How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

11 hours ago, sross112 said:

Is it? Or is it just dead in Ukraine? I asked a few days ago about maneuver being possible under air superiority or supremacy, but no one picked up the discussion. If one side is able to gain air supremacy, doesn't that negate the constraints that are keeping maneuver in a box? 

If the USAF suddenly got the go ahead to support the UA with everything they had and took away the RA denial of airspace and cleared the skies of the RuAF, would the UA be able to go mobile? Wouldn't it be pretty much the same as a Desert Storm at that point? Pound them at will for however long you deem necessary. Take out every piece of arty, AA and logistics that can be found. At that point, how is the maneuver stopped?

Serious question and I'd like those of you that can educate me to chime in and do just that. Thanks in advance.

My bad.  I am so focused on peer-to-peer and peer-to-near-peer warfare where the defending side doesn't fold up on the first smash.   I did not put in the caveat that is what I was talking about. 

While I generally believe, and have stated here many times already, that the West has enough overmatch that it PROBABLY could dominate a war with Russia, especially in its current weakened state, I am not so confident about that being the case with China.  And with the trillions spent on this particular overmatch capability, I honestly am not comfortable with even "probably".  Especially because we know that this overmatch capability doesn't work very well in non-peer conflicts, which is the more likely scenario facing the US in particular.

People are saying we should not read too much into this war because it might not be representational of the next one.  That's good thinking as long as someone saying that keeping in mind that the next war could show the West's military structure is even worse than it might appear to be now.  Yes, the presumption that the next war might be easier than Ukraine is bad enough, but not discussing the possibility that it could be even more challenging than this one is really bad from a planning perspective.

We have to keep in mind that many subject matter experts have been concerned for some time now that the West's entire concept of warfare was a bit long in the tooth.  Afghanistan certainly showed that, at the very least, it had some pretty big flaws that wonder weapons have no chance of fixing.  But aside from that, many warned that the technological edge that the West enjoyed for so long is becoming increasingly harder and more expensive to maintain.  This should not be surprising because it's the natural order of things for this to eventually happen. 

So Ukraine isn't so much an outlier as it is the first test of those doubting theories.  And as a first test, it seems that the doubters were correct to have doubts.

As you can see in my arguments about future procurement, I think there needs to be a fundamental reassessment of spending priorities.  Investing entire the equivalent of many nations' total GDP on things which are already questionable is bad policy.

Steve

[Blazing 88's]

Just saw there is a game called 'Drone Perspective' available as a demo on Steam for those that may want to check it out. Smartwargames just dropped a preview earlier today.

Real-time tactics with a strong focus on squad positioning and collaboration. Connect to the warzone from your home PC and orchestrate modern military operations from a drone perspective.

Edited Monday at 02:52 PM by Blazing 88's

[Battlefront.com]

49 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

FT article (playwalled, I think) mostly about the Kursk front.

https://www.ft.com/content/a22f7d1f-605b-42fc-ac76-98f59b5497a6

 

 

Cool.  According to this, Russia mustered enough competent forces to push in one spot at one time and not enough to generally threaten Ukraine's foothold.  This is what I was hoping was the case, so I'm crossing my fingers it is accurate reporting.

Let's see if Ukraine's new border incursion over the last few days stabilizes things if they aren't already naturally stabilized (i.e. the Russian counter attack force is already spent).

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Eug85 said:

In response to the Ukrainians using FPV drones to shoot down Russian reconnaissance drones, the Russians began using camouflage paint to reduce the visibility of their drones against the ground. The Russians are very good at adapting to rapidly changing war conditions.

"What's old is new again"

[Pete Wenman]

29 minutes ago, Blazing 88's said:

Just saw there is a game called 'Drone Perspective' available as a demo on Steam for those that may want to check it out. Smartwargames just dropped a preview earlier today.

Real-time tactics with a strong focus on squad positioning and collaboration. Connect to the warzone from your home PC and orchestrate modern military operations from a drone perspective.

