How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

50 minutes ago, chrisl said:

I suspect it's a bunch of things, and Telenko may be thinking in the right direction but for the wrong reasons.  

The RA seems to be bad at using their defensive radars - there were a bunch of reports early that their SAM systems were being destroyed while sitting around inactive, and then that enabled further destruction by TB2s.  Moskva reportedly had its radar essentially spoofed by giving it targets in the wrong direction and exploiting its limited simultaneous view/tracking ability that was known to Ukrainians because of the shared soviet history.  Ships have far fewer mass, volume, and power constraints than trucks, so a shipborne radar should be far more capable of tracking incoming stuff than truck borne.  And Russia has very limited microelectronics capability compared ot the west, so while they might be able to make a perfectly fine RF generator and detector set, they likely don't have the capability to track hundreds, dozens, or maybe even tens of individual incoming targets and discriminate them.  There are actually different algorithms you can use that are much less computationally expensive for getting the shared trajectory of a set of unresolved objects than you would use for tracking 20 individually identified rounds.  And while Russia has limited semiconductor capability, they historically have excellent algorithm development dating way back to Soviet days.  So it's entirely plausible that their CB capability is very limited because of a combination of poor training and limited technical capability.

Re using drones for precision spotting - if you have really good maps you can use cheap drones and sort out the angles on the ground.  It would help to have software that overlays your drone view with your Google earth - I haven't seen such a thing, but it's certainly possible.  The capability is shown relatively crudely every day by the community of people who are geolocating every barrage, and even geolocation of individual rounds shown many pages earlier here.  

And precision maps don't even matter much if you have IR guided rounds like KVITNYK.  If the video below is actually artillery (and I suspect it is, because there are a few big misses) rather than an ATGM platoon, then it's probably being IR guided by drones with IR cameras that are also viewing through the smoke.  The timing between rounds is consistent with "I have 10 vehicles in this area at this speed, give me 10 KVITNYKs on 10 second intervals," and then the drone operator just moves from target to target waiting for the rounds to come in. If you had NATO kind of money you'd be able to program the drone to track 10 vehicles and it would rapidly bop from vehicle to vehicle with the laser, displaying a different code on each one, and they'd all explode at the same time.

 

 

We have been seeing more video of guided rounds lately. Does this represent a new supply of guided munitions coming into the fight, or just the release of more videos? Because drone directed guided rounds seem to be a universal problem solver, and enough of them would shorten this war by a lot. I think there is an excellent chance that troops in the rest of the column in the video above got very serious about having a mechanical problem the next time they were ordered to advance. 

SeinfeldRules thinks that drone defense is a solvable problem. We should be VERY sure we have solved it before the next war, because the penalty for not solving it is rather drastic.

[chrisl]

58 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

120 mm mortars. At least a half of explosions. I posted the same video above, but from Youtube page of K-2 UAV group

Seems like way too many direct hits on moving vehicles to not be guided. Or local ATGM fire mixed with artillery.

[chrisl]

1 minute ago, dan/california said:

We have been seeing more video of guided rounds lately. Does this represent a new supply of guided munitions coming into the fight, or just the release of more videos? Because drone directed guided rounds seem to be a universal problem solver, and enough of them would shorten this war by a lot. I think there is an excellent chance that troops in the rest of the column in the video above got very serious about having a mechanical problem the next time they were ordered to advance. 

SeinfeldRules thinks that drone defense is a solvable problem. We should be VERY sure we have solved it before the next war, because the penalty for not solving it is rather drastic.

I would absolutely love to have video in the 800 nm to 2.5 micron range.  And so, I’m sure, would the RA.

[Haiduk]

About Russian tactic and artilery from one serviceman:

Few people understand that their tactic - "throwing machine guns with hats" [he meant dumb direct infantry and armor attacks] - is not stupidity and not mistake. Once again. All theess "naked" unprofessional soldiers from their side are the part of very well adjusted mechanism aside for decades. Namely, this is a method of uncovering of firing positions for detection and destroying its by artillery, MLRS, tanks...

That's exactly how it was intended and there is all good with this. And it may look weird in 21st century, but it works. I've seen how their artillery works with infinite ammunition and I wnt to say there are no fools there. Theese are not those children in torn pants, whos photos are thrown out every day in our media in huge numbers. 

[Haiduk]

8 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Seems like way too many direct hits on moving vehicles to not be guided. Or local ATGM fire mixed with artillery.

