How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

55 minutes ago, dan/california said:

 

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.

I've been saying for a while now that EW is not dead, yet, but it's on the way to being ineffective against precision systems.  There's just too many ways to work around it, including Russia's recent introduction of fiber optic links to UAS.

This would relegate EW to blocking out COTS and older type systems, which is still useful.  Just not as useful and, therefore, not a primary defensive system in the near future.  It's already of questionable utility (e.g. Russia's heavy use and still heavy casualties)

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

8 hours ago, JonS said:

That's interesting footage, for a number of reasons.

First off; WTF were the Russians up to having a relaxed range-day on a billiard table within reach of surface fires!?

Secondly, the MPI wasn't right on target, it was quite a ways off where the dozen or so dudes were. The overall footprint is big enough that they still got stomped by it, which makes this video is a really good illustration of several things.

Thanks for that.  I had noticed (especially in the second strike) how far off  the center was from where we think they were aiming for, but also noticed that it didn't seem to matter much.  What we saw was stomped hard.  Poor rabbits and woodchucks in the brush though.

8 hours ago, JonS said:

Or, if you've you've bet the farm on drones, you can spend the rest of the day and the rest of the week wishing you'd kept some surface fires capability while your drone operator buddies slowly but precisely plink baddies one by one as they gradually reveal themselves.

This war has underscored the importance of artillery, especially precision and long ranged types.  When you want an entire enemy force of multiple vehicles or soldiers GONE, there's really no better tool available.  Traditional tactical air comes a close second, but the difficulty in air operating in this particular war raises questions which have been debated in the past few pages.

As for the cost benefit wisdom of using ATACMS in these cases, some thoughts:

1.  Russia is training these guys within ATACMS range for a reason.  Whatever that reason is, you can safely bet the alternatives are less desirable for Russia in some way/s.  Always good to make them consider those.

2.  Training out in the open is easier and cheaper.  ATACAMS might convince Russia to up its expenditure of resources in order to have them protected (a shooting range can be hardened)

3.  Each enemy soldier killed in the rear is one that isn't at the front, so there's always value in taking them out.  Calculate value in terms of friendly lives not put at risk of harm and/or positions lost.

4.  Presumably there were trainers amongst the casualties.  In a well functioning military trainers are a cut above the rest and they are tasked with passing on those elevated skills to others so that they may be more effective.  One trainer can train hundreds or even thousands of individuals if given a chance, so nice to remove that chance from the equation.

Steve