How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[panzermartin]

1 hour ago, omae2 said:

years ago it was news that they developing nukes the US did nothing to stop it

No that's not true, they sent Dennis Rodman 

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, Lethaface said:

Such strikes have already been happening a lot in the past in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Obama even intensified them. IIRC they call them 'signature strikes' and there was quite some criticism about m because they were striking weddings, taxi drivers and things like that without necessarily knowing what they were striking; just because their GSMs had been in close proximity to target GSMs they were assumed targets as well (taxi driver), or a group of GSMs (of which some belonged to known targets) together seemed like a target group meeting (wedding).

Apart from the ethical pov, and laws of war, my perception is that such strikes mainly create more 'enemy combatants' than that they eliminate. 
Anyway, having autonomous killer drones to be the business end of such strikes, instead of hellfires fired from drones or plain old air strikes shouldn't be that big of a challenge if you have the killer drones on the ready. 

The thing I'm more afraid of and I have been yapping about for a few years on here, is what if you combine current distributed services software hosting/delivery architecture concepts with attrition/corrosive warfare concepts. I deliberately wont go into too much details and a bit tongue in cheek, but:

In the end warfare is mostly logistics, if a Amazon.mil/WarUntilTheEnemyDoorSAAS solution framework can bring munitions directly to your enemy faster and cheaper, what's not to like? . Of course they'd be supporting all NATO compatible ISTAR integrations for targeting, apart from their own TargetFinder service (which could basically just be their customer database as a searchable catalog lol).
You don't even have to go full machine orgy, selected tube fired munitions or missiles are supported with the BYOD premium ;-). 
Combine that with killer drones and they could be flying out the factory straight into 'business' behind the enemy front, 24/7/365.

A Continuous Destruction Pipeline.

Fortunately the (software) engineering part is quite a challenge, at least from an organizational pov. Not many countries could set something like that up and pay for its upkeep in wartime, let alone during peace. 

 

The spirit of Milo Minderbinder lives on. 
Everybody has a share!

[dan/california]

55 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:

Seoul is one of the largest cities in the world. I've been there many times. Used to go hiking in some mountains nearby and at the top you could look out and it seemed like the city stretched on endlessly. I've never seen anything like it and I grew up 20 miles from NYC. There are thousands of KPA artillery pieces that can hit at least part of that city. War on the Korean Peninsula would mean hundreds of thousands of citizens of Seoul dead within the first hour. That's not even counting North Korea's chemical stockpile and short range missiles that can hit Busan, Gwangju, Daegu, or Japan. That is why the US wasn't proactive in taking out the North Korean nuclear program.

One hundred percent correct, and excellent example of how decisions echo down the decades. The U.S. begged the South Koreans to build a new capital further south at the end of the Korean war. The South Korean government was dead set on rebuilding Seoul because it was the historical capital for more or less forever, and rebuilding it was a source of political legitimacy. Keep in mind that at the time Seoul was at least as flat as some of the most fought over places in Ukraine, just erased. The South Koreans won the argument obviously, and while they went on to build one of the worlds nicer countries, they also gave the North Koreans far more ability to deter them, and the U.S., than they would have had otherwise.

2 minutes ago, alison said:

This whole argument reminds me of an excellent talk from 1982 that the NSA recently released ahead of their podcast/recruiting push.

It's a 2 hour lecture by a woman who lived through a lot of wars making the case for modernization and standardization of computer hardware and software in the military. Aside from being an entertaining watch in its own right, it's relevant because you can see that even 40+ years ago people in the system already understood the requirement to move faster, think smaller and cheaper, try to leverage COTS etc.

And even that wasn't the first time the military/industrial complex squashed the idea. Great tape though!

[The_Capt]

18 minutes ago, JonS said:

Hmm. Good question.

So, just off the top of my head; WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Cold War, mission planning for Cold War gone hot, Gulf War, mission planning for INDOPACOM shenanigans, Red Flag, ... but I may have missed some.

