How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Lethaface]

16 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

As someone pointed out a page or two ago, I have an advantage in that I've designed simulations of this stuff for 25 years based on historical study of warfare going back another 10 or so before that.  I know that if you take one set of units and change them from Regular to Conscript you get a different end result.  Or at least are likely to.  I also know that if a really good CM player goes against a nOoB the odds are in favor of the good player.  Give the good player good troops on the defense against a nOoB with crap troops on the attack and it gets really lopsided.

That's a bit how imo much of the war looked like in the beginning: a good player with a good plan with decent enough (although not too many) troops in superior positions for defense, against a noob player who had in theory quite some combat power and numbers but having a challenge to apply it as he was struggling with how to even order and coordinate his troops.

 

[hcrof]

An interesting discussion about tanks being big and hot:

https://x.com/JonHawkes275/status/1807758981831495819

 

Edited Monday at 01:39 PM by hcrof

[cesmonkey]

 

[ArmouredTopHat]

Ingenuity or desperation? You decide!

[paxromana]

28 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Ingenuity or desperation? You decide!

Seen similar 'Technicals' in photos from Libya and other TPLACs

[ArmouredTopHat]

33 minutes ago, paxromana said:

Seen similar 'Technicals' in photos from Libya and other TPLACs

I would say these are better thought out, at least they can move!

[Battlefront.com]

10 hours ago, kimbosbread said:

Everybody excusing the MIC should remember all the components for modern FPVs existed 2010ish. There’s no fancy compute, and the batteries haven’t advanced that much. These are simple analog video transmitters and an RC control link. FPV racing drones have existed for over a decade; the tech is exactly the same.

Exactly.  The excuses for a lack of serious interest on the military's part is telling about where their priorities are (big, exclusive, and expensive).  It is the equivalent of the private sector developing a rapid fire, fast recharging laser gun to shoot vermin for the low price of $1000 and the defense industry, military, and government ignoring it because it's inconvenient for their business model.

10 hours ago, kimbosbread said:

To be fair to MIC, I remember people in government adjacent positions telling me about this 2016ish and saying there was huge money in drone defense, and everybody was scrambling to even think of something better than a guy with a shotgun.

Then they shouldn't be spending billions on anything other than a guy with a shotgun.  Spending billions on weapons systems that are probably less effective is moronic.

Steve

 

[cesmonkey]

 

[cesmonkey]

 

[sburke]

Summer prison camp.......  what a way to create memories...

 

Vladimir Putin to send Russian children to North Korean summer camps (yahoo.com)

Vladimir Putin plans to send Russian children to a summer camp in North Korea where activities include polishing the statues of leaders.

Grigory Gurov, the head of Putin’s Movement of the First youth organisation, announced the plan despite opposition from worried Russian parents.

“We will now form our delegation,” he said. “Conditions there are good.”

The children will be the first Russian group for five years to visit the Songdowon camp, built on North Korea’s eastern shore by dictator Kim Jong-un’s grandfather in 1960.

Accounts from Russian adult leaders on previous trips described Songdowon camp as a cross between a boarding house with regular blackouts, dawn wake-ups and roll calls, and a Disney-themed water park.

Artem Samsonov, a former Communist party official, visited the camp in 2015 before being imprisoned in 2022 for molesting a child.

He said that children were woken at 6.30am to clean the area in front of statues of Kim’s father and grandfather.

“We received special attention and were given not brooms, but special pads and were allowed to wipe the statue itself,” he wrote on the Livejournal blogging platform next to photographs of Russian children polishing a stone plinth.

Samsonov described a tightly packed day that included enforced exercise, state-approved lessons, cleaning and a disco. As for the food, he said “they always give you soup, rice, potatoes”.

[The_Capt]

29 minutes ago, sburke said:

Summer prison camp.......  what a way to create memories...

 

Vladimir Putin to send Russian children to North Korean summer camps (yahoo.com)

Vladimir Putin plans to send Russian children to a summer camp in North Korea where activities include polishing the statues of leaders.

