How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[BeondTheGrave]

This just seems like a bad idea

 

[Battlefront.com]

Just now, sross112 said:

Millennials have been given a horrible reputation and I blame the media.

 I've had some rather stereotypical experiences with Millennials and there was no media involved   I also think of Idiocracy as a documentary, not entertainment, so there's that as well.

However, the point is that you never really know what someone is really capable of until they are sufficiently challenged to either rise to the occasion or get out of the way.  Seeing the youth of Ukraine so willingly and totally put aside cushy lives and take their TikTok and Instagram way of life to war is really something to see.  Whether it be helping people evacuate, feeding the elderly, or slamming some 122mm rounds into a breach... yes, I am impressed up, down, and sideways.

Steve

[BeondTheGrave]

8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I don't think the lack of recon assets in play is hurting Russia too much.  I think what would most likely happen is they would drive out some place, get whacked, and the attack would go forward anyway.  There's really not much room for alternative planning for this particular operation.

Agree with most things, but this. Recon guy's getting whacked still tells you something, there be danger. And sometimes the recce boys actually do something right and figure out an enemy position to call arty on. If youre a Russian Division commander, I would guess you'd rather see a BRM or BRDM get an NLAW than a T-72 or a packed full BMP. 

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

I don't think the lack of recon assets in play is hurting Russia too much.  I think what would most likely happen is they would drive out some place, get whacked, and the attack would go forward anyway.  There's really not much room for alternative planning for this particular operation

I am not sure I agree but if they weren't going to use them anyway you do have a point.  Of course why embrace a de-aggregated BTG model if one does not embrace "alternative planning"?  The Russian forces structure points to a need for "more recon" not less, especially if you are planning to invade a country the size of France.

Well 51 days in and I think it is clear that Russian "planning" clearly suffered from progressive unreality here.  These BTGs look like they were prepared for a internal security operation and not a conventional war.  This goes a long way to why none of the math adds up.  Now I can see how they might go that way, as on paper the Ukraine was not set up to defend this amount of frontage simultaneously - I saw one comparison that the length of frontage was the same as the distance from Minnesota to Washington along the US-Canadian border, if one throws in the entirely of the Belarusian border too. 

But the Ukrainians re-wrote the "on paper" part....whoops.  I think the Russians assumed complete operational freedom and then the entire battlespace got sticky...bad sticky.  Then I think the Russians realized they brought the wrong military to this war and are hastily trying to fix that.

[kraze]

https://youtu.be/NIItoD1Ebh0

Oh boy.

[danfrodo]

8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

 I've had some rather stereotypical experiences with Millennials and there was no media involved   I also think of Idiocracy as a documentary, not entertainment, so there's that as well.

However, the point is that you never really know what someone is really capable of until they are sufficiently challenged to either rise to the occasion or get out of the way.  Seeing the youth of Ukraine so willingly and totally put aside cushy lives and take their TikTok and Instagram way of life to war is really something to see.  Whether it be helping people evacuate, feeding the elderly, or slamming some 122mm rounds into a breach... yes, I am impressed up, down, and sideways.

Steve

Exactly!  We judge the young based on our much more mature and responsible current situations.  But if we think back to what we were like at 21 it probably looks very different.  I am sure most of the grownups from where I grew up would say about me "he's not in jail?  Two engineering degrees?  -- Did he steal them?"

So back on subject, there was a post a few days ago that one or two BTG level officers were arrested and taken away because they were only at 55% strength but had reported 100%.  Does anyone know if that post has held up to scrutiny?  (I get how hard it would be to verify).  That would certainly explain a lot about Russian failings, sending in ~half of what higher ups thought they were sending.

[BeondTheGrave]

10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Well 51 days in and I think it is clear that Russian "planning" clearly suffered from progressive unreality here.  These BTGs look like they were prepared for a internal security operation and not a conventional war. 

