How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[hcrof]

2 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

French Army Chief of Staff General Pierre Schill on the future of the French Army and his views on the future of ground warfare broadly.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/small-drones-soon-lose-combat-160900908.html

So this article makes him sound extremely ignorant but I think it was just poor reporting. I looked into the french scorpion programme and it seems like it aims to network and add some form of drone self defense to all vehicles which is a good approach. But saying drones will just go away and giving the bayraktar and general "EW" as examples is still really dumb. 

I would be interested to hear a french perspective on this.

[mosuri]

13 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

How does South Korea typically react to threats like this?

 

This is just a standard comment from russia. See something you don't like - threaten with unspecified consequences and see if the other guy backs down. If not, pretend you didn't care in the first place if someone brings it up again and it's foolish to suggest someone should care.

We've heard this story multiple times over in the past couple of years.

[Carolus]

28 minutes ago, hcrof said:

So this article makes him sound extremely ignorant but I think it was just poor reporting. I looked into the french scorpion programme and it seems like it aims to network and add some form of drone self defense to all vehicles which is a good approach. But saying drones will just go away and giving the bayraktar and general "EW" as examples is still really dumb. 

I would be interested to hear a french perspective on this.

Yes. Especially the Bayraktar seemed a poor example. It is a relatively large, relatively slow aerial target.

It likely has its use when you have conventional overmatch, like during COINS operations. 

But its usage during the early weeks of the 2022 invasion was likely enabled by Russians failing to properly deploy their SAMs while trying to reach and encircle the biggest Ukrainian cities.

[Letter from Prague]

I read that Ukraine is still using the Baraktars quite a bit, but in long-range surveillance role. Like a cheaper Global Hawk.

[hcrof]

30 minutes ago, Letter from Prague said:

I read that Ukraine is still using the Baraktars quite a bit, but in long-range surveillance role. Like a cheaper Global Hawk.

I think they are good at what they do but that doesn't include fighting a hot war against a peer opponent. More like a coast guard/border patrol/COIN role. 

I think they are using them over the black sea, but nowhere near Crimea. 

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, hcrof said:

So this article makes him sound extremely ignorant but I think it was just poor reporting. I looked into the french scorpion programme and it seems like it aims to network and add some form of drone self defense to all vehicles which is a good approach. But saying drones will just go away and giving the bayraktar and general "EW" as examples is still really dumb. 

I would be interested to hear a french perspective on this.

It completely misses the C4ISR impact on the battlefield, of which drones are one component.  And also makes no mention of AI and full autonomy, which are largely immune to EW.

The French CHOD’s position on this, even if blurred by poor reporting, is not surprising in the least.  Almost every disruptive technology impact on the battlefield is seen by the high commanders of the day as “a fad”.  Airplanes were thought to be the same in WW1.  We have seen this movie so many times before.

What is happening in warfare is so much larger than small tactical drones - they are a symptom, not the cause. Having 50+ year old officers hoping it will all just go away so that their knowledge and experience is still relevant is the least surprising aspect of all this.

[The_Capt]

14 hours ago, Offshoot said:

I don't know enough about it to give an opinion so will leave this here for consideration

Admitting Ukraine to Nato would be a mistake for both Ukraine and Nato by Christopher S Chivvis

Edit: I don't think he is saying anything new - what is new is that it is coming from someone I assume has some heft in the political world given his resume.

Ok, this one. Well he does highlight the risks of admitting Ukraine into NATO, I will give him that.  However, it pretty much sidesteps both the questions of “risk of not doing” and opportunities.  Pulling Ukraine into NATO will put pressure and strain on the alliance.  I do not think it will doom it.  It will require NATO troop deployments, much like we see in the Baltics and remove the western option of ignoring overt Russian aggression.

However, if we do not pull in Ukraine, we know Russia will simply either continue the war or start it back up again later. The author does not offer a valid deterrence mechanism for Ukraine beyond some pretty vague bilaterals and “a strong Ukraine”.  And we know these don’t work because we just lived it.  We have invested hundreds of billions into a venture, leaving that open to future loss by threats almost guaranteed to come is simply bad business.

And then there is opportunity.  The author, like many experts in this time, does not offer a coherent post-war strategy with respect to Russia. Unless we somehow see a complete political and cultural shift in Russia, I suspect we are going to be looking at increasing isolation and containment of that nation.  Whether we hit the levels of the Cold War remains to be seen. So the first rule of building a wall is to make sure one does not leave a giant hole in it.  Ukraine in NATO allows the alliance to be defensively, offensive.  It pushes threat options onto a weakened Russia doorstep.  On Russia’s western fronts we now have three solid theatre level JOAs - Finland, Baltics and Ukraine.

I am not a Carnegie-whatever but a I can read a f#cking map.  These three regions are 1) large, 2) have excellent SLOC access and 3) have favourable terrain.  The fourth option is Turkey through the Caucuses, but that is a mountain nightmare.  So the opportunity is really down to “do we want 2 or 3 strategic counter-offensive options to project onto Russia?”  If we leave Ukraine open - even if it does turn into some sort of super-Belgium pre-WW1 - we lose control of an entire strategic access point.  Worse if we lost Ukraine, that is one long counter attack with a giant river in the middle of it to push Russia back.

So, sure, let’s take what will likely be coming up on a trillion dollar investment, once reconstruction costs are rolled in, and leave it hanging out there as some sort of strategic “NATO near abroad”.  We can hope we can arm Ukraine enough to hold off Russian natural handsy-ness, which goes back centuries. But we leave strategic options on the table…big ones.  Bilateral security guarantees may work, we see this in S Korea, but we know NATO does work.  It is the only thing keeping Russia from authorizing interdiction strikes into Poland or widening this thing elsewhere. I am really not sure why we would drop these options out of risk aversion.  I strongly suspect the author is really anti-NATO and views the alliance as antiquated and weak, so is making an argument that any additional strain will risk the entire affair. But recent events all point in the other direction. 

[Jiggathebauce]

Times radio is putting out a near daily barrage of interviews with mark galeotti and others, doom and glooming on the Russians. Get quite a lot of views too. 

https://youtu.be/f8gpIZ17qNg?si=wGapd2NLTQVWH0J3

[chrisl]

15 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

Something for the future:

 

That's a weirdly written article. It makes it sound like the entanglement is to somehow increase the power.  When you get a little further in, it hints at something that actually makes sense (and is consistent with other work by the same researchers), which is that entanglement can be used to improve error correction and get a better signal-to-noise in an environment with poor optical transmission.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Quote

THREAD on the Russian perceptions about FPV use and availability, and on their own capacity to meet the demand, translated from several Russian Telegram channels: "The ratio of UAVs at the front is now approximately 1 to 6 - not in our favor. And thats 'approximately' - perhaps more, but definitely not less, and the current tendency will widen this gap - all because of the clumsiness and slowness of our Russian bureaucratic machine. In Ukraine, all small NGOs and private garage workshops have been taken under (gov) control and are receiving funding. Two years later, this brought results and quantity began to turn into quality. In Russia, a lot of promising projects have stalled either because of bureaucracy or due to lack of funding. Something needs to be done about this, and very quickly - otherwise we will be hopelessly behind. We need to invest not only in state corporations for state defense orders, but also in promising “DIY/garage workers. It is not that difficult to identify them.

All the “DIY/garage workers/startups” have already created their (drone/tech) prototypes within two years. You invite all these 'garage workers' to the testing site, set uniform requirements for the product and make an initial selection. Those who meet the requested criteria move on to the next (T&E) stage. Those who are selected receive funding to scale up production. And no monopoly built on one manufacturer! Do you hear!? No!!! Only diversity and competition!"

The talk about drone numbers and who has the advantage is not new- there are regular posts on both Russian and Ukrainian TG channels that talk about the adversary having the advantage. Recently, some high-profile Russian bloggers like Rogozin started to complain about Ukraine's heavy Baba Yaga drones operating in groups that "squadrons" that cause significant damage to Russian positions.

There is certainly no lack of Russian volunteers and starts ups who are constantly advertising their agility to assemble lots of FPV drones - such as the Sudoplatov effort that claims to assemble 1000 drones daily.

The real issue may not be the availability of Russian FPVs in general, with multiple efforts churning out products, but their 1) their quality - some volunteers are complaining about Sudoplatov's VT-40 FPV and other volunteers that test other volunteer products pointing out significant technical issues, like FPVs not able to take to the air when out of the box on the frontlines - like the summary below, with the FPV in question having significant comms and range issues, along with poor quality overall. And 2) - supplies of FPVs and quadcopters to the front is uneven, there is no centralized military distribution system, some units get everything while others get practically nothing, and much of such drone procurement still depends on unit commanders establishing a pipeline with volunteer groups and efforts.

Case in point from a recent Russian TG post: "Recently I was in one assault company of one very elite division - its soldiers are as poor as church mice. All the drones they have were purchased at their own expense or sent by volunteers, and they know about EW systems only from articles in Telegram channels."

Such statements overlap with more comments about the absolute importance of FPV drones as indispensable weapons for tactical combat: "In our opinion, FPV drones or bomb-loaded UAVs have turned into a kind of analogue of group weapons, such as a heavy machine gun or an ATGMs."

"Several operators of FPV drones or bomber UAVs, in the absence of massive electronic warfare countermeasures, can stop an attack by armored vehicles - before, such tasks were assigned to machine guns or ATGMs."

Other Russian military bloggers continue to press the importance of FPVs: "At the tactical level, we can cite the example of the Russian breakthrough in Ocheretino, where the Ukrainian forces had a shortage of not only art. shells and anti-tank systems, but also FPV drones. Conversely, there are many other attacks by the Russian forces over the last month and a half, with available videos, where Ukraine had enough FPV drones (to cause major casualties)."

Now that the Russian government is tasking the newly appointed Defense Minster Belousov to "open up" the MOD to greater cooperation with existing volunteer/startup projects, many Russian volunteers are also anticipating better acquisition/procurement pipelines of their FPVs to the forces.

 

https://x.com/sambendett/status/1804163171474653263

 

Edited Friday at 07:07 PM by Vanir Ausf B

[Vanir Ausf B]

Apropos of the above...

_____________

Another Russian AI claim: A Novosibirsk-based company, together with the Moscow-based  "Ploshchad" enterprise, will will supply the military with 3,000 FPV drones "equipped with an autopilot with artificial intelligence.

If the drone's communications is cut off, the AI holds the target in its sights, assumes the UAV control, and the drone attacks the target in unmanned mode that is impossible to jam with electronic warfare countermeasures.

An autopilot with a neural network sees its target  using machine vision technology. While there has been no mass use of such drones with AI so far, various Russian manufacturers have supplied several dozen 'smart drones' for testing in combat conditions."

https://x.com/sambendett/status/1804224198241374640

 

[zinz]

 

 

[ASL Veteran]

Ow

 

[NamEndedAllen]

Shades of the Vietnam War and civilian management of target lists:

(The Washington Post) By Siobhán O'Grady, Robyn Dixon, Serhiy Morgunov and Kostiantyn Khudov June 21, 2024 at 10:12 a.m. PT KHARKIV, Ukraine — A new U.S. policy allowing Ukraine to fire certain American weapons at Russian territory has led to a reduction in some Russian attacks but still restricts the range enough that it prevents Ukraine from hitting key airfields, two Ukrainian officials said. Those airfields are used by Russian jets that drop the deadly glide bombs now inflicting the greatest damage on military positions and civilians.

[cesmonkey]

Reportedly, the owner of the popular Supernova+ telegram channel, a Ukrainian that regular posts videos about the destruction and failures of the Russian military in Ukraine - and which from time-to-time I've re-posted here - was arrested by the Ukrainian authorities for being too careless and posting videos revealing sensitive information:

 

[dan/california]

22 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

French Army Chief of Staff General Pierre Schill on the future of the French Army and his views on the future of ground warfare broadly.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/small-drones-soon-lose-combat-160900908.html

Magyar needs to go into the vehicle certification business, I suspecct the pass rate would not be high.

11 hours ago, chrisl said:

That's a weirdly written article. It makes it sound like the entanglement is to somehow increase the power.  When you get a little further in, it hints at something that actually makes sense (and is consistent with other work by the same researchers), which is that entanglement can be used to improve error correction and get a better signal-to-noise in an environment with poor optical transmission.

Quantum entaglement is one of the more mind breaking concepts in physics. What the article doesn't mention is what temperature the setup has to be held at. I would be beyond amazed if this set up works at temperture above liquid nitrogen. I would not be at all shocked if it required helium cooling. If they can do this at warmish room temperature my very limited understanding of the above mentioned quantum concepts implies that improving military sensors and communications are one of the less important things this technology might improve.

2 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

Reportedly, the owner of the popular Supernova+ telegram channel, a Ukrainian that regular posts videos about the destruction and failures of the Russian military in Ukraine - and which from time-to-time I've re-posted here - was arrested by the Ukrainian authorities for being too careless and posting videos revealing sensitive information:

 

I suspect he may be offered a diversion program that involves getting a much closer look at the war. A " The Russians are a couple of hundred yards that away." kind of look. 

[chrisl]

14 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Magyar needs to go into the vehicle certification business, I suspecct the pass rate would not be high.

Quantum entaglement is one of the more mind breaking concepts in physics. What the article doesn't mention is what temperature the setup has to be held at. I would be beyond amazed if this set up works at temperture above liquid nitrogen. I would not be at all shocked if it required helium cooling. If they can do this at warmish room temperature my very limited understanding of the above mentioned quantum concepts implies that improving military sensors and communications are one of the less important things this technology might improve.

This isn't computing with qubits - it's just sending entangled pairs of photons so that you can basically compare polarizations.  It's been done to/from orbit with room temp stuff.  It's unlikely even that the detectors need to be cooled much - it would be done visible/near-IR so that the problem is scattering rather than thermal noise.  Some moderate cooling will improve the SNR of your detector, but it doesn't need to be 80K.  The thing you get from entanglement is knowing if you read a bit correctly or not (or if someone tried to eavesdrop and scrambled it) and need to have it resent.

Computing with qubits is where you need to be cold.  I still hang out with some quantum mechanics but I haven't had to worry about getting helium out of my Carhartts in a long time.

