How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

1 hour ago, Joe982 said:

How is the French AMX 10 performing in Ukraine?

 

.

A video was posted here recently - interview with Marines, who received these vehicles. They praised it, pointing out its speed, maneuverability and accurate shooting of gun. 

[Haiduk]

1 hour ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1696838128529502456.html

That was faster than expected 

 

The battle for Verbove is very hard. Add also +33..35 of heat in sahdow. One of our serviceman responding on reports of General Staff that "UKR troops had success near Verbove", writes "... But it's like modern battle of the Somme"

[Tux]

24 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

A video was posted here recently - interview with Marines, who received these vehicles. They praised it, pointing out its speed, maneuverability and accurate shooting of gun. 

Pretty sure we’ll have to wait until post-war to hear the real assessment of how the various equipment types have performed.  Not that I don’t believe the above but I’m sure the UA prioritise buttering up western donors by praising their kit rather than starting a diplomatic pi**ing match over who’s is best, etc. 

[Haiduk]

Russian TG

Verbovoye can become the second Rabotino

UKR TGs (RUMINT)

- "Surovikin line" has been breached in four places

- part of Verbove already grey zone

- we have some succes in fields on east and south-east from Novoprokopivka

 

[Chibot Mk IX]

1 hour ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1696838128529502456.html

That was faster than expected 

 

Guess they got to widen the flanks first. The breach is too narrow to support a direct push into the village. 

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, Seedorf81 said:

A testament to the quality of this thread:

it took 2814 pages before the subject of racism popped up. That must be a worldrecord for any thread on any forum these days.

Heh... well, you must have missed all the discussion about the Russian forms of racism, including one of their favorite terms for their "little brothers" - khokhol.  Not that Ukraine's favorite term for Russians (Orcs), is much better

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The one weapon on the battlefield that never runs out of ammo.

Correction.  One of two.  See my previous post about the inexhaustible supply of hurtful words

Steve

[Haiduk]

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, while on a visit in France, told a story, how small group of 31 fighters maintained success in Robotyne, after weeks of unsuccessful assaults

...One Ukrainian unit had been conducting continuous assaults in this area of the front, and due to exhaustion and losses, at some point, this unit lost the ability to continue the offensive. And then "radical decisions" were made: the unit's leadership was changed.

New commander asked to assemble soldiers who were motivated and ready to perform combat missions. A combined group of 31 soldiers was created, a third of whom had no combat experience, but all of whom had the knowledge and will to win.

Thanks to the leadership of the commanders and sergeants, this group established "horizontal links" with neighbouring units and started working on the contact line. For 18 hours, they crawled literally on their stomachs through kilometres of minefields, where the Russians had placed six mines per square metre.

Finally, the unit reached a strip of trees dividing farmers' fields. Everyone in Ukraine knows this word - "posadka" ("tree-plant, tree-line"). It’s in these plantations, invisible on maps, that the greatest tragedies and heroism of the war take place. So, our unit drove the Russians out of there and held the position for two days until reinforcements arrived. Subsequently, this group walked another 10 kilometres with backpacks weighing 35-40 kilograms through minefields. They only had time to catch their breath briefly and immediately stormed the fortified Russian positions, drove the enemy out and held out until the main forces arrived.

In total, this unit conducted six assaults and two reconnaissance missions in 40 days. A group of 31 men did the work of an entire battalion, which should have consisted of about 400 men. The losses amounted to seven wounded, including only one seriously injured after stepping on a mine.

In fact, the work of this group made it possible for an entire brigade to attack Robotyne and liberate it after weeks of assaults.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/08/30/7417687/

[Aragorn2002]

On 8/26/2023 at 4:35 PM, poesel said:

There were some Russians ships with turned off transponders in that region just prior to the explosions. They could have placed the explosives or try to remove them. We don't know.

Pro (Russia is the culprit): they tried to evade the fines for not delivering gas by force majeure

Contra: why would they destroy a big source of income?

Yes, but I don't mean they couldn't do it. I meant that they couldn't do it without being caught afterwards. Their track record hasn't been that good lately.

Quite the contrary. The documentary displays the facts as far as they are known to the public and refrains from presenting a conclusion. But it does list the options. That includes those that most of us probably dislike.

With this operation the Russians gained something very important. They showed the West that they are able to blow up this kind of connections. Like a warning. And combined with the intense interest of the Russian navy for Western energy installations at sea (windfarms for instance) quite an effective warning.

[Battlefront.com]

24 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Russian TG

Verbovoye can become the second Rabotino

UKR TGs (RUMINT)

- "Surovikin line" has been breached in four places

- part of Verbove already grey zone

- we have some succes in fields on east and south-east from Novoprokopivka

 

So far things are looking to play out as I had hoped based on the evidence we've seen so far.  It does seem that Russia has been defending its forward positions so hard because their 1st line of defense is not as strong and their 2nd line is even worse, with 3rd line positions only just now getting any real attention. 

I think Russia's strategy was almost totally dependent upon wearing out the Ukrainian counter offensive in the forward zone, instead of using it to weaken the attack and defeat it at the 1st or 2nd line of defense.  The forward positions were fully manned and massively mined when the counter offensive started, 1st and 2nd lines not so much (especially with combat forces).  However, Ukraine wore down the defenders instead and now there's a distinct shortage of infantry and supporting arms (especially artillery) to man the 1st line of defense.

It sounds like Verbove was very difficult and costly for Ukraine's success at Verbove, so I'm not saying that their 1st line is a "push over".  Russia still has plenty of potential to cause Ukraine casualties.  Plenty.  But their potential for stopping Ukrainian advances seems to be weakening considerably.

Steve

[The_MonkeyKing]

thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1696564228331655559.html

Good points with proof and examples of how we have observer bias on these fortifications dug in the open.

[Seedorf81]

39 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Heh... well, you must have missed all the discussion about the Russian forms of racism, including one of their favorite terms for their "little brothers" - khokhol.  Not that Ukraine's favorite term for Russians (Orcs), is much better

Steve

Well, to be honest, I had a bit of a suspicion that it might have come up earlier (almost ALL subjects and ALL topics seem to end up in this thread, sooner or later), but I didn't have the courage to go back and check the..

TWO THOUSAND EIGHTHUNDRED and FOURTEEN previous pages.

 

(And of course, I hoped no one would find out. Didn't realize our Battlefront-Boss sees it all, reads it all and knows it all!)

 

[Centurian52]

7 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Like trenches?

Trenches have been used in every single war (that I can think of) since WW1, and many, many wars prior to WW1.

Edit: And bayonets were still considered an important weapon at least as late as WW2, and were still retained in many armies until very recently (still a potential backup weapon, and some armies still maintain that bayonet training is a useful way of instilling aggressiveness).

It's not so hard to see why bayonets were retained as late as WW2. Imagine you have assaulted an enemy trench or are storming a house and you find yourself in close contact with an enemy soldier. You have a bolt-action rifle, and have missed your first shot. Is it faster and less risky to work the bolt to chamber a fresh round or to thrust your rifle forward to stab the enemy with your bayonet? Stabbing is probably faster and safer in this situation.

It's harder to imagine why bayonets were retained for so long after WW2. If you are in the same situation, but you have a semi-automatic or assault rifle, then the faster and safer option is probably to just squeeze the trigger again. So you would think that semi-automatic rifles would have been the final nail in the coffin for bayonets. But, as has been pointed out, bayonets don't run out of ammo.

Edited August 30, 2023 by Centurian52

[Centurian52]

2 hours ago, Tux said:

Pretty sure we’ll have to wait until post-war to hear the real assessment of how the various equipment types have performed.  Not that I don’t believe the above but I’m sure the UA prioritise buttering up western donors by praising their kit rather than starting a diplomatic pi**ing match over who’s is best, etc. 

Might as well start trying to assess their performance right now. The post-war information space is still going to be very muddy, just for different reasons. You still have well informed people disagreeing about how this or that platform performed in WW2. History is a complicated and difficult business, and it never gets easier. We get better informed about historical events as time passes because historians have been putting in the hard work of figuring out what happened for longer, not because the sources became more reliable. There's no harm in starting that hard work now.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

Good points with proof and examples of how we have observer bias on these fortifications dug in the open.

Yup.  We've had a pretty consistent discussion that visible fortifications aren't really a good measure of how well defended a particular area is. There's a bunch of reasons holding to this point of view and Tatarigami_UA reinforces them.

The first thing to consider is that even when the visible fortifications are done right (and we've seen plenty that were mere scrapes or lacked reinforcement) they can be bypassed easily enough on their own.  This has been pointed out since the infamous mass placement of dragon's teeth last year.  They just aren't a big deal without there being a lot more.

The two things we keep hammering on here are manpower and artillery.  Without those to cover the defenses, even a thick minefield can be breached (see example Haiduk just posted about Robotyne) in fairly short order.

But Tatarigami_UA describes something else which, I think, we are all well aware of.  And that is the treelines are where the main defenses are set up and they are very difficult to see even for Ukrainians flying tactical drones right over them.  So when we see the obvious stuff, we should presume the treelines are the real main lines of resistance.  It doesn't take watching a hundred 3rd Assault Brigade videos to know that's true

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Ukraine has a new domestic manufactured armored truck (Kozak-2M1) with RWS apparently showing up at the front for the first time.  The truck has been around for quite a while, but the RWS and other improvements (presumably armor, smoke launchers, etc.) are new.  The RWS appears to be designed with the ability to engage aerial targets.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

An example of the difficulties with securing munitions by Ukrainian MoD.  Even when they find a seller and sign a contract, a positive outcome is not guaranteed:

https://censor.net/en/news/3440206/reznikov_on_disruption_of_supplies_to_ministry_of_defense_for_uah_35_billion_by_polish_company_alfa

Steve

[Splinty]

48 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

Trenches have been used in every single war (that I can think of) since WW1, and many, many wars prior to WW1.

Edit: And bayonets were still considered an important weapon at least as late as WW2, and were still retained in many armies until very recently (still a potential backup weapon, and some armies still maintain that bayonet training is a useful way of instilling aggressiveness).

It's not so hard to see why bayonets were retained as late as WW2. Imagine you have assaulted an enemy trench or are storming a house and you find yourself in close contact with an enemy soldier. You have a bolt-action rifle, and have missed your first shot. Is it faster and less risky to work the bolt to chamber a fresh round or to thrust your rifle forward to stab the enemy with your bayonet? Stabbing is probably faster and safer in this situation.

It's harder to imagine why bayonets were retained for so long after WW2. If you are in the same situation, but you have a semi-automatic or assault rifle, then the faster and safer option is probably to just squeeze the trigger again. So you would think that semi-automatic rifles would have been the final nail in the coffin for bayonets. But, as has been pointed out, bayonets don't run out of ammo.

The US Army and Marines still do bayonet training in basic and boot camp. But as was mentioned previously it's more about aggression and motivation than actually training to use them in combat. In any case a big knife always comes in handy. 

[dan/california]

 

[dan/california]

FSB pressure has now made news from the Russian side all but worthless.

[Bearstronaut]

9 minutes ago, Splinty said:

The US Army and Marines still do bayonet training in basic and boot camp. But as was mentioned previously it's more about aggression and motivation than actually training to use them in combat. In any case a big knife always comes in handy. 

I went through Army basic in 2010 and didn't do any bayonet training. We were a bunch of POGs though so I have no idea if the combat arms guys still get bayonet training.

[Centurian52]

2 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:

I went through Army basic in 2010 and didn't do any bayonet training. We were a bunch of POGs though so I have no idea if the combat arms guys still get bayonet training.

I didn't get any bayonet training when I went through basic in the winter of 2012/2013. But I was also a POG (IT Specialist), so I still can't shed any light on what the combat arms guys were up to at that point in time.

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/30/world/europe/ukraine-war-russia-attacks-seismic-waves.html

Seismic waves were generated when Russia fired artillery, airstrikes and missiles across northern Ukraine. For the first time, researchers in Norway and Ukraine studied data from dozens of earthquake sensors around Kyiv, estimating the position and strength of each explosion to see the full extent of the Russian barrage.

 

This was discussed an infinity of pages ago, somebody actually had access to the sensors and computing power to get it done.

Edit: 

Quote

Researchers determined the location of a blast to within a couple of miles by analyzing the timing of multiple seismic waves that arrived at each sensor after the blast went off. They also estimated the size of each blast, although this was more of a rough estimate.

Not super precise yet.

Edited August 30, 2023 by dan/california

[Splinty]

57 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:

I went through Army basic in 2010 and didn't do any bayonet training. We were a bunch of POGs though so I have no idea if the combat arms guys still get bayonet training.

I was in the Infantry. I just assumed that everybody still got bayonet training. So much for assumptions, lol.

[Bearstronaut]

2 minutes ago, Splinty said:

I was in the Infantry. I just assumed that everybody still got bayonet training. So much for assumptions, lol.

At least when I went through basic we still got instruction on some of the heavier weapons. When I was still on active duty a few years ago the newer soldiers in my squad had never even touched a M249 or M240B, let alone fired one.