How long before someone discovers they are not playing a FPV drone game, but they are actually flying drones in combat and racking up kills

P

[ArmouredTopHat]

Talking about shooting yourself in the foot...

[Battlefront.com]

9 hours ago, chrisl said:

If I can do all that (which is about as far into the future as Max Headroom), why would I bother with an expensive breaching vehicle that I can only afford a few of?  I could spend the same money on a several pallets of FlexiDrones^TM and install the mine clearing package on them back in my mom's basement, then transmit the locations of the target mines to the lot of them just before delivery to the breach.  Press "Go" and have the overwatch drones keep track of who blows up their mines and who doesn't, then send out a second wave to clean up.  It's not a lot different from a drone light show, except the drones are all carrying shaped charge detonator packages to blow up their target mines.  Way less subject to the single point failure mode of a small number of big expensive vehicles.

 

For sure this is a promising extension of what I laid out and, in theory, superior.

Yes, I can totally see swarms of small drones putting down small explosives to blow up a specific mine.  The problem I see with this is one of scale.  How many pallets of already armed drones would it take to get a lane cleared through a very thick and dense minefield?  I'm thinking maybe "too many". 

The solution would be to have the little buggers fly back to a spot to have another explosive put on them to then make a second, third, fourth, or however many trips is necessary to get things cleared.  The problem with this is that the defender will absolutely prioritize smashing the resupply points, and they likely will even if it is firing dumb munitions fairly blindly at a suspected area.

So I think there is still a need to have UGVs that can clear as many mines as they encounter without having to be relieved or rearmed.  UGVs in this role can also be 100% immune to EW via a ground line tether, so there's that as well.

Anyway... the point is that traditional manned breaching seems to be a really bad thing to reinvest in. 

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

7 minutes ago, Pete Wenman said:

How long before someone discovers they are not playing a FPV drone game, but they are actually flying drones in combat and racking up kills

P

Someone's read Ender's Game

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

8 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Talking about shooting yourself in the foot...

This is another example of how utterly mind numbingly "different" Russians are from most of us in the West.  If you told me that I was going to be stripped of my responsibilities and sent to the front to die in a pointless meat assault, I would not make a video complaining about it.  I would do something other than go to the front to die in a pointless meat assault.  Whether it be deserting, throwing a grenade in my commander's bunker, shooting the bastard when he got up to take a piss, or (for f's sake) using one of my drones to take 'em out... I have no idea.  But it would be something that at least wasn't 100% pointless suicide.

And yet... this seems to rarely happen on the Russian side.  Or at least, far rarer than logically it should be.

Steve

[sross112]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

To summarize, in a peer on peer conflict, air supremacy is likely a pipe dream. Air superiority is going to extremely costly. We would be better off preparing to fight in air denied environments from the start. This of course will mean that we need to adapt manoeuvre to that environment. And we are back to force compositions.

 

53 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

As you can see in my arguments about future procurement, I think there needs to be a fundamental reassessment of spending priorities.  Investing entire the equivalent of many nations' total GDP on things which are already questionable is bad policy.

Thanks for the responses. I do agree that going forward there will be or at least should be some big changes in force composition based upon lessons learned in Ukraine. I'm just trying to wrap my head around how the changes in different layers affect the others and what that means. 

Panzermartin actually said something that made sense just a bit ago. That drones are the unmanned version of attack helicopters. When I think about that it makes sense and will probably make more sense as they are continued to be developed with more sensor and strike capabilities. That means that we haven't watched the death of the attack helicopter, but we have witnessed the abrupt evolution of it. We've also witnessed some big evolution in the naval space with the USV's.

The ground evolution is much slower, but it is much more complicated due to the terrain and environmental factors. So, the tank is most likely not dead and neither is maneuver, we just haven't seen what it evolves into yet. Probably the same with the air war. Do things like the F-35 and B-21 bring enough capability to the game to support their price tags, or will a cheap disposable jet drone beat them out? 

