How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[billbindc]

3 hours ago, Calamine Waffles said:

The thing is that, before the war he was one of those people who was publishing articles like this:

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/09/23/zapad-2021-what-we-learned-from-russias-massive-military-drills-a75127
 

 

 

 

You could very well argue that analyses from fairly influential people like him discouraged heavier Western aid to Ukraine, especially in the lead-up to and earlier stages of the war. I think they have to acknowledge that this probably led to a lot of Ukrainian deaths, and I don't think they have the intellectual honesty to do that.

I think it's fair to say that Kofman's understandable misreading of the situation and the somewhat huffy arrogance he's frequently displaying lately is lowering regard for him pretty significantly.

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Kofman has a funny bit when he's asked early on what he got wrong and he snippily replies "well I don't know who didnt!" Please, someone get him and @Battlefront.com and @The_Capt on a zoom chat...and a lot of popcorn please.

This reminds me of all the financial experts who said nobody could have seen the collapse of the housing bubble coming.  Yet there I was, years before it isolating my retirement account (401k for you Yanks) and continuously monitoring my primary bank's lending practices to make sure they were stringent enough.  And guess what?  I lost no money in my 401k when others last 50% and my bank suffered no special hit when the financial sector imploded.  Er, so suppose those financial experts would say I made a lucky guess?

6 hours ago, Kinophile said:

But he has some good takes, as well as Dara Massicot of RAND. Like Steve above, she notes that Russia has shown almost no capacity to adjust to the tactical realities and even though they are somewhat changing, its too slow and too small.

I haven't had a chance to listen yet (it is queued up for sure!), but this has been one of those things that I can't really fault the experts for getting wrong.  Even I expected the Russians would better adapt to conditions after the first month.  Maybe not as much as they expected, but for sure I didn't think they would show almost no improvement in month 2 and only tiny improvement (out of necessity?) in month 3+.  Which gets me to this point...

6 hours ago, Kinophile said:

And all this since even the very start when the West was publishing Russian war plans and the RuA still said, "Feckit lets go ahead anyway- our blue stripeys will protect us!" - and hoped for the best. Then shes promptly man-splained by Ryan but kk, its his podcast.

... one should never expect your enemy to consistently take all the options available to it and consistently select the worst paths forward.  Expecting such behavior means crafting doctrine that relies upon "best case scenarios", which is a very bad concept.  Instead, you should assume your adversary will be reasonably competent and even, at times, show flashes of brilliance.

Much to everybody's surprise, Putin not only consistently chose to pursue the worst options available to him and the military he created consistently botched executing those options.  A double whammy of incompetence.  The crap equipment, shortages of key capabilities, poor training, etc. were always givens for an operation of this scale.  Therefore, if someone presumed Putin would make decent choices, the military would reasonably translate them into orders, and the forces on the ground were generally able to carry them out... well, then this war has been full of surprises

For me, this war started with me concluding that Putin had made a decision that the military was incapable of planning for success with forces that were destined to fail.  While the war has definitely been full of surprises for me too, Russia losing this quite badly is not one of them.

Steve

[Calamine Waffles]

In WOTR, Kofman was saying he thinks Russia will rebuild and probably faster than most people think, but who is going to finance Russia's rebuilding and remodernising of the military?

Unlike 1905, they are in terminal demographic decline and France is not going to bail out their arms industry or rearm their military this time.

Is China going to foot the bill? Unlikely, they see Russia as a resource extraction state like the US sees Canada. They also have their own historical grudges against the Russians. They have no interest in a strong, independent Russia beyond one that can keep the Europeans occupied.

Edited May 30, 2022 by Calamine Waffles

[Battlefront.com]

27 minutes ago, billbindc said:

I think it's fair to say that Kofman's understandable misreading of the situation

Kofman earned his reputation for knowing as much, if not more, about Russian military capabilities fair and square.  I do not know anybody of equal standing who held an opposing view and could have successfully debated him prior to this war.  That is because pretty much everybody in that strata of the analysis profession got the same major things wrong as Kofman did.

In fact, let's say that I somehow got put up on a debate stage with Kofman before the war.  He would have wiped the floor with me.  Why?  Because a fair amount of my thinking, which turned out to be spot on, was not based on anything other than my gut feelings about how this specific war setting would play out.  The moderator would ask an intelligent question about capabilities and outcomes, Kofman would have spelled out things in such detail that anybody other than a military geek would have tuned out.  Then when the moderator turned it over to me, my answers would basically boil down to "yeah, but I think the Russians suck at war and millions of pissed off Ukrainians won't be pushed aside easily".  Not the best way to win a debate

The take away from this whole expert assessment debacle is there weren't enough people like me (i.e. a doubter of Russia's real strength and proponent of Ukraine's real strengths) getting paid to flesh out their gut instincts into arguments that could stand up to detailed analytical scrutiny.  The result is that one dominate chorus was allowed to sing alone when it turns out they were singing from the wrong sheet music.

