How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Joe982]

9 hours ago, AlexUK said:

Ukrainian forces ... note that many aspects of Russian fighting have significantly improved...drones, potentially EW, use of glide bombs.  
 

But not strategy or tactics. 

During a Russian meat wave, Russian EW is meant to counter Ukrainian electronics. But still, the meat wave goes ahead.

[Vlad]

2 hours ago, Fenris said:

He doesn't link a source in the post, hopefully it's true and is another of those small indicators of mounting trouble for RU at home.

https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1848637588963262563

I've seen it too, but no source as well.

Anyways, the article I've read claims that the price of butter is about 400 Roubles for 180 grams (<6,5 oz) - approximately 95 CZK, which is about twice as much as you pay in Czechia for a 250 grams (<9 oz).

https://valka.online/aktualni-konflikty/analyza-devitistehosedmdesatehotretiho-dne-ruske-invaze-na-ukrajinu-23-10-2024/

You can auto translate it, it's in the bottom half of the article.

Edited Thursday at 05:45 AM by Vlad

[CHARLIE43]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Well, if they are thinking that then it's delusional.

The West isn't running out of stuff, it's running out of stuff it can spare without restricting its own needs.  Russia, on the other hand, is running out of stuff for its own needs.  Huge difference.

All evidence suggests that Russia is indeed running out of stuff.  Others have already helped explain that, but in addition to this it's simple math.  The stuff the Russians had in service at the start of the war has been lost several times over in many categories.  Those losses far outstrip new production, which means they are dipping into reserves.  It's simple math.

Also, let's not forget that for decades much of Russia's "new" production was nothing more than upgrading something built during Soviet times.  So what are they going to do after this war is over when there's nothing left from the Soviet days of old?  Ground up production is a lot more expensive and slower than modest upgrades.

It is probably true that Russia has tried to hold back stuff for future needs and not squander it on the war.  However, as time has gone on, and losses have mounted, it's been pretty clear that's not feasible.  The first to go was ground forces stationed as far away as the Arctic and naval personnel in the Pacific Fleet.  Forces pretty much everywhere were drained, probably with a fair amount of their equipment too.

The withdrawal of artillery and air defenses from all over the place is also pretty well documented.  You don't move that sort of stuff from places like Kaliningrad if you have ample reserves sitting elsewhere.

Steve

Interesting! Thanks! I know that the conversation turned to tanks and such as a benchmark, but do you think that if a re-formed Russian military, especially the army, turns more to unmanned vehicles that are cheap and quickly produced, would that make it a formidable adversary to a NATO that is seemingly ill prepared to deal with such a force?

I'm looking at the "No matter how it looks" part. It's just that the arguments get circular to me at times. We argue that the West needs to trim the fat, cheapen and reorganize it's forces and at the same time, declaring the Russian army impotent because "bloated, heavy, and way too expensive" is piling up on the battlefield, while they are obviously doing more than dabbling in UAV technology.

[Joe982]

10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

BRDM-2??!  Holy crap!

1. What is the minimum sized round required to penetrate the tyres?

2. Can a 50. Cal penetrate the armour?

 

[Kraft]

3 hours ago, Joe982 said:

But not strategy or tactics. 

During a Russian meat wave, Russian EW is meant to counter Ukrainian electronics. But still, the meat wave goes ahead.

This is not an issue exclusive to russia.

You cannot transport capable local EW by foot, if you use a vehicle, you end up attracting more trouble than what its worth. Its good at protecting trenches and the decrease in FPVs on well lived in trenches is evidence of that, they mostly go for soldiers inbetween or in recently captured positions.

Even with EW, there are countless videos of FPVs hitting vehicles with EW complexes installed, either malfunctioning or already surpassed by better drones.

I doubt that by sending in more would decrease casualties on the russian. One mine barrier, a few protected or immune FPVs, an ATGM team, heavy artillery, (in theory bombs), and you get the same result as the initial mass counter offensive 2023, which also ended up switching to a grinding strategy of small unit action.

The continous 3-5 man assault /infiltration team is the answer to the challenges posed, if someone had overmatch, it would be different ofc. Doesnt help that the defending trench is usually held by a skeleton crew too.

