you will have callsign "Mole" %)

When I saw this the first time, I thought at least he got dug out very quickly, so no real problem. Then I went back and timed it and he's actually completely stuck underground with his whole face covered for a full 17 seconds. Probably felt like a lot longer, too.

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

I've always been an area studies guy myself so it's never revved my engines much either. But this sort of thing *is* influential in how conflicts get explained to the public at large so we need to pay some attention. One need only look at how Mearsheimer is *still* being approvingly quoted by the Musk supplicants on Twitter to see that real world political implications come from what are often just very dry intellectual exercises in policy justification. Seen in that light, Phillips is attempting to lower the resistance to arming Ukraine and raise resistance to deferring to Russian interests. Call it another front in the war if you will. 

Nicely put. 

[kevinkin]

One of perhaps several reasons the FSB kept Putin in the dark:

The FSB is a dystopian version of what some Americans refer to as the “deep state.” It is dystopian in the sense that Russia is, as Calder Walton fittingly argued in his article in Time, “effectively a security service with a state attached.” Whereas the FBI and CIA exist to protect the United States, as John Sipher pointed out in another piece for Time, the FSB exists solely “to keep the regime in power.”

If the source of power starts with the FSB, they can select the face of the nation. Putin is now a useful idiot and will be discarded if and when the time is right. This has implications on the chances the Russia failing quickly top to bottom and the safety of WMD. Maybe those freaking mother of all poker chips are safer than we think. As evil as they are, perhaps the FSB represent the only remaining adults in Russian.  

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4070910-will-the-kgb-be-the-last-man-standing-in-russia/

[Yet]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

Russian TG:

Now contact line near Rabotino [ukr. Robotyne] is along this white line. UKR need to overcome just one field to reach northern part of the village

and that field is defence line #2 out of the 6 defensieve lines on the map in this part of the front. 

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

I've always been an area studies guy myself so it's never revved my engines much either. But this sort of thing *is* influential in how conflicts get explained to the public at large so we need to pay some attention. One need only look at how Mearsheimer is *still* being approvingly quoted by the Musk supplicants on Twitter to see that real world political implications come from what are often just very dry intellectual exercises in policy justification. Seen in that light, Phillips is attempting to lower the resistance to arming Ukraine and raise resistance to deferring to Russian interests. Call it another front in the war if you will. 

This, exactly this. Why was Ukraine left hanging for the six months previous to 2/24, when there was rock solid evidence of what was coming. It was because there was this enormous fear of Russian power, that anything we do will make it worse.Why were there not HIMARS in country in a month? Why was Western armor that is now grinding through mine field in the south not available to drive home the offensive in Kharkiv last fall? Why is the southern offensive not supported by fifty plus F-16s? The answer to all of those questions is that we gave Russia to much deference, to much credit, and to much fear.