[Battlefront.com]

12 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

I found the main takeaway was that the Kursk operation has revealed not a single case of a KA-52 (Or Russian attack helicopter in general) actually destroying any equipment (that is visually confirmed) Which is a drastic difference from just a year ago where they were actually doing something against the previous Ukrainian attack. This is very much unusual given this should be an environment that in theory would be ideal for said helicopters to operate in as a fast response measure.

That's not what Perun laid out.  What he said was that the attack helicopters have been generally useless utility since the opening phase of the war, with the opposition to Ukraine's 2023 summer offensive being an outlier of effectiveness.  Kursk, on the other hand, is the logical outcome of the progression of reasons that they are no longer able to perform their jobs EVEN in what would previously have been viewed as ideal circumstances.

In other words, Perun outlined exactly why Kursk is an expected result, not an outlier.

12 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Compare this to tanks operating in Kursk and they are pretty reasonably featured in most engagements. They have use / roles to perform and are doing so. Attack helicopters in comparison are absent. This to me suggests that unlike a tank, the environment has become so uncertain / unfriendly to helicopters that they cant even perform their useful role in any meaningful capacity (and even suffered losses from manpads in the process)

You have (not surprisingly) missed the point.  It isn't that tanks are as useless as attack helicopters, it is that tanks are showing all the same symptoms as attack helicopters.  It's like two patients in a hospital suffering from the same disease.  One is already on a ventilator and probably going to die soon, the other is shorter of breath today than yesterday and that was worse than the day before.

Tanks are definitely showing more utility on the battlefield today than attack helicopters.  That's not great comfort considering that attack helicopters showed more utility last year than this year, more the year before that, and lots more in the previous decades.  The same can be said for tanks even if they aren't as far along on the route to irrelevance as the attack helicopter is at this moment.

 

12 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Attack Helicopters take the primary downsides of a tank (being even more expensive) but have increasingly nothing to show for it,

That is the exact argument many of us here have been making about tanks.  They still have something to show for themselves, but it is a fraction of what they were entrusted to do and at a cost which is totally out of proportion to what they do contribute.

12 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Whereas nothing quite provides the firepower, armour or mobility of a tank in ground combat I would argue.

We know   And as I, and others have argued, it's a factually flawed position that becomes more demonstrably so with the passage of time.  While it is true that nobody has completely replaced the tank on the battlefield of today, it's mostly been replaced by things which are only on the start of their development curve.  Tanks are unarguably at the end of theirs.  This matters when planning out for the next 20-30 years.

12 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Also, entirely agree on that data summary stuff, shows that not all precision is created equally certainly! Those later stats of Excalibur go a long way to explain why they are not being shipped anymore. Has there been any sign of supplying the version of Excalibur that has a laser guidance component? Or would this require NATO ISR?

Perun did not mention any such prospects and I'm sure he would have if there was any credible motion in that direction.

12 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

In addition, I found the data on the BMP to BMD destruction / annihilation rates utterly fascinating, as it indicates just how important even some basic protection is to vehicles. I would love to see how those stats match up to Western hardware, with tanks thrown in as well. My hypothesis would be the western kit is even harder to catastrophically destroy, which would support the common assumption that these vehicles are safer. 
 

Absolutely.  Perun laid out the case that there's a line at which a vehicle's design compromises do not allow it to meet the needs it is intended to fulfill.  Which means it's a waste of precious limited defense spending resources while at the same time reducing the ability of the whole force to perform it's mission.

And this is, once again, a core argument I and others have raised as to why NATO should move away from heavy armor.  It already struggles to perform a subset of the tasks it was entrusted to perform and there's no signs, at all, that it can be readjusted to make up for its current and probable future failings.  At the same time it consumes a massive amount of limited defense spending capacity to do the little it can still (for now) contribute.

In my previous post I wondered how closely you listened to what Perun said.  It seems you listened reasonably well, but haven't really understood much of the underlying reasons for why Perun said what he said. 

Steve

[Sgt Joch]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

  In fact, you should think back to 2014 and recall your positions regarding what was really going on in Ukraine.  There's a written record of it and, from your perspective, it did not age very well.