Mass has its place in getting past immense barriers, such as the slagheap near Avdiivka because without the vehicles burnt there, the russian soldiers would not have reached the city and would still be dying in the field. But if all you need is reach the next treeline, it might be better to trickle in soldiers and reserve the vehicles for more meaningful challenges. 

 

Edited Thursday at 07:55 AM by Kraft

[hcrof]

1 hour ago, Joe982 said:

1. What is the minimum sized round required to penetrate the tyres?

2. Can a 50. Cal penetrate the armour?

 

1 it has a central tyre inflation system so will be quite resistant 

2 yes, even at quite long ranges

[fireship4]

15 hours ago, sburke said:

Not to pile on but this sentence is a good example of linking items that aren't the same trying to prove a contradiction that doesn't exist.

To clarify my sentence:

"Says the RA is both losing experienced men and gaining experience and adapting, apparently one effect is faster than the other, without [him providing an] explanation [of why he apparently thinks one is the more causal effect, and it is not clear which this would be because he says Russia won't be stronger...].  Then accepts the argument, then dismisses it again."

I can accept that experience of different types is coming and going from the RAF, that is necessarily true, what I was looking for was the actual point he was trying to make and his argument, e.g. those effects in sum result in a weaker but smarter RAF,  as opposed to something more like, a weaker but stronger RAF.

 

15 hours ago, sburke said:

Those experienced soldiers are learning what combat is like at the sharp end.  What they aren't learning is what it takes to develop and field an army under these conditions.  What production criteria are required.  There is a lot more being learned in Ukraine than just how to employ drones at the tactical level.  Those lessons need to be learned at the higher echelons of leadership.  Just as @The_Capt has argued that Western militaries need to understand how warfare has changed and adapt.  It isn't the Sgts and Capts who will drive that.  Granted they will need to learn the systems that are developed, but they won't be the ones making any decisions about what to develop.

So you say, some might say crowdsourcing their own equipment, devising and implementing solutions to novel battlefield problems then spreading their solutions and requests for non-obvious or un-available requirements over social media, perhaps even having such fulfilled by volunteer manufacturers behind the frontline, that they have done exactly that in certain cases.

Edited Thursday at 10:37 AM by fireship4

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, fireship4 said:

To clarify my sentence:

"Says the RA is both losing experienced men and gaining experience and adapting, apparently one effect is faster than the other, without [him providing an] explanation [of why he apparently thinks one is the more causal effect, and it is not clear which this would be because he says Russia won't be stronger...].  Then accepts the argument, then dismisses it again."

I can accept that experience of different types is coming and going from the RAF, that is necessarily true, what I was looking for was the actual point he was trying to make and his argument, e.g. those effects in sum result in a weaker but smarter RAF,  as opposed to something more like, a weaker but stronger RAF.

 

So you say, some might say crowdsourcing their own equipment, devising and implementing solutions to novel battlefield problems then spreading their solutions and requests for non-obvious or un-available requirements over social media, perhaps even having such fulfilled by volunteer manufacturers behind the frontline, that they have done exactly that in certain cases.

Been giving this some thought (and you could have just started with this as line of questioning as opposed to a Karen routine).

After this war, for at least ten years, the Russian Army (we have noted Navy and AF) will be weaker but smarter...and more unpredictable. So landing on the point, the RA will be weaker physically, but a stronger threat cognitively and conatively.

This is a nuance from what General C seemed to be saying, but keep in mind we got only a small snippet of his speech.

 

6 hours ago, CHARLIE43 said:

Interesting! Thanks! I know that the conversation turned to tanks and such as a benchmark, but do you think that if a re-formed Russian military, especially the army, turns more to unmanned vehicles that are cheap and quickly produced, would that make it a formidable adversary to a NATO that is seemingly ill prepared to deal with such a force?

I'm looking at the "No matter how it looks" part. It's just that the arguments get circular to me at times. We argue that the West needs to trim the fat, cheapen and reorganize it's forces and at the same time, declaring the Russian army impotent because "bloated, heavy, and way too expensive" is piling up on the battlefield, while they are obviously doing more than dabbling in UAV technology.