Too far for ATGM to our positions and no incoming ATGMs seen on the video. This is March, so no any guided ammunition. 

[dan/california]

Video of apparent Ukr counter-battery fire.  It seems like the first round was dead on, and then the rest more scattered. Possibly leading with one guided round? The other interesting thing is there are a lot of other vehicles in that tree line, but all the fire appears to be directed at the guns set up in the field. Per recent post by the professionals the Russian probably set up this way to get a better survey of their guns, and therefore better accuracy?

[The_Capt]

20 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

About Russian tactic and artilery from one serviceman:

Few people understand that their tactic - "throwing machine guns with hats" [he meant dumb direct infantry and armor attacks] - is not stupidity and not mistake. Once again. All theess "naked" unprofessional soldiers from their side are the part of very well adjusted mechanism aside for decades. Namely, this is a method of uncovering of firing positions for detection and destroying its by artillery, MLRS, tanks...

That's exactly how it was intended and there is all good with this. And it may look weird in 21st century, but it works. I've seen how their artillery works with infinite ammunition and I wnt to say there are no fools there. Theese are not those children in torn pants, whos photos are thrown out every day in our media in huge numbers. 

Recce by death, with mass fires follow up, is straight out of the WW2 playbook.  If that is the Russian design, sure it should work as long as the Russians can keep feeding that bloody "Find" and keep up momentum.

If the Russians are in fact much better than we have been led to believe, more in line with what we saw in 2014...then why are they not crushing the UA?  

I get all the numbers comparison hazards, but there is no getting around the fact that the RA had (note past tense) the clear advantage in mass.  They also had their choice of where to put that mass at the beginning of this.  So by all traditional conventional metrics, this thing should be over by now...and that did not happen.  Quite the opposite. 

Maybe the opening phase was just a wild winger, and the UA got lucky; however, we have seen the same thing in the Donbas Offensive phase; Russian mass is not working...and it is supposed to if all the textbooks still have any value.

My honest guess is that the Russian suck, but not as badly as we think - at least not initially during the opening offensive.  And something the UA was doing basically negated that mass.  I suspect it was a combo of ISR superiority - a lot of western strat stuff at play - UAVs everywhere, hybrid self-synchronizing tactics, all link back to integrated fires.  My working hypothesis is that Ukrainian defence has, and continues to be able to create friction along the entire Russian operational system.  This friction, along with Russia's own, has made all that mass nearly useless as it is dislocated and disrupted constantly.  To the point that up north it may have fallen under its own weight.

[akd]

Drone footage of Javelin strike seen in short clip yesterday:

 

[SeinfeldRules]

47 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I for one, am thinking that the old concepts of mass need a serious rethink.  Take the guns, it is enormously inefficient and wasteful to employ mass, we do it because hitting/suppressing a target at 20kms is damned hard but that does not make it desirable. It strains the logistics system and weight too much, and let's not start on collateral.  Precision over mass should be what we are looking for, problem has been "easier said than done".  

 

So this is a common thought, especially in the American artillery community about a decade ago. The issue is that valuing precision over mass briefs well, but only in certain situations. Against point targets or specific stationary systems (ADA, command posts), yes - precision is crucial! Much better to hit it once and be done. Guided rockets, laser and GPS guided shells, and other precision munitions are great tools. But that’s only the portion of the fight. The Excalibur or GMLRS capabilities sound good on paper, but the realities of its employment preclude individual targeting of maneuvering vehicles in almost all cases.   Even laser guided munitions can be difficult to utilize - the US Army had a laser guided round (Copperhead) but got rid of it due to usability issues. The artillery answer to maneuvering units is MASS - throw as many dumb rounds as possible and saturate the area. It is far cheaper and faster to throw dumb rounds at the enemy then try to conduct laser designation on individual vehicles. Imagine a vehicle in heavy tree cover, designated by a UAV sitting at a significant slant angle to avoid enemy ADA  - how can you be sure the laser is actually designating the right place? The reality is more complicated then you think. How can you refine a grid accurately enough to achieve effects with a GPS guided munition? A lot of effort goes into developing targetable data for guided munitions - otherwise you miss your target very precisely. 