Steve

That is below the belt even for you Steve. Get up on the wrong side of the bed did you?

[The_Capt]

18 minutes ago, sross112 said:

 

Thanks for the responses. I do agree that going forward there will be or at least should be some big changes in force composition based upon lessons learned in Ukraine. I'm just trying to wrap my head around how the changes in different layers affect the others and what that means. 

Panzermartin actually said something that made sense just a bit ago. That drones are the unmanned version of attack helicopters. When I think about that it makes sense and will probably make more sense as they are continued to be developed with more sensor and strike capabilities. That means that we haven't watched the death of the attack helicopter, but we have witnessed the abrupt evolution of it. We've also witnessed some big evolution in the naval space with the USV's.

The ground evolution is much slower, but it is much more complicated due to the terrain and environmental factors. So, the tank is most likely not dead and neither is maneuver, we just haven't seen what it evolves into yet. Probably the same with the air war. Do things like the F-35 and B-21 bring enough capability to the game to support their price tags, or will a cheap disposable jet drone beat them out? 

The challenge is that if we rely on mech and armor as our primary means of manoeuvre, then we must set the conditions to allow them to be able to do that. Based on what we are seeing in this war, those costs are becoming prohibitive. 

The drone may very well be the new AH. But unlike tac aviation, drones can stay up nearly indefinitely by pushing volume, spread out, are much harder to target. And cost a tiny fraction of the unit price compared to helicopters so the required volumes can be sustained, even with high losses.

So trying to re-set the battlefield for our older systems of manoeuvre may be impossible, or at least extremely expensive. So what? Change the foundational systems for manoeuvre. That is the challenge moving forward. No one really knows what that will look like. But as this war progresses, it is looking more and more dramatic in shift. So, for example, "tanks" as mobile medium range (10km) guns firing precision weapons starts to make sense. Using amored platforms as distrubuted C2 nodes, also makes sense. Investing the majority of our firepower and mobility in heavy, hot, expensive vehicles...makes a lot less sense.

 

[sburke]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

We really aren’t. Poesel is arguing that “the Boar” makes a lot of sense from a strictly technical standpoint. My point is that one cannot make an assessment for a strictly technical standpoint as all this”technical” is directly linked to battlefield requirements. AKA “where this new piece of kit will fit into the system”. Based on that assessment this monster makes little sense.

And if you are saying we cannot employ sarcasm, well then half the fun of this forum has been murdered.

yeah BUT you do agree on tractors right?  Tractors have been one of the most important vehicles of this war.  heck I even saw one towing the Moskva!  I saw a pic so I know it was true.

[Battlefront.com]

15 minutes ago, sross112 said:

I'm just trying to wrap my head around how the changes in different layers affect the others and what that means. 

So aren't we all

Maneuver warfare itself, as a concept that goes back hundreds if not thousands of years, is still alive and well.  It's just that the specific formula that the West has employed since WW2 is highly suspect.  It needs to be reexamined.

Steve

 

[Battlefront.com]

24 minutes ago, Sgt Joch said:

That is below the belt even for you Steve.

How so?  Your position appears to be that propaganda isn't harmful and people are able to judge for themselves what is fact and what is invention to serve a nefarious agenda.  I don't see it being "below the belt" to point out that you should not be so convinced this is true.  After all, those ideas you argued so forcefully in 2013-2015 that people, like me, told you were untrue didn't come out of thin air.  They came from propaganda which you did not always successfully properly evaluate in terms of truthfulness.

Steve

[ArmouredTopHat]

22 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

That is the exact argument many of us here have been making about tanks.  They still have something to show for themselves, but it is a fraction of what they were entrusted to do and at a cost which is totally out of proportion to what they do contribute.

Is this really fair to say when dozens if not hundreds of tanks are involved in active combat of some sort on the front everyday? It seems the issues with mechanised warfare currently (In the face of in depth defence) are being unfairly placed upon tanks when they are but one component of said warfare. Why are the infantry, IFVs or APCs not receiving the same scrutiny when they make up the majority of the force in question? 