And I wanted to jump to this one. I think we are basing our assessments on a lot of observations we have seen in the evolution of this war. The RA at the outset was structured and operated more like us than the UA was. The UA was fighting more along the lines of hybrid warfare (a mix of conventional and unconventional warfare).

We armed and supported them in this but by the military metrics of 21 Feb '22, there is no way Ukraine should have been able to resist the RA. The numbers and force ratios simply did not add up. As it was, we know now it was actually a much closer run affair in those early days. However, it is undeniable that "something strange" had just happened. 

Then against all military metrics, the UA went onto the offensive in late '22. Not only did they force an RA collapse, they did in a manner we did not recognize. It was not mech manoeuvre-to-cause-dislocation, it was a weird combination of precision attrition - delivered primarily by really accurate indirect fires, and light forces. [Before the "tank pajamas" crowd get excited - yes, there were armored and mech forces but when you see the composition of the breakout forces you can quickly see that it was primarily fast moving light. Heavier stuff seems to have done the break-in work and then held the shoulders.] Keep in mind this was all before the FPV swarms that occurred last winter. 

Then we watched the UA completely fail in summer'23...and again, they were fighting then pretty much exactly as we would. The stark truth of summer '23 is that without complete air superiority, our ground forces look like they can be stopped cold by a very light defence. The UA adapted and moved to a more distributed grinding, trying to emulate what they did in the back end of '22. But by then the RA got the memo and was using UAS and ISR more effectively. They were able to sustain a defence with very low troop density.

So to your point - the conclusion amongst some of here was "western forces need to be lighter, cheaper (per pound), reorganized/structured for this environment". They also need to have a lot more capacity. This is important. We say "cheaper" but we mean "cheaper per unit of capability." Overall costs could very well go up. If you look at almost every western military, except for the US, they have very expensive, very low density capability.

If we cling to the old metrics of land warfare, for example, Canada has about 100 MBTs, Germany had around 200 - that is a single bad afternoon in this war. Even the US would be looking at losses that it likely could not sustain politically. Imagine if the US invaded Iraq and lost 10k in the first two months; and then 70k by 2005. That is unsustainable from a western point of view.

So we need to be cheaper per unit...but we are very likely going to need more units. Why? To fight more like the UA. Distributed, dispersed, highly connected and capable of projecting enormous losses on opponent asymmetrically until they collapse....and then exploit. Those few lines there are enough to send the MIC and military traditionalist into apoplectic fits. For the MIC it basically means all they have tooled up for since about 1949 is now becoming obsolete. For military traditionalist, it also means obsolescence of not only capability but doctrines and strategies. And, as I am sure you know from history, there is not much militaries of the day will resist more than challenges to their established doctrines and strategies, as they are directly tied to their political value propositions.  

So what? Well basically, if we do not hoist aboard the lessons coming out of this war, Russia damn sure will. How well they translate them remains to be seen (but we can trust Russian corruption and baffling bureaucracy to try and screw it up). Russian military theorists are going to be all over this. Planners are going to make it's central to future operations. Russia is likely just as surprised by all this as we are. To the point they simply went back to an older form of attrition warfare in order to try and still win. The RA meat assaults are not stupid in themselves, they are falling back on basically the only option the RA has left. Attrition is the oldest form of warfare - kill them faster than they can kill you...then exploit. The RA is slamming "big, bloated and expensive" because that is what they had to bring to this war. The problem was that this war turned into something no one was ready for. 

So looking forward, well two broad strategic approaches seem to be on the table - with a whole lotta sub options in between. 1) We double down on our current capabilities and go with the theory that if we can concentrate enough, we can overcome denial and frictions being created by this new dynamic. Or 2) go back to the drawing board and rethink warfare itself and how we are going to do it. How does a lethal mist defeat another lethal mist? (Or bacteria vs anti-biotics?) Can we create and sustain advantage through software vice hardware? What force structures do we need as the core of a ground manoeuvre force? What does "combined arms" mean in 2024?

So there it is pretty much all on the table and hope it makes it a little clearer.     

