How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Aragorn2002]

1 minute ago, sburke said:

as my father used to say.  "Steven, you aren't as dumb as you look.  But then nobody could be that dumb."

[dan/california]

 

1 hour ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Quite worrying actually. I know the dutch army did sent most of it's Stingers and Panzerfausts to Ukraine and I suspect Germany did the same. And the number of Russian tanks still available also worries me. Not all of them may be runners and not all of them may have a crew but it still means the Russians aren't done yet. But don't rule out the Panzerfaust and other AT weapons of NATO. Most Ukrainian soldiers will have mastered their fear of tanks by now and put them to good use.

The good news is that the Russians won't have much to fight with once the Ukrainian army is finished with them.

The missiles are killing the army they were built to kill, hard to ask for more. This war is lesson 8037 that you need five times as ammo as the most pessimistic planner thinks, maybe ten times. They are either going to have to expand the production lines or move up and expand production of the missile that is supposed to replace the Javelin. Said replacement is actually much further along than I thought, I need to find that article again and post it here. Seems expensive, until you look at the bill for being occupied by orcs.

[BlackMoria]

I think every new school textbook addressing the Dunning-Kruger Effect needs to have a picture of Putin as the exemplar of that effect and to show how Dunning-Kruger can have real tangible consequences when world leaders become representation of that effect.

[panzermartin]

59 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

59 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Er, isn't the lesson here that RUSSIA dragged the West into this mess?  The fantasy that NATO expansion is responsible for this mess has been so totally debunked it makes my head hurt to even think about it any more.   And if NATO hadn't expanded eastward the EU would be short at least 3 member states, if not 5, by now.

If anything is to blame for Russia's aggression westward it is the EU's expansion eastward, which the United States had nothing to do with and UK was dragged into it kicking and screaming (and left the EU kicking and screaming, I might add). 

Russia is vastly more threatened by the EU than NATO.

Last time I checked Germany started WW2 and the United States tried desperately to avoid being entangled in it, only going to war after Germany declared war on it (not the other way around).

So I think it might be you that needs to clear up some memory issues.

Steve

It's not totally debunked. There are credible people that voiced their concerns before we reached this point, it's not only my fantasy. For instance there are even voices inside America:   https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine/amp

On EU expansion, it was a peaceful process that didn't really ignite tensions but simultaneously it was strengthening ties of Europe with Russia, with the Nord Stream pipelines being the wedding ring. Now, who actually benefited by breaking this marriage is the question. 

On the WW2 issue, we had agreed some posts before that the reasons of war weren't that simple and that cornering and humiliation of Germany by its rival colonial enemies was a key ingredient of nurturing fascism there. After that it went out of hand. 

 

Edited April 13, 2022 by panzermartin

[Harmon Rabb]

35 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

yes, to all of these new posts.  It all boils down to Putin, through his genius, has managed to accomplish everything that he did NOT want.  Expanded NATO, stronger NATO, Russian weakness made glaringly obvious, sanctions, worthless ruble, Zelensky is a super popular hero, Russia-curious folks in Ukraine now ~completely on side of Ukraine independence, and Russia is a (nearly) worldwide pariah, and at the mercy of whatever China will pay for it's fossil fuels once Europe weans itself.

Was totally worth it, Putin says, as he doubles down yet again.

At this point people who still think that things are going like Putin planned remind me of Qanon followers who keep saying "trust the plan".

[Battlefront.com]

9 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

It's not totally debunked. There are credible people that voiced their concerns before we reached this point, it's not only my fantasy. For instance there are even voices inside America:   https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine/amp

And they were totally wrong.  It's been shown that Russia has only viewed NATO as a threat because it meant it couldn't dominate those countries.

You don't understand that what Russia says and what Russia believes are two different things.  NATO was only a threat because Russia wanted to take over those countries.  So not expanding NATO would have led to fewer EU members and also started Cold War 2.0 even sooner.

So what you're arguing is we should have not done anything to annoy Russia, but instead done everything we could to facilitate Russia reestablishing enslavement of people who want no part of it?  That's not a great attitude IMHO.

9 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

On EU expansion, it was a peaceful process that didn't really ignite tensions but simultaneously it was strengthening ties of Europe with Russia, with the Nord Stream pipelines being the wedding ring. Now, who actually benefited by breaking this marriage is the question. 

EU expansion is a HUGE threat.  It is in fact the factor that kicked off the 2014 Russian war against Ukraine.

