How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

The moment of destroying of T-90M near Staryi Saltiv, Kharkiv oblast. UKR civil volunteer Roman Donik, which supply units around Kharkiv, claimed this was a work of 227th TD battalion of 127th TD brigade and the tank was destroyed with Carl Gustav shot

PS. After huge flame around this video among UKR auditory, the cause of detonation was more likely the a shot of the next Russian tank. Maybe T-90M really could be hit and immobilized with Carl Gustav (or just because of technical failure) and in order to prevent capturing of newest tank, it was destroyed by Russians themselves. 

 

Edited May 10, 2022 by Haiduk

[DesertFox]

What can you expect from a society which takes washing machines into battle???

 

 

[evilcommie]

22 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

The moment of destroying of T-90M near Staryi Saltiv, Kharkiv oblast. UKR civil volunteer Roman Donik, which supply units around Kharkiv, claimed this was a work of 227th TD battalion of 127th TD brigade and the tank was destroyed with Carl Gustav shot

 

Is it really a M4 hit? Seems more like a Direct HE hit from 120mm mortar or 155 shell? 

Edited May 10, 2022 by evilcommie

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Meanwhile, up at strat level...

Horowitz's take on the likely end game, mainly stuff we all know here:

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/05/09/five-ways-the-war-in-ukraine-could-end-view

“Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please,” Machiavelli observed....

There is a more “prudent” course of action for Putin, one that I think is more likely than “doubling down” given the risks involved...Russia could try to simply “lock in” the territory it already secured, and “dig its heels”....

The World Bank recently predicted that the Ukrainian economy would shrink by 45%. By contrast, the highest estimate suggests the Russian economy will contract by 15%. This would not be the first time Russia... turns active conflict into a frozen one for lack of a better solution.... A frozen conflict has one key advantage for Russia: It may well help it demobilise the West. As the fighting becomes more sporadic, media attention may shift away to other crises....

Ukrainian victory would likely come from the attrition suffered by Russian forces, either due to exhausting offensives, or the need to maintain control over increasingly rebellious areas. Ukrainian forces have been quite effective at hitting Russia with limited but painful counter-offensives, taking advantage of a Russian penchant for large-scale offensives and reliance on poorly defended supply lines.

The fog of war is still thick, but I would argue that [victory] is the only realistic and positive “end-game” for the West. Giving Putin an “exit ramp” out of the conflict will only work once Russia’s defeat in Ukraine is clear, and not a second before.

So I also think that this will be Russia's play, likely trying to hold on until either the West loses interest, Ukraine burns out and/or they can see an opportunity to go back on the offensive.  By going to the defensive Russia and freezing the conflict, Russia may be able to reduce Ukrainian options while sustaining theirs, and possibly see openings for new ones.  All war is negotiation, a frozen conflict puts Russia in a better bargaining position as they can drag this out, shift the domestic narrative to one of "defending against attacks on Russia from the evil West".

Big problem needs to solved first - how do they freeze the conflict?  Can they?

We have been watching for over two months and I am still scratching my head at what is going on here.  But for arguments sake let's play this out and discuss what a Russian Defence would look like:

Strategic - I am going to assume they are going to dig in along the lines they have in order to create bubbles where they can have referendums, create "republics" and get people to spend rubbles.  They will likely keep stuffing those lines with as much cannon fodder as they can find and hope that sheer mass in trenches can attrit Ukrainian and Western willpower.  In sum, they will lose a lot of people but so long as Ukraine loses as a similar rate, the strategic equation may tip in their direction.  Good plan, but let's see what it is resting on. 

Operational - 70+ days into this thing and the Russians have still not solved for setting operational conditions, and likely will not be able to in the future.  The air space remains at rough parity, or in reality porosity, ISR and information remain out of Russian reach in any meaningful manner and logistics still remain a problem - even in the defence. The Russian's ability to Shield their forces remains in serious question as Ukraine is accelerating its deep strike capability either through indirect fires, missiles and/or NLOS self-loitering munitions.  So a Russian operational defence is likely going to, 1) be visible from space, 2) static because manoeuvre is going to be very hard and the Russians have already demonstrated that they are not to good at this, and 3) have its entire operational system in reach of Ukrainian ISR and weapons with no real counter. 