In short, why does the responsibility of failure to ensure widespread mechanised warfare as an option lie with a tank over the rest of the force participating? In my view, if there is a death with regards to tank warfare, its the death of the soviet approach of tank warfare and design. I would also argue that you hardly improve the situation faced by mechanised forces by removing tanks, you would in fact probably only make things worse for the rest of the attacking force now deprived of tank support. 
 

26 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

We know   And as I, and others have argued, it's a factually flawed position that becomes more demonstrably so with the passage of time.  While it is true that nobody has completely replaced the tank on the battlefield of today, it's mostly been replaced by things which are only on the start of their development curve.  Tanks are unarguably at the end of theirs.  This matters when planning out for the next 20-30 years.

I suppose we are just making different conclusions based on the available data, which is not a bad thing in itself I suppose. I still think its an extremely early conclusion to make, based on a conflict that as Perun says, is not one that is going to have lessons that apply to everyone. 

27 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

You have (not surprisingly) missed the point.  It isn't that tanks are as useless as attack helicopters, it is that tanks are showing all the same symptoms as attack helicopters.  It's like two patients in a hospital suffering from the same disease.  One is already on a ventilator and probably going to die soon, the other is shorter of breath today than yesterday and that was worse than the day before.

Tanks are definitely showing more utility on the battlefield today than attack helicopters.  That's not great comfort considering that attack helicopters showed more utility last year than this year, more the year before that, and lots more in the previous decades.  The same can be said for tanks even if they aren't as far along on the route to irrelevance as the attack helicopter is at this moment.

Ouch. I'm Sorry if I did. 

To take this analogy further as a retort, while the primary issue (cost to efficiency) is indeed similar on the surface of it, the reasons for why the AH is not in a great spot compared to a tank effectively means it in fact a different disease. Symptoms can often overlap with different diseases and vary in severity. Think flu to covid. 

That is to say, the tank has a lot more 'treatment' options than the AH because it in fact suffers from something less acute as a prognosis. As an example: on the base level of it, even the smallest explosive charge on a helicopter is going to likely result in a rapid unscheduled landing of the violent sort, something that is now a reality based on the AFU attempts to hit Russian helicopters with FPVs. From the limited data we have seen, tanks are far more durable. 

In fact, the use data compared to helicopters I would say is quite promising, as you say AH have shown a drastic decrease in utility, where tanks have been in use pretty consistently through the entire conflict. If a brigade on either side is on the contact line, it almost certainly has tanks supporting it. Really the only example I can think where this is not the case is the Kherson river raids and the initial stages of the Kharkiv operation that seemed to prioritise wheeled vehicles (though tanks quickly did get involved later on)

As the analogy suggests, there is a problem of sorts with tanks, at least one I would argue lies with design / the need to adjust a design that is effectively cold war era in nature. This does not mean the base concept of a tank is any less relevant to the current conflict. 

[Sgt Joch]

4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

How so?  Your position appears to be that propaganda isn't harmful and people are able to judge for themselves what is fact and what is invention to serve a nefarious agenda.  I don't see it being "below the belt" to point out that you should not be so convinced this is true.  After all, those ideas you argued so forcefully in 2013-2015 that people, like me, told you were untrue didn't come out of thin air.  They came from propaganda which you did not always successfully properly evaluate in terms of truthfulness.

Steve

Honestly Steve, that is the type of argument I would expect from my wife, dredging up ancient arguments. I hardly remember what I wrote last month, let alone 10 years ago, but it does seem to have gotten under your skin though...

[poesel]

15 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Really? Fascinating deduction.

No, you stated up front that your were not considering the vehicles “battlefield role.” Instead focusing only one the safety of hard engineering factors. My point was that this was impossible as the battlefield role and environment drive those engineering factors. You cannot sidestep them nor drawn an arbitrary line as to what or what not to consider. You cannot simply worry about earth and mine pushing and disregard how this vehicle fits into a broader system. This would be the point you are missing. None of this is a simple engineering problem. It is an engineering problem where the components are driven by battlefield requirements.