[Battlefront.com]

9 hours ago, CHARLIE43 said:

Interesting! Thanks! I know that the conversation turned to tanks and such as a benchmark, but do you think that if a re-formed Russian military, especially the army, turns more to unmanned vehicles that are cheap and quickly produced, would that make it a formidable adversary to a NATO that is seemingly ill prepared to deal with such a force?

I'm looking at the "No matter how it looks" part. It's just that the arguments get circular to me at times. We argue that the West needs to trim the fat, cheapen and reorganize it's forces and at the same time, declaring the Russian army impotent because "bloated, heavy, and way too expensive" is piling up on the battlefield, while they are obviously doing more than dabbling in UAV technology.

This is exactly the thing that the West should be worried about.  In theory what you said could very well happen. 

Russia's industrial capacity to support a huge, bloated force collapses without its imperialist desires going with it.  So after a bunch of purges of top leadership and some industrialists having health issues or falls from windows, the Russian military realigns itself to be a lean, mean, automated fighting machine. 

While on the other side the West continues to make expensive, slow to produce, difficult to maintain and (ironically) highly vulnerable systems.

This could happen and it would not be pretty for the West.  At the very best it would be a huge amount of economic resources forever lost without serving an effective purpose.  At the worst it would be that + not being able to effectively challenge Russia on the battlefield.  Either way, not good.

However, one thing we have seen with Russia is that it's pretty set in its ways.  Back in 2008 the then Defense Minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, recognized that the Russian way was not competitive with the West.  He introduced a huge and sweeping set of reforms to professionalize the Russian military from top to bottom.  As it started to take hold he was ousted and most of the reforms were either abandoned, reversed, or only partially implemented.  The result was a Russian military that appeared to have improved, but fundamentally hadn't.

So what happened to Serdyukov's reforms?  It ran into the general criminal nature of the Russian government where it's a bunch of crime bosses fighting for power, not people interested in making Russia better.  His reforms threatened the very things the crime bosses made money off of, so after a short struggle they reasserted themselves.  And that is why we have the 2022 Russian Armed Forces instead of what Serdyukov was trying to make.

The lesson here is that the same sorts of corruption and conservative thinking that we're talking about with the West's Military Industrial Complex is even worse in Russia.  There's more historical precedent and structural support for the West making a major shift compared to Russia.  So while what you said is theoretically possible, I don't think it will happen.

What I do worry about is that Russia will change just enough to cause the West a lot of casualties, either directly or through a proxy.  The West will still win, but at a higher cost than it could have if it retooled its military.

Steve

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Been giving this some thought (and you could have just started with this as line of questioning as opposed to a Karen routine).

After this war, for at least ten years, the Russian Army (we have noted Navy and AF) will be weaker but smarter...and more unpredictable. So landing on the point, the RA will be weaker physically, but a stronger threat cognitively and conatively.

This is a nuance from what General C seemed to be saying, but keep in mind we got only a small snippet of his speech.

 

And I wanted to jump to this one. I think we are basing our assessments on a lot of observations we have seen in the evolution of this war. The RA at the outset was structured and operated more like us than the UA was. The UA was fighting more along the lines of hybrid warfare (a mix of conventional and unconventional warfare).

We armed and supported them in this but by the military metrics of 21 Feb '22, there is no way Ukraine should have been able to resist the RA. The numbers and force ratios simply did not add up. As it was, we know now it was actually a much closer run affair in those early days. However, it is undeniable that "something strange" had just happened. 

Then against all military metrics, the UA went onto the offensive in late '22. Not only did they force an RA collapse, they did in a manner we did not recognize. It was not mech manoeuvre-to-cause-dislocation, it was a weird combination of precision attrition - delivered primarily by really accurate indirect fires, and light forces. [Before the "tank pajamas" crowd get excited - yes, there were armored and mech forces but when you see the composition of the breakout forces you can quickly see that it was primarily fast moving light. Heavier stuff seems to have done the break-in work and then held the shoulders.] Keep in mind this was all before the FPV swarms that occurred last winter. 

