How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Carolus]

Tatarigami on leadership problems within the UAF. Claims Syrski is even more conservative than Zahluzhny, as some have feared.

 

[catwhowalked]

41 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Ah, you see we are mostly all old and technological refugees.  Now this sounds like what they are doing.  My point was not that this was impossible…because clearly the UA has pulled it off.  It was “how are they doing it?”  And you have just laid out a bunch of “how’s”.

Now another question….what happens when they point this acoustic thingy at vehicles and people?  Can it be used as a broader ISR suite?

I would expect yes, but it’s probably more difficult, the less noise something makes, the more likely that noise is to be obstructed by unknown surfaces (vehicle bodies, ground cover, etc) and the more that noise is similar to other noises (your own troops moving around, animals moving around, etc) the harder it is to separate signal from noise. 
 

I’m also a non-expert on this subject (Im a software developer experienced with 3d data, but I know next to nothing about audio signal processing, except for the layman knowledge I expect we all have here: it varies in known ways based on distance and obstruction, different signal sources can be separated with some precision if you know what to expect, and the same general problem of signal waveform processing is present for audio, radar, and other sources like medical imaging.)

I can say with some confidence that if the same unknown sound source shows up in hundreds of different sensors, (modulated by different obstructions, issues with the specific microphone, etc) you should be able to make a somewhat accurate guess about where it is located and whether it matches some known sound signature you want to alert human observers about (presumably with some kind of visual indication, like “maybe this is a tank, if so it’s somewhere in this radius moving at something like this speed.”) But for the details I can only handwave. How big the error bars on that are (and how much computing power and data transfer it takes) isn’t clear to me — I expect that in a quiet environment with simple or known terrain you can be extremely precise, and the more complicated it gets the fuzzier the error bars get.

 

Naturally things in the air are probably easier to detect than things on the ground with trees and buildings inbetween you and the sensors! Googling “detecting vehicles with microphone arrays” shows civilian research going back several years, though I’m not qualified to interpret the specifics.

Edited July 29 by catwhowalked

[hcrof]

Note that western vehicles are regularly getting shot sensors installed, which can also double as drone detectors. That will allow a certain degree of triangulation of any signal. To be honest I don't think you need to be super precise with acoustic detection, but it think it is underrated: having every turret slew around to the direction of any fire or incoming drone, or a signal that it is time to move away from incoming mortar rounds as soon as they are fired is a powerful capability!

[The_Capt]

23 minutes ago, hcrof said:

Note that western vehicles are regularly getting shot sensors installed, which can also double as drone detectors. That will allow a certain degree of triangulation of any signal. To be honest I don't think you need to be super precise with acoustic detection, but it think it is underrated: having every turret slew around to the direction of any fire or incoming drone, or a signal that it is time to move away from incoming mortar rounds as soon as they are fired is a powerful capability!

So we are talking about small pretty quiet targets that can fly in amongst trees.  If we have a tactical ISR complex that can detect and engage that small a target, accurately and in numbers, it is going to change warfare forever.

What happens when this “shot sensor” can pick up enemy vehicles and soldiers at the same ranges?  How about drone mounted acoustic sensors pushed out kms that can do exactly what you are outlining as C-UAS.

This highlights a point I keep coming back to and the “symmetry” camp keeps avoiding…the solution to all these pesky drones is an entirely new problem that is going to kill mass and manoeuvre as we knew as well or better than drones.

Edited July 29 by The_Capt

[dan/california]

Quote

 

“ Next-generation acoustic panels are drastically more effective. Tracking a conversation between two people across a crowded 100 m space is eminently feasible. Organic noises however can prove difficult to distinguish. Mechanical sounds, because of the regularity of their signature, can be detected over much greater distances. Small UAVs for example can be reliably detected at between 300 and 1,200 m depending upon type. Deeper sounds from armoured vehicle engines or helicopters travel further, often being detectible out to 10 km with sufficient fidelity to be classified.”

Excerpt From
The Arms of the Future
Jack Watling
This material may be protected by copyright.

 

I think this is going to finish helicopters completely, if they were not dead already.

[billbindc]

20 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So we are talking about small pretty quiet targets that can fly in amongst trees.  If we have a tactical ISR complex that can detect and engage that small a target, accurately and in numbers, it is going to change warfare forever.

What happens when this “shot sensor” can pick up enemy vehicles and soldiers at the same ranges?  How about drone mounted acoustic sensors pushed out kms that can do exactly what you are outlining as C-UAS.

This highlights a point I keep coming back to and the “symmetry” camp keeps avoiding…the solution to all these pesky drones is an entirely new problem that is going to kill mass and manoeuvre as we knew as well or better than drones.