Course I can and I should. To translate it for you in military terms: how do you think would a general feel if the lieutenant wants to question the grand strategy instead of following the order?

Same for an engineer: you get a specification, you build the machine according to spec. It is someone else's job to decide if that thing is marketable or fit for purpose.

However, what you can do as an engineer is to tell your customer/boss that the machine will look like THIS if you build it to THAT spec. That is what I did.

Someone said the Keiler is too big. Well, if you want to push a plow of that size, the resulting machine will roughly have that size. If you don't like that size, don't buy the machine. No, you cannot have a jeep pushing this plow. End of discussion.

[billbindc]

11 minutes ago, Sgt Joch said:

Honestly Steve, that is the type of argument I would expect from my wife, dredging up ancient arguments. I hardly remember what I wrote last month, let alone 10 years ago, but it does seem to have gotten under your skin though...

If the argument is “I don’t even remember what I thought in 2014 but how dare you suggest that propaganda works!” you probably want to sit this one out.

 

[Sgt Joch]

15 minutes ago, billbindc said:

If the argument is “I don’t even remember what I thought in 2014 but how dare you suggest that propaganda works!” you probably want to sit this one out.

 

hmm, I do not recall posting propaganda cannot be effective, my only comment was that before deciding the film "Russians at War" is or is not propaganda, someone would have to see it. As far as I know, no one here has seen it, even though everyone has already made up their minds about it.

Edited Monday at 05:24 PM by Sgt Joch

[Kraft]

Leo1A5 all ERA-d up.

Quote

 

[The_Capt]

13 minutes ago, poesel said:

Course I can and I should. To translate it for you in military terms: how do you think would a general feel if the lieutenant wants to question the grand strategy instead of following the order?

Same for an engineer: you get a specification, you build the machine according to spec. It is someone else's job to decide if that thing is marketable or fit for purpose.

However, what you can do as an engineer is to tell your customer/boss that the machine will look like THIS if you build it to THAT spec. That is what I did.

Someone said the Keiler is too big. Well, if you want to push a plow of that size, the resulting machine will roughly have that size. If you don't like that size, don't buy the machine. No, you cannot have a jeep pushing this plow. End of discussion.

Well first off a good general is going to take questions from Lts on just about any topic and listen to them.

No, what you did was make an assessment of a new military vehicle based on an only partial understanding of what the specs for this vehicle actually are or are not. Your assessment was that this vehicle was adequate to the task without accounting for what the task actually comprised of. 

You made assumptions about the required specifications and then an assessment. This what I take issue with. This vehicle is not only pushing dirt that may contain mines. Or lobbing explosive hoses. It is part of a breaching system and contributes to delivery of effects.

This is like looking at a titanium bayonet and declaring it a fine weapon. It is lighter, stronger, holds a decent edge…all good and up to spec. Except for the part that it costs a lot more than current bayonets and really does not provide additional capability or advantages for that money. 

My point is that this is a titanium bayonet. We do not admire it, we question the logic for ever building it. Its technical requirements are directly tied to the battlefield where this new bayonet is going to do little, still have external dependencies, cost a mint in both procurement and maintenance, and may very well make things worse. But sure, it is a fine bayonet.

[Vanir Ausf B]

32 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

In my view, if there is a death with regards to tank warfare, its the death of the soviet approach of tank warfare and design.

I agree with most of your post, and have asked the same question before, but I wouldn't single out the Russians here. Western tanks are not especially resistant to drones (although crew survivability is much better), have poor anti-personnel ammunition and are too heavy.

[Sequoia]

16 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Neither have I, but I hang around people here who have

Steve

I thought you said you played Panzer Blitz/Panzer Leader when you were young? Of course if you meant you stayed away from Steve Jackson games, I get that. Their games didn't interest me. There is a true story about them being raided by the Secret Service because of their Cyber Punk role playing game.  

SJ Games vs. the Secret Service