How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[CHEqTRO]

So, after reading the article, key points are:

- They are going to send a battery of Selenia Aspide AA missiles, on their surface to air configuration.

- There are 40 Leo2a4 that were previously mothballed that the government is trying to reactivate to be sent to Ukraine

-There are 6 Leo2E (Leo2a6) in Latvia that will serve to train ukranian crews initially

-Supposedly, ukranian crews will eventually came to Spain to train in the Leo2a4s

-It seems that the final intention is for the tanks to be sent for actual combat usage, however that is still far off, and the plan is for them to act as training vehicles as of now.

 

Edit: Seems that the idea of sending those mothballed Leo2a4 is not new, as it was already discussed back in april 18, so maybe the reactivation process is somewhat advanced?:

 

Edited June 5, 2022 by CHEqTRO

[Panserjeger]

13 hours ago, Calamine Waffles said:

Kast talks to Dobrev, who has been one of the more prescient analysts when it comes to this war.
 

 

This one is absolutely worth the time to watch, Dobrev have some very good examples on how corruption and greed have undermined the combat effectiveness of the Russian army prior to the invasion. 

[poesel]

2 hours ago, Huba said:

 Scholz must be fuming

I even haven't voted for this guy but this is stupid. He may be slow or cautious whatever you want to call it but he is not on the Russian side.

1 hour ago, CHEqTRO said:

...

Huge caveats, we need German approval first,

...

Nevertheless, huge news for Ukraine if true, as it marks the precedent for western tanks being sent to the country.

That would be the most interesting part. For Scholz to refuse delivery of German tanks by OTHER countries would be  politically impossible. If that gets approved and no nukes are raining on Spain, there could be hardly made an argument for Germany not to deliver tanks, too. That discussion will be fun.

But I haven't seen that piece hitting the German news so the show hasn't started, yet.

 

Edit: SPIEGEL has it but only in the short news so that is on

Edited June 5, 2022 by poesel

[Cederic]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is not something that current TacAI takes into consideration, but it should for really crappy crews.  A more experienced and motivated one would have more confidence that they could do something evasive, even if it turns out not to be the case.

Sure the experienced crew became that way by legging it from their vehicle before it joined the turret launch olympics?

[Calamine Waffles]

1 hour ago, CHEqTRO said:

So, after reading the article, key points are:

- They are going to send a battery of Selenia Aspide AA missiles, on their surface to air configuration.

I think the Aspide is going to be more useful to the Ukrainians at this time. It's no S-300, but it is a capable medium range system in its own right.

[c3k]

6 hours ago, FancyCat said:

If Russia didn't have nukes, sure, I could see a situation like the Persian Gulf patrols. But....it does. So NATO is not going to risk nuclear confrontation and war. Plus commercial shipping won't go into the Black Sea unless a country seizes their ships or somehow legally forces them to work in the Black Sea.

This points out a recurring theme: because Russia has nuclear weapons, they cannot be pushed too hard to comply with international norms of behavior.

I wonder if anyone in Europe the West is drawing a lesson from this vis a vis Iran's continuing quest to gain nuclear weapons? As insane as Putin seems to be, I cannot imagine how Iran's leadership will act once they gain that type of leverage.

Edited: because it's not just European politicians that seem to have lost sight of the dangers of nuclear proliferation.

Edited June 5, 2022 by c3k

[The_Capt]

11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

When people ponder Ukraine's ability to do a big counter offensive I've been saying they don't need one.  All they need to do is continually pick and choose weak points to smash them.  One at a time is fine, though more is better as long as Ukraine doesn't get over confident and provide Russia with an opportunity to inflict pain. 

Russia simply can not keep this war going "as is" if it is losing ground and forces, even a little at a time, on a continual basis. 

Steve

We discussed this before and it is an interesting idea - a “fog eating snow” highly distributed offensive.  It is still “big” but a death of a thousand cuts.  It would still need to deliver operational effects and most importantly it must be able to deliver tactical attrition in depth.  The aim here is the collapse of the Russian military system, first locally and then regionally.  This already happened once in this war and could happen again.

The trick is pushing the Russian system past a “recovery point”.  The weakness of FEBA tactical actions is that they are localized.  Grinding F ech units up in order to break a system is a highly inefficient and long process.  If you can take that attrition, once again, along its operational length then system collapse can happen a lot faster.  This brings me back to the first phase of this war, the UA needs to strike Russian artillery, logistics and C2 nodes, far more that it does Russian tanks.  We are basically taking about a 21st century version of Deep Battle; however, now the aim is to make a Russia defensive system collapse vs forcing a Soviet offensive one to stall.

[Huba]

3 hours ago, poesel said:

5 hours ago, Huba said:

 Scholz must be fuming

I even haven't voted for this guy but this is stupid. He may be slow or cautious whatever you want to call it but he is not on the Russian side.

He must be fuming, cause his BS might get exposed, as you yourself explained in the rest of your post. What's supid about it? 

