How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

53 minutes ago, sburke said:

I think @LongLeftFlankwas the first to term it crowd sourcing the war.

Nah, people were tossing this around back in 2014 when Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and the likes were used to fund the volunteer battalions.  Not saying LongLeftFlank is unworthy of praise, just not about this

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, akd said:

Bucha seems to be exceeding even my worse expectations.  When they said “hundreds dead,” I assumed that a good portion of these would be indirect, non-targeted casualties from artillery, exposure, lack of medicine, etc.  All the horrors brought to a city just by virtue of being on the front line of a war.  But today the mayor stated that 90% of the dead had been shot.  And they are still finding bodies…

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/collecting-bodies-in-bucha

Sadly, I'm right there with you.  In fact, I cautioned people in this thread to not jump to conclusions that the mass graves were anything other than hasty burials of shelling victims.  So much for giving the Russians some benefit of the doubt.  From here on out my assumption will be "murder" first until proven otherwise.

Steve

[Haiduk]

Why this is a not good idea - to sneak too close to the enemy tank, which have to be knoked out

 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Haiduk

[Lethaface]

18 hours ago, db_zero said:

I actually like to watch this as well China’s spectacle’s. If their combined arms execution was like their parades we’d be in trouble.

China doesn't need to invade Taiwan to blockade it.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Mass can be defeated with mass

True but it is the nature of that mass that seems to be in flux.  UA had mass they just distributed it broadly in a hybrid fashion and it worked.  I am not sure why the UA seems to be pairing up for a straight up conventional vs conventional mass fight now.  Could be because they know they can win more quickly.  Maybe they have no choice as the Russian military gets to some sort of critical density.  Or it could be a mistake in the making and we might see some major UA defeats.

This is high risk for the UA as if it gets mauled badly enough it might get caught into a stalemate and have to negotiate out.  Crazy days...we will have to see.

[DesertFox]

10 minutes ago, akd said:

Bucha seems to be exceeding even my worse expectations.  When they said “hundreds dead,” I assumed that a good portion of these would be indirect, non-targeted casualties from artillery, exposure, lack of medicine, etc.  All the horrors brought to a city just by virtue of being on the front line of a war.  But today the mayor stated that 90% of the dead had been shot.  And they are still finding bodies…

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/collecting-bodies-in-bucha

Borodyanka is most likely even worse:

War das Massaker von Borodyanka noch schlimmer als in Butscha? (tagblatt.ch)

Kyiv fears a civilian massacre at Borodyanka worse than Bucha | Euronews

[Battlefront.com]

17 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

All very good points, as always. But this one, I'd change to Mass can be defeated with Precision.

I'll modify your point with a modification... Mass can be defeated with Massed Precision

The Russians will likely through thousands of soldiers and almost as many vehicles into this battle.  Picking off 10% of them won't be enough to hasten the end of the war even if it does manage to stall out the offensive.  Ukraine needs to be in a position to kill 20-50% and to do it in a very short period of time.  That is not going to come from the sort of pin-prick strikes we've seen up until now.

When a Russian column is seen heading down a road Ukraine needs to have the capacity to wipe it out completely.  Every single last vehicle and soldier in it.  And Ukraine needs to be able to do that for every convoy every time one is spotted.  Consistently.

Fortunately, I think Russia is going to present Ukraine with a very dense, target rich environment.  Shooting a school of fish in the barrel with a 9mm pistol isn't what you want to bring to a situation like this.

This is the ideal, of course.  There are other routes to victory that rely less upon Mass, but they will likely cost Ukraine more in death and destruction on their side.  More risk too.  This situation doesn't call for a hammer, it doesn't even call for a sledgehammer.  It calls for a wrecking ball.

Steve

[G.I. Joe]

22 minutes ago, db_zero said:

The yearly alcohol consumption rate of Russian men was 3 times higher than Western males and a good portion of that was spirits which has a higher alcohol content. 

Does appear to be a difference between Russian males and women. Women appear to be less indulgent.

My dad spent a summer in Leningrad during the 70s as part of a UN-sponsored university exchange program between the United States and the Soviet Union. I remember him saying that the most shocking thing about alcohol in the USSR was that the vodka bottles had pull tabs...

[db_zero]

8 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

China doesn't need to invade Taiwan to blockade it.

Blockade would be an act of war. China would be subjected to the same sort of sanctions Russia is being subject to and China is more integrated into the global economy than Russia, so it would be far more damaging.

The risk/reward of just blockading Taiwan doesn't seem worth it to me, but who knows.

[db_zero]

Just now, G.I. Joe said:

My dad spent a summer in Leningrad during the 70s as part of a UN-sponsored university exchange program between the United States and the Soviet Union. I remember him saying that the most shocking thing about alcohol in the USSR was that the vodka bottles had pull tabs...

I watched a video and the reason why they had just pull tabs was the assumption the bottle would be consumed in 1 setting...

[kraze]

1 hour ago, db_zero said:

Ruble collapsed in the 90s. There were shortages. Productivity dropped. 
 

Doesn’t sound like good times to me.

Ruble couldn't collapse because prior to 1991 there was no money in USSR. There were fictitious "soviet rubles" that had zero buying power as every citizen was allowed to "buy" exactly X of something per month and not a gram more - so the exchange of paper for products was basically virtual.

There were also "spetztalony" aka real money - using which (and only those) you could buy import goods - but they were not available to 99.99% of the population, only to the most equal of animals.

Productivity dropped only because it was instantly replaced by import goods (soviet products were awful) - but the sole fact of soviet goods being replaced by import ones tells you that people could suddenly afford those.

And even then it didn't get better in Russia even now. I mean their soldiers loot teeth crowns. Can one get any more poor than that.

Edited April 7, 2022 by kraze

[db_zero]

7 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'll modify your point with a modification... Mass can be defeated with Massed Precision

The Russians will likely through thousands of soldiers and almost as many vehicles into this battle.  Picking off 10% of them won't be enough to hasten the end of the war even if it does manage to stall out the offensive.  Ukraine needs to be in a position to kill 20-50% and to do it in a very short period of time.  That is not going to come from the sort of pin-prick strikes we've seen up until now.

When a Russian column is seen heading down a road Ukraine needs to have the capacity to wipe it out completely.  Every single last vehicle and soldier in it.  And Ukraine needs to be able to do that for every convoy every time one is spotted.  Consistently.

Fortunately, I think Russia is going to present Ukraine with a very dense, target rich environment.  Shooting a school of fish in the barrel with a 9mm pistol isn't what you want to bring to a situation like this.

This is the ideal, of course.  There are other routes to victory that rely less upon Mass, but they will likely cost Ukraine more in death and destruction on their side.  More risk too.  This situation doesn't call for a hammer, it doesn't even call for a sledgehammer.  It calls for a wrecking ball.

Steve

I don't know what the kill rate was during the 1991 Gulf War but what you're asking for seems even higher than the Western coalition pulled off in 1991

[Battlefront.com]

21 minutes ago, db_zero said:

IDK...as I've said in the past when I look at what's presented in front of me I would have to come to the conclusion Russia is done...but then I think of what Russia had endured and how the Germans as well as the West thought Russia was done in the opening phase of Barbarossa and how the West got many things wrong when this war started and I have doubts. 

Russia is done.  They lost this war, they can not continue on indefinitely.  There are no facts in support of that premise.

I'll also remind you that I am not one of the people that called this war incorrectly.  In predicted Russia would lose this war years before they started it.  On the first day of the war I saw all I needed to to know I had made the correct call, but waited to make that call "final" on the 5th day.  This was when talking heads kept saying that Russia was just getting started.  A week later I made the call that Putin's government wouldn't survive this war.   I have consistently refuted all the experts who used terms like "operational pause" and "strategic reset" and "stalemate" as not knowing what they are talking about.

I am not saying I am totally right about everything, but so far my track record is vastly better than all but a few experts out there.  Therefore, I am comfortable with maintaining my position that Ukraine is the one that decides how this ends, not Russia.

21 minutes ago, db_zero said:

As for Putin wants things wrapped up by VE day, might that be a view seen through a western bias? In the West having a war wrapped up by a major holiday-especially a military oriented one might be desirable, but in Russia maybe not?

Supposedly based on Western intel.  And so far they have been calling things correctly.  It also makes sense from Putin's regime standpoint.  The VE day parade is a big deal for it.

21 minutes ago, db_zero said:

Many who study Russia and know far more than I do have commented that sanctions are going to have less effects than we think. The Russian economy is geared for war. I'm sure the Germans were shocked at the Russians packing up entire industries and moving them East. Putin by some accounts already views this as a total war against the West.

Anybody saying this should get crossed off your list as a reliable source.  They are as clueless as the ex-Generals saying that Russia was going to win the war in a matter of days or months.

Russia is not geared for anything.  That's their whole problem.

21 minutes ago, db_zero said:

People learn to adapt to hardships. The Russian have been known for stoicism.  