This is a really interesting observation and I'm not sure I have heard it put this way before. Honestly it helps crystalize the biggest single flawed assumption of the war: The Russian assumption that Ukraine is just another part of Russia, not a culturally, historically, and politically distinct entity. The more you dig into it, that seems to be the first assumption over the Rubicon, if you'd allow me to make hash of that metaphor. This will be easy, Moscow said, because isn't Ukraine just Russia anyway? 

Edited April 20, 2022 by BeondTheGrave

[danfrodo]

6 minutes ago, kraze said:

https://youtu.be/NIItoD1Ebh0

Oh boy.

WTF is wrong w Sholz???  This is not a complex calculation.  Give weapons.  Russia has not retaliated against all the other countries that are helping.  What's the hold up?  Is Sholz in the pocket of business interests that would suffer in some way? 

[dan/california]

25 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

I get how Russians could say "let's just scout w drones" but for small groups of ATGM-armed enemy infantry that's asking for disaster.  It's not impossible to hide when there's at least some forested or broken terrain.  Seems crazy to lose BMPs and tanks instead of TIGRs just to find out the road isn't safe.  'course, UKR troops would probably just say "let the tigr pass"

There are a LOT of pictures of shot up TIGRS. From machine gunned, to disassembled by the ever popular 2x1522 mm IED. So someone has been trying to do something with them, badly.

Edited April 20, 2022 by dan/california
dropped a word, yes I am the worlds worst typist

[The_Capt]

3 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

This is a really interesting observation and I'm not sure I have heard it put this way before. Honestly it helps crystalize the biggest single flawed assumption of the war: The Russian assumption that Ukraine is just another part of Russia, not a culturally, historically, and politically distinct entity. The more you dig into it, that seems to be the first assumption over the Rubicon, if you'd allow me to make hash of that metaphor. This will be easy, Moscow said, because isn't Ukraine just Russia anyway? 

Further, progressive unreality means that the framework they built at the outset became rigid, likely due to political pressure.  So when the RA met initial resistance they saw it more as "isolated anomalies" of disjointed resistance that once eliminated would still lead to Ukrainian collapse with some residual internal resistance.  By the time they realized that the defense was not "isolated or disjointed", it was too late.  

[Battlefront.com]

9 minutes ago, kraze said:

https://youtu.be/NIItoD1Ebh0

Oh boy.

I think you undersold that link.

Putting it this way definitely makes it sound like that that a) Russia has some backdoor "negotiations" (most likely in the form of national of personal blackmail or both) going on with Scholz and b) Scholz doesn't want anybody to know about it.

Steve

[kraze]

4 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

WTF is wrong w Sholz???  This is not a complex calculation.  Give weapons.  Russia has not retaliated against all the other countries that are helping.  What's the hold up?  Is Sholz in the pocket of business interests that would suffer in some way? 

I guess similarly to Merkel, Steinmeier and Schroeder he is deeply in a russian gas pocket. After all he was pushing hard for NS2.

So it's not about fear but some kind of hope to swipe it all under the rug and do business as usual, as if nothing ever happened, like Merkel did in 2008 and 2014.

[danfrodo]

2 minutes ago, kraze said:

I guess similarly to Merkel, Steinmeier and Schroeder he is deeply in a russian gas pocket. After all he was pushing hard for NS2.

So it's not about fear but some kind of hope to swipe it all under the rug and do business as usual, as if nothing ever happened, like Merkel did in 2008 and 2014.

either that or they have some personal dirt on Sholz and are extorting him.  Either way, he is not the right person for this time of crisis -- that's me saying something nasty in a nice way.  I wonder what this is doing to his popularity? 

 

[kraze]

4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think you undersold that link.

Putting it this way definitely makes it sound like that that a) Russia has some backdoor "negotiations" (most likely in the form of national of personal blackmail or both) going on with Scholz and b) Scholz doesn't want anybody to know about it.