Then we watched the UA completely fail in summer'23...and again, they were fighting then pretty much exactly as we would. The stark truth of summer '23 is that without complete air superiority, our ground forces look like they can be stopped cold by a very light defence. The UA adapted and moved to a more distributed grinding, trying to emulate what they did in the back end of '22. But by then the RA got the memo and was using UAS and ISR more effectively. They were able to sustain a defence with very low troop density.

So to your point - the conclusion amongst some of here was "western forces need to be lighter, cheaper (per pound), reorganized/structured for this environment". They also need to have a lot more capacity. This is important. We say "cheaper" but we mean "cheaper per unit of capability." Overall costs could very well go up. If you look at almost every western military, except for the US, they have very expensive, very low density capability.

If we cling to the old metrics of land warfare, for example, Canada has about 100 MBTs, Germany had around 200 - that is a single bad afternoon in this war. Even the US would be looking at losses that it likely could not sustain politically. Imagine if the US invaded Iraq and lost 10k in the first two months; and then 70k by 2005. That is unsustainable from a western point of view.

So we need to be cheaper per unit...but we are very likely going to need more units. Why? To fight more like the UA. Distributed, dispersed, highly connected and capable of projecting enormous losses on opponent asymmetrically until they collapse....and then exploit. Those few lines there are enough to send the MIC and military traditionalist into apoplectic fits. For the MIC it basically means all they have tooled up for since about 1949 is now becoming obsolete. For military traditionalist, it also means obsolescence of not only capability but doctrines and strategies. And, as I am sure you know from history, there is not much militaries of the day will resist more than challenges to their established doctrines and strategies, as they are directly tied to their political value propositions.  

So what? Well basically, if we do not hoist aboard the lessons coming out of this war, Russia damn sure will. How well they translate them remains to be seen (but we can trust Russian corruption and baffling bureaucracy to try and screw it up). Russian military theorists are going to be all over this. Planners are going to make it's central to future operations. Russia is likely just as surprised by all this as we are. To the point they simply went back to an older form of attrition warfare in order to try and still win. The RA meat assaults are not stupid in themselves, they are falling back on basically the only option the RA has left. Attrition is the oldest form of warfare - kill them faster than they can kill you...then exploit. The RA is slamming "big, bloated and expensive" because that is what they had to bring to this war. The problem was that this war turned into something no one was ready for. 

So looking forward, well two broad strategic approaches seem to be on the table - with a whole lotta sub options in between. 1) We double down on our current capabilities and go with the theory that if we can concentrate enough, we can overcome denial and frictions being created by this new dynamic. Or 2) go back to the drawing board and rethink warfare itself and how we are going to do it. How does a lethal mist defeat another lethal mist? (Or bacteria vs anti-biotics?) Can we create and sustain advantage through software vice hardware? What force structures do we need as the core of a ground manoeuvre force? What does "combined arms" mean in 2024?

So there it is pretty much all on the table and hope it makes it a little clearer.     

And this has at least as many implications for the Navy as it does the land forces. We are rapidly approaching a moment where nothing bigger than a row boat can come within 750 kilometers of a defended shore line. 

Edit: I heard a quote this week that the U.S.Navy shot more standard missiles in an hour helping the Israelis than we produce in a year. That is not a plan for winning a real war.

Edited Thursday at 03:19 PM by dan/california

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Those few lines there are enough to send the MIC and military traditionalist into apoplectic fits. For the MIC it basically means all they have tooled up for since about 1949 is now becoming obsolete. For military traditionalist, it also means obsolescence of not only capability but doctrines and strategies.

More than once I've thought of IBM back in the 1970s and 1980s.  They were tooled for massive computer systems and made entire country's GDP supporting them once installed.  Then came the personal computer, which was quickly recognized by many in IBM as both a threat to its current business and an opportunity for new business at the same time. 

IBM could have dominated that market without breaking a sweat, but it didn't.  Why?  Because the executives calling the shots cocooned themselves in denial and short term self interests.  They did not embrace the PC because it meant massive, disruptive change to everything they knew and relied upon for their personal positions of power.  They feared the PC and hoped the problem would just go away.