My personal use case is long range autonomous precision strike drones keyed to the hum of transformers, truck engines, turbines, refinery crackers, etc, etc. And ultimately heartbeats, of course.

[dan/california]

4 minutes ago, billbindc said:

My personal use case is long range autonomous precision strike drones keyed to the hum of transformers, truck engines, turbines, refinery crackers, etc, etc. And ultimately heartbeats, of course.

Trains are the sweet spot. There are a lot of ways to hit tings that don't move around.

[The_Capt]

29 minutes ago, billbindc said:

My personal use case is long range autonomous precision strike drones keyed to the hum of transformers, truck engines, turbines, refinery crackers, etc, etc. And ultimately heartbeats, of course.

Damned things will be chasing pheromones and DNA before we are done.

[Offshoot]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Damned things will be chasing pheromones and DNA before we are done.

Already being worked on - Detection of human DNA in the air

Just need to strap a sequencer to a drone and we're laughing.

[Sgt Joch]

On 7/28/2024 at 1:04 PM, chris talpas said:

I don’t want this to devolve into a partisan discussion and hope to have a very narrow focus.

The potential impact of a Trump presidency on continued Ukrainian aid has been discussed and everyone has a pretty good sense of where Biden has stood.

While I fully expect a Harris presidency to continue to support Ukraine, I am curious if there is any indication that support would continue to flow on a similar trajectory or would there be any greater risk tolerance for escalation in terms of systems delivered and ROE for systems provided?

So on this narrow topic of support for Ukraine, are we likely to see any significant changes should the Democrats be successful in November?

Since we are going into the semi-political, we are deep in the middle of “silly season”, i.e. U.S Presidential election, each candidate will say or not say what they think will help them win. Trying to read the tea leaves on what they will do or not do based on what they say or not say is a useless exercise. You will not know until after the election and probably not until spring 2025 when the new POTUS puts his or her foreign policy team (Sec State, Sec Def, NSA) in place what direction they are going to go.

On Trump, one thing to remember is that unlike 2016-17 when he was boycotted by most mainstream Republicans, he will have a much wider experienced pool of foreign policy talent to choose from, so the 1st term or whatever he is saying on the campaign may or may not be relevant.

[billbindc]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Damned things will be chasing pheromones and DNA before we are done.

I'm sorry to tell you that pretty much the only thing William Gibson missed was cell phones. 

[Kinophile]

F16s at last? 

[ArmouredTopHat]

Anyone else getting WW2 Luftwaffe ground forces vibes?

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Sgt Joch said:

On Trump, one thing to remember is that unlike 2016-17 when he was boycotted by most mainstream Republicans, he will have a much wider experienced pool of foreign policy talent to choose from, so the 1st term or whatever he is saying on the campaign may or may not be relevant.

Unfortunately, this is counter factual.  Trump amply demonstrated that he is not interested in being "betrayed" by people who are doing their job and trying their best to look after their country's best interests  Trump is only interested in loyalty and the facade of success because his supporters are satisfied with a shaped message rather than reality.

Towards the end of Trump's first term we saw the quality of those carrying out his whims diminish ever further.  Those who sucked up the hardest kept their positions, no matter how incompetent or destructive they were.  In fact, incompetence and destruction were seen as plusses.

At the higher levels, Trump absolutely can not stand anybody taking any attention away from him.  He can also not stand anybody disagreeing with him, no matter how absolutely ill informed he might have been.  And even if they did, Trump would "violently" thrown them under the bus for even minor infractions, like not defending the indefensible strongly enough.  The threat of having a tough time finding a good job after working for Trump was a major consideration for people turning down jobs that under a normal president would have been snapped up in a heartbeat.

This is not some sort of partisan commentary on my part, rather it is a well documented and obvious reality.  In fact, I would say the quality of Trump's administrators in the first 2 years were a mix between incompetent and some of the best one could ask for.  By the end of the 4 years it was pretty much just hacks, ideologues, and grifters working under him.

Best example of this is how Trump left senior administration positions vacant rather than have to find someone that the Senate would approve of.  This despite the Senate being GOP controlled.

To bring this back around to how it affects Ukraine, we can presume that if Trump is elected President again that he will show the same style of leadership we saw in the last 2 years of his previous term, not the first 2 years.  All evidence from the past suggests that leadership will be strongly tilted in Russia's favor.

Steve

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Unfortunately, this is counter factual.

Yeah per my more politically connected friends, nobody with any foreign policy chops wants anything to do with Trump.

That said I’m generally depressed by US foreign policy since the end of the cold war almost entirely, but I’m pretty sure one could do even worse!

[danfrodo]

5 hours ago, Sgt Joch said:

On Trump, one thing to remember is that unlike 2016-17 when he was boycotted by most mainstream Republicans, he will have a much wider experienced pool of foreign policy talent to choose from, so the 1st term or whatever he is saying on the campaign may or may not be relevant.

