How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[danfrodo]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Ok, well really hard to tell what that really means.  Could be military socks for all we know - and don't turn a nose up at that one, good socks are a lifesaver in this business.

Regardless, we know Russia has started pulling and China has jumped in to an extent.  What we are not seeing are high end Chinese military platforms or systems on the battlefield.  I encourage anyone interested to take a look at what China is really producing - https://odin.tradoc.army.mil/WEG/List/ORIGIN_china--people-s-republic-of-d6ee02

If the high end stuff was getting shipped we would be seeing Chinese HIMARs show up in force: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHL-03  That plugged into Chinese ISR support could make this war so much worse - the other side of the proxy escalation ladder.

Which brings us to the question of what is China really doing?  Are they just trying to make a few bucks while also keeping their old adversary weak?  If they wanted RU to actually win they'd be giving the good stuff like the west is giving.  Are they just trying to play both sides where they support RU enough to save face w Putin but also not so much as to anger the west?  And make a few bucks at the same time?  

[poesel]

6 hours ago, Letter from Prague said:

I know we talk about drones a lot when we talk about weapons. But one thing has been bugging me.

The West has bet a lot on PGMs. Like instead of biggest booms, or using a lot of weapons, West uses small but precise weapons. But turns out those are trivial to defeat with GPS jamming and end up being rather ineffectual.

So what next? What is being done to fix it? Didn't West lose most of its combat power when most weapons are possibly useless against peer enemy who will definitely have EW?

GPS is only one possibility in the 'P' of PGM. Since image recognition has developed in leaps and bounds recently, there is no reason why munitions shouldn't be able to fly by looking out the windows and comparing it with a map. They actually do this already but AFAIK by radar and height data.

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Now let’s not suddenly forget the real reason why China has risen to power…western greed. 

That is not wrong but do not forget that China currently just moves back into the slot they took over from the Romans and lost to Britain in the 18th century: the leading industrial nation of the world.

The main difference to then is that the US didn't exist at that time.

5 hours ago, Carolus said:

The article was edited to remove that quotation. 

I hope it's true and this was simply done to create plausible deniability for the UK government. But it could also just be a hasty comment by Cameron or an overly eager journalist who misheard.

It could also just be to enhance the uncertainty for Russia. Storm Shadow covers a lot of Russian soil measured from Ukraine.

[The_Capt]

55 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Which brings us to the question of what is China really doing?  Are they just trying to make a few bucks while also keeping their old adversary weak?  If they wanted RU to actually win they'd be giving the good stuff like the west is giving.  Are they just trying to play both sides where they support RU enough to save face w Putin but also not so much as to anger the west?  And make a few bucks at the same time?  

I honestly think they want the same thing we do - Russia needs to lose by just enough.  China wants two things out of Russia - energy and a market.  Both of those are at serious risk if Russia completely falls apart. So they are propping up a partner..just enough. China could have flooded Russia with much higher end capabilities.  Loans, grants and gifts much like we have done in the West for Ukraine. But China does not want a full on proxy war with the US, but also wants a weak but pliable Russia.  To my eyes they are threading a similar needle here.  I also think China is also ticked off at this whole thing as it just made things harder.  We were apathetic and internally obsessed but this war made us look up, maybe only for a bit, but we looked up and out all the same.  So while China was quietly stacking the deck, suddenly the West is all paranoid and freaking out because there was a war that did not involve brown people someplace hot and tan.  We started to care and for a revisionist state that is never a good thing.

[dan/california]

3 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I honestly think they want the same thing we do - Russia needs to lose by just enough.  China wants two things out of Russia - energy and a market.  Both of those are at serious risk if Russia completely falls apart. So they are propping up a partner..just enough. China could have flooded Russia with much higher end capabilities.  Loans, grants and gifts much like we have done in the West for Ukraine. But China does not want a full on proxy war with the US, but also wants a weak but pliable Russia.  To my eyes they are threading a similar needle here.  I also think China is also ticked off at this whole thing as it just made things harder.  We were apathetic and internally obsessed but this war made us look up, maybe only for a bit, but we looked up and out all the same.  So while China was quietly stacking the deck, suddenly the West is all paranoid and freaking out because there was a war that did not involve brown people someplace hot and tan.  We started to care and for a revisionist state that is never a good thing.