You also have to appreciate the morale and suppressive effect massed artillery represents - even harassing fires can pin a unit in place, limiting movement and observation. It isn’t always about see target, kill target - your UAV may never see the ATGM team in the forest, but if you mass a battalions worth of artillery on that tree line for 30 minutes I guarantee whoever is there will NOT be looking for your tanks. Expensive and limited precision munitions can not replicate that effect.

16 minutes ago, dan/california said:

We have been seeing more video of guided rounds lately. Does this represent a new supply of guided munitions coming into the fight, or just the release of more videos? Because drone directed guided rounds seem to be a universal problem solver, and enough of them would shorten this war by a lot. I think there is an excellent chance that troops in the rest of the column in the video above got very serious about having a mechanical problem the next time they were ordered to advance. 

SeinfeldRules thinks that drone defense is a solvable problem. We should be VERY sure we have solved it before the next war, because the penalty for not solving it is rather drastic.

This is where you can’t look at this and assume guided munitions, just because they achieved a direct hit on a vehicle. Howitzers can achieve this effect given enough rounds and proper adjustment… it’s just unlikely, but not impossible. 
 

I have some thoughts on this video in particular that I will address tonight. There are several other comments in this thread that I’d like to discuss as well (including most of your post BFC, I’ll get there I promise!) but I need to wait till after work to give it the proper attention. 

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, SeinfeldRules said:

So this is a common thought, especially in the American artillery community about a decade ago. The issue is that valuing precision over mass briefs well, but only in certain situations. Against point targets or specific stationary systems (ADA, command posts), yes - precision is crucial! Much better to hit it once and be done. Guided rockets, laser and GPS guided shells, and other precision munitions are great tools. But that’s only the portion of the fight. The Excalibur or GMLRS capabilities sound good on paper, but the realities of its employment preclude individual targeting of maneuvering vehicles in almost all cases.   Even laser guided munitions can be difficult to utilize - the US Army had a laser guided round (Copperhead) but got rid of it due to usability issues. The artillery answer to maneuvering units is MASS - throw as many dumb rounds as possible and saturate the area. It is far cheaper and faster to throw dumb rounds at the enemy then try to conduct laser designation on individual vehicles. Imagine a vehicle in heavy tree cover, designated by a UAV sitting at a significant slant angle to avoid enemy ADA  - how can you be sure the laser is actually designating the right place? The reality is more complicated then you think. How can you refine a grid accurately enough to achieve effects with a GPS guided munition? A lot of effort goes into developing targetable data for guided munitions - otherwise you miss your target very precisely. 

You also have to appreciate the morale and suppressive effect massed artillery represents - even harassing fires can pin a unit in place, limiting movement and observation. It isn’t always about see target, kill target - your UAV may never see the ATGM team in the forest, but if you mass a battalions worth of artillery on that tree line for 30 minutes I guarantee whoever is there will NOT be looking for your tanks. Expensive and limited precision munitions can not replicate that effect.

This is where you can’t look at this and assume guided munitions, just because they achieved a direct hit on a vehicle. Howitzers can achieve this effect given enough rounds and proper adjustment… it’s just unlikely, but not impossible. 
 

I have some thoughts on this video in particular that I will address tonight. There are several other comments in this thread that I’d like to discuss as well (including most of your post BFC, I’ll get there I promise!) but I need to wait till after work to give it the proper attention. 

We appreciate it!

[Vacillator]

6 minutes ago, akd said:

Drone footage of Javelin strike seen in short clip yesterday:

 

Wow, tough to look at if you forget the immediate context.  I like the music though, seems these guys aren't producing the videos for old farts like us .

[Haiduk]

@sburke @Kinophile

Mayor Sergey Borisenko, 106th guard airborne division, killed 3rd of May.

[Aragorn2002]

16 minutes ago, Vacillator said:

Wow, tough to look at if you forget the immediate context.  I like the music though, seems these guys aren't producing the videos for old farts like us .

I've seen worse video clips.

[Haiduk]

About so-called counter-offensive actions on Zaporizhzhia direction, claimed by some media

We fu...g missed approaching and attack of the enemy on our positions in one area.... Then our arty has mixed them with manure... And then they [Russians] have brought down fire on ours as revenge 

[danfrodo]

6 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

I've seen worse video clips.

this is what is real.  If they don't want to end up dead in a field they should point their guns against their actual oppressors, meaning their officers and the officers above them all the way to the top.  I would be sorry for them except that if they crossed that field and got into position they would've sooner or later been firing on Urkrainians. 