And then there is the frontages.  I am not sure what Russia has left in the hopper as they slowly bleed out on this last offensive.  However, conservatively we are talking an approx 850km frontage from Kherson to Kharkiv, so Western Front WW1 length.  To even try to make that airtight, particularly without solid C4ISR is going to take in the order of more than 1 million troops (that is about 1100 troops per km of frontage - depth and rotations).  The Russians do not have that right now, not even close.  They would need to generate those men and even "here is your uniform and a rifle" takes weeks, months if you want anything that resembles an able fighting force.   Without that force the ridiculous frontage is going to be extremely porous, likely for months.  Now let's go down a level and see where the real problems lie.

Tactical- Given the Operational conditions, we know the Russians will not be able to do a complete linear defence in depth, so, knowing the Russians they will go with strong points.  Due to political considerations, the Russians will not be able to adopt the Ukrainian style of warfare and trade space for manoeuvre - and they probably could not pull it off if they had the green light to try.  The Russians will shoot for mutually supporting/firebase concepts much like they did in Afghanistan and something that resembles a mobile reserve system to plug gaps.  You can see the tactical problems stack up already.  Nothing in this was has signaled that high concentrations of troops, even dug in, is a good idea.  The Ukrainians, being fed Western ISR, will be able to see exactly where those strongpoints and reserves are, and importantly, where they are not. 

So what those "strong points" actually become are deathtraps as the Ukrainians, infiltrate - the porous frontage, likely with irregulars and SOF, isolate - by hitting the mobile reserve and logistics in depth, and destroy - Russian tactical strong points in detail with a combination of freakishly accurate artillery fire and PGMs, with an mech follow up/clean up.  [BTW, this is very much how the Iraqi security forces re-took Mosul]  The UA will employ drones everywhere and one strongpoint at a time erode entire fronts until they crack.  Here I am very interested in the time race: can Russians push troops forward and dig them in at the same or better pace than the UA can blow them up?  My guess is "no" but we will see.

An obvious solution for the Russians to this is a robust and effective screen in front of those defensive positions to prevent infiltration...sure, but recon screens have been something the Russians appear to have lost all knowledge of and the majority of the trained troops they had for this job are all making sunflowers right now...and for an 850km frontage they are going to need a lot of them.

So back to my original question - how can the Russians freeze this conflict?  Particularly when the tactical and operational conditions do not point to an easy answer?  Next question, what happens if the Russians cannot freeze this conflict?

[poesel]

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

Worth mentioning that any Chinese blockade of Taiwan will likely result in a similar blockade of oil flows to the Chinese economy. 

This is why they are buying or building harbours at the Indian ocean, the Med & inbetween.

[Haiduk]

UAV recon group K-2 of 54th mech.brigade hit probably DPR armored column, which rides near Olexanrivka village to atatck Maryinka town. After first impacts convoy stopped, then after losses retreated. 5 items of armor destroyed/damaged, including two or three direct hits. 

Looks like this is old episode month or more ago, but previuosly unseen. 

@SeinfeldRules here the 120 mm mortars work or combined work of mortars and howitzers.

 

[Kinophile]

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/16/the-turkish-drone-that-changed-the-nature-of-warfare

New Yorker, but decent article about the TB2

[JonS]

58 minutes ago, poesel said:

This is why they are buying or building harbours at the Indian ocean, the Med & inbetween.

Still gotta get the goodies from there to Shanghai and Beijing though. A million tons of crude sitting in a shiny new port in the Maldives doesnt power many factories in Shangdong.

Edited May 10, 2022 by JonS

[JonS]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'm curious to know why you think that a quadcopter isn't sufficient for a battery to perform a fire mission in the sort of environment we have going on now. 

In order to practically adjust fire, the 'FO' ( ie, drone) needs to accurately know where it is, the direction it's looking, and the angle between things it's looking at. Without all of those three, trying to adjust fire becomes a hopeless task.^

Most drones can at best maybe do one or both of the first two. Few can do the third. That makes them not useful as FO platforms. Good for recce and BDA (and TikTok ), but not the technical task of adjusting fire.

Edit; also most small drones have a fairly narrow field of view at a useful resolution, which makes adjusting much harder.

^Another option would be that the drone has ability to derive the grid for a remote observed point, such as by knowing the gps grid and alt of the air frame, then lazing the distance, bearing, and angle of sight to the target, but ... that's basically the same technical problem.

