How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

11 hours ago, JonS said:

Each gun firing on a mission is given a specific point of aim within the overall mission distribution. So, for example, say you have a Circular 200 and 12 guns firing (ie, a battalion). One of the guns will be given bearing and elevation data for the centre of the circle. Another gun will be given firing data for 12-o'colock and 100m out, and the other guns spread evenly around the 100m radius circle. So, of course, you would expect most of the rounds to 'miss' the building, because they weren't aiming at it to start with. Minute variations between rounds mean that each guns' subsequent rounds smear out in a smallish area around it's own particular point of aim, within the overall battalion distribution.

Yup.  After all, traditionally (and even usually today) artillery is used to saturate an area, not pound the bejuzus out of one specific spot.

You can see a VERY tight set of hits in a couple of places, especially right at the beginning in the foreground.  Looks like two rounds impacted within a few meters and seconds of each other and a triple hit of similar grouping to the right of the building mid barrage.  So again, if the house was the target... you'd expect a high concentration of fire on the house itself and not almost half of the rounds hitting empty field way off to the left.

11 hours ago, JonS said:

Then again... that one gun that was aiming at the centre 'should' have hit it again, or at least come close. But I didn't see anything come close - which could be for any number of reasons, including that that one gun had a slightly different mission - "No 1, load Excalibur, Bearing 1640, elevation 182, at my command, one round, fire for effect." (except the commands are most likely issued digitally, rather than by voice)

Which is why I keep coming back to the Ukrainians having a little something extra up their sleeve

I just thought of something.  Normally you wouldn't see Grads and howitzers in the same unit, but you could very easily mix them if you had the communications established.  For example, a single howitzer (Excalibur) or a battery could have been targeting the building and the Grads used for distraction/saturation around it.  All they would have to do is compare the estimated flight times for both missions, set one as the baseline, then +/- the other one so that it came down roughly at the same time.

This technique could allow them to have a single battery with Excalibur being used in combination with other artillery units.

We won't likely know how this theory holds up until after the war is over.  But I'm certainly keeping my eye open for similar videos

Steve

[TheVulture]

Fire and explosions at military arsenal near Tomarovka, Belgorod oblast. Confirmed by Belgorod governor.

https://t.me/zhest_belgorod/11240

На границе трёх муниципалитетов — Борисовского и Белгородского районов и Яковлевского городского округа - произошёл пожар на территории одного из объектов Министерства обороны РФ. Информация о пострадавших и разрушениях уточняется.

Все оперативные службы работают на месте, принимаются все необходимые меры для обеспечения безопасности, — сообщил Гладков

https://t.me/zhest_belgorod/11246

[Battlefront.com]

Belgorod is getting just as dangerous for Russians as Izyum.

About the Soviet and Fascist Russia connection...

As long since stated, there is very little difference between the hard-hard left and hard-hard right.  They are both expansionist and value brutality over Humanism (gross oversimplification, of course).  One thing autocratic rulers love to do is to tie themselves directly to a more powerful/glorious past.  This is very effective if the population has not "moved on" from dreaming of past glory because they are looking for someone to reestablish what they perceive was a better time.  Details do NOT matter to such mindsets, which is why Putin's Fascism is not incompatible with Lenin/Stalin's Communism.

Putin has been increasingly tying his regime to the Soviet Union for the last 10-15 years.  Here's a really good article I just found that touched on the central point... Putin has been gradually attempting to rehabilitate the Soviet Union's image to use it for his own purposes:

https://theconversation.com/putins-war-on-history-is-another-form-of-domestic-repression-176438

Steve

[Haiduk]

Photos of collapsed railway bridge in Kursk oblast appeared. This is near Bondarevka village 5 km east from Sudzha town and 11 km to Ukrainian border

 

  

Edited May 1, 2022 by Haiduk

[Combatintman]

57 minutes ago, dan/california said:

The Russians seem to have a compulsive desire to die trying to take the most defensible spot on the Ukrainian lines. Because this is the exact spot Combatintman referenced above as the place no sane army would attack. Hopefully the will be very, VERY sorry.