[Bil Hardenberger]

20 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

We discussed this before and it is an interesting idea - a “fog eating snow” highly distributed offensive.  It is still “big” but a death of a thousand cuts.  It would still need to deliver operational effects and most importantly it must be able to deliver tactical attrition in depth.  The aim here is the collapse of the Russian military system, first locally and then regionally.  This already happened once in this war and could happen again.

The trick is pushing the Russian system past a “recovery point”.  The weakness of FEBA tactical actions is that they are localized.  Grinding F ech units up in order to break a system is a highly inefficient and long process.  If you can take that attrition, once again, along its operational length then system collapse can happen a lot faster.  This brings me back to the first phase of this war, the UA needs to strike Russian artillery, logistics and C2 nodes, far more that it does Russian tanks.  We are basically taking about a 21st century version of Deep Battle; however, now the aim is to make a Russia defensive system collapse vs forcing a Soviet offensive one to stall.

We need to wargame this out Warren.

There is some real cutting edge stuff happening in Ukraine right now, but offensive success, on both sides, is not where it is happening. 

I agree 100% that striking the enemy throughout its depth, but mainly in the rear and along the MSRs is the most effective and quickest way to break up an enemy offensive... it has worked for the Ukrainians over and over again in this war.

I think there needs to be more work on how tactical (CM size) formations of Brigade-Battalion and below operate while on the offense... because frankly its at that level that both sides have had poor and underwhelming results so far... that is a missing ingredient that I think we can wargame and come up with a few possible concepts of employment... using distributed infantry forces, UAVs, artillery, rocket artillery, tanks (massed at key points and times), and information warfare. Those make up what I think of as the new-combined arms force and working out how they operate together would be an interesting experiment.

[domfluff]

11 minutes ago, Bil Hardenberger said:

We need to wargame this out Warren.

Was playing this last week. Is John's semi-rigid Kriegspiel of the first couple of weeks of Ukraine, discussed here:

http://wargamingco.blogspot.com/2022/03/ukraine-2022-why-are-our-wargames-wrong.html

Brigade level, but I think it did a pretty decent job of modelling some of the fundamental problems with this, notably in how easy it was to stymie the Russian advance by using depth (and how ridiculously big Ukraine is).

[Harmon Rabb]

Order your new Cope Cage now! Now available for your T-62. 

[Kinophile]

10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yup, I've made a note of this a while ago.  This is not something that current TacAI takes into consideration, but it should for really crappy crews.  A more experienced and motivated one would have more confidence that they could do something evasive, even if it turns out not to be the case.

Steve

Im not sure of this logic. Wouldn't a more experienced crew know the reality, that they cant outrun/maneuver/reverse an incoming ATGM?

Conversely, a crappy, inexperienced crew wouldn't?

The guys above are obviously highly aware of the uselessness of staying in their mobile sardine cans, which speaks to experience. The first guy who falls out seems to help/encourage everyone else to GTFO and is one of the last to leave.

 

[Huba]

No comment needed

Also, one has to admit that if Germans commit to do something, they do it really well:

 

Edited June 5, 2022 by Huba

[Aragorn2002]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

He must be fuming, cause his BS might get exposed, as you yourself explained in the rest of your post. What's supid about it? 

I don't think Scholz is doing much wrong. Germany supports countries who send their Russian made material to Ukraine, but also sends German weapon systems like the powerful PzH 2000 and the Gepard Flakpanzer, not to mention the many Panzerfaust ATGM' s.  I don't see any justification to call that BS. There's a strange Germany bashing atmosphere in this thread, but I think Germany is doing all it can in a very difficult and complicated situation. 

Apart from that I'm not in favor of sending all available weapons to Ukraine because we don't have much left to start with. Rearmament will take years and years and Ukraine is getting enough weapons to stand their ground. In the meantime NATO has to rebuild it's strength and prepare for the time when the US will turn it's back on Europe.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[Huba]

Just now, Aragorn2002 said:

I don't think Scholz is doing much wrong. Germany supports countries who send their Russian made material to Ukraine, but also sends German weapon systems like the powerful PzH 2000 and the Gepard Flakpanzer, not to mention the many Panzerfaust ATGM' s.  I don't see any justification to call that BS. There's a strange Germany bashing atmosphere in this thread, but I think Germany is doing all it can in a very difficult and complicated situation. 

Well, there were the strange statements from DE MoD about NATO-wide agreement not to provide western AFVs to Ukraine directly, which is now going to be proven bovine manure by the Spanish. I agree that German support to UA is substantial, but all the political circus around it is confusing and really quite annoying. 

[poesel]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

He must be fuming, cause his BS might get exposed, as you yourself explained in the rest of your post. What's supid about it? 

Just because you don‘t share someone’s reasoning you can not (or least should not) call it BS. That is not a discussion, just flinging dirt.