Edited May 10, 2022 by JonS

[alison]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I am glad you mentioned this.  A fairly consistent and important element of an autocracy is a set of clearly defined enemies, both within and external.  These act as the basis for creating a nationalist belief system, which often is transformed into a cult like experience for the citizens.  China seems to have substituted traditional Communist ideology with simplistic nationalism more with each passing year.

I think this is one of the areas where foreign reporting on China misses some of the nuance, because they don't really contextualize the local propaganda.

For example, inside China, the operations in Xinjiang are presented as a front line in the war on terror. Ostensibly the security measures now in place over there were a direct response to a string of real terror attacks made by Islamic extremists from the region. And it's worked - no terror attacks since 2017. That, coupled with the usual "building a civilized society" motif that is used to explain the gentrification campaigns that exist in cities across the whole country, helps even progressive-minded citizens to accept a level of control that might seem excessive in the abstract.

This "war" terminology has also been used more recently in response to the pandemic, where the party describes the country as fighting a war on COVID. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of neighborhood control and surveillance measures pioneered in Xinjiang ended up in use across the rest of the country during this "wartime" mobilization against the virus. The party has framed their zero-COVID policy as a noble way of preventing casualties, and they compare themselves favorably to other governments who they claim do not care nearly as much about the lives of their citizens. When all the official media is reinforcing this heroic messaging, and public dissent on social media is squashed, it does eventually alter people's perspectives.

In the context of how this relates to Russia and Ukraine... I think it's interesting that from what I have heard, the Russian government is avoiding describing what's happening in Ukraine as a war. This is different to how readily the Chinese government represents major mobilizations of its human resources (e.g. flood response) or inconveniences that it wants its citizens to weather (e.g. mass lockdowns) as "wartime" activities. I am not sure how much of this is due to subtleties of the language, and if perhaps foreign reporters are over-eager to translate 战 as war when they could sometimes use fight or battle instead. Unfortunately I don't speak any Russian so I can't analyze the sort of language Putin and the Russian media are using to read between the lines of "special military operation" and understand if the Russian people are actually being sold the message that they are collectively engaged in a war by any other name. If they were, I expect there would be more stories of people voluntarily signing up to fight, which doesn't appear to be the case, although - again - that might be my ignorance of the local media showing. This is why I prefer to stay in my lane and talk more about countries whose politics and media I am familiar with.

[akd]

1 hour ago, evilcommie said:

Is it really a M4 hit? Seems more like a Direct HE hit from 120mm mortar or 155 shell? 

Looks like impact was on top rear of turret, but I guess it could also be on far rear side of turret:

[FancyCat]

 

[billbindc]

49 minutes ago, JonS said:

Still gotta get the goodies from there to Shangai and Beijing though. A million tons of crude sitting in a shiny new port in the Maldives doesnt power many factories in Shangdong.

This. 

Australia didn't go with American subs because they suddenly decided they hated frites. It was because our version can sit on the Straits of Malacca for 70 days per tour instead of 7.

[akd]

@sburke @Kinophile

Maj. Dmitry Vostrikov, deputy commander of 810th Naval Infantry Brigade’s air-assault battalion:

 

[Kinophile]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/09/us/politics/russia-air-force-ukraine.html

Summary view.

200/300 sorties per day and still no air superiority. So odds are those sorties are almost pure battlefield support. Which just recedes AS into the distance as the airframes take damage and wear, pilots die off/worn out and UKR A2AD relentlessly increases in experience, NATO technology, technical ability and knowledge ofvtyeir enemy.

[SeinfeldRules]

2 hours ago, Grey_Fox said:

There may be an explanation for this. Ukraine is leveraging uninterrupted to the Starlink satellite network plus some smartphone apps to coordinate artillery strikes firing from individual guns across the front, and seem to have shown an ability to do so within 30 seconds of the call for fire. The guns are widely dispersed and fire only a couple of shells at a time, so there isn't really anything for counterbattery radar to find.