 

 

Two BTGs in play pushing east and south if UAWarData is correct and looking at the size of both places they will culminate if the Ukrainians are still up there and defending them.

 

Note I have ignored the BTG IVO Pasika because the report you quote makes no mention of Sosnove which is on any axis that would be used to come into Oleksandrivka from the south.  Bottom line any attempt to bridge at Sviatorhirsk, like most other possible operations in this part of Ukraine, is not within the capabilities of the forces available to the Russians if the Ukrainians choose to contest the ground.  I appreciate that this is a statement I make frequently so for context if we apply the three attackers to one defender ratio that most wargamers are familiar with when they are trying to maximise their chances of victory in a QB, it is blatantly obvious that a company each in Krymky and Oleksandrivka will render those two BTGs combat ineffective.  When you look at what's elsewhere on the graphic above and consider that Sviatohirsk, again defended by a company, will require at least two BTGs to cross then you can see what I mean.

If we look at Sosnove, which is an important node en route to Sviatohirsk - it is more of a rail junction than anything else but is certainly not great manoeuvre terrain and again a Ukrainian company-sized unit could easily defeat/delay in the area.

[Battlefront.com]

Good article in The Washington Post today about how Russia has attracted a lot of hacking against its interests.  The article is behind a paywall, but here's one bit I found particularly interesting:

Quote

The published documents include a cache from a regional office of media regulator Roskomnadzor that revealed the topics its analysts were most concerned about on social media — including antimilitarism and drug legalization — and that it was filing reports to the FSB federal intelligence service, which has been arresting some who complain about government policies.

 

A separate hoard from VGTRK, or All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Co., exposed 20 years of emails from the state-owned media chain and is “a big one” in expected impact, said a researcher at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss his work on dangerous hacking circles.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/01/russia-cyber-attacks-hacking/

Hacks like this help establish Russia's history of repression and are likely to contain specific elements to corroborate various crimes committed against Ukraine since 2013 (in particular).  It's going to take years for experts to sift through all this stuff to find the most important bits of information, but they will.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

11 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Photos of collapsed railway bridge in Kursk oblast appeared. This is near Bondarevka village 5 km east from Sudzha town and 11 km to Ukrainian border

 

  

Looks like standard structural failure due to age and (likely) over use.

In the West when a bridge is found to be weakening it is "posted" to restrict weight on it until it can be replaced.  This is an involved process that is, itself, quite expensive to do.  Even small bridges can cost several tens of thousands USD for proper assessment and larger bridges can cost hundreds of thousands.  I very much doubt the Russians are big on this sort of thing.

Steve

[Taranis]

"A tank and trucks of pro-Russian troops drive on a road near the port city of Mariupol, southern Ukraine, April 17, 2022. ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO / REUTERS" * T-72B3

[Harmon Rabb]

 

General Valery Gerasimov was reportedly Wounded in Action in Izium.

Looks like it did not take long for him to get his "welcome" after he entered Ukraine.

[Battlefront.com]

  

1 hour ago, Combatintman said:

Two BTGs in play pushing east and south if UAWarData is correct and looking at the size of both places they will culminate if the Ukrainians are still up there and defending them.

 

Note I have ignored the BTG IVO Pasika because the report you quote makes no mention of Sosnove which is on any axis that would be used to come into Oleksandrivka from the south.  Bottom line any attempt to bridge at Sviatorhirsk, like most other possible operations in this part of Ukraine, is not within the capabilities of the forces available to the Russians if the Ukrainians choose to contest the ground.  I appreciate that this is a statement I make frequently so for context if we apply the three attackers to one defender ratio that most wargamers are familiar with when they are trying to maximise their chances of victory in a QB, it is blatantly obvious that a company each in Krymky and Oleksandrivka will render those two BTGs combat ineffective.  When you look at what's elsewhere on the graphic above and consider that Sviatohirsk, again defended by a company, will require at least two BTGs to cross then you can see what I mean.