[cesmonkey]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/21/ukraine-firing-range-us-weapons-russia/
U.S. restrictions put key Russian air bases out of firing range, officials say

Quote

The Ukrainian officials said the United States has restricted Ukraine to firing less than 100 kilometers, or about 62 miles, from the border. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the rule. U.S. officials declined to specify the limitation but said the Ukrainians’ assertion of less than 100 kilometers was incorrect.

“The U.S. has agreed to allow Ukraine to fire U.S.-provided weapons into Russia across where Russian forces are coming to attempt to take Ukrainian territory,” said a Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Charlie Dietz. “This is not about geography or a certain radius, but if Russia is attacking or about to attack from its territory into Ukraine, Ukraine has the ability to hit back against the forces that are hitting it from across the border.”

 

[LongLeftFlank]

I don't have much time to sniff around and don't choose to have Txitter stalking me, but does anyone have a sense of what the increasing depth of the drone wars is doing to Russian (and Uke) supply lines these days? I suspect that was a lot of the story at Krinky; the Ivans just couldn't get enough stuff up front to crush that single battalion.

And the places where they're attacking now are close to relatively intact infra, within Russia or the Donetsk metro area...

Thoughts?

#KillAllTheTrucks.

Edited Saturday at 08:28 AM by LongLeftFlank

[Carolus]

Don't know about trucks, but apparently the Russians are now intensively using the rail line in Southern Ukraine to support the front from Donetsk to Melitopol. At least  6 to 7 large trains with military supplies every day. And they are repairing and reusing Ukrainian rails in the occupied territory as well very actively.

[Letter from Prague]

What the hell was the Putin visit to North Korea? He was driving Kim around as his driver in a car? Waving at him from plane? 

Is Russia doing that badly, or what? This is just surreal.

Or did world really supposed to end in 2012 and is the simulation getting more absurd every year.

[poesel]

We talked a lot about the attrition of Russian artillery tubes. But what about Ukraine? They are not firing that much (but would if they could) and they seem to lose fewer pieces from attacks.

Is NATO supply of 155m tubes more endless than Russia's of theirs?

[zinz]

3 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

I don't have much time to sniff around and don't choose to have Txitter stalking me, but does anyone have a sense of what the increasing depth of the drone wars is doing to Russian (and Uke) supply lines these days? I suspect that was a lot of the story at Krinky; the Ivans just couldn't get enough stuff up front to crush that single battalion.

And the places where they're attacking now are close to relatively intact infra, within Russia or the Donetsk metro area...

Thoughts?

#KillAllTheTrucks.

https://geoconfirmed.org/ukraine/5ec4f3eb-b782-4668-c024-08dc83a6728a

there you can see a map with geolocated incidents. there are some attacks on logistics behind the front lines. Reporting seems less intense than a year ago. But might be fatigue of all the volunteers.

[Battlefront.com]

16 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

https://x.com/sambendett/status/1804163171474653263

 

This is interesting and very important.

We saw Russian propaganda, backed by cautiously optimistic bloggers, that Russia was cranking up standardized drone production on a massive scale.  Then we saw an increase in Russian drones at the front, noted by both sides.  However, we also saw complaints from Russian sources that there were lots of quality and design problems with the mass produced drones.

Now we have this article that makes it sound like the bump in Russian FPVs was temporary as replacements are not equaled or exceeded the numbers being used.  Without evidence of why, the article states that bureaucracy, funding, and sole sourcing (i.e. corruption) is what's behind this trend.  It's probable that all three are indeed happening (this is Russia after all!), but I'm really curious about the funding allegation.

It seems odd that Russia is under investing in something that it clearly understands is a critical frontline component.  They are spending wildly in other areas, such as reviving old vehicles and securing munitions from abroad.  As we've discussed endlessly, you can get truckloads of FPVs for the same cost as a bunch of artillery shells.  We also know that Russia isn't shy about wasting money on this war.  So what gives?

I suspect that there are other issues that the article didn't take into consideration that are hindering production.  In particular shortages of critical components, either due to sanctions, poor logistics, supply chain corruption, or simply very poor project management.

I doubt we'll get much meaningful information on what is really going on, though we might get hints (e.g. some drone factory worker saying they went home for the week because they had no parts).

Whatever the reason for Russia's trouble producing drones might be, I hope it doubles

Steve

[billbindc]

4 hours ago, Letter from Prague said:

What the hell was the Putin visit to North Korea? He was driving Kim around as his driver in a car? Waving at him from plane? 

Is Russia doing that badly, or what? This is just surreal.

Or did world really supposed to end in 2012 and is the simulation getting more absurd every year.

Add in the 'either give me Ukraine or I nuke the world' speech and yes, you have all the fixin's for a hearty meal of Russia-is-increasingly-****ed.