This Twitter thread goes into it, and granted while there is a fair bit of hyperbole it may be indicative of reality:

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1523791050313433088

I'm going to take a minute before work to address this Twitter thread by Trent. I only caught the first part of his thread in my responses yesterday, and I think the rest of what he posted is a perfect example of him taking isolated situations and extrapolating them to create sexy scenarios for public consumption with little additional evidence. In this thread he takes examples of shell burst patterns to build this idea of Ukraine using a vast network of distributed, digital howitzers to shoot and scoot across the battlefield. The tactic is certainly feasible on paper - it's been around in doctrine since WW1, the US Army calls it a "roving gun" - but hardly unique to Ukraine. The AFATDS system and digital howitzers that we use are literally designed to facilitate this function. And while Ukraine may be using a digital system to route and process fire missions, but from what I've seen the vast majority of their howitzers (and definitely not the 122mm D-30s he references) lack the digital systems to make it truly effective to the extent he describes. Trent uses a lot of questionable assumption to build this idea of Ukrainian artillery supremacy that is honestly not backed by the data I'm seeing. If he has more sources to back his claims I would love to see them, because none of his thread passes the sniff test for this artillery officer.

Please don't take this as a slight on you Grey Fox or anyone who found Trent's thread interesting, this is just professionally frustrating to see someone the public "trusts" peddling such poorly sourced information in such a confident manner. Now I get to see his thread linked in every Reddit and Twitter thread featuring artillery, talking about something that is almost certainly not happening, at least not to the extent that Trent describes.

Edited May 10, 2022 by SeinfeldRules

[akd]

Russian dead piling up in dumping grounds:

 

[cesmonkey]

11 minutes ago, SeinfeldRules said:

I'm going to take a minute before work to address this Twitter thread by Trent. I only caught the first part of his thread in my responses yesterday, and I think the rest of what he posted is a perfect example of him taking isolated situations and extrapolating them to create sexy scenarios for public consumption with little additional evidence. In this thread he takes examples of shell burst patterns to build this idea of Ukraine using a vast network of distributed, digital howitzers to shoot and scoot across the battlefield. The tactic is certainly feasible on paper - it's been around in doctrine since WW1, the US Army calls it a "roving gun" - but hardly unique to Ukraine. The AFATDS system and digital howitzers that we use are literally designed to facilitate this function. And while Ukraine may be using a digital system to route and process fire missions, but from what I've seen the vast majority of their howitzers (and definitely not the 122mm D-30s he references) lack the digital systems to make it truly effective to the extent he describes. Trent uses a lot of questionable assumption to build this idea of Ukrainian artillery supremacy that is honestly not backed by the data I'm seeing. If he has more sources to back his claims I would love to see them, because none of his thread passes the sniff test for this artillery officer.

Please don't take this as a slight on you Grey Fox or anyone who found Trent's thread interesting, this is just professionally frustrating to see someone the public "trusts" peddling such poorly sourced information in such a confident manner. Now I get to see his thread linked in every Reddit and Twitter thread featuring artillery talking about something that is almost certainly not happening, at least not to the extent that Trent describes.

Perhaps it's a PsyOp designed to strike fear into the hearts of all Russian vehicle crews?

[The_Capt]

20 minutes ago, SeinfeldRules said:

Trent uses a lot of questionable assumption to build this idea of Ukrainian artillery supremacy that is honestly not backed by the data I'm seeing

What data are you seeing?  I am not sure what "artillery supremacy" means to be honest, never really heard it before.  I am guessing it means "our arty all the time, and none of theirs" but that does not seem reasonable.  Hell, the TB had indirect fire.

I think of this more along lines of capability trajectories.  Russian artillery seems to be getting dumber and employing more mass (or trying to), while the UA seems to be getting better, faster and more precise.

This whole thing is wrapped around "deep strike", which would include c-btty, logistics - back to SLOC nodes, apparently and reserves, and in that battle Ukraine seems to be able to Find, Fix and Finish much better than whatever system the Russians are using.

Edited May 10, 2022 by The_Capt

[billbindc]

1 hour ago, alison said:

In the context of how this relates to Russia and Ukraine... I think it's interesting that from what I have heard, the Russian government is avoiding describing what's happening in Ukraine as a war.

The Russian government is pursuing a two track messaging approach. On the one hand, they are pushing the "special operation" line which was obviously an attempt to limit the reaction of their domestic audience to the conflict. On the other, Russia is pushing the idea that Russia is fighting all of NATO. That message is aimed at their domestic audience as well in order to prepare the ground for a potential loss but it is also aimed at the large parts of the world that chafe at American hegemony and so have an innate susceptibility to a Russia-as-the-underdog narrative. Think Lula in Brazil, China, India, etc. Of course, it's schizophrenic messaging and (along with the 'We are fighting Nazi Jews" line) is not something anyone's really expected to believe.