Grigory Gurov, the head of Putin’s Movement of the First youth organisation, announced the plan despite opposition from worried Russian parents.

“We will now form our delegation,” he said. “Conditions there are good.”

The children will be the first Russian group for five years to visit the Songdowon camp, built on North Korea’s eastern shore by dictator Kim Jong-un’s grandfather in 1960.

Accounts from Russian adult leaders on previous trips described Songdowon camp as a cross between a boarding house with regular blackouts, dawn wake-ups and roll calls, and a Disney-themed water park.

Artem Samsonov, a former Communist party official, visited the camp in 2015 before being imprisoned in 2022 for molesting a child.

He said that children were woken at 6.30am to clean the area in front of statues of Kim’s father and grandfather.

“We received special attention and were given not brooms, but special pads and were allowed to wipe the statue itself,” he wrote on the Livejournal blogging platform next to photographs of Russian children polishing a stone plinth.

Samsonov described a tightly packed day that included enforced exercise, state-approved lessons, cleaning and a disco. As for the food, he said “they always give you soup, rice, potatoes”.

What are you taking about….North Korea disco!

 

Edited Monday at 08:29 PM by The_Capt

[Fenris]

More improvisation. Doesn't say where it is.  I count at least 19 bikes, 4 MLTB's and a tank in the clip.  Am guessing they weren't all lost at the same time.  Edit - based on the insignia, this might be from the 72nd Mechanized Brigade near Vuhledar.

 

Edited Monday at 11:00 PM by Fenris

[Fenris]

Story from our national broadcaster with interviews with some RU deserters. 

Quote

Soldier Y — as we will call him — had never held a gun before he arrived at his five-day military training camp in Russia.

He's another convict who signed up to fight but managed to escape.

"I had to sit in trenches with water and rats for two weeks," he says.

"Then, we were sent across a minefield to storm a position. Two drones hovered above us, literally above us.

"Our commander told us not to move, and we weren't moving, but the guys behind us did and the drone flew at them. Three people were blown apart right there."

Not long after that, he sustained shrapnel wounds in an attack and was transferred to several hospitals to recover in the subsequent months.

"I was shocked by what I saw on the front lines," Soldier Y says. "I expected to see a high-tech army fighting with decent equipment. Out of the 210 people I was sent there with, 16 survived, and seven of them are amputees.

At no point do they admit that the war is wrong or they shouldn't have been there though.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-02/how-russian-soldiers-escaped-from-front-lines-in-ukraine/103953886

[Joe982]

2 hours ago, sburke said:

Summer prison camp.......  what a way to create memories...

 

Vladimir Putin to send Russian children to North Korean summer camps (yahoo.com)

 

My fear is that kidnapped Ukranian children are sent there

[Fenris]

Be nice if UKR were allowed to do this

Quote

Myrhorod Air Base. Not the first time that Russian recon drones have been able to quietly observe before striking with an Iskander cluster missile. It appears that at least 1 Ukrainian Su-27 has been destroyed, while several others are also believed to have been damaged.

 

[cesmonkey]

1 hour ago, Fenris said:

Be nice if UKR were allowed to do this

 

This is what Rybar claims:
https://t.me/rybar/61468

 

Quote

Russian troops carried out a series of pinpoint strikes on targets in the territory of the so-called Ukraine and the occupied part of Russia. One of the targets was the airfield in Mirgorod , where at least six Su-27s of the Ukrainian Air Force were destroyed and damaged.

 

 

[Leeo]

23 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Do. Not. Speak. It.

How's about I whistle it?

Ok, Ok, I've done my Peng duty, paint my presence as absent.

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

Rybar: Russian troops carried out a series of pinpoint strikes on targets in the territory of the so-called Ukraine and the occupied part of Russia. One of the targets was the airfield in Mirgorod , where at least six Su-27s of the Ukrainian Air Force were destroyed and damaged.