Ok, let’s unpack your list then, WW1 - yep, early days of air power and AD. WW2, most definitely. Korea and Vietnam…kinda makes my case really. We never achieved air superiority in either of those conflicts…nor did we achieve victory. Cold War…well ok, but we planned a lot of things. It may have even gone down as you describe but without having actually done it…it is weak. Gulf War…so you may want to read up on that air war phase. As I recall we did not do a lot of fancy dodging, we kicked the front door in and achieved air supremacy. Red Flag? Seriously.

So your historical refs are definitely applicable back to about 1945. The rest is pretty weak tea. I would argue that pinning air planning on the hope that a peer opponent is dumb enough to leave gaps in which to slalom in 21st century warfare is not the way to go. I mean I am not sure of the NZ doctrine but somehow stretching that into air superiority really does not sound right. The idea that we are going to play that as a COA for a war with China is frankly insane. I am sure someone has tried to do sell it but that don’t make it right.  

And then there is this war. Let me guess the Russians don’t understand SEAD and slaloming? How about they are in a condition of mutual air denial, which has been noted by more than one analysis. It gets mentioned quite a bit. Our problem is there is no easy way to solve that, even for western forces drawing on the lessons learned from 1945.

Edited 5 hours ago by The_Capt

[Lethaface]

16 minutes ago, chrisl said:

The spirit of Milo Minderbinder lives on. 
Everybody has a share!

I don't know what would be better ethically, use the bingo and cash in big on hourly basis going nowhere or actually design the freaking thing for a decent monthly salary.
Obviously only naïve minds believe the ethical route will persevere, so there's that.

Edited 5 hours ago by Lethaface

[JonS]

So, are you saying that mission planners and pilots since the 1940s have just ignored threat assessments, enemy weapon capabilities, orders of battle, and battlefield laydowns, and just said "**** it, fly where you want. Nothing matters anymore"?

33 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So your historical refs are definitely applicable back to about 1945. The rest is pretty weak tea.

And yet, exploiting capability gaps - slaloming around and playing trigonometry - is exactly how F-117s got to tool around over Bahgdad, how U-2s and SR-71s got to overfly the USSR, how A-4s and Mirages got to sink ships off the Falklands, and so on.

The silly sods. If they'd just read some Canadian doctrine they could have saved themselves a tremendous amount of bother.

 

Edited 4 hours ago by JonS

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, JonS said:

So, are you saying that mission planners and pilots since the 1940s have just ignored threat assessments, enemy weapon capabilities, orders of battle, and battlefield laydowns, and just said "**** it, fly where you want. Nothing matters anymore"?

Absolutely not. In fact it is the pervasive increase of cheap threats that is making things the way they are. How does one do a “battlefield lay down” when AD is pretty much everywhere? Everything matters too much…that is the problem and why we are seeing air domain deadlock.

[Sojourner]

How come Netanyahu can call up Über for a B-2 but Zelenskyy can't?

The U.S. military conducted airstrikes in Yemen against the Iranian-backed Houthis, targeting five underground weapons storage sites, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement late Wednesday. The strikes were carried out by B-2 Spirit bombers, marking the first use of these strategic stealth bombers against the Houthis.

“This was a unique demonstration of the United States’ ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened, or fortified,” Austin said in the statement.

He added that the deployment of B-2 long-range bombers demonstrated “U.S. global strike capabilities” to take action anytime and anywhere. The targeted facilities housed weapon components of the type used in attacks on military and civilian vessels in the region, the statement said. [emphasis added]

Anywhere???

May be paywalled...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/17/us-strike-houthi-yemen-b2-bombers/

[Lethaface]

7 minutes ago, Sojourner said:

How come Netanyahu can call up Über for a B-2 but Zelenskyy can't?

A fatal flaw in the matrix rules based order system. Please fix or do sumfink 

[Fenris]

4 hours ago, akd said:

Third part of documentary about International Legion’s Chosen Company at Pervomaiske:

 

This is long but worth the watch.  Shows the full story of clips we saw last summer - russians running into the assault team and one of them turning around and running off again, one the guys collapsing backwards after being hit and a few other things I recognize.

[Silentkilarz]

53 minutes ago, Sojourner said:

How come Netanyahu can call up Über for a B-2 but Zelenskyy can't?