Steve

It is quite possible. And I hope Germans unscrew it all somehow. Clearly Scholz decisions aren't the most popular even back home.

[dan/california]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think you undersold that link.

Putting it this way definitely makes it sound like that that a) Russia has some backdoor "negotiations" (most likely in the form of national of personal blackmail or both) going on with Scholz and b) Scholz doesn't want anybody to know about it.

Steve

 

1 minute ago, kraze said:

I guess similarly to Merkel, Steinmeier and Schroeder he is deeply in a russian gas pocket. After all he was pushing hard for NS2.

So it's not about fear but some kind of hope to swipe it all under the rug and do business as usual, as if nothing ever happened, like Merkel did in 2008 and 2014.

Sholz seems to have missed the fact that the German defense industry is perfectly happy to get paid for arming Ukraine to max. And thus discounted the fact that his position would be utterly undermined by blatant leaks, or out right press releases from his "own" side.

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Further, progressive unreality means that the framework they built at the outset became rigid, likely due to political pressure. 

This is what I was getting at about the possible reason why we're not seeing a lot of recon going on now.  Just like the initial invasion plan, the one they are carrying out now is politically motivated and therefore fixed.  Knowing that the Ukrainians are in X spot in force doesn't really matter because BTG 123 is going there today at 15:00 no matter what, otherwise the whole time table is going to fail.

Now, is it SMART to not conduct ground based recon directly ahead of an advance?  No.  But at what point in this war has Russia done anything we would consider smart, other than withdrawing all forces from around Kiev before they imploded?

The mention of Tigrs above does raise an interesting point.  It could be that the bulk of the Regimental level recon units are Tigr based and that they already got killed off in the first phase of the war.  The infamous Tigrs entering Kharkiv, for example, were almost definitely a recon unit.  They were wiped out.  There are other examples. 

Oryx shows 70 Tigr-M confirmed lost.  I think we can presume some number of those were held by recon units.

Steve

[womble]

Just because the TO&E says there should be a recon element doesn't mean they didn't just elide it in favour of actually filling some more of the BMPs when they went into combat at 55% strength... After all, "Brigade has recon assets, and the Brigadier doesn't actually have to get down in the mud with a rifle, so we need our BTG recon troops actually fighting."

[BeondTheGrave]

15 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Further, progressive unreality means that the framework they built at the outset became rigid, likely due to political pressure.  So when the RA met initial resistance they saw it more as "isolated anomalies" of disjointed resistance that once eliminated would still lead to Ukrainian collapse with some residual internal resistance.  By the time they realized that the defense was not "isolated or disjointed", it was too late.  

Helmuth von Moltke had a saying, which I will now brutalize, which was "Mistakes made in planning cannot be solved in thirty days of campaigning." How long did it take for Russia to pull out of the northern direction? 35 days? 40? Old HvM The Elder proved right again. 

But seriously, totally agree. They were breathing rarified air up in the Kremlin. Question now is, have they 'opened up the windows' or has Putin just retreated into the bunker? Everyone, including the US, is talking now about the long war. But what would that even look like? 1000 Russians dying a week trying to hold Kherson, the farm fields east of Kharkov, and three extra towns in the Donbas? I dont see that as sustainable politically long term for Putin, let alone economically or militarily. 

[Haiduk]

48 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Seeing the youth of Ukraine so willingly and totally put aside cushy lives and take their TikTok and Instagram way of life to war is really something to see.  Whether it be helping people evacuate, feeding the elderly, or slamming some 122mm rounds into a breach... yes, I am impressed up, down, and sideways

Alas, this is not quite. Significant part of Ukrianian generation of "millenials" and younger are indeifferrent, apolitic and even cosmopolitan. Instagram images of сarefree bright life, life like entertainment or in best case,  trend struggle "save coalas" or something like this, IT or blogger career and "get away sometime from this country" - this typical ideas of many young people today in Ukraine. Despite of 8 years of war, many of them consider that Russian business, society and culture give more opportunities, more respectable etc. For example, many pupils and even more senior listen dirty Russian rap, propaganding violence, anti-social behavior and "criminal romantic". So, this part of young people, which you could see is some sort of responsible citizens of own country, passionaries. Fortunately we have them, but... all not such in bright colors... I hope, this war forced at least a part of rest to rethink their values.        