If we look at Sosnove, which is an important node en route to Sviatohirsk - it is more of a rail junction than anything else but is certainly not great manoeuvre terrain and again a Ukrainian company-sized unit could easily defeat/delay in the area.

Thanks for continuing your analysis!

Many people in high places made grave miscalculations, even to this day, about Russia's capabilities by misusing numeric assessments.  Put another way, quantitative calculations without properly weighting for qualitative factors.

This is not to say that numbers aren't important.  They are, but they still need to be qualified.  Combatintman has been doing the proper baseline calculations by looking at BTGs as if a) they are full strength and b) they are combat functional.  These are two things which we have reason to doubt, but that should be adjusted for after the quantitative analysis is established.

Combatintman's initial quantitative assessments establish a "best case" for the Russians, which is useful to see what the theoretical range of options and outcomes might be.  Russia's "best case" doesn't look so great!!  So what about their "worst case", or perhaps "expected case", for this operation? 

Qualitative adjustments for Russian forces' likely understrength BTG with crap leadership and morale fighting over difficult terrain without good combined arms support doesn't bode well for them.   It is pretty safe to conclude that Russia's forces will "under perform" compared to their theoretical capabilities.

When we adjust for Ukraine's qualitative factors we find that high morale and good tactical decision making backed by superior defensive weaponry in terrain that favors such things means that Ukraine's forces should be expected to "over perform".

Combine the two qualified forces together and it's pretty clear that 3:1 standard ratio is unlikely sufficient for Russia to achieve a positive tactical outcome.  In real terms this means that Ukraine could probably hold this ground with less than 2 light infantry companies and Russia would also likely need more than 2 BTGs to assure success.

Summary... Russia is fook'd.

Steve

[LongLeftFlank]

20 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

Two BTGs in play pushing east and south if UAWarData is correct and looking at the size of both places they will culminate if the Ukrainians are still up there and defending them.

 

Note I have ignored the BTG IVO Pasika because the report you quote makes no mention of Sosnove which is on any axis that would be used to come into Oleksandrivka from the south.  Bottom line any attempt to bridge at Sviatorhirsk, like most other possible operations in this part of Ukraine, is not within the capabilities of the forces available to the Russians if the Ukrainians choose to contest the ground.  I appreciate that this is a statement I make frequently so for context if we apply the three attackers to one defender ratio that most wargamers are familiar with when they are trying to maximise their chances of victory in a QB, it is blatantly obvious that a company each in Krymky and Oleksandrivka will render those two BTGs combat ineffective.  When you look at what's elsewhere on the graphic above and consider that Sviatohirsk, again defended by a company, will require at least two BTGs to cross then you can see what I mean.

If we look at Sosnove, which is an important node en route to Sviatohirsk - it is more of a rail junction than anything else but is certainly not great manoeuvre terrain and again a Ukrainian company-sized unit could easily defeat/delay in the area.

Oi will cross this body of water if you promise me you won't troi this at'ome!

-- Billy Bragg

Per your prior, there's no question now that this area is marginal to useless as a bridgehead for future offensive ops against Sloviansk.

But if the game at this point is to fill out a defensible 'stop line' roughly paralleling the river, this push might still make sense....

[Battlefront.com]

10 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

 

General Valery Gerasimov was reportedly Wounded in Action in Izium.

Looks like it did not take long for him to get his "welcome" after he entered Ukraine.

If this is confirmed (there is some doubt) it would be great, but even if Gerasimov was there and not wounded it is a HUGE thing.  This ought to shake things up quite a bit.

Steve

[dan/california]

29 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Looks like standard structural failure due to age and (likely) over use.

In the West when a bridge is found to be weakening it is "posted" to restrict weight on it until it can be replaced.  This is an involved process that is, itself, quite expensive to do.  Even small bridges can cost several tens of thousands USD for proper assessment and larger bridges can cost hundreds of thousands.  I very much doubt the Russians are big on this sort of thing.

Steve

Wasn't great construction to start with. There ought to be some pretty substantial metals bits where those concrete beams come together, well, used to come together. It looks like the expansion joint, it isn't really worthy of the term, was concrete sliding on concrete.