The U.S. military conducted airstrikes in Yemen against the Iranian-backed Houthis, targeting five underground weapons storage sites, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement late Wednesday. The strikes were carried out by B-2 Spirit bombers, marking the first use of these strategic stealth bombers against the Houthis.

“This was a unique demonstration of the United States’ ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened, or fortified,” Austin said in the statement.

He added that the deployment of B-2 long-range bombers demonstrated “U.S. global strike capabilities” to take action anytime and anywhere. The targeted facilities housed weapon components of the type used in attacks on military and civilian vessels in the region, the statement said. [emphasis added]

Anywhere???

May be paywalled...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/17/us-strike-houthi-yemen-b2-bombers/

Pretty simple, Houthis have attacked several US warships and Civilian flagged vessels. RU isnt attacking anything of ours minus some drones. And yes, as tie has shown over and over again B-2's will fly the world to show our enemies why we dont have free healthcare. Ryan Mcbeth just posted a video today about it and it took 4 A2A refueling trips to get them from MO to Yemen.

[Vet 0369]

1 hour ago, sburke said:

anyone see any decent news reports on this?

Vladimir Putin has been dealt another blow after a military airfield in the Moscow oblast was the scene of a huge fire on Wednesday.

Images shared online showed black smoke billowing above the airfield in Chkalovsky, just days after he was rattled by a deadly fireball and his tanks exploded into flames.

Putin needs to ban any type of smoking material or device.

[ArmouredTopHat]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Let me guess the Russians don’t understand SEAD and slaloming? How about they are in a condition of mutual air denial, which has been noted by more than one analysis.

Its almost like despite the Russians technically having the equipment for SEAD / wild weasel operations, they lack the training and practical experience / doctrine to do so. Its one of the most demanding forms of air combat and only the USA / NATO have the expertise to do it at scale. (The Chinese are very much doing their best to catch-up in this area)

5th gens / stealth make SEAD a hell of a lot easier and less dangerous as well. F-35 in particular with its ELINT capabilities is especially potent in this regard as not only is it capable of getting close to a lot of AD platforms (in a way that would be suicide for a 4th gen), but can actively mess with them as well before destroying them (or getting something else to do so)

VKS was simply not geared for such operations, not helped by good old corruption and other systemic issues. Its also a legacy of the Soviet airforce that never really prioritised such a capability given they knew full well that NATO had the better airpower. Soviet planes were thus designed with the notion that any air supremacy on their part was unlikely / temporary (hence the massive focus on air defence in the soviet military to compensate)

Russia is very much still stuck with that legacy and suffer the appropriate consequences. This same legacy effects Ukraine to a degree, but in a positive way as they inherited a large amount of former soviet AD systems that gave them a reasonably robust network designed to fight NATO airpower to begin with, now supplemented by western systems.

The VKS does have a lot of capability with stand off, but no real active manner to engage air defence with wild weasel tactics. Flinging the odd ARM is simply not enough, you need large groups of aircraft working in close cooperation to bait, draw out and then destroy the enemy radars and launchers with all the corresponding electronic warfare. This requires extremely brave (some would say suicidally brave) and trained pilots willing to essentially act as bait to achieve this alongside the supporting force to actually destroy the air defence in question. 

The USA / NATO has been actively using Wild weasel specialised planes since Vietnam and perfecting their use, its something they have gotten rather proficient at, as shown in the Gulf war where over the course of a few months they utterly disintegrated a pretty comprehensive soviet style air defence network for little loss. The Yugoslavian operation was similar and conducted with equally low casualties (albeit less effective) but NATO capability has only grown even more proficient with more stealth and better / more precise pgms. 

Not sure why I bother replying, but at least others can see the illogical nature of Capts argument here. 

Edited 1 hour ago by ArmouredTopHat

[kimbosbread]

56 minutes ago, Silentkilarz said:

And yes, as tie has shown over and over again B-2's will fly the world to show our enemies why we dont have free healthcare. Ryan Mcbeth just posted a video today about it and it took 4 A2A refueling trips to get them from MO to Yemen.

It’s ironic that the US’s first space battleship will almost certainly be cheaper than a B2, both in initial cost and in maintenance costs. Hopefully Musk will christen it “Shockingly reasonable financial decisions” or something like that.