You have to understand that Russia is a fascist state with all that comes with it.  War, domination, misery... these are things that Russia would be doing no matter what.  Appeasement is what Europe and the West tried and, like so many times before, it failed because they were not dealing with someone that wanted to be appeased.  Russia wanted domination, not appeasement.

9 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

On the WW2 issue, we had agreed some posts before that the reasons of war weren't that simple and that cornering and humiliation of Germany by its rival colonial enemies was a key ingredient of nurturing fascism there. After that it went out of hand.

Germany was still to blame for it.  All other factors don't amount to a hill of beans compared to that.

Steve

[dan/california]

38 minutes ago, db_zero said:

US officials are meeting with defense industry leaders to discuss long range plans to produce more weapons. 
 

Supply chain issues and lack of skilled labor will also be discussed. 
 

Zelinsky asked for 2000 Javelin’s a month and based on estimates of inventory and production times it looks like 2000 a month isn’t going to happen.

I’ve seen a few videos where about every other soldier had an AT weapon and I’ve heard estimates of the AT weapon to soldier ratio that sounded crazy. 
 

And because of that ratio they are winning the war. With enough missile density a frontal assault by massed armor just isn't a thing anymore. The same way rifled musket's and minie ball just made the calvary charge go away. The standard doctrine on how many ATGM infantry needs to be completely revised. It looks expensive, until you look at what losing costs

[db_zero]

18 minutes ago, dan/california said:

And because of that ratio they are winning the war. With enough missile density a frontal assault by massed armor just isn't a thing anymore. The same way rifled musket's and minie ball just made the calvary charge go away. The standard doctrine on how many ATGM infantry needs to be completely revised. It looks expensive, until you look at what losing costs

We don’t know that yet. As mentioned other systems are killing tanks and many vehicles were simply abandoned. We also don’t know if Ukrainians are just firing off AT weapons at abandoned vehicles just to do so. Some videos seem to suggest that 

No-standard doctrine on how many ATGMs isn’t going to be changed on a whim. Infantry is already carrying enough weight without adding more stuff to carry. These AT systems are not light and they are also bulky.
 

Videos showing a preponderance of AT weapons with Ukrainian soldiers also shows they are not as weighted down as standard US soldiers-many don’t have body armor.

Its possibly also wasteful and not necessary to start adding more ATGMs to NATO troops if other systems are capable of killing tanks.

Edited April 13, 2022 by db_zero

[The Steppenwulf]

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

When the Russian public starts to see real shortages, even heavier inflation, their sons dragged off to war, will they still support this mess?  And if they don't, as I've said before it all comes down to "will the soldiers shoot?" -- against thousands of protestors in the streets.  If they shoot, Putin hangs on to power.  If they don't, he hangs on a lamp post.

I'm not sure that this is where it starts, or even ends.

I mean maybe, but Russia is made up of so many disparate regions with a lot of complex and internal self interests. When the economy is breaking down and the Govt is still embroiled in a conflict, growing costlier by the day, the internal tensions develop and the self-interests become ever more magnified. Because of the authoritarian need to control everything, in this scenario, it's predictable that the Kremlin would just be overwhelmed firefighting all these collective problems, struggling to hold together any semblance of a cohesive nation.

So my thought is that the longer this conflict continues without a ceasefire the more likely the internal tensions develop and a Govt that looks increasingly out of control. In this situation, I'd suggest there's likely only two end paths. Either the 'enduring painful conflict' collapses because the military will is no longer there, think Eastern Front 1917/18 - and where did that lead to - or else the writing would already be on the wall approaching that sort of critical crisis point and Putin is removed by either (relatively) peaceful or violent means from within the Kremlin. 

Presently though we are a long way out from this, just that all the conditions are beginning to fall into place for a typical sequence of events like this starting to unfold. It makes sense that Putin will be getting twitchy to wrap up this conflict asap, like in the next couple of months, latest before next autumn, beyond that the prognosis for him will start to look really bad I'm sure.

Edited April 13, 2022 by The Steppenwulf

[db_zero]

27 minutes ago, dan/california said:

 

The missiles are killing the army they were built to kill, hard to ask for more. This war is lesson 8037 that you need five times as ammo as the most pessimistic planner thinks, maybe ten times. They are either going to have to expand the production lines or move up and expand production of the missile that is supposed to replace the Javelin. Said replacement is actually much further along than I thought, I need to find that article again and post it here. Seems expensive, until you look at the bill for being occupied by orcs.

That’s been known for some time. It’s easy to say buy and store more, but aside from the expensive of acquisition of ammo, storage is a major consideration. Not only is space a major consideration, but also keeping environmental factors under control is another.