Oh isn't that cute of Rybar... calling Ukrainian held territory as "occupied part of Russia".  I think Ukraine should start referring to European territory as "occupied part of Kievan Rus".

Nazi humor aside, it is upsetting to see that the Russians were able to observe and hit the same Ukrainian base it hit a month or so ago.

Steve

[Carolus]

17 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

 

1415 artillery pieces would be on average 46 pieces destroyed per day. 

That number is absolutely bonkers.

I fully accept that Ukrainian numbers are exaggerated (with good reason) and also think that they are least indicating trends with their ups and downs, so artillery losses for the Russians likely are rising for various reasons (more towed pieces instead of self-propelled, older models with lower range etc. which increases the likelihood of a strike).

But I hope they don't paint themselves into a corner with higher and higher records published for morale puposes or the Russian practice of "if I shot into its vague direction, it's mission success".

I think historically the number of tank kills by CAS pilots was very exaggerated due to that latter reason (in WW2 and Gulf Wars as well). Hopefully we don't see a repeat of that.

Edited yesterday at 06:46 AM by Carolus
terrible spelling

[MikeyD]

10 hours ago, sburke said:

Vladimir Putin plans to send Russian children to a summer camp in North Korea

Well, that's ironic. A Korean series I watched mentioned North Korea shipping orphan children to East Germany to work in the coal mines in the early 60s. I just looked it up, a documentary on the topic aired in 2020.

[dan/california]

4 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

Well, that's ironic. A Korean series I watched mentioned North Korea shipping orphan children to East Germany to work in the coal mines in the early 60s. I just looked it up, a documentary on the topic aired in 2020.

They might have been better off than if they stayed in North Korea. Note better is not the same as good.

[Carolus]

51 minutes ago, dan/california said:

They might have been better off than if they stayed in North Korea. Note better is not the same as good.

North Korean child, emerging wide-eyed from the coal mine: "Sir, what is this?"

Man with Thuringian accent: "This, my child, is one of our most effective weapons against capitalist imperialism. We call it the pickled egg. Since its invention, no Western army has had an interest to cross our border."

[NamEndedAllen]

Another report:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/07/01/the-ukrainian-air-force-parked-six-su-27-fighters-in-the-open-100-miles-from-the-front-line-a-russian-missile-destroyed-two-of-them/

On or just before Monday, a Russian surveillance drone winged from Russian lines to the Ukrainian air force’s Mirgorod air base, 100 miles from Ukraine’s northern border with Russia.

The drone spotted at least six Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-27 supersonic fighters parked in the open at the base in broad daylight. A Russian Iskander missile barreled in, destroying two of the precious Sukhois and damaging the other four.

It may have been one of the costliest single days for the battered Ukrainian air arm since Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022. “There are some losses,” air force official Yuriy Ignat acknowledged.

Ukrainian bloggers rushed to blame the air force officers who ordered the Su-27 crews to park their jets out in the open at a base dangerously close to the front line. “A million years of war, sheep do not learn anything,” one blogger moaned.

 

The raid on Mirgorod is just the latest in a series of Russian strikes on vulnerable Ukrainian air bases. In recent months, Russian Lancet drones have struck at least four Ukrainian jets at Dolgintsevo air base near Kryvyi Rih, just 45 miles from the front line in southern Ukraine.

****

What’s especially galling, for supporters of a sovereign Ukraine, is that Russian jets are equally vulnerable at their own bases near Ukraine. But in some cases, U.S. policy prohibits the Ukrainians from striking those jets with American-made weapons.

[cesmonkey]

Another airbase under attack -  Starokostiantyniv in western Ukraine:

 

[Kraft]

Butusov interviewed a wounded soldier who recently killed 3 russian assault troopers in a trench fight.

The soldier was a supply truck driver, the reason why he was in a first line trench is because the 3rd assault brigade, one of the units with the highest volunteer applications, has to sublet line infantry with cooks, drivers, mechanics and other non-combat soldiers due to casualties from russian FPVs.

 

Edited yesterday at 10:23 AM by Kraft