27 minutes ago, billbindc said:

and the somewhat huffy arrogance he's frequently displaying lately is lowering regard for him pretty significantly.

I am reluctantly agreeing with this.  Kofman should have figured out early on that he had made some core misjudgements and used his VAST knowledge to recalibrate his assessments of how the war might go from that point on.  Instead, we saw from him, and others, a reluctance to confront the fact that Russia really does suck at fighting war on this scale and is unlikely to unsuck any time soon.

To put it in Kofman's own words, he early on said that he had spent years trying to convince people that Russia wasn't 12 feet tall, now he fears he's going to have to convince people they aren't 4 feet tall.  This is not what he should be doing.  He should be trying to tell us how tall Russia is right now against Ukraine in this war, not some future possible scenario.  And if it means him having to explain that Russia is currently 1 foot tall, then he should do that and not worry about correcting people later on if Russia rebuilds itself into a taller foe.

Steve

[fireship4]

5 hours ago, dan/california said:

That's a different Mykolayivka... er Mykhailivka than the one in 'The War in Ukraine' Live map:

Edited May 31, 2022 by fireship4

[Battlefront.com]

6 minutes ago, Calamine Waffles said:

In WOTR, Kofman was saying he thinks Russia will rebuild and probably faster than most people think, but who is going to finance Russia's rebuilding and remodernising of the military?

I still haven't listened to it yet (I will soon), but this is a refrain that is common amongst the people that got it wrong.  It is a variation on theme that their prewar analysis wasn't that far off and we need to avoid underestimating Russia's capabilities in the near future.  "They will learn from their mistakes" is one of the more common things I see being pushed, but there is the "they have vast reserves to bring into play", "once they rebuild they will hit a weakened Ukraine", and others similar to that.  This all flies in the face of the facts... Russia has lost this war and there's NOTHING it can do to change that fact.

I am still baffled by the argument that Russia can rebuild a military that could be better than the one it had in February 22nd, 2022.  Those points have been discussed here so many times I won't repeat them.

Steve

[Calamine Waffles]

7 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Kofman earned his reputation for knowing as much, if not more, about Russian military capabilities fair and square.  I do not know anybody of his stature who would have been able to successfully debated him prior to this war.  That is because pretty much everybody in that strata of the analysis profession got major things wrong.

The problem is that he, like many of the other Russia-specific military analysts, bought into the PR and theatre that the Russians put out (which, in fairness, the Russians seem to have bought themselves). Generalists tend to have a broader picture because by their nature they have to have some knowledge about how militaries other than just Russia's operate. So that can act as a sanity check.

[akd]

Yikes!

 

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, Calamine Waffles said:

The problem is that he, like many of the other Russia-specific military analysts, bought into the PR and theatre that the Russians put out (which, in fairness, the Russians seem to have bought themselves). Generalists tend to have a broader picture because by their nature they have to have some knowledge about how militaries other than just Russia's operate. So that can act as a sanity check.

See corrected (tweaked) post above.  I cleared up a few of my thoughts and they align with what you just said quite nicely!

The experts seem to have missed the fact that strategic victories are built upon operational successes which are determined by tactical capabilities.  If you don't have a force capable of regularly securing tactical wins, then you'd better have the ability to fight a war that gives you a chance to score enough successes that all the failures don't wind up mattering.  This is what the Soviets did in WW2, this is what Russia can't do in Ukraine because Russia today is not Soviet Union of 1940s.

Steve

 

[Battlefront.com]

6 minutes ago, akd said:

Yikes!

 

Yikes indeed!  That Ukrainian soldier was cool as a cucumber.  I don't need to understand Ukrainian to know what was going on.

An obvious reminder why journalists are supposed to have at least some minimal training for treating wounds.  At least they had at least one tourniquet on them.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

BTW, the reason I have stuck with ISW is that early on they showed they had the capacity to adjust their pre-war thinking to account for the current war reality.  They have steadily gotten even better and bolder at looking at things with an open mind and drawing very different conclusions than they would have pre-war.  They now consistently say things like "Russia is trying to do X, but we don't think they can pull it off for Y reason".  Separating Russia's intentions from their capabilities is extremely important.  Otherwise one just falls into the dreaded Red Map Arrow Syndrome™

Steve

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, Vic4 said:

@Battlefront.com@The_Capt@Haiduk@kraze et al..

Appreciate any perspective on the following regarding Crimea.

