How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Huba]

My understanding is that if there's indeed such a complex, it was probably built in Soviet times as a shelter in case of WW3, the factory being a prime target for a nuke. This seems quite plausible, those were being built all over the place, in other WP countries too.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Huba

[Kraft]

8 minutes ago, Huba said:

My understanding is that if there's indeed such a complex, it was probably built in Soviet times as a shelter in case of WW3, the factory being a prime target for a nuke. This seems quite plausible, those were being built all over the place, in other WP countries too.

That does seem more plausible.

But if it is just an air shelter, I wonder how they manage to keep attackers at bay for so long. Also, Azov fighters still appear to be working outside so maybe they haven't even reached the entrance yet and it is mostly an explanation to cover up their bad progress? 

I myself am very surprised at the resiliance that has been put up as the situation appears to be very bad.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Kraft

[Huba]

Just now, Kraft said:

That does seem more plausible.

But if it is just an air shelter, I wonder how they manage to keep attackers at bay for so long. Also, Azov fighters still appear to be working outside so maybe they haven't even reached the entrance yet.

This is pure speculation at this point of course, but having such a complex, designed for large number of people, would give you a safe place to store your supplies, rest, care for wounded etc. That is a tremendous  help is situation where everything is under constant bombardment. 

For actual fight you'd have to emerge to the surface of course, but factory ruins make for great defensive positions, that is a proven fact.

[Taranis]

The wreckage of a downed Russian helicopter lies in a field near Kharkiv on April 16, 2022, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russia has stepped up airstrikes on kyiv, hitting another military factory a day after Moscow warned the Russian military would renew its attacks after two weeks of relative calm in the Ukrainian capital. SERGEY BOBOK / AFP

 

A police officer films a damaged Russian artillery tank, during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Trostianets, Sumy region, Ukraine, April 15, 2022. ZOHRA BENSEMRA / REUTERS

* 2S19 Msta-S

[billbindc]

7 hours ago, sburke said:

This is one thing that fascinates me.  Clearly the US intel community decided very very early on that this wasn't the usual gamesmanship from Putin.  I don't know that we will ever know, but I'd love to understand the intel that allowed them to make that call and with such assurance.  Putin has to be convinced someone sold him out and that someone has to be in a pretty small circle of his most trusted.  Could be that no one did but someone was careless with info (yeah not exactly shocking there). Maybe the source of Shoigu's heart attack.

What's interesting to note is that the publicly announced US intelligence assessments weren't a one time thing. They were copious, changed over time and were updated. They also were issued pretty frequently. That's *not* the kind of product you have if you are working off of a few highly placed sources (if you want them to live through the next week). Bottom line, the US was demonstrating that we had thoroughly penetrated the Russian decision cycle in every way possible. A similar thing happened a week or so ago when the NSA simply disconnected the GRU hacking team from a broad swathe of software they were about to use for a larger cyber attack. 

There's a purpose to all of this, of course. It's a demonstration of dominance and so a method by which one nation can coerce another from escalation. Putin has to consider not just the down stream effects of (for example) a strike on a Polish arms depot or a limited nuclear strike...he now has to think about what happens between when he orders it and when it can actually be carried out. He has to assume that we know pretty much as soon as he decides. It cannot be a comfortable position.

[akd]

1 hour ago, BeondTheGrave said:

Interesting tidbit

 

Also because they are running out of people to throw at it, but he won’t discuss that part…

[Kinophile]

Sounds like the Rus sphere around Putin is sending signals that WMDs will be an actual option if the offensive stalls. 

They're always a theoretical option, but signalling like these interviews makes me very wary. 

Edited April 16, 2022 by Kinophile

[Taranis]

 

 

[Taranis]

Ukrainian soldiers walk through the debris of damaged buildings after a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Saturday April 16, 2022. FELIPE DANA / AP

[Ultradave]

NVM.  Overcome by events.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Ultradave

[Haiduk]

@sburke @Kinophile

+2

Captain of 2nd rank (=lt.colonel) Vladimir Khromchenkov, commander of large landing ship "Saratov", 197th landing ship brigade of Black Sea Fleat.

Was heavy wounded 24th of March when his ship was targeted. Died in hospital on 16th of April.