 

Edited 3 hours ago by kimbosbread

[Silentkilarz]

1 minute ago, kimbosbread said:

It’s ironic that the US’s first space battleship will almost certainly be cheaper than a B2, both in initial cost and in maintenance costs. Hopefully Musk will christen it “Shockingly reasonable financial decisions” or something like that.

 

Nah, she'll be the USS Texas and she'll have the B52Y flying next to her.

[JonS]

9 minutes ago, Silentkilarz said:

 B52Y

lol

 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Silentkilarz said:

Pretty simple, Houthis have attacked several US warships and Civilian flagged vessels. RU isnt attacking anything of ours minus some drones. And yes, as tie has shown over and over again B-2's will fly the world to show our enemies why we dont have free healthcare. Ryan Mcbeth just posted a video today about it and it took 4 A2A refueling trips to get them from MO to Yemen.

All true and Yemen isn't able to escalate in a way that Russia could.  This is why no B-2s have gone over to drop something in Iran despite Iran being behind the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas.  Attacking the proxy directly is generally easier than attacking its sponsor.  It's why countries have proxies.

Steve

[Silentkilarz]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

All true and Yemen isn't able to escalate in a way that Russia could.  This is why no B-2s have gone over to drop something in Iran despite Iran being behind the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas.  Attacking the proxy directly is generally easier than attacking its sponsor.  It's why countries have proxies.

Steve

All true, the most they can do is launch more missiles at Civilian and US ships (which they did just hours ago) plus we send a message to Iran that we can and will touch your precious underground facilities and there is nothing you can do about it. Then we get to other subject not many are talking about and its the free weapon training and development they are giving Aegis and THAAD and other AD. The intelligence gathering is also important as they keep showing their cards so to speak.

[Silentkilarz]

15 minutes ago, JonS said:

lol

 

https://www.bunkerbranding.com/products/hlc-buff-t-shirt?variant=43606198976643

[Vanir Ausf B]

1 hour ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

 Its one of the most demanding forms of air combat and only the USA / NATO have the expertise to do it at scale.

Excellent post. The only quibble I have is that it isn't USA/NATO, it's just the USA.

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/1g5xto9/the_secretive_phoenix_ghost_kamikaze_drone_first/

All “AEVEX loitering munitions use visual-based navigation to autonomously identify and follow landmarks or features in their environment, enabling precise positioning and pathfinding without reliance on GPS,” according to the company’s website. “Our systems leverage alternative PNT [precision navigation and timing] solutions to maintain precise navigation and operational capability in GPS-denied or degraded environments.”

In addition, “AEVEX loitering munitions automatically detect, identify, locate, report (DILR) and deliver lethal and non-lethal effects against threats across multiple scenarios and domains with unprecedented accuracy and speed” and are able to “navigate, make decisions, and complete missions without direct intervention,” the company says.

 

If A third of this hype is true the U.S. and Ukraine should both be building factories to turn these out by the million.

[cesmonkey]

https://x.com/WSJ/status/1846899661203751044

https://x.com/KyivIndependent/status/1847005494667276750

https://x.com/KyivPost/status/1846996374551761194

https://x.com/KyivPost/status/1846968731982795006

[dan/california]

12 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

https://x.com/WSJ/status/1846899661203751044

https://x.com/KyivIndependent/status/1847005494667276750

https://x.com/KyivPost/status/1846996374551761194

https://x.com/KyivPost/status/1846968731982795006

I have burned my twitter for the day, can I get a hint? 

[Silentkilarz]

2 minutes ago, dan/california said:

I have burned my twitter for the day, can I get a hint? 

Basically the US is focusing F16 training on younger pilots, Germany is sending more aid and Norway is sending some F16's over

Edited 43 minutes ago by Silentkilarz

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://aevex.com/loitering_munitions/

UNPARALLELED MISSION FLEXIBILITY

AEVEX Loitering Munitions designed for modern war are combat-proven daily and are ready immediately
for US DoD, and our allies and partners.

 

Same company mentioned above, their actual website. They certainly have the hype down. I would love to have a vague idea of unit costs. But they are quoting "1000s" of units produced. There need to be several zeros added to that.