Militaries have a budget and a lot of items to budget for. 

[dan/california]

If there was point this could have been avoided, it was with truly massive support for the Russian economy immediately after the fall of Soviet union. But everything I have read about it implies that Russia simply didn't have enough rule of law, and technical capacity to absorb a lot more aid in any useful way.  More aid would have just been stolen or wasted. I am almost certain that was never possible for Russia to transition to better government than it got. The Soviet system systematically eliminated decent people from rising to prominence, and the world just didn't get lucky there. Zelensky will have several hundred books written about him, because people like him are not common.

[DesertFox]

2 hours ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

 It's notable that there are very few videos of them getting fired. I think I've seen only one or two during the entire war so far.

Since you mentioned it:

 

 

[hm_stanley]

1 hour ago, Aragorn2002 said:

After the Russians are defeated we're going to count how many tanks and other vehicles are destroyed by Javelins, Panzerfausts etc. That should be fun.

the entire AAR of this war is going to be a field day for military historians for decades..  I'm just hoping I survive it (to study it) and not wake one morning to see a bright flash over the bay bridge..

[acrashb]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

All this is possible, of course.  But the amount of income that Russia has been cut off from is problematic to say the least.  Loans from China aren't going to be enough to combat this long term.  Especially because we can be pretty sure the money gained will not be used efficiently or effectively (neither are Russia's strong suits).

[...]

Russia is not going to borrow its way out of problems that it couldn't work its way out of prior to this war.

On the first, as is often the case this doesn't need to be either/or, it can be some where in between, and I think your word "problematic" gets at that.  The Russian economy is being cratered; so has the North Korean one been for some time and they still maintain a large (although likely ineffective) armed forces.  But I agree that the RA will not be the same after this.

On the second, the chart and information you presented are persuasive - and my thanks for putting it forward.  I'll be using some of this to inform my corporate leadership about the advisability of re-entering the Russian market post-war - we drew down our limited business there shortly after it started.

31 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

You don't understand that what Russia says and what Russia believes are two different things.  NATO was only a threat because Russia wanted to take over those countries.  So not expanding NATO would have led to fewer EU members and also started Cold War 2.0 even sooner.

This was directed to panzermartin - and I agree. Russia has been forming a narrative to justify aggression and has been fairly successful in using this to instill doubt in NATO societies - partly because, like every good lie there was a glimmer of truth in the sense that the West as a whole had become somewhat triumphalist with the collapse of the USSR.  The ISW has a tidy diagram, below, and an excellent article on this.

Narrative:

As I've said before, reviewing twenty years of Putin's statements leads me to believe that we could not have prevented both Russian expansion and war - it was one or the other.  Had we conceded the narrative, Russia would have created buffer zones and then adjusted the narrative to expand from there.

The way out?  Russia could have reformed its society and joined NATO.  But that ship has sailed.

 

Edited April 13, 2022 by acrashb

[DesertFox]

"If this is actually what Russia ends up doing; they are strategically bankrupt and haven’t learned a thing. Just drip feeding forces as they become available is a recipe for Russian failure."

"And personally think this is right; Give Ukraine ranged weapons. Artillery, UAVs, fixed wing aircraft, things to allow them to attack around Russian formations. keeps Ukrainian casualties down too. Should matter more than tanks."

 

Edited April 13, 2022 by DesertFox

[Gary R Lukas]

I just saw BMP-1's on the news, at first I thought it was just file footage, but then I saw the letter Z painted on their sides. If I had to take a guess I believe these units are from Russia's satellite countries, if not then the Russian's are taking vehicles out of mothballs!!!

[Combatintman]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

This is the kind of answer I hoped for. So the bottom line is that's unlikely for  Russians to mix things up to a degree that would confuse the Ukrainian defense at this point, given apparent Ukrainian intelligence advantage. Even more so in a spirit of reversed Kursk.

No not quite - I have yet to meet a commander that admits they have enough ISR assets for a starter.  I don't doubt that the coverage is there but there are the issues of whether:

• The coverage is persistent or time limited.
• There are overlapping and separate sources reporting.
• There is information overload in the analysis cell.
• The analysed product is getting to the right people at the right time.
• That leaders make the right judgements based on the product.

Khafji in Gulf War 1 is a good example of how surprise by the Iraqi Army was achieved in the face of pretty good coverage by a headquarters that vaguely knew what it was doing ... 