Stoicism doesn't produce weaponry or 100,000 trained soldiers in time for them to matter.

Steve

[benpark]

I've seen a fair amount of writing about how much of an issue the relative openness of the southern areas of Ukraine may be for a defender, but the precision aspect certainly seems to me to make massed armor advances over this terrain a potentially troubling proposition for the attacker. One man with the capacity to take out one AFV over a distance is new stuff at this scale.

I do agree with The Capt. that the tank indeed still has a place in combined warfare - maybe the Ukrainians can show us how that's done again when they get enough tools for the task. The Russian implementation (like everything on display here) has been absurd.

This is especially true if the attacker's timeline is set by artificial aspects and concerns...like taking ground before parades kick off.

[Hapless]

Because it (almost inevitably) appeared elsewhere:

[keas66]

Do we think there is any chance at all that the US will move into Ukraine by itself  ?  I mean the scale of the atrocities being carried out  ... we can't just continue to sit on the sidelines arming the Ukrainians can we ?

[Haiduk]

23 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

Borodyanka is most likely even worse:

War das Massaker von Borodyanka noch schlimmer als in Butscha? (tagblatt.ch)

Kyiv fears a civilian massacre at Borodyanka worse than Bucha | Euronews

As I know Borodianka several times was an arena of heavy clashes between two forces. First battle probably was a meeting engagement along central street. Russian aviation bombed all along this way and there most heavy detructions, which burried many citizens under ruins. But still unknown how much of civilians were exactly executed like in Bucha.

In Hostomel in one of garages were found 11 bodies. Locals told Russian have been took per 1-2 citizens like live targets for sniper trainings and then all dead bodies  were collected in the garage.  

Edited April 7, 2022 by Haiduk

[sburke]

34 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Nah, people were tossing this around back in 2014 when Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and the likes were used to fund the volunteer battalions.  Not saying LongLeftFlank is unworthy of praise, just not about this

Steve

maybe I should have caveated that with "in this thread"  

[Battlefront.com]

18 minutes ago, db_zero said:

I don't know what the kill rate was during the 1991 Gulf War but what you're asking for seems even higher than the Western coalition pulled off in 1991

Apples to oranges.  What we're looking at here is completely different.  The Coalition was on the offensive and had to find the forces in order to kill them.  They were spread all over the place and tended to break and run at the first sign of trouble.  The area this all took place in was MASSIVE.

In this situation we're talking about a box roughly 70km wide by about 40km deep.  The attacker has only a few places it can go without getting bogged down.  Almost all big HE chucking systems can reach into the center of this area from relative safety of rear areas.  And Russia is most likely going to push too many units too fast into this confined area.  Kill rates in excess of 20% should be relatively easy to achieve with upwards of 50% for some engagements being quite realistic.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

7 minutes ago, Hapless said:

Because it (almost inevitably) appeared elsewhere:

What grass mod did you use?

Steve

[sburke]

8 minutes ago, Hapless said:

Because it (almost inevitably) appeared elsewhere:

looks at pic... starts crying because it has curved roads...

[Haiduk]

@sburke @Kinophile

+1 mayor

Mayor Dmitriy Stakheev. Killed 29th of Marth. No info about the unit. Confirmed by Russian media.

 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Haiduk

[kraze]

48 minutes ago, db_zero said:

Many who study Russia and know far more than I do have commented that sanctions are going to have less effects than we think. The Russian economy is geared for war. I'm sure the Germans were shocked at the Russians packing up entire industries and moving them East. Putin by some accounts already views this as a total war against the West.

People learn to adapt to hardships. The Russian have been known for stoicism.  

Most casualties suffered during WW2, and especially on defence that grinded through germans on the russian army side weren't russian.

The war was happening mostly on Ukrainian and Belarusian territory.

Winter war was predominantly russians.

That should give you some clues and explain why russians have troubles here. They weren't the ones adapting to hardships.

Edited April 7, 2022 by kraze

[Vacillator]

1 minute ago, sburke said:

looks at pic... starts crying because it has curved roads...

I see what you're doing there as we have Steve's attention .

10 minutes ago, keas66 said:

Do we think there is any chance at all that the US will move into Ukraine by itself  ?

I'm not American but I would say the percentage chance of this is about zero?

[G.I. Joe]

23 minutes ago, db_zero said:

I watched a video and the reason why they had just pull tabs was the assumption the bottle would be consumed in 1 setting...

Exactly...the idea of a bottle of hard liquor not being expected to last for at least weeks, if not months or years, was hard to fathom.