I suspect China was caught up in the same group think as everybody else who wasn't deeply familiar with Ukraine. When Putin told them it would be a short victorious war, they believed him. I am sure they hoped the defeat of Ukraine would fracture the Western alliance system, and intimidate Taiwan. 

Then they got the short end of the stick in almost every possible way. The West is reenergized, Taiwan is not coming home short of an all out war, and all they got was some cheap energy that they were probably in position to get anyway. I am more or less certain Xi is privately incandescently angry with Putin.

I agree with what The_Capt wrote above about what they now consider the ideal glide path. But they have the same problem as everybody else, wars are not terribly predictable, and there a whole lot of things that could cause it to just crash. 

[The_Capt]

8 minutes ago, dan/california said:

I suspect China was caught up in the same group think as everybody else who wasn't deeply familiar with Ukraine. When Putin told them it would be a short victorious war, they believed him. I am sure they hoped the defeat of Ukraine would fracture the Western alliance system, and intimidate Taiwan. 

Then they got the short end of the stick in almost every possible way. The West is reenergized, Taiwan is not coming home short of an all out war, and all they got was some cheap energy that they were probably in position to get anyway. I am more or less certain Xi is privately incandescently angry with Putin.

I agree with what The_Capt wrote above about what they now consider the ideal glide path. But they have the same problem as everybody else, wars are not terribly predictable, and there a whole lot of things that could cause it to just crash. 

And lets not forget old fashion greed as well:

"China has been Russia’s key defense partner throughout this period, providing direct and
indirect support to Moscow’s military machine. By 2023—despite the threat of Western secondary
sanctions—Chinese supplies to Russia fully replaced imports from Europe, the United States,
South Korea, and Taiwan, as trade between the two countries hit a record high of $240 billion,
growing 26.3 percent from 2022. Chinese shipments to Russia jumped 46.9 percent from 2022 to
2023 and 64.2 percent from 2021 to 2023.64 Having surpassed the European Union and become
Russia’s largest trade partner, China now exports to Russia a significant share of dual-use items and
technologies, from much-needed electronics to drones.65"

From that Back in Stock pdf a few posts back.

[dan/california]

13 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

And lets not forget old fashion greed as well:

"China has been Russia’s key defense partner throughout this period, providing direct and
indirect support to Moscow’s military machine. By 2023—despite the threat of Western secondary
sanctions—Chinese supplies to Russia fully replaced imports from Europe, the United States,
South Korea, and Taiwan, as trade between the two countries hit a record high of $240 billion,
growing 26.3 percent from 2022. Chinese shipments to Russia jumped 46.9 percent from 2022 to
2023 and 64.2 percent from 2021 to 2023.64 Having surpassed the European Union and become
Russia’s largest trade partner, China now exports to Russia a significant share of dual-use items and
technologies, from much-needed electronics to drones.65"

From that Back in Stock pdf a few posts back.

Certainly they will take whatever opportunities are on the table. Russia might wind up owing the Chinese several tens of percent of its energy output for more or less forever if it reaches the point where the Russian war effort is totally dependent on them. But that may still be a significant net loss for China. The new restrictions on the sale of high end semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China, and the massive subsidies being showered to reboot domestic production in the U.S. would not have happened without the war in Ukraine.

Putin's little misadventure has more or less permanently changed the answer to one the eternal questions in top level geopolitics. "They wouldn't really be that stupid would they?", sadly the the proven answer is yes, yes they would.

Edited May 3 by dan/california

[Sojourner]

I've long suspected China is sitting on the fence trying to keep the door open for reconstruction contracts in Ukraine when the fighting stops. And possibly rearmament contracts with Russia - why give it away now when you can sell it to them later.

[poesel]

1 hour ago, Sojourner said:

I've long suspected China is sitting on the fence trying to keep the door open for reconstruction contracts in Ukraine when the fighting stops.

Ukraine would piss off the rest of Europe in a mayor way if it bought from China instead of Europe after the war. That would throw a real big spanner in any EU ascension plans.