Edited May 1, 2022 by dan/california

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, LongLeftFlank said:

But if the game at this point is to fill out a defensible 'stop line' roughly paralleling the river, this push might still make sense....

I agree that securing defensible terrain and shortening the line might now be the new primary objective for this operation.

Russia is now kinda in need of this service:

Steve

[dan/california]

4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

If this is confirmed (there is some doubt) it would be great, but even if Gerasimov was there and not wounded it is a HUGE thing.  This ought to shake things up quite a bit.

Steve

Gerasimov is the one guy I wouldn't kill. Even the abysmal median Russian standard general officer would be vastly more competent.

[The_Capt]

28 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Looks like standard structural failure due to age and (likely) over use.

In the West when a bridge is found to be weakening it is "posted" to restrict weight on it until it can be replaced.  This is an involved process that is, itself, quite expensive to do.  Even small bridges can cost several tens of thousands USD for proper assessment and larger bridges can cost hundreds of thousands.  I very much doubt the Russians are big on this sort of thing.

Steve

Hard to tell, those could be blast marks on the right hand picture.  Bridge like this would not take much to bounce off its abatements by the look.

[hcrof]

13 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Looks like standard structural failure due to age and (likely) over use.

In the West when a bridge is found to be weakening it is "posted" to restrict weight on it until it can be replaced.  This is an involved process that is, itself, quite expensive to do.  Even small bridges can cost several tens of thousands USD for proper assessment and larger bridges can cost hundreds of thousands.  I very much doubt the Russians are big on this sort of thing.

Steve

It is very hard to tell what exactly happened to the bridge from these photos. There is no obvious damage that might have triggered the event, but also strangely it doesn't look like the bridge hit anything on the way down. It is almost as if the supports moved apart from each other over time (i.e. a failure of the foundations) and eventually the bridge just fell off. 

As this is pretty adjacent to my field of expertise (I design buildings, not bridges) I would suggest that the bridge was pretty poorly designed by modern (i.e. post-1960s in the West) standards and only minor damage would result in catastrophic collapse like this. All bridges require movement joints to allow for thermal expansion and contraction but I would expect a bridge to be tied securely to its supports as opposed to relying on friction to stop it falling off. Bridges of this design would be very vulnerable to an explosion should someone genuinely decided to take a crack at them. 

[sburke]

38 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Good article in The Washington Post today about how Russia has attracted a lot of hacking against its interests.  The article is behind a paywall, but here's one bit I found particularly interesting:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/04/28/madison-cawthorn-gun-airport-tsa/

Hacks like this help establish Russia's history of repression and are likely to contain specific elements to corroborate various crimes committed against Ukraine since 2013 (in particular).  It's going to take years for experts to sift through all this stuff to find the most important bits of information, but they will.

Steve

I think you meant this article.     Madison just can't seem to remember he's wandering around with a loaded weapon.  Probably will forget he has it if he ever does need it.

Hacktivists and cybercriminals wreak havoc in Russia - The Washington Post

[Haiduk]

31 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

 

General Valery Gerasimov was reportedly Wounded in Action in Izium.

Looks like it did not take long for him to get his "welcome" after he entered Ukraine.

See my post above, today he has departed to Russia, not injured. Author of "sensation" - Anton Gerashchenko on own TG Pravda_Gerashchenko. He is former advisor of former Minister of internal affairs. And his unverified information was shared throughout social networks and even respectable media. All want a good news. But Gerashchenko already not for the first time issues "victorious news". 

Edited May 1, 2022 by Haiduk

[sburke]

3 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

See my post above, today he has departed to Russia, not injured.  

dang....   oh well, Putin will be sending him back as May 9th gets closer and he has nothing to show for it.

[Kinophile]

@Battlefront.com , Haiduk just describe before you that Gerasimov has returned to Belgorod by help. Walked to his plane unassisted. 

Could be hiding an injury of course, but still, he's mobile and still on one piece.