More utterly and completely absurd wishful thinking completely removed from all evidence, completely disregarding all previous Trump actions & words.  Do people who post such things live in some kind of information bubble? -- but how could that be in an age of such readily available actual factual information?  It's a mystery to me.

[Carolus]

Quote

Let's summarize...

An increase in the number of personnel of the Russian strategic group of troops deployed in Ukraine will, of course, have a “sharply negative” impact on the general course of the war for you and me... After all, this will contribute to a significant expansion of the capabilities and abilities of the Russian command at the appropriate level to plan, organize and CONDUCT one or another of your actions (especially of an offensive nature).

However, the influence of this buildup on the general situation in the war is not at all limited exclusively to the military sphere. For her, a number of other factors “related” to this matter. Starting with the financial (after all, this ADDITIONAL horde must be clothed, fed, watered, finally armed and equipped with something... these are means, again means and again means...), ending with the socio-political.

As of mid-February this year, according to the Left Bank publication, the Russian Federation has ALREADY spent at least 1.3 TRILLION US dollars on the war with Ukraine (of which, at least 211 billion - only for the deployment and maintenance of its strategic troops, when it clearly did not reach 500 thousand “heads”, now it is larger, and it’s not February yet). Adding another 150-160 thousand “carcasses” to this caudle means adding expenses, and a significant one at that...

At the same time, in the Russian Federation itself, inflation continues to grow, industrial production, despite the simply “amazing pumping of dough” from the Russian budget into military production, continues to “slow down” (the growth rate that the local military-industrial complex “gave” initially stabilized and now has gradually begun to decrease , they are still growing, but less and less). Something bad is also happening with the very deficit of the swamp budget, and in general, taxes in the swamps are growing dramatically.

And then there is the socio-political factor (these ADDITIONAL “knights” for the fight against the “NATO-Binderof hydra” still need to be caught somewhere and somehow, that is, mobilized, and this is unlikely to evoke particularly positive feelings and emotions in Russian society )...

Well, etc.

https://t.me/zvizdecmanhustu/2078

 

Mazovets did several posts on the planned buildup of RA personnel in Ukraine to 700.000 until the end of 2024.

Overall, his views are: While it is not good for Ukraine (if Russia can accomplish this, which he seems doubtful of, at least in the given time span), it would not change the war fundamentally: RA would push in 3 to 4 sectors of the front in the same way as before instead of 1 or 2. And it is a further strain on the Russian economy and society to keep these bodies clothed and fed in the field. The goal behind it is likely to accelerate the capture of territory to dishearten Ukraine's allies and force concessions.

Edited July 30 by Carolus

[Grigb]

10 hours ago, dan/california said:

I strongly suspect everything he just said about audio is also also applicable to the front line EW environment.

And the game is gong to spin out more or less forever. But even if all you can do is take down an antenna, that might enough if your FPV drones are coming in two minutes later. The layering and ordering of what gets used in what order and with what timing must be an endlessly evolving competition of its own.

Yes. Actual technical capabilities of drones and counter-drones defenses are less relevant than competence and organization. The one who is more competent and better organized invariably wins. 

[Grigb]

5 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Anyone else getting WW2 Luftwaffe ground forces vibes?

Comment from experienced RU Mobik from the first mobilization wave (adjusted for better readability). Please read it together with UKR Tatarigami twitter post.

Quote

Fighterbomber blogged about the VKS' motorized infantry regiment. At the end, he notes that there must be a conclusion, but he does not state one. I will attempt to express it.

This is a tryndets [euphemism for situation is totally ****ed up]. Under the slogan "must do anything to avoid second wave of mobilization", various branches of the armed forces are pushing out contract personnel to replenish or form new units and even formations, as we see from the report.

Prior to viewing this video, I had heard that the Navy transfers contractniks to marine brigades as quickly as possible. Up to the point of converting the commandant's platoon [parade and sort of MP unit]  into an assault unit. Now here is a motorized rifle unit made up of VKS members.

Additionally, there are local initiatives at the forefront. For example, [they] recruit a few "unnecessary" signallers to supplement an assault unit. Or move Rmoshnikov [memebers of non-combat support company] to the newly established UAV platoon, as there were no contractniks or mobilized specialists. Forming [wounded] evacuation units from a mortar battery after the loss of mortars. Disband the sniper platoon of the sniper company and assign men to the assault unit. This is turnover started in December 2023, as a consequence of continuous "positional offensive" with no operational pauses for [further] preparation and replenishment.