We all know how well that turned out.  Not good, but better than what happened to IBM's competitors like Wang and DEC simply because IBM was a behemoth and the others weren't.

Once IBM decided it had no choice about entering the PC market its early attempts were full of hubris and self delusion about how easy it would be to capture the market.  When in fact it took them NINE MONTHS to produce an EMPTY cardboard box for a PC from design to production line.  That's when IBM started to realize that they also had an outdated and bloated management problem.

Lastly, I will point out that the IBM situation was in the private sector that is supposed to be far more nimble and forward thinking compared to the public sector.  There are plenty of other examples, such as Microsoft missing the mobile market and US auto makers missing demand for fuel efficient and inexpensive cars.  It baffles me why anybody thinks the Military Industrial Complex is somehow better than the private sector.

Steve

[ArmouredTopHat]

6 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

However, one thing we have seen with Russia is that it's pretty set in its ways.  Back in 2008 the then Defense Minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, recognized that the Russian way was not competitive with the West.  He introduced a huge and sweeping set of reforms to professionalize the Russian military from top to bottom.  As it started to take hold he was ousted and most of the reforms were either abandoned, reversed, or only partially implemented.  The result was a Russian military that appeared to have improved, but fundamentally hadn't.

So what happened to Serdyukov's reforms?  It ran into the general criminal nature of the Russian government where it's a bunch of crime bosses fighting for power, not people interested in making Russia better.  His reforms threatened the very things the crime bosses made money off of, so after a short struggle they reasserted themselves.  And that is why we have the 2022 Russian Armed Forces instead of what Serdyukov was trying to make.

I think this is the key takeaway about the threat potential of Russia. Its something so baked into the system at this point that I dont see them actually improving on the corruption problems without literal decades of work, and ideally a change to the oligarch system. Until then any lessons learned in the war are less likely to be implemented at any wide scale. We already see this to a degree with volunteer units complaining on the RU side that they have to do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to implementing positive changes: they almost always go back to complaining about the top down Russian structure throwing everything possible in the way of enacting positive changes. 

 

 

7 minutes ago, dan/california said:

And this has at least as many implications for the Navy as it does the land forces. We are rapidly approaching a moment where nothing bigger than a row boat can come within 750 kilometers of a defended shore line. 

Russian naval performance in the black sea should not be indicative of naval action for any actual navy for the future, their readiness, capability and status was so abysmal that it was a mistake for them to be at sea in the first place and its why they have been losing large ships to small attacks of ASM / drones. Actual blue water navies are significantly better at resisting drones (look at the Houthi who have been flinging drones / missiles at western ships to no avail)

[Kraft]

Excuse me if this video has been posted already - the click baiting thunbnail does not do its content justice

 

 

[Bearstronaut]

35 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

More than once I've thought of IBM back in the 1970s and 1980s.  They were tooled for massive computer systems and made entire country's GDP supporting them once installed.  Then came the personal computer, which was quickly recognized by many in IBM as both a threat to its current business and an opportunity for new business at the same time. 

IBM could have dominated that market without breaking a sweat, but it didn't.  Why?  Because the executives calling the shots cocooned themselves in denial and short term self interests.  They did not embrace the PC because it meant massive, disruptive change to everything they knew and relied upon for their personal positions of power.  They feared the PC and hoped the problem would just go away.

We all know how well that turned out.  Not good, but better than what happened to IBM's competitors like Wang and DEC simply because IBM was a behemoth and the others weren't.

Once IBM decided it had no choice about entering the PC market its early attempts were full of hubris and self delusion about how easy it would be to capture the market.  When in fact it took them NINE MONTHS to produce an EMPTY cardboard box for a PC from design to production line.  That's when IBM started to realize that they also had an outdated and bloated management problem.

Lastly, I will point out that the IBM situation was in the private sector that is supposed to be far more nimble and forward thinking compared to the public sector.  There are plenty of other examples, such as Microsoft missing the mobile market and US auto makers missing demand for fuel efficient and inexpensive cars.  It baffles me why anybody thinks the Military Industrial Complex is somehow better than the private sector.