[Battlefront.com]

19 minutes ago, poesel said:

Ukraine would piss off the rest of Europe in a mayor way if it bought from China instead of Europe after the war. That would throw a real big spanner in any EU ascension plans.

Agreed.  China's best long term gain would be to have an economically dependent Russia stable enough to stay together, weak enough to not challenge expanding Chinese influence.

Steve

[Probus]

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I think the longer term strategy has to be to offset capacity issues by creating a military industrial base for Ukraine itself. 

@The_Capt We can't help them build an industrial base until after the war is over, right?  Anything that is built in Ukraine is open game for the Russians, whereas aid from the West is off limits (for now).

[Sojourner]

54 minutes ago, poesel said:

Ukraine would piss off the rest of Europe in a mayor way if it bought from China instead of Europe after the war. That would throw a real big spanner in any EU ascension plans.

For sure, and it would piss off more than Europe, but would that stop China from trying?

I hadn't considered EU ascension, take that off the table and Ukraine may have no choice but to go with the low bidder if Russia can't be forced to pay restitution. But you're right, EU membership will definitely tip the scales.

[NamEndedAllen]

49 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Agreed.  China's best long term gain would be to have an economically dependent Russia stable enough to stay together, weak enough to not challenge expanding Chinese influence.

Steve

Important to keep in mind the role of the third leg of the dynamic. The Joker here is the odd polarity reversal from the Nixon-China-Soviet triangle, where Nixon undercut the Soviets by opening up to China. Today, we have Trump-Russia-China where Trump embraces Putin and the Russian criminal state model, while at least verbally jumping all over China in his usual mouthy manner. The former case seemed rather a brilliant coup. It favorably altered the Cold War dynamic for Team USA. If Trump returns to the Presidency, the current case seems at best ominous.

[JonS]

8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

The important point is that they have confirmed 50,000, not that there is 50,000 total.  Just like vehicle counts, you can only visually verify something if it is spotted and noted.  Russia is a vast country with many nooks and crannies to check into.  Even if 100% of the deaths were reported in an obvious way, many would be missed.  I'm sure that sort of clarity doesn't exist.

First, you'll have some people who died and for whatever reason their death isn't clearly associated with being in Ukraine.  Kinda like in the US we have a huge percentage of our obituaries that report "died unexpectedly" instead of "blew his brains out".

Second, the huge number of prisoners will have a disproportionate % of non-reporting because nobody cares enough to acknowledge their death.

Third, Russia was documented to have been picking up vagrants off of the street and sticking them into uniform at the very early stages of the war.  Who knows how many, but whatever that number is it's not likely to be reported.

Fourth, estimating dead Donbas Ukrainians has got to be beyond difficult to do, yet we know very large numbers have been killed.  With such a very large pool of dead, the number missed could be quite large.

Fifth, we also know that Russia has "recruited" migrant workers and the poor from other countries in very large numbers.  These were fed into the z-storm units that suffered massive casualties, which means the dead in this group is disproportionately higher than other groups.  The researchers are not combing every local paper in a few dozen non-Russian countries, so these would likely be totally missed.  And even if they were looking for them, they were disproportionately poor and less likely to have easily found and detailed death notices.

In aggregate, the number that they missed could easily be 2-3 times what they have confirmed.

Steve

Yeah, counting is hard.

Actually, legitimately, hard.

That said, for the purposes of what we're talking about most of the time, the number of foreign mercs or contractors killed doesn't really matter. Whether it's 1,000 or 10,000 Nepalese killed in Ukraine, either number isn't going to lead to Putin's regime collapsing. And when Nepal gets tired of sending its young men to die there, theres still Nigeria, and Sudan, and Liberia, and Myanmar, and ...

[JonS]

DDuble

Edited May 3 by JonS

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Probus said:

@The_Capt We can't help them build an industrial base until after the war is over, right?  Anything that is built in Ukraine is open game for the Russians, whereas aid from the West is off limits (for now).

Unless you build it far in the west where one can protect it, or in another country.  It is not like the Russians can see and hit every industrial site in Ukraine, if they could then they would have done it.  The best location is in the southwest, in the mountains near the Romanian/Hungarian border - but that is without knowing about Ukrainian infrastructure in that area:

1000ish km and tough to hit if you dig it in.  But it will of course cost.