Edited April 20, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

23 minutes ago, dan/california said:

There are a LOT of pictures of shot up TIGRS. From machine gunned, to disassembled by the ever popular 2x1522 mm IED. So someone has been trying to do something with them, badly.

This also vehicles of special forces and some air-assault units.

Edited April 20, 2022 by Haiduk

[keas66]

21 minutes ago, dan/california said:

 

Sholz seems to have missed the fact that the German defense industry is perfectly happy to get paid for arming Ukraine to max. And thus discounted the fact that his position would be utterly undermined by blatant leaks, or out right press releases from his "own" side.

One wonders how many levers the US has  that they can use to "enhance" The Chancellor's thinking on this ?

Edited April 20, 2022 by keas66

[Probus]

Here ya go @kraze:

*Now with more pictures!  

I bet this has something to do with keeping the gas flowing to his country. Either that or he's just a dirtbag. 

Edited April 20, 2022 by Probus
Dirtbag comment

[Der Zeitgeist]

1 hour ago, Probus said:

Has this story been confirmed:

https://www.foxnews.com/world/germany-pledges-to-maintain-ukraines-military-equipment-says-direct-arms-support-has-been-maxed-out

If true, how does it affect the Leopards?

It doesn't affect the Leopards at all.

The Leopards are an entirely separate issue, because they're not part of the Bundeswehr stock but are held by the industry.

[Haiduk]

One more of fresh Russian units, moved from Far East - in the clashes around Severodonetsk was killed company coommander of 57th motor-rifle brigade, 5th CAA, East military district

So, who tracks Russian units, you can draw new mark. Recently elements of 127th motor-rifle division of the same army were spotted in action

Graphic photo!: https://censor.net/ua/photo_news/3335501/komandyra_roty_57yi_brygady_zs_rf_znyscheno_pid_syeverodonetskom_foto_18

PS. other link under this article shows a video with another company commander - of 6th company of the same brigade, killed at the same location, but as far as on 2nd of April, so at least one BTG of  57th brigade already three weeks involved in fight

Edited April 20, 2022 by Haiduk

[Der Zeitgeist]

48 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think you undersold that link.

Putting it this way definitely makes it sound like that that a) Russia has some backdoor "negotiations" (most likely in the form of national of personal blackmail or both) going on with Scholz and b) Scholz doesn't want anybody to know about it.

There are various interpretations about the bevhaviour of Scholz and the SPD on the issue of shipping heavy weapons. Like almost everything, you can of course pin it on Russian kompromat, but the real reasons are likely much more mundane.

For me, it's most likely a combination of:

• Having a number of critical state elections that the SPD wants to win in the coming months, where they don't want to risk having their party base and aging electorate run scared with talks of German Panzers rolling east.
• A number of influential SPD officials (especially Rolf Mützenich &  Ralf Stegner) that are fundamentally opposed to any confrontational policy with Russia.
• The usual ****up of our bureaucracy in the Ministry of Defense, where the leadership has no idea what's going on and the middle management is basically running their own policy.

20 minutes ago, keas66 said:

One wonders how many levers the US has  that they can use to "enhance" The Chancellor's thinking on this ?

Just keep the pressure up, it's as simple as that.

The fundamental fear of German foreign policy is the concept of "Alleingänge", taking any risks by making decisions that aren't also taken by allied nations. If Germany appears isolated on the question of heavy weapons, it will align its policy to come back into the fold.

Edited April 20, 2022 by Der Zeitgeist