3 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

I don't think Scholz is doing much wrong. Germany supports countries who send their Russian made material to Ukraine, 

Thanks for the warm words from the neighbours!

I guess Germany gets a lot of bashing because it is still seen as a big military power. It is not - it is a dwarf (relative to its economic power). The reason the Bundeswehr exists is because of the cold war. After that was won it had no perceived purpose at all (from the German public viewpoint) and it was underfunded into oblivion. That is where we are now. The promised 100b€ were just approved last week. It will be a while until this is a respectable army again.

[billbindc]

13 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

I don't think Scholz is doing much wrong. Germany supports countries who send their Russian made material to Ukraine, but also sends German weapon systems like the powerful PzH 2000 and the Gepard Flakpanzer, not to mention the many Panzerfaust ATGM' s.  I don't see any justification to call that BS. There's a strange Germany bashing atmosphere in this thread, but I think Germany is doing all it can in a very difficult and complicated situation. 

There's plenty of room to critique Scholtz but your last point is spot on. He has been forced to navigate some quite difficult intraparty politics and reorient decades of German policy overnight. His own military isn't really onboard and the German foreign policy establishment is having to question every premise it held since the 1990's. It's easy to scoff at that but it's without question a barrier the German government has to surmount. We remember this guy, right? 

https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2022/01/24/german-navy-chief-resigns-following-ukraine-comments/

Edited June 5, 2022 by billbindc

[Huba]

6 minutes ago, poesel said:

Just because you don‘t share someone’s reasoning you can not (or least should not) call it BS. That is not a discussion, just flinging dirt.

So to just cut the off-topic, I agree with the post above - Scholz's position is very difficult and realistically he couldn't probably do much more. 

The BS comment was aimed precisely at the statement that delivering Western made AFVs is a no-no because of some strange external reasons ( "informal NATO agreement"). That statement, in the light of Spanish plans is the definition of BS. 

Edited June 5, 2022 by Huba

[billbindc]

Something that fortuitously dropped into my lap this morning that gets deeply into the German conundrum:   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/germany-dependence-russian-energy-gas-oil-nord-stream?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[Sequoia]

7 hours ago, chrisl said:

Indeed that's correct!  There's a graphic on wikipedia showing the righthand rail position for a bunch of different gauges, all with the same lefthand.  There's overlap at the bottom and only a small gap at the top.  So for dual gauge tracks it looks like they just use longer ties and four rails, which adds another whole layer of complication to dual-gauging existing tracks.

Thanks to all for the information on why dual gauge won't work as a quick solution. However, please don't overlook my question about converting just one line to wide gauge by moving one rail (no dual gauge) to, say, Constanta. As I said, I'm sure smarter people than me have been thinking about such things. I'm just trying to learn if it won't work, why.

Thanks

[keas66]

12 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Something that fortuitously dropped into my lap this morning that gets deeply into the German conundrum:   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/germany-dependence-russian-energy-gas-oil-nord-stream?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Great Article from the Guardian - thanks for the link .

Mind boggling that the  Germans ended up trusting the Russians  that much  and then  without a pause ....

"In February this year, German Green economic affairs and climate action minister Robert Habeck said that gas storage facilities owned by Gazprom in Germany had been “systematically emptied” over the winter, to drive up prices and exert political pressure. It was a staggering admission of Russia’s power to disrupt energy supplies"

 

 

[cesmonkey]

53 minutes ago, Huba said:

No comment needed

Also, one has to admit that if Germans commit to do something, they do it really well:

 

According to this interview, the software was updated by a joint German-Ukrainian team:
 

6:16

Auch hier hatten wir auch ein Joint Venture mit ukrainischen IT-Spezialisten,
 

 

[Aragorn2002]

18 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Something that fortuitously dropped into my lap this morning that gets deeply into the German conundrum:   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/germany-dependence-russian-energy-gas-oil-nord-stream?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Interesting article! Good old Ronnie Reagan wasn't the fool some people made him out to be. But I think both Europe and the US have made incredibly wrong calculations when it comes to Putin. Time to correct those mistakes. Don't trust Russia. Period.

[Aragorn2002]

7 minutes ago, keas66 said:

Great Article from the Guardian - thanks for the link .

Mind boggling that the  Germans ended up trusting the Russians  that much  and then  without a pause ....

"In February this year, German Green economic affairs and climate action minister Robert Habeck said that gas storage facilities owned by Gazprom in Germany had been “systematically emptied” over the winter, to drive up prices and exert political pressure. It was a staggering admission of Russia’s power to disrupt energy supplies"

 

 

Also happened in the Netherlands. Talking about Russian planning....

[SeinfeldRules]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

Also, one has to admit that if Germans commit to do something, they do it really well:

 

I could not find anything in that video that supports that third tweet, although all I had to go off was auto-translated closed captions. Maybe I missed it, but it's a big claim so I'd love to see the proof.

Edited June 5, 2022 by SeinfeldRules