1. Should reacquiring Crimea be a strategic/operational goal at all for Ukraine?

2. If yes, what would you anticipate Russia’s response to be, given the current condition of the RA & political climate?

3. Would a majority of the Crimean population actively support or reject such an endeavor by Ukraine?

Very tough questions and I have no idea on #3 - the region seems to have normalized since 2014 under Russia unless I have missed reports on an insurgency.   More to the point would Ukraine re-taking Crimea trigger an insurgency in itself?  Or has 8 years of Russia love driven the locals in the Crimea away?

As to #1 and #2 - Ukraine has every right to re-take Crimea as it was essentially stolen illegally - UN and most the west agree.  Should they, is trickier.  I would hope that if the Russia front collapses to the point that the UA can seriously look at a Crimean offensive that we are regime change territory because I would be nervous as to what Putin might do out of desperation.  If Russia sees Crimea as part of the motherland then it could escalate things dramatically as this would be akin to an operational offensive into Russia itself.  Of course if the Russian military and political have collapsed then have at it.

And the there is the reaction from the West.  We are pretty united right now and doubling down our bets, I am not sure what a deeper offensive by Ukraine into Crimea would do to that.  Before warcrimes I would have said “doubtful” but a lot of water has gone under the bridge in the last 3 months.  So would a Crimean offensive make the alliance nervous? Likely “yes”, but how nervous.

So to summarize I have to admit that I really don’t know.  My guess is that unless Russia is in military and/or political free fall a Crimean offensive would be an escalation, and with Putin at the helm a significant one.  It would be justice to take back the peninsula and the Black Sea Fleet anchorage/basing at Sevastopol.  However for the UA to get to the point that they could retake Crimea, a whole lot has already gone very bad on the Russian side…would it be enough?  

 

[Calamine Waffles]

There is retaking Crimea militarily, but there's also making it unusable to Russia to the point where they have to give it up. I imagine the latter us much more doable with Harpoons and SAMs + the destruction of the Kerch bridge.

[Battlefront.com]

7 minutes ago, Calamine Waffles said:

There is retaking Crimea militarily, but there's also making it unusable to Russia to the point where they have to give it up. I imagine the latter us much more doable with Harpoons and SAMs + the destruction of the Kerch bridge.

The problem with making Crimea an island is then all the Human suffering that takes place there is being caused by Ukrainian action instead of Russian inaction.  A good chunk of the original Ukrainian population of Crimea will not look upon an eventual Ukrainian victory with much pleasure.  We already saw this when Ukraine cut water and electricity supplies to Crimea back in 2014/2015.  So if I were Ukraine, I'd not repeat that sort of thing this time around.

Striking Russian military installations is more viable, but lots of Ukrainians work there and will likely become casualties.  This also makes things problematic for Ukraine's image.

Mind you, this is all BS because Russia started this war and Ukraine has every right to fight back.  Especially if it does so selectively vs. Russia's mass atrocities against civilians and destruction of civilian infrastructure.  But Crimeans won't likely be as understanding.

If it were up to me, I'd seal off Crimea and try to negotiate something better than the status quo.  I would not make any immediate plans for a military conquest of Crimea.  Too risky militarily, too uncertain politically.  Ukraine has a lot more important things to take care of in the immediate future.  Crimea can be put on the back burner for a while.

Steve

[Calamine Waffles]

You don't necessarily have to starve them, all you have to do is make the military installations unusable and destroying warships/SAMs located there because they threaten Ukrainian territories and assets. It's perfectly justifiable because Russia uses their naval assets to launch Kalibrs at Ukraine.

Like, the Ukrainians can still keep the water flowing from Nova Khakova and allow food through. Maybe cut off fuel supplies if absolutely necessary.

Edited May 31, 2022 by Calamine Waffles

[MikeyD]

56 minutes ago, fireship4 said:

That's a different Mykolayivka...

I did the same thing with an earlier post about Russian snipers in Pisky. I thought 'Russians in Pisky?!' then realized they were talking about Pisky, Donetsk oblast and not the village Pisky on the Pivdennyi Buh river 80 kn above Kherson

[dan/california]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

The problem with making Crimea an island is then all the Human suffering that takes place there is being caused by Ukrainian action instead of Russian inaction.  A good chunk of the original Ukrainian population of Crimea will not look upon an eventual Ukrainian victory with much pleasure.  We already saw this when Ukraine cut water and electricity supplies to Crimea back in 2014/2015.  So if I were Ukraine, I'd not repeat that sort of thing this time around.

Striking Russian military installations is more viable, but lots of Ukrainians work there and will likely become casualties.  This also makes things problematic for Ukraine's image.