Interesting, this officer is a traitor - before 2014 he served in Ukrainain Navy and was commander of middle landing ship "Kirovohrad" (the ship still in UKR navy under name "Yuriy Olefirenko", but since 24th of Feb there is no information about her fate)

 

Mayor general Vladimir Frolov, deputy commander of 8th Guard CAA, Southern military district. Data of death unknown - probably it happened 18th of March and very probably he was confused with commander of 8th GCAA lt.general Mordvichev, which as if was killed in Chornobaivka 18th of March, but since 10 days was spotted alive

 

Edited April 16, 2022 by Haiduk

[Kraft]

Impressive Russian drone footage from Mariupol.

[LongLeftFlank]

10 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Putin was one such although, significantly, his posts kept him behind the Curtain (DDR). Which may, unfortunately, have inclined him to take only his own advice regarding the, ahem, pacification of former 'satellites.'

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32066222

"Their German friends give them a 20-year-old washing machine and with this they drive back to Leningrad," says Putin biographer and critic Masha Gessen. "There's a strong sense that he was serving his country and had nothing to show for it."

Hmm, in another 2015 piece fellow Chekisty challenge the prevailing view of Putin as a strategic chessmaster and instead suggest a thuggish apparatchik.... 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/vladimir-putin-failed-spy/2015/08/07/1b51170a-3c72-11e5-b3ac-8a79bc44e5e2_story.html

“Wait!” my interlocutor barked. “The truth is he is not one of us.” I blinked. Another veteran of Soviet intelligence at the table nodded briskly in support of this comment.... “He was seen in the system as a risk-taker who had little understanding of the consequences of failure....

I was pointed to the fact that he was given a backwater assignment in Dresden rather than in the East German capital in 1985, and then was sent to do counterespionage in Leningrad rather than Moscow at the end of that tour. "It was a message that he should seek another career."

Putin’s rise from that point — with the help first of Leningrad Mayor Anatoly Sobchak and then-President Boris Yeltsin — is another story. He has shown cunning, tactical skill and, at times, statesmanship.... But he has also shown a disturbing willingness to bet the farm even as his plans come a cropper.

 

 

[Kinophile]

EMSO podcast episode. Overview stuff rather than deep dive technical but good.

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy50cmFuc2lzdG9yLmZtL2Zyb20tdGhlLWNyb3dzLW5lc3Q/episode/OTMwMWJkNjQtYTgzMy00MmI5LTg5OWYtMDk0MjU3YWQxMDkx?ep=14

Edited April 16, 2022 by Kinophile

[LuckyDog]

The more I think about how this war has unfolded, the more confident I am that NATO anticipated this, and their actions were much less of a gamble than I had assumed. If you examine the best practices of NATO armies and look at the WHY of those practices, I think it is possible to forecast what will happen if they are not followed.

Synthesizing information from experienced engineers and logistics branch members would reveal that maneuver would be limited and that delays caused by significant numbers of ATGM and MANPADS could critically shorten this window. The answers to the simple question set below could have forecast a lot of the issues we see:

If there is a specific and demanding schedule for vehicle and equipment maintenance, what happens if not performed? How does that influence the readiness percentage? How many vehicles will break down per mile?

How should you store munitions to ensure that they function? If not, how many will be dud, and how will it affect accuracy?

If you do not conduct large-scale maneuvers, what happens to coordination and what kind of supply chain issues develop?

Combine this information with endemic Russian corruption so that no one is doing quality assurance, and you have a perfect storm. IMHO the RU Army offensive will be limited as they don’t have the supplies and readiness to move. Moreover, they have effectively put a time limit on the conflict by pulling their training cadre to combat duty and limiting trained manpower for the future conscription cycles.

Am I assuming too much based on retrospective knowledge? Would it be fair to expect NATO commanders to ask these types of questions? (Apologies if this was already covered)

[Haiduk]

Unit of VUC Right Sector - sniper with Finnish SAKO rifle

[Huba]

26 minutes ago, LuckyDog said:

Combine this information with endemic Russian corruption so that no one is doing quality assurance, and you have a perfect storm. IMHO the RU Army offensive will be limited as they don’t have the supplies and readiness to move. Moreover, they have effectively put a time limit on the conflict by pulling their training cadre to combat duty and limiting trained manpower for the future conscription cycles.

This is an interesting thought. My understanding is that the Russian brigades in their administrative aspect still exist after spitting out the BTGs to fight in Ukraine. To what degrees their ability to proceed with training of fresh recruits or reservists would be compromised at this point ? To my understanding "the best" people were send to fight, including younger officers and NCOs especially.

[dan/california]

Haven't seen one these in use before.

[Lethaface]

On 4/14/2022 at 7:28 PM, MSBoxer said:

Regarding semiconductor chips.
Let's say that Russia is cut off from their typical chip supplier in Taiwan and turn to China to replicate and supply.
Now China would need to reverse engineer/design the chip for their production facility, or acquire the original design.  This could take months.