[Battlefront.com]

Good!  You're still here   When I wrote about my "deep dive" into WW2 artillery I instantly thought of your insights into the nuances between American and Commonwealth approaches.  Ah... simpler times!

1 hour ago, JonS said:

In order to practically adjust fire, the 'FO' ( ie, drone) needs to accurately know where it is, the direction it's looking, and the angle between things it's looking at. Without all of those three, trying to adjust fire becomes a hopeless task.^

Most drones can at best maybe do one or both of the first two. Few can do the third. That makes them not useful as FO platforms. Good for recce and BDA (and TikTok ), but not the technical task of adjusting fire.

Edit; also most small drones have a fairly narrow field of view at a useful resolution, which makes adjusting much harder.

^Another option would be that the drone has ability to derive the grid for a remote observed point, such as by knowing the gps grid and alt of the air frame, then lazing the distance, bearing, and angle of sight to the target, but ... that's basically the same technical problem.

From what I've been able to gather, at least some of these quadcopters have a GPS tracker on them.  They also have laser range finders attached.  Meaning, they aren't pure COTS systems.  While I would certainly make a right mess of this, the Ukrainians have been doing this sort of stuff since 2014.  They have a lot of practice using COTS for directing artillery. 

More evidence of this is the fact that Ukraine has relatively few drones that are of the type NATO artillery have access to.  Yet Ukraine is having no problem directing artillery onto mobile targets with great frequency across the whole front with seemingly very good accuracy and precision.

I think this might be a case of underestimating what can be achieved with these cheaper/available platforms.  However, I am sure there are some major limitations in what Ukraine is able to do vs. what NATO can do.

From where I sit it seems that Ukraine has adapted to their particular situation quite well in part, perhaps a large part, because it is not all that dissimilar to what they've been doing for the past 8 years (i.e. using artillery for sniping).  Good thing Russia isn't fighting the way it should be.  If there was a mass onrush of fully staffed BTGs they probably would find themselves overwhelmed before being overrun.

In short... I think it is probable that Ukraine has adopted a specialized artillery doctrine that, luckily, is a good match for the terrain and Russia's insistence of fighting a poorly run and sourced high intensity conflict.  If Russia were fighting this war "properly", I don't think I'd be sitting around singing the praises of quadcopters.

Steve

[danfrodo]

what a night of posts, thanks all.  SeinfeldRules, Steve, et al, knocking it out of the park w bases loaded. 

War definitely entering a new phase, where Russia is now responding to Ukrainian offensive threats.  I keep worrying about stalemate then remember that 800km front.  No way RU can hold that. 

I've seen multiple reports of front line soldiers complaining about lack of sufficient ammo & AT assets.  So UKR has logistical issues also, though how could anyone not have logistical issues is such a huge conflict.

Pundit land again freaking out over "19 BTGs near Belgorod -- another RU offensive?" -- yeah, that's very likely given, as Steve mentioned, these are mostly shattered formations.

Telenko: he really loved his 15 minutes of fame w the tire scoop, now trying to capitalize on it.  But why would i listen to him on artillery stuff?  There's a lot of artillery experts here on this site already on the payroll. 

 

[Haiduk]

@sburke @Kinophile

Colonel Vladimir Ivanov, unit unknown

Mayor Sergey Kotelnikov, killed 7th of May, unit unknown

 

Edited May 10, 2022 by Haiduk

[danfrodo]

A colonel and two majors in recent posts.  The amount of lost RU officers is getting pretty staggering.  And this is just the KIAs, the WIAs who are out of action is probably several times higher. 

Upcoming, I see a mix of unwilling, angry, terrified conscripts plus underqualified ad hoc leadership plus very heavy pressure from above for results at all cost.  Exactly what is needed for some mutinous behavior, which hopefully could spread. 

[Battlefront.com]

10 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Telenko: he really loved his 15 minutes of fame w the tire scoop, now trying to capitalize on it.

One of the problems I've seen with guys like Telenko is that they did not have a deep background on the subject matter they are now trying to speak authoritatively upon.  I look at OSINT to see how it jibes with 30 years of studying warfare, quite a bit of it "professionally" (i.e. you guys and militaries pay me to do this work AND to do it right).  From this I can hopefully make some sense of what we're seeing, as imperfect and prone to error as it might be.  This is a complicated mess of information to sort through and make sense of even for someone like me, but someone who doesn't have a broad and deep understanding of warfare the should stick to retweeting.

Steve