[Butschi]

6 hours ago, poesel said:

GPS is only one possibility in the 'P' of PGM. Since image recognition has developed in leaps and bounds recently, there is no reason why munitions shouldn't be able to fly by looking out the windows and comparing it with a map. They actually do this already but AFAIK by radar and height data.

I'm more or less speculating here. GPS is much simpler and needs way less computing power. Given that some high end mobile phones already have dedicated chips for that computer vision stuff, computing power is, I guess, not a show stopper. The precision and/or reliability part is where I am sceptical. Well, depends on what kind of PGM we are talking here. Artillery, where we have to identify the spot where the shell is supposed to land or more like a cruise missile, flying horizontally?

In autonomous driving, not having to rely on HD maps is what we all think we have to be able to do. Simply because keeping them up to date doesn't scale very well. Guess what, we are all still using HD maps. Using computer vision for navigation by landmarks is one thing. But I think we are talking more talking about something on the level of route planning here (so more like knowing in which street I am currently driving - behind that church tower turn left). Using computer vision for precise position estimation to replace GPS requires again very precise maps - you have to know where all those landmarks are exactly and - if we are not talking about generic things like poles (lamp posts, signs, etc.) you have to have a database against which to compare. Let's ignore that because maybe I am thinking too complicated here.

The real issue, again extrapolating from autonomous driving, is, I think weather/lighting conditions. Rain, darkness or glare, etc. very adversly affect performance. In your car you can mitigate these issues by switching on your headlights but that is probably not an option for PGMs.

EDIT: And while I keep saying, war is not autonomous driving, lower levels of reliability are acceptable, PGMs are precisle where we need high precision and reliabilty.

Edited May 3 by Butschi

[dan/california]

16 minutes ago, Butschi said:

I'm more or less speculating here. GPS is much simpler and needs way less computing power. Given that some high end mobile phones already have dedicated chips for that computer vision stuff, computing power is, I guess, not a show stopper. The precision and/or reliability part is where I am sceptical. Well, depends on what kind of PGM we are talking here. Artillery, where we have to identify the spot where the shell is supposed to land or more like a cruise missile, flying horizontally?

In autonomous driving, not having to rely on HD maps is what we all think we have to be able to do. Simply because keeping them up to date doesn't scale very well. Guess what, we are all still using HD maps. Using computer vision for navigation by landmarks is one thing. But I think we are talking more talking about something on the level of route planning here (so more like knowing in which street I am currently driving - behind that church tower turn left). Using computer vision for precise position estimation to replace GPS requires again very precise maps - you have to know where all those landmarks are exactly and - if we are not talking about generic things like poles (lamp posts, signs, etc.) you have to have a database against which to compare. Let's ignore that because maybe I am thinking too complicated here.

The real issue, again extrapolating from autonomous driving, is, I think weather/lighting conditions. Rain, darkness or glare, etc. very adversly affect performance. In your car you can mitigate these issues by switching on your headlights but that is probably not an option for PGMs.

EDIT: And while I keep saying, war is not autonomous driving, lower levels of reliability are acceptable, PGMs are precisle where we need high precision and reliabilty.

Given the fact that so much of the recon is done by drones anyway, I suspect that laser designators are about to make a comeback. The imaging based seeker in the Javelin may be about to be upgraded and used in  lot more places as well. If you can tell it it is looking for a tank at the end of the trip, inertial guidance may be plenty good enough to get it in the basket. Some of the Israeli stuff uses a a fiberoptic cable to feed the video back to the operator. And of course more autonomy for drones. 

Last but not least is every kind of home on jam and HARM you can think of. It all amounts to another turn of the wheel in military tech. At the end of the day cheaper computer processing is still going to lead to more precision.

[dan/california]

 

Quote

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-red-line/id1482715810?i=1000654485990

 A good podcast on the Russia/China relationship. Its conclusions pretty much align withe The_Capt's, but it has a LOT of details on trade flows and logistics.

 

Edited May 4 by dan/california

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, JonS said:

Yeah, counting is hard.

Actually, legitimately, hard.