Interesting how he had a 3 x Ka5a2 escort even at Belgorod. Even that far inside Russia they felt a follow up decap strike was a possibility.

[EDIT - Ninja'd]

Edited May 1, 2022 by Kinophile

[sburke]

Rotflmao... Kadyrov's used tractor dealership just hit a speed bump

Farm vehicles removed from Ukraine by Russians who find they've been remotely disabled (msn.com)

[The_Capt]

40 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

Two BTGs in play pushing east and south if UAWarData is correct and looking at the size of both places they will culminate if the Ukrainians are still up there and defending them.

 

Note I have ignored the BTG IVO Pasika because the report you quote makes no mention of Sosnove which is on any axis that would be used to come into Oleksandrivka from the south.  Bottom line any attempt to bridge at Sviatorhirsk, like most other possible operations in this part of Ukraine, is not within the capabilities of the forces available to the Russians if the Ukrainians choose to contest the ground.  I appreciate that this is a statement I make frequently so for context if we apply the three attackers to one defender ratio that most wargamers are familiar with when they are trying to maximise their chances of victory in a QB, it is blatantly obvious that a company each in Krymky and Oleksandrivka will render those two BTGs combat ineffective.  When you look at what's elsewhere on the graphic above and consider that Sviatohirsk, again defended by a company, will require at least two BTGs to cross then you can see what I mean.

If we look at Sosnove, which is an important node en route to Sviatohirsk - it is more of a rail junction than anything else but is certainly not great manoeuvre terrain and again a Ukrainian company-sized unit could easily defeat/delay in the area.

Life is hard, it is harder when stupid.  So we have been staring at this whole Izyum/Lyman front for weeks now and I can't figure out how they landed on this as the optimum front.    The terrain all along here is a nightmare coming from the east.  The North and West obviously swallow up formations the Russian did not have but even if they did achieve manoeuvre, the stuff coming from Kreminna is bottled up until you can take Slovyansk, as they have found out.

This whole operation has a Rube Goldberg feel to it, with no aggressive recon phase, no operational pre-conditions (which frankly after two months of watching the Russians may as well be science fiction to them) and manoeuvre scheme built on hope, a thousand points of failure and weak logistics.  All over some of the worst terrain in the country, short of urban.

The tactical shortcomings are there for everyone to see, and we have talked a lot about strategic; however, it is the operational level of warfare that is a complete train wreck for the RA in this war as well.

[Probus]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

So again, if the house was the target... you'd expect a high concentration of fire on the house itself and not almost half of the rounds hitting empty field way off to the left.

I just noticed something. You mentioned "If the target was the house" and "almost half" hitting empty fields. But statistically speaking, much more of the area of the attack is open fields so if unguided, much more of the rounds should have hit empty field. When you look closer, many of the rounds are going into treelines and some of the rounds seem to be hitting targets in the treelines (due to the explosions being dissimilar). This suggest GPS targeting to me. 

Or is it just my imagination? I agree there may just be more to this video than meets the eye.  

[danfrodo]

8 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Life is hard, it is harder when stupid.  So we have been staring at this whole Izyum/Lyman front for weeks now and I can't figure out how they landed on this as the optimum front.    The terrain all along here is a nightmare coming from the east.  The North and West obviously swallow up formations the Russian did not have but even if they did achieve manoeuvre, the stuff coming from Kreminna is bottled up until you can take Slovyansk, as they have found out.

This whole operation has a Rube Goldberg feel to it, with no aggressive recon phase, no operational pre-conditions (which frankly after two months of watching the Russians may as well be science fiction to them) and manoeuvre scheme built on hope, a thousand points of failure and weak logistics.  All over some of the worst terrain in the country, short of urban.

The tactical shortcomings are there for everyone to see, and we have talked a lot about strategic; however, it is the operational level of warfare that is a complete train wreck for the RA in this war as well.

Golly, this whole thing almost feels like there's some dictator w no real military experience directing everything from far away w/o really understanding the reality of the situation -- strengths, terrain, LOC, etc.  Yeah, almost looks like the work of a very desperate amateur.