I am hoping for a mutiny that brings in the Kadyrovs to restore discipline and the mutiny grows to where the Kadyrovs are wiped out.  Then the units involved just drive back to their own country.  Yeah, I know it's a dream but it's a beautiful dream. 

[c3k]

7 hours 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

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. 

 

Indeed. The second tank definitely fired at the first tank. You can see the dust churned up from the muzzle blast.

[The_Capt]

48 minutes ago, SeinfeldRules said:

You also have to appreciate the morale and suppressive effect massed artillery represents - even harassing fires can pin a unit in place, limiting movement and observation. It isn’t always about see target, kill target - your UAV may never see the ATGM team in the forest, but if you mass a battalions worth of artillery on that tree line for 30 minutes I guarantee whoever is there will NOT be looking for your tanks. Expensive and limited precision munitions can not replicate that effect

Oh, I get that, trust me. 

If we are going to do this, then we have to list the downsides to massed fires.  Targeting individual vehicles will always be a challenge with artillery, at least until technology jumps a long way.  However, if all we need is "dumb saturating mass" then why invest millions in digitized FCS?  I doubt we are going to see one-shot-one-kill anytime soon but faster more precise fires, has to be the goal here.  Even a 50% increase in efficiency has enormous benefits, I suspect this is why it is competitive space.

So let's take your example above (i.e. treeline).  By that logic, based on the advances in ATGMs, we have to hammer every treeline for kms in order to advance.  I am not buying "no need for Find...we will just hit everything" because it is not a practical solution.  The biggest downfall of mass, is exactly what we saw with the Russian tepid attacks so far, they all rely more heavily on logistics.  The more we need to pull on logistics trains, and mass means a lot of rounds and guns, the more vulnerable our entire system is.  That, and for expeditionary militaries that means weight which adds to the force projection bill.  Then there is the collateral damage bill.  I know we all want to go back to "war in the old way" but the reality is that reckless destruction of civilian infrastructure is never going to "brief well" and we have had to get a lot better at this.  I get it if massed fires is the only solution to the problem, we will have to eat the costs; however, at some point that will likely change, the question is "when?"

I think you do hit on an important point, cost.  Until PGM systems come way down in price (and they are) you are likely correct here.  PGMs have gone from very special (i.e. SOF), to special to "well, not all the time" in 30 years.  I have no doubt this war is just another sign-post along the way.  Once the cost goes down and technology matures - not sure if this war is it or not - then we will see the shining city on hill - massed precision fires. 

56 minutes ago, SeinfeldRules said:

The issue is that valuing precision over mass briefs well

I am not sure which GOs you have been briefing but in my experience it goes the other way.  Trying to get senior leaders to trust new technology to the point that it replaces old doctrine never "briefs well" in my experience.  

[poesel]

5 hours ago, JonS said:

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.

That is true. But owning a port in Pakistan, Yemen & Athens will at least give you an option for a land based transport that is behind the street of Malacca. That is what the silk road initiative is all about.

That cannot replace the volume of shipping but an option is better than nothing.

[Homo_Ferricus]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

 As to mass, this war almost looks like it has broken it.  The Russians have all the mass, even now with their losses but it appears to be "dumb" mass, and likely blind.

I suspect maybe the better way to think of it is "timid" mass. I don't think the generals and colonels on the ground are getting much in the way of strategic directives let alone operational ones from the highest levels. The planning was shrouded in secrecy and the execution has been nothing but chaos from the start. I'm referring to a command issue that goes beyond the mass being "blind" from lack of C4ISR assets. Downstream of that, the soldiers on the ground don't have full confidence in the colonels and generals. I'm sure there is this palpable sense that even if the leaders committed their mass in a given direction, they fear they'd cross a line with the men. No colonel wants to find that line when his men tell him, "Really? And you think I'm going to accept that death sentence for you?" After all, modern Russians are less numerous and more casualty averse than WWII Soviets, and they know there isn't a true existential or ethical reason for them to stiffen up and march forthrightly into oblivion.

[JonS]

20 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So let's take your example above (i.e. treeline).  By that logic, based on the advances in ATGMs, we have to hammer every treeline for kms in order to advance.  I am not buying "no need for Find...we will just hit everything" because it is not a practical solution. 

To use PGM you need to either 'find' that ATGM to the nearest 10m or be able to laze their foxhole ... and then hope they don't wander off to take a leak or something while you're prepping the mission. But if you use dumb + mass you 'only' need to know theres something in that 100m length of tree line and then you snot the whole thing.

Edited May 10, 2022 by JonS

[FancyCat]

No infantry mass tho. Well at least the importance of infantry has been reconfirmed in large scale warfare. I wonder aside from thinking of bad Ukrainian morale, maybe they put too much faith that their artillery and armor would run over infantry?

[The_Capt]

12 minutes ago, JonS said:

To use PGM you need to either 'find' that ATGM to the nearest 10m or be able to laze their foxhole ... and then hope they don't wander off to take a leak or something while you're prepping the mission. But if you use dumb + mass you 'only' need to know theres something in that 100m length of tree line and then you snot the whole thing.

Well this is another big problem.  Two guys in a treeline that can kill a tank at 4kms.  How on earth are we going to be able to tell it is that 100m they are in?  At that point, we will need to see them or what possible low resolution method is going to tell us "there are two guys in that line, so hammer it".  And if we can pin it to a 100m of treeline, why not just employ smart rounds to do the same job with half or even a quarter of the ordinance?

This does not compute.  We either have lo res and need to hammer every treeline for kms, because that is their lethality range, or we get higher resolution so why do I need to support tons of dumb mass to achieve what smart can do?  We have seen UAVs drop grenades for pete's sake and do this exact job.

My sense is that we need to solve for mass based on what I have seen in this war.  I do not mean wholesale abandonment of the idea, nor radical "all light" (gawd help me the USMC thing is on the horizon) but we cannot walk into the next war thinking we are going to be "ok" because we are not Russian.  Western militaries, are just as addicted to mass as the Russians are.  "Oh but we are better"...well yes, but I am still not sure how to fight the UA arsenal.

Maybe some sort of precision screen, able to find and hit with very high resolution and then massed precision fires for our own deep strike?  With dumb mass in the chamber for breakthroughs? 

[JonS]

My sensor sees two dudes in a tree line. Cool! I can hit those two with a single PGM. Done, dusted. Let's move on.

*boom*

Oh, damn. There were actually another 15 dudes in that tree line, but my sensor didn't pick them up and my one PGM missed them precisely. Q, send me another BMP full of crunchies, willya? And Guns, hit that /whole/ tree line for me this time please?

Edited May 10, 2022 by JonS

[sburke]

31 minutes ago, poesel said:

That is true. But owning a port in Pakistan, Yemen & Athens will at least give you an option for a land based transport that is behind the street of Malacca. That is what the silk road initiative is all about.

That cannot replace the volume of shipping but an option is better than nothing.

Land based?  Yemen?  I think you might need to look at a map again...maybe a map of the belt and road initiative.   Think about the volume you are talking and then tell me again how land transport is going to make any sense.  If there were a RR line maybe.  But there isn't and there isn't a pipeline, so you are talking trucks... or maybe camels.     The land route runs from Gwadar Pakistan to Urumqi China.  Trucking any volume over that route would be insane.  Maybe the basis of a new reality TV show.

The New Silk Road - China's Belt and Road Initiative (chinahighlights.com)

[dan/california]

59 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I think you do hit on an important point, cost.  Until PGM systems come way down in price (and they are) you are likely correct here.  PGMs have gone from very special (i.e. SOF), to special to "well, not all the time" in 30 years.  I have no doubt this war is just another sign-post along the way.  Once the cost goes down and technology matures - not sure if this war is it or not - then we will see the shining city on hill - massed precision fires. 

So very much of the cost issue, even leaving aside the disaster that is defense procurement, is just being willing to eat the cost of setting up the factory to make a LOT of something. There is nothing in an Excalibur round that is more complicated than an Iphone, or an advanced motor cycle engine. There are some fancy electronics, and some highly stressed parts.  But for several billion dollars you definitively could set up a real factory instead of the current almost artisanal process. By real factory I mean virtually nothing is ever touched by a human hand and hundreds or even thousands  these of the things roll off the line every hour. 

 

 

If you have their location to the 100 meters you have already won. and the choice of smart or dumb rounds comes down to situational specifics.  I think The_Capt's point is that with the quality of Russian ISR they currently need to saturate KILOMETERS plural of tree line to make progress with acceptable losses, and the logistics math just doesn't add, at lest not for them, not right now.

 

Edit

I cross posted with The_Capts own response

Edited May 10, 2022 by dan/california