Steve

My dad used to work at LexisNexis in the early 90s as a computer scientist. At one point he went to his bosses with an idea to tweak the algorithm to search the entire nascent internet for anything instead of focusing on legal documents. Unfortunately for my family the bosses shut down my dad's idea and focused on their (admittedly successful) business plan. Now, LexisNexis is still around and has carved out a niche for itself, but it's not Google. 

[dan/california]

35 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Actual blue water navies are significantly better at resisting drones (look at the Houthi who have been flinging drones / missiles at western ships to no avail)

Until their missile magazines run dry. It used to be assumed nobody could come up with the throw weight to make that happen. I think the validity of that assumption is extremely questionable.

[ArmouredTopHat]

Just now, dan/california said:

Until their missile magazines run dry. It used to be assumed nobody could come up with the throw weight to make that happen. I think the validity of that assumption is extremely questionable.

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2023/03/28/us-navy-prioritizes-game-changing-rearming-capability-for-ships/

US at least have already recognised this and are making it a priority. 

https://www.twz.com/sea/greek-warship-guns-down-houthi-drone-in-new-video

Kinetic options are already proving themselves instead of wasting very expensive missiles. 

[dan/california]

 

15 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2023/03/28/us-navy-prioritizes-game-changing-rearming-capability-for-ships/

US at least have already recognised this and are making it a priority. 

https://www.twz.com/sea/greek-warship-guns-down-houthi-drone-in-new-video

Kinetic options are already proving themselves instead of wasting very expensive missiles. 

Yes but at sea reloading, while desperately needed, is only half the problem.

 

Quote

 

https://www.heritage.org/missile-defense/commentary/its-past-time-re-supply-our-munitions-depleted-us-navy

Over that same time, it has expended at least 2,800 Standard Missiles and 2,900 TLAMs, leaving the U.S. with on-paper maximums of roughly 11,000 missiles in the SM-series, and 6,000 TLAMs—for a total of roughly 17,000 VLS-launched munitions. In other words, the U.S. cannot reload the full complement of VLS even once.

 

We are under buying the munitions by a factor of ten, AT LEAST. And while kinetic options should be pursued with all possible speed, I have not seen anything that gives an engagement range of more than few kilometers. At that point, even with very short engagement times per target, there is a grave risk of there being more targets than you have time.

 

Edited Thursday at 04:42 PM by dan/california

[ArmouredTopHat]

31 minutes ago, dan/california said:

We are under buying the munitions by a factor of ten, AT LEAST. And while kinetic options should be pursued with all possible speed, I have not seen anything that gives an engagement range of more than few kilometers. At that point, even with very short engagement times per target, there is a grave risk of there being more targets than you have time.

Which is why Kinetic options are so important. Its also an area where things like Lasers are far more feasible when placed on a big ship that has no problems powering them. We are already seeing a belated push for more kinetic solutions on ships (especially when we did see some concerns over reliability of some systems with the Houthi incidents)

There are also cheaper missile options open that offer the range without the sheer expense of some of the shinier options open that are better suited for drone interceptions. Obviously expending expensive VLS on small drones is not feasible when you want those for actual fixed wing threats / ASM.  

Does anyone know if something like the Aegis system can handle smaller targets? It can juggle a lot of traditional assets but I am curious to know what its like against drones / ASM threats. (if its not classified...which I suspect it is)

Edited Thursday at 05:13 PM by ArmouredTopHat

[CHARLIE43]

Thanks for the answers! Puts the conversation more into perspective.

@ArmouredTopHat

In searching for the Aegis, I instead found this video and can't figure out what the heck it is (the 8 wheeled platform with the .50cal, Javelin, and drones). Never seen it before.

 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

Until their missile magazines run dry. It used to be assumed nobody could come up with the throw weight to make that happen. I think the validity of that assumption is extremely questionable.

I kinda strain my eye muscles rolling them when I read about the “Houthis = Blue Water Navy is a’ok!”

First off the strategic impacts of the Houthi actions are not small and a lot of shipping has been redirected:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sea_crisis

In fact it is down by about half of pre-fuss. As to blue water navies, well the Houthis are more like an insurgency than a nation state, and their operations match. While they have managed to lob a few dozen drones at carrier groups, they are doing so sporadically. A few dozen is like maybe 40. As we have seen in Ukraine forces are adding a couple zeros to that number…per day.