That said, for the purposes of what we're talking about most of the time, the number of foreign mercs or contractors killed doesn't really matter. Whether it's 1,000 or 10,000 Nepalese killed in Ukraine, either number isn't going to lead to Putin's regime collapsing. And when Nepal gets tired of sending its young men to die there, theres still Nigeria, and Sudan, and Liberia, and Myanmar, and ...

Yup, which is why it would be good to have a firm understanding of what % of Russian dead are actually Russian or Russians that have anybody caring about them.  That's been an obvious part of Russia's strategy since the war suddenly needed a lot of warm bodies.  They went for those who would not be missed first.

Steve

[FancyCat]

Personally I don't know how I feel about tanks being on the way out vs not but probably good to bring up these tweets. Makes sense to me, if offensives can't happen and you need something to use against enemy pushes and everything else is in short supply....is it ideal? Guess not but better than dead friendlies.

Quote

1/ When we evaluate how weapons perform, it is important to note the conditions in which they operate. Abrams were committed into the fight this winter at a time when Ukraine had a lack of infantry as well as mines, ATGMs, air defense, and artillery ammunition. This may seem bizarre from the outside, but Ukraine often employs tanks in a manner to compensate for a lack of infantry or ammunition for other systems because those are the conditions they face.

2/ If you don't have enough artillery or ATGM ammunition, you may bring up a tank or Bradley to engage Russian armor or infantry instead. This could involve placing an Abrams or Bradley at greater risk than you would like, but these are the organic assets that the 47th Mechanized Brigade had, and they come with a different supply of ammunition.

3/ All weapons have vulnerabilities, and you mitigate those vulnerabilities through combined arms. When several of those arms are weaker (e.g. infantry, artillery, air defense), because of attrition or a lack of ammunition, others will be more vulnerable as well.

4/ So we need to be careful drawing conclusions that are too strong and sweeping about specific weapon systems or tactics without asking the Ukrainians what they think.

Random poster I follow but he brings up a really good point that does not just apply to Abrams but to just in general the mindset of full on conventional conflict and the amount of losses expected and the fact the West haven't had the type of playing field in forever and the last time comparable was a cakewalk (ish).

So....what was the expected tank losses in a full on conventional NATO vs USSR conflict?

Quote

1/ This is a less scholarly view on my part but I think part of the M1 losses in Ukraine borderline hysteria just has to do with an entire generation or more of Americans being brought up on a fantasy that certain types of U.S. hardware are essentially invincible (not the case).

2/ Ask someone who was a planner in EUCOM in the 1980s what expected tank losses were in a NATO-USSR conflict even before potential nuke use and *then* come back to me with what the loss of a half-dozen Abrams says about the viability of that one platform and MBTs in general in war.

3/ Never ask a woman her weight, a man his salary, or an A-10 defender what their expected losses were in Central Europe for a NATO-WARPAC scenario.

 

[poesel]

5 hours ago, dan/california said:

Given the fact that so much of the recon is done by drones anyway, I suspect that laser designators are about to make a comeback. The imaging based seeker in the Javelin may be about to be upgraded and used in  lot more places as well. If you can tell it it is looking for a tank at the end of the trip, inertial guidance may be plenty good enough to get it in the basket. Some of the Israeli stuff uses a a fiberoptic cable to feed the video back to the operator. And of course more autonomy for drones. 

Last but not least is every kind of home on jam and HARM you can think of. It all amounts to another turn of the wheel in military tech. At the end of the day cheaper computer processing is still going to lead to more precision.

Shooting HARMs at GPS jammers is probably a loosing game economically. Drones that triangulate jammers and drop grenades on them may be feasible.

The problem that Excalibur has is likely to be attributed to the lack of a proper antenna. That makes GPS jamming especially effective. I don't see a way to mitigate that.
OTOH Smart/Bonus type of projectiles where the shell only needs to be shot in the vicinity of the target don't have that problem. But they are of course a different type of projectile.

[Kraft]

Uraaaaaaaaa

 

 

[zinz]

https://masto.aidon.social/@ChrisO_wiki/112359154927283225

Not so positive view inside Ukraine. From this view it's currently the hardest time for Ukraine since March 2022.