"Throughout 28 January, the Coalition received a number of warnings suggesting an impending Iraqi offensive. The Coalition was flying two brand-new E-8A Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) aircraft, which picked up the deployment and movement of Iraqi forces to the area opposite of Khafji.  Observation posts 2, 7 and 8 also detected heavy Iraqi reconnoitering along the border, and their small teams of air-naval gunfire liaison Marines called in air and artillery strikes throughout the day. Lieutenant Colonel Richard Barry, commander of the forward headquarters of the 1st Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Intelligence Group, sent warnings about an impending attack to Central Command. CentCom leaders were too preoccupied with the air campaign to heed them however, and so the Iraqi operation came as a surprise."

Sure the Iraqis got booted out a few days later and the attacking force suffered on the way down to Khafji but the attack was still a surprise even though this was an advance over a piece of ground not well endowed with hiding places by an organization not known for its prowess against a Coalition led by a nation which had trained and equipped itself to be probably the most competent executor of conventional manoeuvre warfare at that time.

That said, I doubt that Russia will be able to achieve much in the way of significant surprise in where it decides to strike to the extent that Ukrainian forces will be unable to recover.  Likewise, the thing with surprise is that you need to capitalise on it by rapid exploitation, maintaining the initiative and thus ahead of the Ukrainian OODA loop.  The Russian Army has done nothing in this conflict that suggests it is capable of this.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Combatintman

[akd]

56 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

There are credible people that voiced their concerns before we reached this point, it's not only my fantasy. For instance there are even voices inside America:   https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine/amp

No longer credible. At all.

 

[akd]

14 minutes ago, Gary R Lukas said:

I just saw BMP-1's on the news, at first I thought it was just file footage, but then I saw the letter Z painted on their sides. If I had to take a guess I believe these units are from Russia's satellite countries, if not then the Russian's are taking vehicles out of mothballs!!!

Probably L/DNR.

Edited April 13, 2022 by akd

[Battlefront.com]

46 minutes ago, The Steppenwulf said:

Presently though we are a long way out from this, just that all the conditions are beginning to fall into place for a typical sequence of events like this starting to unfold. It makes sense that Putin will be getting twitchy to wrap up this conflict asap, like in the next couple of months, latest before next autumn, beyond that the prognosis for him will start to look really bad I'm sure.

Overall agree with your points, except we need to keep in mind that the timing of a major collapse is usually surprise when it happens.  There could be a coup 5 minutes or 5 years from now.  Same thing for military collapse.  There's no way of knowing what "a long way out" it is until it happens.

The important thing, from a predictive standpoint, is to be aware of the conditions that make something more/less likely to happen.  The conditions for a Kremlin coup are, for example, far stronger today than they were 8 years ago.  But 8 years ago we think there was something brewing that Putin headed off before it stuck.  For all we know the 150+ FSB guys that just got rounded up were up to something instead of just getting punished for being bad at their jobs.

Steve

[danfrodo]

14 minutes ago, akd said:

No longer credible. At all.

 

Indeed, didn't this bulls--t get squashed in the first 100 pages of this thread?  "West is responsible for the war because it made Russia feel sad".  Which is ridiculous, because the only thing keeping the baltic states free is their NATO membership.  What a clown.  Like saying Greece was responsible for Hitler's invasion because it had the temerity to beat the Italian invasion.

[Ts4EVER]

I watched a lecture by that guy and his main problem is that he basically agrees with Russia ideologically: Only "superpowers" matter, what smaller countries want is irrelevant and in the name of peace one should not meddle in other people's "spheres of influence", no matter what bull**** they get up to there.

[TheVulture]

37 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

"If this is actually what Russia ends up doing; they are strategically bankrupt and haven’t learned a thing. Just drip feeding forces as they become available is a recipe for Russian failure."

"And personally think this is right; Give Ukraine ranged weapons. Artillery, UAVs, fixed wing aircraft, things to allow them to attack around Russian formations. keeps Ukrainian casualties down too. Should matter more than tanks."

 

That twitter thread also has photos of several new Russian miles-long convoys / traffic jams just to show that their logistics traffic management hasn't radically improved in the last 6 weeks. 

[asurob]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

So what you're arguing is we should have not done anything to annoy Russia, but instead done everything we could to facilitate Russia reestablishing enslavement of people who want no part of it?  That's not a great attitude IMHO.

 

This times 1000.  At no point should we be trying to not annoy Russia anymore than any other country who is bent on dominating it's neighbors.  Every time we have in the past millions paid the bill ultimately.  Which is why giving Ukraine whatever support it needs to not just win, but remind Russia what happens to those who attempt to conquer neighbors by force (Iraq 1991).

[akd]

ANNA News propaganda troops almost catch it: