How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Butschi]

4 hours ago, dan/california said:

Just for reference my definition of winning is 2/24 borders, and NATO and EU membership.

And the latter two are not going to happen anytime soon. Legally (although I'm seriously no expert on that) NATO membership would only be possible with a real peace contract, a cease fire and a frozen conflict are not enough. I also imagine a fast track towards EU membership wouldn't sit too well with Turkey - they have been waiting for this for decades - so they could veto NATO membership. In Germany, there are many who would rather have Ukraine become a neutral state and I think France may be similar. 

EU membership is also very unlikely to happen soon.

• Turkey and the Balkan states have been held in limbo for a long time, so it would be difficult to argue why an exception should be made for Ukraine.
• With every country having veto power, EU is already pretty inefficient and there are many who say that reforms should be made before any new members are accepted.
• Ukraine maybe has too close ties to Poland which is not the most popular member right now due to its autocratic tendencies. It could be perceived as making the Visegrad Faction even stronger.
• Adding more and more net receivers means less money for the other receivers.

Not to mention that we want resume normal business with Russia at some point, so let's not be too nice to Ukraine. /irony off

[Butschi]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Germany, France, and Hungary could cut their support to zero and it wouldn't affect the outcome in any meaningful way.

What support? *sigh*

[Markus86]

15 minutes ago, Butschi said:

What support? *sigh*

Strange that two of the named countries range 5th and 6th of the top 12 donors. 

If the current support given, is the best every country can do, that's another question ...   

[Huba]

30 minutes ago, Huba said:

In other news, Polish MoD signed a Letter of Request for 500 (!!!) HIMARS launchers ( 80 batteries). It is a crazy number, I'll be happy to hear some comments about what's really going on - it is enough for Polish, Ukrainian and Baltic armies, and then some.

 

Spokesman of Polish Armaments Agency ( a MoD official) just confirmed the number requested, and hinted that delivery times proposed by US industry are really short. If I was an ukrainian rocket artilleryman, I'd be on my way for some champagne

 

 

Edited May 26, 2022 by Huba

[kraze]

36 minutes ago, Butschi said:

 In Germany, there are many who would rather have Ukraine become a neutral state and I think France may be similar.

Ukraine was a neutral state up until 2019, 5 years into the war, a war Merkel made sure to swipe under the rug over those years.

I wonder if those many realize that Ukrainian neutrality is off the table forever.

[Huba]

20 minutes ago, Markus86 said:

Strange that two of the named countries range 5th and 6th of the top 12 donors. 

If the current support given, is the best every country can do, that's another question ...   

But please note that the numbers here is the "commitment", not what was actually transferred. For Germany it for sure included Pzh2000 and Gepards, none of which actually made it there.

[Ultradave]

42 minutes ago, Markus86 said:

Strange that two of the named countries range 5th and 6th of the top 12 donors. 

If the current support given, is the best every country can do, that's another question ...   

This graph looks "bad" but when if you plotted the GDP or defense budget of each of the same countries, it would look similar - GDP a little higher percentage of the US GDP, but defense budget somewhat less a percentage of the US. So the graph is actually proportional to readily available resources (leaving aside the issue of what has been promised vs actually delivered so far).

Dave

[Huba]

I bet Polish "parts" deliveries for MiG-29s worked the same way, I doubt we have many left at the moment.

[JonS]

34 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

This graph looks "bad" but when if you plotted the GDP or defense budget of each of the same countries, it would look similar - GDP a little higher percentage of the US GDP, but defense budget somewhat less a percentage of the US. So the graph is actually proportional to readily available resources (leaving aside the issue of what has been promised vs actually delivered so far).

Dave

the 777 transfers illustrate this too. The US has provided about 100, Australia about 6 and Canada about the same (numbers from memory, correct in order of magnitude), but the funny thing is that despite the wildly different absolute numbers all three nations have transferred about 10% of the 777 fleet.

[Butschi]

1 hour ago, kraze said:

Ukraine was a neutral state up until 2019, 5 years into the war, a war Merkel made sure to swipe under the rug over those years.

I wonder if those many realize that Ukrainian neutrality is off the table forever.

I understand and when even Sweden thinks neutrality is no longer a good idea it would be strange if Ukraine would be overly fond of this concept. Not without strong guarantees at the very least and then is it still real neutrality?

Foreign policy under Merkel was a little more complex than you put it here, although from your perspective the result is the same. German diplomacy had this idea of being the honest broker and there was a lot of diplomatic action w.r.t. Ukraine. The nature of this honest broker thing is, of course, that a lot of that was rather disadvantagous for Ukraine - hence the less than warm opinion of Steinmeier, I guess. What's more, German politics is first and foremost about German jobs and economy. Some people, I'm sure, really believed in "change through rapprochement". Put mostly it was/is an excuse for doing business with almost everyone. Mind you, that doesn't mean Germany sacrificed Ukraine in order to do business with Russia. The ideal situation was doing business with both sides. German automotive industry likes to produce in Ukraine and our automotive industry has a lot of influence on politics. Still, the net result is pretty much what you said, I guess.

To close the loop: I do understand why neutrality is off the table but as I said previously, I doubt NATO membership is on the menu, so what would be the solution? Bilateral defensive pacts?

[Butschi]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

But please note that the numbers here is the "commitment", not what was actually transferred. For Germany it for sure included Pzh2000 and Gepards, none of which actually made it there.

Exactly. And that is what really upsets me. A souvereign nation can legitimately decide whether or not to support another nation. And if a democratically elected government says no, we don't provide military aid, well, than that's not my opinion but it's the way democracy works. But our government should have the guts to decide and than stop waffling and pull it through either way.

[Bil Hardenberger]

10 hours ago, c3k said:

Brutal.

Took the word right out of my mouth.

[Huba]

Yeah, the whole problem here is saying ambiguous things, and not following with any action - that is the way to piss everybody off. OTOH, some good comes out of Scholz too:

 

[Harmon Rabb]

2 hours ago, kraze said:

Ukraine was a neutral state up until 2019, 5 years into the war, a war Merkel made sure to swipe under the rug over those years.

I wonder if those many realize that Ukrainian neutrality is off the table forever.

Neutrality is a nice concept for a country like Switzerland. If you have a country like Russia as a neighbour it just does not work, unless your goal is to become a part of Russia or a puppet state of Russia.

[Harmon Rabb]

Thermite munitions being used by Russia.

[LongLeftFlank]

1. Mortar work

2. Javs on the steppe

3a. Mariupol defenders came out looking in better shape than these 'attacking forces'....

3. Meanwhile, the beleaguered and supposedly trapped defenders of Lyman look fairly... chipper.

4.  These guys, not so much.  Bunching up kills, as we CMers all know.

5.  WHOOOMPH! 

 

 

Edited May 26, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[Kinophile]

3 hours ago, Butschi said:

 

• Turkey and the Balkan states have been held in limbo for a long time, so it would be difficult to argue why an exception should be made for Ukraine.

Turkey and the non-member Balkans current elites arent in some unfair purgatory - theyve repeatedly refused to guarantee media freedom, open trade, patent protection and crucially clean government through structural reforms or legal protection, etc. Stupid chauvinism ego and power protection seems mostly to blame.

Other countries, notably Romania, did accept terms, got in and have steadily improved. 

 

 

Edited May 26, 2022 by Kinophile

[Butschi]

12 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Turkey and the non-member Balkans current elites arent in some unfair purgatory - theyve repeatedly refused to guarantee media freedom, open trade, patent protection nd crucially and clean government through structural reforms or legal protection, etc.

True but IMHO that is only part of the truth. It's not like corners weren't cut for some countries in the past, for political reasons. See Greece, for instance, which didn't formally meet the criteria for getting the Euro and cheated but with the knowledge of the other Euro members. The eastern expansion was also somewhat rushed, w.r.t. to corruption, out of the top of my head, in Bulgaria.

Anyway, as you correctly said, the non-member Balkan states and Turkey don't meet the formal criteria. The same is true for Ukraine and so it is hard to argue to take in Ukraine but not the other applicants.

[The_Capt]

9 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

5.  So the Ukraine partition will become 'facts on the ground'. 

I take note of the valid points by @The_Capt about the drain on battered Russia of manning such a long frontier (and resettling/rebuilding a now devastated okrajina with whom? Cossacks and Kadyrov's Chechens?).

But remember, they have no choice but to make that heavy commitment, realign their shredded economy to China and wait for better days to resume their mucking around.

I don't buy Steve's thesis that there will be sustained partisan warfare. That won't force out (brutal) occupying forces by itself, and only so many citizens will risk martyrdom or deportation. Most will merely accept the new reality, as was true in Donetsk and Lukhansk

So...DOOOOOOOOOOM?

Well all war is negotiation and sacrifice, so the question will come down to both sides coming to terms with those two factors.  My pushback to the "inevitable partitioned Ukraine" is that Russia talks a good game but Ukraine has lived it.  Russia is only just starting to feel the pain and like any good nut-sack shot, that pain takes some time to build. 

Here is a dirty little inside baseball secret - professional soldiers are supposed to die, it is what we get paid for; civilians, not so much.  Every society knows this and accepts it.  We can lose people who choose this lifestyle who, like mercs, take the Queen's Coin and do the dirty work.  We have Remembrance Days and "Thank you for your service"-free coffee but in order for a society to be truly tested in war, it must be willing to feed it people who had nothing to do with warfare before it started.  The harsh calculus of regular everyday people dying in numbers is a threshold that we in the West have not crossed in a very long time (e.g. WW2 for Canada and Vietnam for the US).  Nor has Russia by this point, but it is approaching it quickly. 

However, you know who is already living in that stark land?...Ukrainians.  They have been "all in" since 24 Feb, to the point that there are no longer "regular Ukrainian civilians", the whole nation is in on this.  I see pictures of 12 year old holding a wooden AK properly and that says it all; war, has become the way of life for Ukraine.  Out of everyone talking and positioning, only Ukraine (and possibly the folks in the DPR/LPR...many involuntarily by the looks of things) has crossed that threshold.  Putin is very nervous of it, and it shows.  The US was terrified of it in Iraq, that is why they imposed all sorts of crazy things to try and keep the professional troops they had.

So before I pass judgement on the current situation with finality, I would want to see how Russia reacts when the civilian population starts bleeding heavily.  They are hurting but it has been a slow burn, and frankly I think Russia is culturally masochistic...to a point. However, despite a bunch of retired Russian warhawks barking from the cheap seats, Russia has not been tested in this trial in a very long time either.  Ukraine is the single largest hot-war they have been involved in since WW2.  History looks great in the movies and we can all get our pulses up watch Saving Private Sasha; however, watching the guy next to you get blown in half by long range arty when you were working at a now-closed Starbucks a month ago, is an entirely different experience.

So no, I do not think Russia and Ukraine or on the same wavelength when it comes to negotiation and sacrifice...at least not yet.

As to communication:

We have been over the challenge of the Russian Defence, which they need in order to "freeze" this conflict.  Right now they are keeping Ukraine busy by this very slow grinding offence, but it has been costly as hell.  At some point if they want to "freeze" they are going to need to dig in and let the UA crash upon the shores of the great Russian Steel Wall.

Problem is what it will take to build that wall.  Did some research and frankly we do not have modern troop density calcs for this sort of thing - we have lots on peacekeeping/making and COIN but basically sweet FA on modern conventional conflict.  So we are going to have to make some assumptions here and keep checking them.  In warfare the concept of "troop density" is a bit controversial.  It is a hold over of the Jomini-esque "war is math" approach.  It holds water but it is not deterministic as we already know a lot of soft non-linear factors play into this.  With this in mind, all caveats etc lets break this down a bit:

- We are talking about 800kms of frontage from the Russian western position around Kharkiv to its position ion the East near Kherson.  That is a long active front...very long.  In WW1 the Western Front was about 400 miles, or about 640 kms in comparison.

- Troop density requirements have decreased over time.  It is well documented that weapons ranges, ISR and battlefield mobility have increased the combat influence each soldier has on the battlefield over time.  Problem here is that reality cuts both ways.  In both offence and defence effectiveness and range have increased, so it is competitive. 

- Troop density in WW1 - a frozen conflict - was in and around "5000 troops for mile" or roughly 3125 per km: (https://books.google.ca/books?id=nhhlHGWCnzYC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=troop+density+western+front&source=bl&ots=WWfd6Y7VIl&sig=ACfU3U1M05Ef9GIbmBAREwu-_obJPnXEpw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_rO_4jf33AhXvjIkEHRJEDUoQ6AF6BAg7EAM#v=onepage&q=troop density western front&f=false).  This jives with the roughly 2 million troops each side had to sustain in the trenches, in depth, replacements and rotation, in order to sustain that deadlock.  This does not count logistics and support overhead -which is likely why each side had on the order of 12-15 million troops in total.

- Based on WW1 metrics, Russia would need approximately 2.5 million men in those trenches to achieve the same deadlock...and then have the architecture behind them to sustain it, which at a very generous 1:1 (which means a very slow burn war) means roughly 5 million men to dig in and hold that front a la WW1.  But as I noted we are not in WWI - although if the Russians tried to force generate these numbers they would probably start looking like they were from that era equipment-wise. 

- Actual Russian troop numbers as of today are hard to find; however, with the 200k they brought with them and assuming they have kept that force level (big assumption), Russia currently has a troop density of 250 men per km of frontage.  This is less than ten percent than the WW1 number. But as we noted modern forces can cover more ground, which makes this a weak analogy.  The question is, "versus a very well armed attacker, how much troop density does Russia need to "freeze" this front?"  My bet is a lot more than 200k troops, but how much more?

So let's tackle this from another direction.  Things in this war are challenging a lot of our rules of thumb; however, we can go with the 1:3 ratio of defender to attacker, at least locally.  So Russia likely needs to put at least a Company per km frontage.  This forces the UA to concentrate a BG on the attack, with all the support bells and whistles in order to make an effective shot at it.  This makes sense from a force-space-time perspective for both attacker and defender but I am not sure about firepower in the least [Note: it might be a lot less if things like UAVs and precision artillery are involved.  This is one of the unknowns]. Terrain may also give them a break, particularly on the Dnipro, however, they also have urban areas so I am betting things even out.  

So a Russian Company of say 150 men per km.  They will need at least on more company behind them to create effective depth and prevent breakthrough of that UA BG, while also accounting for attrition, so now 300 men per km.  And then they will need to rotate troops in and out of those positions.  We are not designed to live in the open, under harassing artillery/Switchblade fire indefinitely.  So we are now looking at another company for rotation and sustainment.  Throw in an armored reserve to plug holes and supporting fires/assets and we are getting dangerously close to a BTG, per km.  This would bring the Russians up to about 1500 (a fat BTG) men per km, about half of WW1 troop density.  Or 1.2 million men.  And that is just the fight stuff and basic tactical logistics.  As we know from this war, the Russians like to travel light on logistics and formation-level support, so we can probably add another third of that number, say 400k to build the backbone to keep those 1.2 million men in the field = about 1.6 million men...and they have to sustain that for years, under increasingly crushing sanctions.

I have to be honest, if I was an average Russian and I saw these types of numbers I would be asking myself "how badly do we need Putin". 

Finally, checking the old CIA factbook (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/russia/#people-and-society) Russia has roughly 37 million fighting aged men aged 15-54 (I am going to assume good old Putin male chauvinism holds and they do not a start tapping women).  You can throw out a third right off the top for all sorts of medical conditions etc that make them simply unfit for service.  So roughly 24 million men to draw from, in entirety.  To freeze this Ukrainian war, to the point that you can force Ukraine to "tap out" you need to commit at least 5 percent of all eligible fighting aged males...up front.  And you count on needing an extra 1.2 million just to sustain it over time.  Now I can hear the demographic nerds out there pointing out that over time more men come of age...well the news for Russia in that regard is not good either:

Russia is in a bit of a demographic hole right now and it is going to take what look like 3-5 years to dig its way out.  Worse the big bulges in the 35-44 range are going to age out in the same timeframe.

And finally, finally, this does not take into account the the standing military bill for the rest of the country - Russia can make all the noise it wants with Finland and Sweden, everyone is going to be fully engaged on this Ukrainian thing for a few years so you may as well shut down everything else.  

So What?  After all that it comes back to: how much does the average Russian want a bunch of new broken Republics vs how much does Ukraine want its country back? 

If I were a betting man, I would put my money on the country that has already demonstrated the commitment.  If this war goes long, we will likely need to shift from send guns and bullets (fish), to funding the creation of a Ukrainian domestic arms industry (fishing rods) and then figuring out what to do when Russia totally collapses under the weight of this thing.

Edited May 26, 2022 by The_Capt

[LongLeftFlank]

7 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So...DOOOOOOOOOOM?

Really? That was your takeaway from my post?

[kraze]

1 hour ago, Butschi said:

I understand and when even Sweden thinks neutrality is no longer a good idea it would be strange if Ukraine would be overly fond of this concept. Not without strong guarantees at the very least and then is it still real neutrality?

Foreign policy under Merkel was a little more complex than you put it here, although from your perspective the result is the same. German diplomacy had this idea of being the honest broker and there was a lot of diplomatic action w.r.t. Ukraine. The nature of this honest broker thing is, of course, that a lot of that was rather disadvantagous for Ukraine - hence the less than warm opinion of Steinmeier, I guess. What's more, German politics is first and foremost about German jobs and economy. Some people, I'm sure, really believed in "change through rapprochement". Put mostly it was/is an excuse for doing business with almost everyone. Mind you, that doesn't mean Germany sacrificed Ukraine in order to do business with Russia. The ideal situation was doing business with both sides. German automotive industry likes to produce in Ukraine and our automotive industry has a lot of influence on politics. Still, the net result is pretty much what you said, I guess.

To close the loop: I do understand why neutrality is off the table but as I said previously, I doubt NATO membership is on the menu, so what would be the solution? Bilateral defensive pacts?

There's only a single country in the world that threatens NATO and it's Russia.

There's also a country that's fighting Russia alone against all odds and it's Ukraine.

Ukraine already knows how, but most importantly - is willing to defend against Russia.

The math is blunt here. Not accepting Ukraine into NATO will be a net loss for an alliance. Because it's the only way Ukraine (and whole Europe) gets true peace, while NATO gets an experienced, battle hardened force that will be more than happy to play ball with all the NATO requirements and demands once this is all over.

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Really? That was your takeaway from my post?

Meh, just taking a "piss".

[Kraft]

3 hours ago, Huba said:

But please note that the numbers here is the "commitment", not what was actually transferred. For Germany it for sure included Pzh2000 and Gepards, none of which actually made it there.

I would also like to know what they valued the moldy Iglas at

It is no secret the german army requisitions are often a lot more expensive than they could of been, just using book values from each country has to be done with great amount of salt

[Huba]

So the latest Russian position regarding ceasfire:

 

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, JonS said:

the 777 transfers illustrate this too. The US has provided about 100, Australia about 6 and Canada about the same (numbers from memory, correct in order of magnitude), but the funny thing is that despite the wildly different absolute numbers all three nations have transferred about 10% of the 777 fleet.

Exactly!  In my experience a lot of people don't look at proportionality, but they absolutely should.

I posted a chart a bunch of pages ago that showed contributions as a % of GDP.  Estonia and Latvia were amongst the top, at something like 10%.  The US, while it has contributed as much as all other nations combined, was in the middle of the pack in terms of % of GDP.  This reminds me of a lot of the stats I saw out of Afghanistan.  At one point Estonia had the highest casualty % of any nation in the war, but in absolute numbers it was something like a dozen and that looked tiny compared to the losses the US and UK took.

Related, my comment before about all Ukraine needs is the US and Poland is reflective of this.  While the other contributors are doing important work, if the US pulled out of the mix Ukraine would be in big trouble because of absolute numbers.

Steve