Let us add to this the VVK [Med panel] increase in requrements for demobilization due to injuries. Losing one finger is no longer sufficient; losing two fingers on the same hand is required. Etc. Let us add to this the VVK [Med panel] increase in requrements for demobilization due to injuries. Losing one finger is no longer sufficient; losing two fingers on the same hand is required. Etc. As a result, there are crowds of cripples in the PPD [unit permanent base], from which individual commanders recruit troops for assaults, as evidenced by network reports. The fact that lightly injured soldiers are often released [to combat duty] earlier [than nessesary] is also well known.

All of this is the reverse side of the adopted  "grinding strategy" and relentless, without sufficient pauses, [offensive] pressure on all fronts. The grinding is mutual.

And the Ukrainians are working to increase their manpower exchange rate to at least one to one [naive mobik]. As a result, the bet is on "a million drones," artillery reaction time, F-16s, and available planes as Guided weapons carriers.

All of these [cases] are warning signs (with the moto rifle VKS regiment serving as a general alert) of a ceasefire or a second wave of mobilization. The accepted tactic of relying on an attack by poorly trained soldiers rather than expanding firepower by adding [our] "million drones" to hundreds of [our] artillery barrels nearly guarantees a second wave [of mobilization.

My personal view regarding second mobilization is based on economical reports from opposition economist Milov - second mobilization is economical catastrophe for RU. That's why they try to avoid it at all cost. So, what Puttin is doing? Most likely he is betting  everything on Trump announcing ceasefire. Milov said recently that RU elites are simply waiting for Forbes article that the conflict is frozen. Milov said unequivocally that the only thing that would save RU economy now is ceasefire. 

[Maciej Zwolinski]

9 hours ago, billbindc said:

I'm sorry to tell you that pretty much the only thing William Gibson missed was cell phones. 

He also put too much faith in the economic and political power of Japan

[The_Capt]

10 hours ago, billbindc said:

I'm sorry to tell you that pretty much the only thing William Gibson missed was cell phones. 

Total jerk…he ruined sci fi for the every aspiring writer out there.

[billbindc]

2 hours ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

He also put too much faith in the economic and political power of Japan

Well...he had a nuclear war that affected the plotline. The idea of a slamhound racing through the streets of Delhi keyed to pheromones was way ahead of it's time.

[Beleg85]

Not 100% sure if identification is correct, but it seems another North Korean stuff on the frontlines.

On the Russian side of the front in the Kharkiv region, a self-propelled anti-tank system Bulsae-4 M-2018 NLOS from North Korea was noticed. As usual, in the case of equipment from the DPRK, it is difficult to have reliable technical data, but it is assumed that the projectile fired from this launcher has a range of 15-25 kilometers.

 

[ArmouredTopHat]

5 hours ago, Grigb said:

Comment from experienced RU Mobik from the first mobilization wave (adjusted for better readability). Please read it together with UKR Tatarigami twitter post.

My personal view regarding second mobilization is based on economical reports from opposition economist Milov - second mobilization is economical catastrophe for RU. That's why they try to avoid it at all cost. So, what Puttin is doing? Most likely he is betting  everything on Trump announcing ceasefire. Milov said recently that RU elites are simply waiting for Forbes article that the conflict is frozen. Milov said unequivocally that the only thing that would save RU economy now is ceasefire. 

Fully agreed, there is clearly a desperate attempt to avoid further mobilisation. Yet they continue to launch these constant attacks that are so very costly. Its truly insane. 

This is really quite good for Ukraine, provided they can hold for the next 3-6 months to get the new influx of manpower currently in training. Russia is bleeding itself out for political gains and simply cannot keep this up. It is of course good for them to keep on suiciding themselves like this instead of sitting behind defences like they did in the second half of 2023. There really does seem to be a 'one more push' mentality in the Russian side of things. We can hope this puts them in a worse situation down the line. 

Adding further to this:
 

A lot of it is pure Russian cope, especially point one and two specifically, we have moved from polish mercenaries to the French foreign legion apparently. Is the SAS next or something? Yet at the same time, when these propagandists that spout such rubbish are acknowledging that infantry is running increasingly short, you can only imagine the scale of the problem. There is even some almost self realisation from this moron that at current rate of progress, its going to take the Russians two years just to 'liberate' the Donbas, let alone Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and other areas the Russians want to grab.

Some interesting points made about drone superiority as well. Hopefully Ukraine can keep up this potential drone advantage (though it seems to vary based on the line) and maintain attrition rates. I will grant that FPV drones are an excellent attritional tool that might give Ukraine the advantage when it comes to retaking their land next year. You cannot defend a trench if all your men are dead to drones. Hopefully this will lead to more dynamic mobile results from Ukraine in the future where they can retake swathes of territory after shattering a line with said drones, provided minefields are dealt with of course. 

Edited July 30 by ArmouredTopHat

[ArmouredTopHat]

Yeesh