Mind you, this is all BS because Russia started this war and Ukraine has every right to fight back.  Especially if it does so selectively vs. Russia's mass atrocities against civilians and destruction of civilian infrastructure.  But Crimeans won't likely be as understanding.

If it were up to me, I'd seal off Crimea and try to negotiate something better than the status quo.  I would not make any immediate plans for a military conquest of Crimea.  Too risky militarily, too uncertain politically.  Ukraine has a lot more important things to take care of in the immediate future.  Crimea can be put on the back burner for a while.

Steve

Ukraine needs to trade Crimea for Russia agreeing to Ukraine joining the EU, and NATO. I realize nobody likes this idea, but short of taking Moscow, and doing something medieval with Putin's corpse this is the thing that would create a stable peace. The other issue with taking back Crimea is that I don't think Ukraine can deal with an unhappy populace that size and retain uncontested Western support. Putting down riots inherently looks bad on TV. The FSB most certainly knows this, and I am sure they have a plan. EU/NATO membership and the 2/24 frontiers as absolutely inviolable international borders make Ukraine a prosperous, UNIFIED, successful country. Sometimes living well really is the best revenge. 

[Calamine Waffles]

I believe that can only be accomplished if the Russians agree to demilitarize Crimea. As long as it hosts naval and air assets that can be used to threaten Ukraine, it will be a non-starter.

[billbindc]

58 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I still haven't listened to it yet (I will soon), but this is a refrain that is common amongst the people that got it wrong.  It is a variation on theme that their prewar analysis wasn't that far off and we need to avoid underestimating Russia's capabilities in the near future.  "They will learn from their mistakes" is one of the more common things I see being pushed, but there is the "they have vast reserves to bring into play", "once they rebuild they will hit a weakened Ukraine", and others similar to that.  This all flies in the face of the facts... Russia has lost this war and there's NOTHING it can do to change that fact.

I am still baffled by the argument that Russia can rebuild a military that could be better than the one it had in February 22nd, 2022.  Those points have been discussed here so many times I won't repeat them.

Steve

Analytical vapor lock is a real thing. I very much respect Kofman's expertise but that expertise is rendered less useful if it's deployed in the service of salvaging an earlier (and in many ways entirely reasonable) misjudgment. That's pretty clearly what he's doing. 

[dan/california]

 

[danfrodo]

9 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Analytical vapor lock is a real thing. I very much respect Kofman's expertise but that expertise is rendered less useful if it's deployed in the service of salvaging an earlier (and in many ways entirely reasonable) misjudgment. That's pretty clearly what he's doing. 

"analytical vapor lock" -- that's great.  Is it trademarked or can I use it?  

[Artkin]

9 hours ago, sross112 said:

If the west announced 300 M777s,

Just to put things in perspective a bit:

 

According to "The Military Balance 2016" there were only 421 M777A1/A2 in service with the US Army and the reserves. The Marines had 501. Himars is a different story: 830 ATACMS capable M270(/A1)'s, and 375 M142's in the Army.

Germany only had 99 Pzh 2000, with Italy coming runner up with 68.

 

 

For Russia and Ukraine here are some numbers.

Russia:

MBT 2,700: 1,300 T-72B/BA; 600 T-72B3; 450 T-80BV/U; 350 T-90/T-90A; (17,500 in store: 2,800 T-55; 2,500 T-62; 2,000 T-64A/B; 7,000 T-72/T-72A/B; 3,000 T-80B/BV/U; 200 T-90)

AIFV 5,400: 500 BMP-1; 3,000 BMP-2; 500 BMP-3; 700 BRM1K; 100 BTR-80A; 600 BTR-82A/AM; (8,500 in store: 7,000 BMP-1; 1,500 BMP-2)

Ukraine:

MBT 788: 710 T-64/T-64BV/BM; 70 T-72; 8 T-80BV; (10 T-84 Oplot; 150 T-80; 530 T-72; 640 T-64; 20 T-55 all in store)

ARTY 1,862 SP 541+: 122mm 247 2S1; 152mm 288: 235 2S3; 18 2S5; 35 2S19; 203mm 6+ 2S7 (up to 90 in store)

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by Artkin

[dan/california]

This video this the first clip I have seen in the whole three months of someone actually adjusting something on an artillery fuse. 

[Battlefront.com]

12 minutes ago, dan/california said:

 

I saw that.  The guy's postings are pretty good, though he is obviously extremely biased in favor of Ukraine.  So having him say that Severodonetsk is abandoned is credible at least.  It is also consistent with other information we have to look at.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Uncommon video of a clear view of a Stugna-P hitting a moving target:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarRoom/comments/v1br16/stugna_p_destroys_russians/

Heh... you can see a quick flash shows that this is an export model Stugna-P.  Just a tiny glimpse of Arabic.

Steve