Further, the Houthis have not fielded surface (or God help us, sub-surface) unmanned vehicles, or hybrids. The UA has and the effect on the Russian Black Sea Fleet has been pretty dramatic. So while we all enjoy a nice day with heads in sand and sun on our bums, I think our maritime forces are going to have a Come to Jesus moment all their own in the near future.

[ArmouredTopHat]

13 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Further, the Houthis have not fielded surface (or God help us, sub-surface) unmanned vehicles, or hybrids. The UA has and the effect on the Russian Black Sea Fleet has been pretty dramatic. So while we all enjoy a nice day with heads in sand and sun on our bums, I think our maritime forces are going to have a Come to Jesus moment all their own in the near future.

https://www.twz.com/news-features/first-look-at-houthi-kamikaze-drone-boat-that-struck-cargo-ship-in-red-sea

Sigh, maybe look up some things before saying this.

They have been using drone boats, notice how they literally dont go for military ships with them because they get blown out of the water if they do. They Instead go for tankers / other merchants without any escorts. Even then a few were destroyed by security on board with small arms. 

Turns out if you have an actual half decent gun system on your ships the threat of a half dozen unmanned boats becomes a lot less troublesome. (We noted how in half the cases of the Russian ships being attacked, the heavier guns are not even traversing or engaging at all, they were defending the boats with small arms)

Certainly in the past western navies have not had issue turning groups of small boats into matchwood (Somali pirates)

Edited Thursday at 06:46 PM by ArmouredTopHat

[Battlefront.com]

59 minutes ago, CHARLIE43 said:

Thanks for the answers! Puts the conversation more into perspective.

@ArmouredTopHat

In searching for the Aegis, I instead found this video and can't figure out what the heck it is (the 8 wheeled platform with the .50cal, Javelin, and drones). Never seen it before.

 

8x8 MUTT:

https://www.army-technology.com/projects/multi-utility-tactical-transport-mutt-ugv/

Steve

[Haiduk]

This looks pathetic... Of course, NK soldiers came to pick up mashrooms. 

 

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

This looks pathetic... Of course, NK soldiers came to pick up mashrooms. 

 

Yay, Haiduk is back! And he is 100% correct, as well.

[ArmouredTopHat]

I found an interesting video that shows a Russian company strength attack at Hostre with footage from both sides that is combined for a chronological progression with maps included. Its an interesting watch that shows the broad development of an attack instead of snapshots. I fear the source might be Russian biased so its good to keep that in mind.

Some observations:

Drone effectiveness does seem to vary during the engagements, the initial attack is far less impacted by drones than the next day, where the drones have a better day and start picking off vehicles and destroying disabled ones over time. The dismounted infantry actually seem to suffer more here by the relentless drone drops than the vehicles themselves. (Presumably its easier for the AFU to fix and then send a drone bomber to the relatively static dismounted infantry than it is to hunt moving vehicles)

Artillery does seem to help at least in some respect to delaying the attack than the drones on that first day. They key point is that the drones need some degree of time to inflict their damage, and were incapable of stopping this particular attack on their own, let alone prevent it from reaching AFU lines. 

Mines still represent a primary issue for the attacking Russians, they can achieve surprisingly reasonable penetrations of the line when they clear them, even when moving in large convoy masses. Tanks do seem to help in particular on the first day, both to ensure the route is clear of mines via minerollers and to suppress and smoke up positions. (It was interesting to note the lead tank was mainly firing smoke shells it seemed at AFU strongpoints)

We should sadly bear in mind that not every Russian attack ends in disaster, and this was one of the larger ones that does seem to have at least pushed the line somewhat. 

Such footage does also indicate that the Russians can in fact mass strength to the company level without too much interdiction for its attacks, which at this scale seems quite appropriate for the scale of the engagement. Its also a healthy reminder that while the Russians have boatloads of problems, they are not fools and can and will execute attacks properly, at least on occasion. 

Edited Thursday at 07:19 PM by ArmouredTopHat