Quote

There are three reasons for the current state of affairs and in principle there is nothing revelatory here, as the problems on the Ukrainian side have been known for a long time: lack of ammunition, manpower, fortifications. To illustrate the shortage of artillery ammunition, it is enough to mention that there are units on the Ukrainian side whose expenditure has decreased by 70-90% compared to the summer of 2023. Artillery fire is limited to a minimum and often has to be authorised by brigade commanders. In this context, US assistance is now crucial, as it will reduce the disparity between Russian and Ukrainian numbers. But we are still talking here about reducing asymmetry, not about reaching parity. Ukrainian restrictions on access to guns and barrels will effectively affect the number of bombardments the Ukrainians can conduct. But what comes from the US will not change the course of this war, it will only delay it. We continue to wait for long-term and systemic solutions, both from the US and Europe, and the presentation of a concrete plan for Ukraine's military support in this war that would allow it to focus on planning (together with Western advisors) and conducting operations on the frontline to regain the initiative. The start of fortification construction was delayed. In the context of emerging reports of potential Russian attacks towards Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv (in my opinion, this information is part of Russia's reflexive control mechanism [see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexive_control]), Kiev was faced with the dilemma of choosing a priority area. Analysing publicly available satellite images of the areas where Russia is currently leading the assault (Pokrovsk and Konstantinovka directions), there are no visible fortified lines. It seems that the Ukrainians have focused on building up resistance strongpoints, which are, however, vulnerable to flanking manoeuvres, which is already taking place. It remains to be hoped that additional fortifications are being created deep inside the Donetsk region. However, the shortage of soldiers is the key factor that will have the greatest impact on developments on the front in the next 3-4 months. During this time, newly mobilised soldiers will begin to appear on the frontline, but there is also the possibility that their training time will be reduced to a minimum in the event of a Russian breakthrough or a shortage of reserves. In that case, Ukraine could find itself in the same situation as Russia in September 2022 [i.e. facing a localised collapse, as happened to Russia in the Kharkiv region]. We are currently seeing attempts to fill gaps in the front line by moving units from other directions, and engaging the 47th Mechanised Brigade or the 3rd Assault Brigade. However, such actions are difficult to sustain in the months ahead due to personnel losses on the Ukrainian side. We have reached the point where the situation on the frontline is the worst since March 2022. The Russians' numerical superiority continues to grow, and so does the number of attacks.  Ukraine has not survived the darkest hour. It is yet to begin." /end 

 

[zinz]

https://mastodon.social/@ragnarbjartur@masto.ai/112381829171883096

Reported Russian personel losses are at an all time high. The losses are around 3 to 400 higher than 2 weeks ago. Now up to 1200 per day for the 7 day average. I think that means that new or expected munitions are already having an impact. Before the US aid package Russian losses were in decline. Now they are through the roof

Quote

WAR IN #UKRAINE - MAY 4, 2024

 

■ New record for 7-day casualties; 9th highest daily losses reported

■ Equipment losses stay well above average; special equipment passes 2,000 mark

■ Increased air strikes & fewer artillery ones on both sides

https://lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/dfbcec47-7b01-400e-ab21-de8eb98c8f3a?s=kEpzTUNCBK0

[Offshoot]

RE the discussion about countering Russian GPS jammers, it looks like the US is going to try GPS jam seekers on JDAMs, though work won't be completed for over a year - https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract/Article/3765102/

Quote

AIR FORCE: Scientific Applications and Research Associates Inc., Cypress, California, was awarded a $23,554,341 firm-fixed-price and cost-plus-fixed-fee, undefinitized contract for the acquisition of Home-on GPS Jam seekers. This contract provides for the integration of the extended range seekers into existing Joint Direct Attack Munition wing kits. Work will be performed at Cypress, California, and St. Louis, Missouri, and is expected to be completed by Oct. 1, 2025. This contract involves Foreign Military Sales to Ukraine. This contract was a sole source Small Business Innovation Research Phase III acquisition. Fiscal 2023 operation and maintenance funds in the amount of $9,961,706 are being obligated at time of award. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is the contracting activity (FA8213-24-C-0017).