OK, so Russia gets lucky and China happens to have the original design files and they are compatible with their manufacturing tools.  It could still take up to 4 months for the precision lithography machines to complete one disk of dies (plate of multiple individual chips).

With that in mind, due to the ongoing chip shortage odds are that Russia could not have stockpiled any sizable quantity of chips over the last 2 years and that even if they put in a "rush" order once they realized the war would not be a 3 day affair, at the very best their first delivery of chips would be July and that is if China already had the design and every step of the manufacturing process went flawlessly.

That would probably give China issues getting any new lithography machines of the same type, or getting their current ones serviced. AFAIK only Nikon and ASML provide these.

[db_zero]

deleted

Edited April 16, 2022 by db_zero

[Haiduk]

Reportedly yesterday Russian Tu-22M3 dropped FAB-3000 heavy bombs. Russian sources claimed Azovstal underground facilities were destroyed, but there is no any information about this and more, stable Starlink internet appeared today around Mariupol port. And here is a video how looks a crater of FAB-3000, the place of bombimg unknown, soldier says there was no any positions here - just a forest. The depth is 15 m

 

[Harmon Rabb]

7 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Reportedly yesterday Russian Tu-22M3 dropped FAB-3000 heavy bombs. Russian sources claimed Azovstal underground facilities were destroyed, but there is no any information about this and more, stable Starlink internet appeared today around Mariupol port. And here is a video how looks a crater of FAB-3000, the place of bombimg unknown, soldier says there was no any positions here - just a forest. The depth is 15 m

 

I see the Russian military is using its resources as efficiently as ever.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Harmon Rabb

[db_zero]

11 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

That would probably give China issues getting any new lithography machines of the same type, or getting their current ones serviced. AFAIK only Nikon and ASML provide these.

Don't about this particular product, but Fujitsu Ni-CD batteries are some of the best ones to get, but you have to be careful. Some are still made in Japan and high quality, while others made in China using machines shipped to China to be used for cheaper labor, but sold under the Fujitsu name are not as high quality. 

One of the conditions for opening shop in China is you play by their rules and turn over everything to them so they can learn.

[asurob]

8 hours ago, womble said:

 

For example, Ukraine could, potentially offer to add provisions similar to those the Germans have in their law, against celebrating Nazism, and then go further by including the humanitarian offenses of the CCCP in those measures. Would that mess with Russian heads enough to be worth putting on the table?

 

What?  Oh hell no.  You don't get to come to my house kick down the door, shoot my dog and tell me how to run my family and choose my friends for me.

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, billbindc said:

What's interesting to note is that the publicly announced US intelligence assessments weren't a one time thing. They were copious, changed over time and were updated. They also were issued pretty frequently. That's *not* the kind of product you have if you are working off of a few highly placed sources (if you want them to live through the next week). Bottom line, the US was demonstrating that we had thoroughly penetrated the Russian decision cycle in every way possible. A similar thing happened a week or so ago when the NSA simply disconnected the GRU hacking team from a broad swathe of software they were about to use for a larger cyber attack. 

Yes, that struck me too.  Continuing on from this...

Those sources remained active all the way through to the day the war started, despite months of broadcasting we tapped into a lot of closed loops.  I think we can presume they are still actively producing quality intel even though little of it is being shown to the public since the war started.  Obviously now it makes sense to keep that sort of stuff out of the public eye except for rare exceptions.

3 hours ago, billbindc said:

There's a purpose to all of this, of course. It's a demonstration of dominance and so a method by which one nation can coerce another from escalation. Putin has to consider not just the down stream effects of (for example) a strike on a Polish arms depot or a limited nuclear strike...he now has to think about what happens between when he orders it and when it can actually be carried out. He has to assume that we know pretty much as soon as he decides. It cannot be a comfortable position.

Indeed.

This gets at the big surprise about the relative cyber capabilities of each side.  Because the Russians were more overt in its activities over the last 10+ years, and there were struggles to counter them in the West, the presumption (by MANY including me) was that the Russians were way better prepared for this type of warfare than the West.  Especially given all the damage Russia was able to do to the NSA (Snowden, Manning, and Shadow Brokers).

However, it now seems like the West was "keeping its powder dry" for just such a war and is maybe is in fact far better at combating Russia's cyber capabilities and vulnerabilities than we thought.  Which is the way it SHOULD BE, given the resources the West has at its disposal.  Especially Human resources.

Steve