How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

53 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

is it artillery or UAVs that are pushing Russia's advance? seems misplaced to be discussing about drone swarms when Russia isn't overtaking Ukraine in drones but artillery, and Ukraine seems unable to counter with drones or limited artillery. 

Russia isn't taking over much of anything these days, so there's that What they are taking over is through brute force and, ironically, not much of that has been artillery.  The battle for Avdiivka was a combination of endless meat waves, massive amounts of armored vehicles, lots of drones, and huge numbers of glide bombs.  Artillery was hardly mentioned by anybody on either side, at least not as much as it had been in previous battles.

Steve

[JonS]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Why do you need to blast an entire treeline (and the fields around it) for hours to suppress a fortified line, MAYBE causing some casualties, when a half dozen FPVs can have the exact same effect of suppression and probably cause more casualties?

Time.

I can be suppressing that tree line 4 minutes from now and start supported arms moving 4 minutes after that, or keep it up for the rest of the day.

Achieving either with drones is, ok, lol.

Quote

True, which but we've seen plenty examples of artillery systems getting knocked out or their supply disrupted.  You don't need to intercept a 155mm shell if you destroy the gun that was going to use it or the truck trying to bring it to the gun.

This is the same argument as "you don't need to knock out a tank, you just need to knock out the truck that brings it fuel." And it's true; you don't, although it only solves the problem tomorrow rather than right-now-because-omg-the-tank-is-breathing-down-my-neck.

But still. It's true.

And you know what else the argument works on?

Edited April 10 by JonS

[Battlefront.com]

3 minutes ago, JonS said:

Time.

I can be suppressing that tree line 4 minutes from now and start supported arms moving 4 minutes after that, or keep it up for the rest of the day.

Achieving either with drones is, ok, lol.

This is a good point coming from someone who I've heard wears fishnet stockings in other people's nightmares.

Certainly time is one thing artillery theoretically has to offer.  Provided, of course, that artillery is not so busy displacing and staying on the move to be able to provide that fire support faster than drones can get into action.

One of the things that the ISR aspects of UVs provides is more time to react.  We've seen Ukraine watch over the assembly and march of Russian assault group from far behind the lines and follow them straight to that treeline.  Seems to me that alert time provides an opportunity for drones units to get into the area.  Maybe not in 4 minutes, but if it's within 10 it probably is good enough.

Steve

[cesmonkey]

 

[cesmonkey]

 

[The_Capt]

10 minutes ago, JonS said:

Time.

I can be suppressing that tree line 4 minutes from now and start supported arms moving 4 minutes after that, or keep it up for the rest of the day.

Achieving either with drones is, ok, lol.

Assuming the bloody gunners can actually hit the right treeline and not the one I am currently trying to hide in.

The time thing is valid up to a point.  Once drones are used at sufficient scales they are trading persistence for speed.  A cloud of drones doesn’t need time of flight because they are already there.  This is an extension of the old Fast Air argument - “well a drone takes far longer to get to a target than a ground attack bird”.  Well technically yes, except if the Reaper has been loitering over the area for 12 hours already.

As to “LOLZ”, how much more video evidence so we need to see what FPVs are capable of?  And these systems will be “classic” by this time next year.  FFS Ukraine now has an Unmanned Service branch.

[cesmonkey]

 

[JonS]

2 hours ago, Letter from Prague said:

So what do you need to counter drones? A weapon, radar and some computer?

Drones are part of a system - the whirrwhirr flying thing is just the end point of that system. The system can be attacked anywhere along its chain, and different points in the chain will need different combinations of things to effect an attack.

At the moment everyone seems exclusively focussed on knocking down the whirrwhirr. Thats part of it, but so is camouflage, dispersion, armouring up, supply chains, intelligence in its myriad forms, attacking the operators, disrupting comms, deception, etc.

Edited April 10 by JonS

[JonS]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

As to “LOLZ”, how much more video evidence so we need to see what FPVs are capable of?  

Quite a bit. I havent yet seen a lot of evidence of drones being used offensively as part of go-forward combined arms maneauvre.

Instead we see they're being used as mobile mines or battlefield assassination tools. Which is genuinely really problematic, but also kind of a dead end street.

Edit: I'm excluding ISR above. That's already generally integrated and supplementing other systems

Edited April 10 by JonS

[Battlefront.com]

Ukraine appears willing to risk some diplomatic ruffled feathers in order to get more and quicker aid, in particular Patriots:

https://thehill.com/policy/international/4586137-ukraine-kuleba-ups-urgency-weapons/

Steve

[The_Capt]

7 minutes ago, JonS said:

Quite a bit. I havent yet seen a lot of evidence of drones being used offensively as part of go-forward combined arms maneauvre.

Instead we see they're being used as mobile mines or assassination tools. Which is genuinely really problematic, but also kind of a dead end street.

Dead end street?!  It is keeping Ukraine in this war right now.  And we really have not seen artillery being used offensively as part of a go-forward combined arms maneuver either while we are poking holes.  We have seen tons of steel being dropped by the Russians while they retake inches since summer of ‘22.  Ukraine has high precision guns and have not been able to overcome those Russian minefields or defensive positions with much better luck.

Right now inter-arms finger pointing on offensive “go-forward” is akin to whores arguing on levels of chastity.  No one is “go-forwarding”.  By these metrics artillery are as much a “dead end street” as drones are.

Edited April 10 by The_Capt

[Battlefront.com]

6 minutes ago, JonS said:

Quite a bit. I havent yet seen a lot of evidence of drones being used offensively as part of go-forward combined arms maneauvre.

Sure you have. They are used on enemy trenches and rear area support areas to harass and soften up the enemy.  How is that different than what artillery does?

Steve

[Kinophile]

46 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Russia isn't taking over much of anything these days, so there's that What they are taking over is through brute force and, ironically, not much of that has been artillery.  The battle for Avdiivka was a combination of endless meat waves, massive amounts of armored vehicles, lots of drones, and huge numbers of glide bombs.  Artillery was hardly mentioned by anybody on either side, at least not as much as it had been in previous battles.

Steve

Well no, AIUI it (lack of readily available ammunition) was a major factor in the craking of the Ukrainian lines. The sheer number, duration and dimensions of RUS infantry assaults required far more arty than was provided. 

There were at least two major positions on the northern "shoulders" in lost because of lack of fires support. 

This didn't get better and eventually was a significant factor. Ukraine just couldn't kill and suppress the Rus infantry in sufficient numbers. 

[JonS]

10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

we really have not seen artillery being used offensively as part of a go-forward combined arms maneuver either while we are poking holes.

WWI? WWII? Korea? Falklands? GWI?

[chrisl]

4 minutes ago, JonS said:

WWI? WWII? Korea? Falklands? GWI?

How's it been working in modern Ukraine?

[The_Capt]

9 minutes ago, JonS said:

WWI? WWII? Korea? Falklands? GWI?

But Papa we are talking about this war, remember?  Not really high levels of FPVs in your walk down memory lane.  Unmanned systems have denied maneuver in this war.  First by ISR and now by Strike.  Now amount of long tube boom-boom appear to be able to change that.

Gawd, was willing to give the guns a break, looking towards a new type of all arms team….and of course the most insecure combat arm decides to try for “I am now King of the Castle”.  Armor is all “Know it Isn’t…er ‘No’…Now….oh crap”.  Engineers go “Technically.”  And Infantry just want it to all be over.

Well good to see some things never change.

Edited April 10 by The_Capt

[JonS]

52 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

looking towards a new type of all arms team…

You do realise we're arguing the same side here?

A lot of traditional systems seem broken (or wounded, or at least a bit lame due to a gammy knee) right now; navy, fast air, attack aviation, infantry, armour, engineers, logistics, and yes artillery. That's due to a bunch of things; prolific atgms, prolific pgms, lagging mil industrial capability and production, prolific isr, and yes drones.

The way through this dark wood isn't going to be ditching everything and betting the farm on the whirrwhirr.

We *know* that artillery is an important part of the combined arms team. We *know* that artillery is crucial to enabling go-forward offensive maneauvre. It isnt working right now, but as always it'll evolve and indirect fires will resume their place in the go-forward team.

Edited April 10 by JonS

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

Well no, AIUI it (lack of readily available ammunition) was a major factor in the craking of the Ukrainian lines. The sheer number, duration and dimensions of RUS infantry assaults required far more arty than was provided. 

There were at least two major positions on the northern "shoulders" in lost because of lack of fires support. 

This didn't get better and eventually was a significant factor. Ukraine just couldn't kill and suppress the Rus infantry in sufficient numbers. 

Riiiiight, but the point I was responding to was that Russian artillery is allowing Russia to take ground, not drones.  I was arguing that artillery wasn't what got Russia Avdiivka, it was other factors.  Including Ukraine's inability to mass fires against Russia sufficient to stop all the attacks.

This is now moving away from the topic of artillery and UVs because neither explain how Russia is taking ground.  But here's a synopsis.

Avdiivka was much like the final phase of Bakhmut in that Russia simply exhausted the Ukrainian defenders.  Not necessarily in terms of physical assets, though that was part of it, but manpower.  The Ukrainians in both cases were simply too few and too tired to continue resisting.

We read report after report about Ukrainian forces defeating a Russian attack either 100% or nearly so.  Great!  Except that was 1 of 4 that day.  And then there was 4 the next day.  Then there was 4 the day after that, then there was... etc.

Which is to say that Russian artillery and Russian drones and Ukrainian artillery and Ukrainian drones weren't what got Russia ground.  It was part of the equation, but not the most important part.

Steve

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, JonS said:

You do realise we're arguing the same side here?

Ya I know but you keep showing up looking like this in my nightmares.

So you need to be argued with for all humankind….

[JonS]

PM me your email - I'll send your beaver tail some more recent images to dream about.

 

(Edit: fun fact - TRHPS was written by a kiwi dairy farmer. I'm not sure what that says about the farming community, or the wider country, but I'm going to assume "something disturbing." Very fun movie though )

Edited April 10 by JonS

[poesel]

4 hours ago, dan/california said:

The artillery deployed sub munitions in the very effective German smart round were developed in 1989. They deploy a parachute and float over an unlucky target, or not. Electronics and and and everything else have improved in the last thirty years, just a bit. There is ZERO reason except some development time and money that a new version of this couldn't deploy the exact same submunition with pop out glider wings instead of a parachute. So now instead of sweeping a a strip a few tens of meters wide at the mercy of the wind, it systematically searches  a square kilometer for the highest value target.

The French have a version of it ('Bonus') that uses wings instead of a parachute. But the motion is the same: the ammunition is doing a spiral motion to scan for targets. The area covered is a circle with around 150m radius (that's about 70.000 m^2 or 760.000 ft^2 so slightly more than 'a few tens of meters').

The spiraling motion points it towards many points in that area, and that covers scanning and aiming in one go. Trying to replace that with something that can fly, fit inside a 155mm tube and survive the delivery was hard in '89 and still is today. Even if it were feasible I doubt it would be economical.

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, poesel said:

The French have a version of it ('Bonus') that uses wings instead of a parachute. But the motion is the same: the ammunition is doing a spiral motion to scan for targets. The area covered is a circle with around 150m radius (that's about 70.000 m^2 or 760.000 ft^2 so slightly more than 'a few tens of meters').

The spiraling motion points it towards many points in that area, and that covers scanning and aiming in one go. Trying to replace that with something that can fly, fit inside a 155mm tube and survive the delivery was hard in '89 and still is today. Even if it were feasible I doubt it would be economical.

So some body has already done pop out wings. It already has a pretty good sensor package. All  it needs is a tiny solid fuel motor and some way warp those wings for control purposes, and instead of a 150 meter circle, it is a 1500 meter circle. I think that might worth the some engineering effort. setting up a new line is almost free, as a marginal cost,  because we need LOTS of new lines for every type of 155 round in the inventory. They might as well be better 155 rounds with current generation electronics.

[dan/california]

Read Dmitri every day.

[sross112]

5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Riiiiight, but the point I was responding to was that Russian artillery is allowing Russia to take ground, not drones.  I was arguing that artillery wasn't what got Russia Avdiivka, it was other factors.  Including Ukraine's inability to mass fires against Russia sufficient to stop all the attacks.

This is now moving away from the topic of artillery and UVs because neither explain how Russia is taking ground.  But here's a synopsis.

Avdiivka was much like the final phase of Bakhmut in that Russia simply exhausted the Ukrainian defenders.  Not necessarily in terms of physical assets, though that was part of it, but manpower.  The Ukrainians in both cases were simply too few and too tired to continue resisting.

We read report after report about Ukrainian forces defeating a Russian attack either 100% or nearly so.  Great!  Except that was 1 of 4 that day.  And then there was 4 the next day.  Then there was 4 the day after that, then there was... etc.

Which is to say that Russian artillery and Russian drones and Ukrainian artillery and Ukrainian drones weren't what got Russia ground.  It was part of the equation, but not the most important part.

Steve

Isn't the number one thing that the UA troops were saying was the game changer for recent battles the glide bombing? 

This correlates to the drone discussion as that is what drones can't deliver yet: LARGE amounts of HE. They also can't support long range C4ISR like a HIMARS can. They don't have the kill radius that those tungsten balls do either. 

I'll give FPVs their due as they are the only indirect option that has proven effective on moving targets close to the front. That is where they are very useful is right on the front and close behind it. Anything deeper than that is a toss up. Look at the last airfield strike where quite a few long range UAV's went in. If you had a choice between that many UAV's or the same number of ATACMS, Tomahawks, or Storm Shadows which would you take? Which would give you the most damage and loss to the enemy?

Now that will lead into the what is available question, and that is where this war is a disconnect between the ground in Ukraine and if the US was prosecuting the same conflict: resources. The UA has had to develop the UAVs and FPVs in order to fill a gap that is not present for the US. A thousand pages ago a lot of us agreed that C4ISR and ammo to hit the targets equals success. The UA has been starving for ammo. If we really want to test the theory of where these weapon systems fit into the future, give the UA the platforms and the ammo and see where the drones get meshed in. My bet is company level and below integral fire support and recon. 

For those reasons I don't believe that the UAV's will usurp the other systems, but they will become complementary. I do believe they will be very significantly expanded and should be prolific on the fire team to company level, but I don't see how in their current form they can replace 50lbs of explosive and fragmentation 50 or more kms away in a matter of minutes. 

The defensive primacy will only last until there are effective drone countermeasures, whatever they may be. Once that is done, those layered indirect fire platforms and the other members of the traditional combined arms will be back on deck to make things happen. 

[Kinophile]

Hopefully my dream of a FPV video with this sh*tbag's face at the end of it can still come through.... 

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-girkin-strelkov-ukraine-invasion-prison/32899197.html