How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[FancyCat]

2 hours ago, DMS said:

It's amazing that you openly admit that plans. And that western public "buy" it. "Pushing out of that Russian replacers"!  

Tbh aside from the physical elimination part for administrators in occupied regions, which I doubt will occur, not sure anything else Haiduk said is sinister. Of course collaboration needs to be punished (Ukraine abolished death penalty anyway no?), it’s war, full scale war unseen since the Balkans for Europeans, increasingly shown as a war of imperial conquest and erasure of Ukrainian identity. Why are you surprised at Haiduk and others anger? As for Crimea, those Baltic restrictions, don’t they have terms for non-citizens to gain citizenship? Those terms according to wiki are quite fine to me. 
I am not sure why you think some form of collective guilt is bad. It is important for society to have self-reflection and collective responsibility (Germany a prime example). Putin may have ordered the war, but Russia as a whole goes along with it, a war that has shocked European consciousness unlike anything since the Balkan wars or even 1945 as far back. A war seen as unthinkable, for the simple idea that many in the West believed Russia and Ukraine were “brotherly nations” yet somehow Putin was able to get Russia to launch a full scale attempt to seize all of Ukraine and annex it wholly, with the idea of erasing Ukraine as a nation and forcing Ukrainians into a Russian identity, well certainly Putin didn’t make it so that this could occur on his own. 

Foreign Minister Lavrov stated that Russia had a right to assert to militarily intervene to assert the Russian language be allowed in Ukraine by stating what the UK would do in response to Ireland banning English, or Belgium banning French, 

Except that is a pile of horse****, in this modern time, no European nation would invade another over language rights!

That Lavrov chose to mention Ireland is astoundingly on the nose considering Ireland tossed the British imperial chokehold on their country and certainly if you asked the Irish or anyone in Europe if Ireland had the right to tell Britain to go **** itself before breakfast and after dinner everyday, the answer would have been a resounding affirmation for Ireland doing so, so why does Russia feel like it can tell Ukraine what to do, and why does Russia think inflicting a full scale war is a valid justification of Ukraine banning Russian? (Which it didn’t do anyhow)

it would be like Britain attempting to reconquer Ireland over Ireland mandating Gaelic, a absolutely ridiculous notion to consider Britain having the right to do so, and would be rightly considered a British attempt at regaining her lost imperial status over Ireland and yet Lavrov is I dunno, stupid, or just unaware, or horridly too aware of how stupid and outdated the reasoning sounds.

 

[panzermartin]

I don't think dailymail is a trustworthy source but is this  request in touch with reality ? Even US doesn't have so many systems in service.  

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10914467/Kyiv-issues-list-equipment-wants-win-war-Russia.html#article-10914467

 

[Grigb]

15 minutes ago, Billy Ringo said:

On multiple occasions I've tried to find the % of Russian military by region both serving and KIA/WIA and can't find it. 

I cannot find now but I have seen map with percentage of KIA per population. Most affected per population are indeed minorities like Dagestan or Byritia. 

15 minutes ago, Billy Ringo said:

An assumption on my part, wrong or right, would be that most residents of these regions would likely be more progressive and likely to have more access to Western media.  Thus, their opinions on the Russian operations would be much different than that of Central or Eastern Russia.

Do not ask a Russian about war. Ask him when he is going to enlist. Any Russian who is older 20 years remembers Grozny. Any Russians who is older 30 remembers Afghan. 

Reality is even ultra nationalists know perfectly well that Ru generals are incompetent butchers. So majority of them want somebody else to answer the call.

Let me give you example - this funny DMS guy. He is relatively young(like 30), has no family, unimportant job and has shooting skill. He is an indoctrinated patriot who literally believe that in 2014 Ukrainian evil Nazis made coup and started killing Russian-speaking people.

He literally believes his people are being murdered all these years and he is sitting it out. 

All you need to know about RU patriots.

So, the majority of Russians do not want to be cannon fodder regardless of their support. It is just in poor regions people tend to enlist much more often because they have little choice to support their families. Better developed regions have options. 

15 minutes ago, Billy Ringo said:

It's one thing to stay quiet and go about one's business when/if the bulk of Russian forces are coming from far away places.  But to leverage full Russian mobilization would require the forced conscription of these territories which might then be the tipping point for the bulk of the population to become more vocal and disruptive.   Basically say, no mas.

Most likely it will be not just tipping point but crashing hammer - that's what broke Tsar (ww1). Thats what helped to collapse USSR (Afghan). Stalin managed to survive but he was mad dog and he had to kill or lock up a lot of people. Current RU oppression organizations are incapable of that.

That's why Putin so far avoided call for mobilization. Extremely risky.

15 minutes ago, Billy Ringo said:

If this assumption is only partly accurate, would this make the population base for potentially available Russian conscripts more like 35-45 ml. instead of 144ml?    Are body bags of Russian soldiers being sent with frequency back to Moscow or St. Petersburg?  From what I'm seeing--the answer is no. 

It is not just about limiting conscription pool. What are you going to do with all these dodgers and deserters? You have to deal with them otherwise conscription will fail. But the harsher you deal with them the harsher they will respond. It's like creating Ukrainian partisans all over the country. They are not going to fight for Ukraine. They are not going to even fight but they will **** around, steal, rob, drunk, pillage, rape, shoot and doing usual stupid stuff military aged males do when they have nothing to do.

That's like 1917 all over again. It's a nightmarish scenario for RU government.

[cesmonkey]

1 hour ago, Billy Ringo said:

On multiple occasions I've tried to find the % of Russian military by region both serving and KIA/WIA and can't find it.  I've seen numerous articles stating that Russian casualties are significantly higher for ethnic minorities and remote regions than that from more populated and progressive Western areas.   But nothing definitive.

From a population perspective, my visual reference of Western Russia consists of:

Region    Population, ml.    %of Population           

Northwest     13.6ml     9.5%

Central          38ml       26.4%

Volga          30ml        20.8%

South          16ml        11%

North Cauc.    9.5ml      6.6%

Total Western Russia    107 ml   74.4% of total population.  Total Russian population 144ml.

An assumption on my part, wrong or right, would be that most residents of these regions would likely be more progressive and likely to have more access to Western media.  Thus, their opinions on the Russian operations would be much different than that of Central or Eastern Russia.

It's one thing to stay quiet and go about one's business when/if the bulk of Russian forces are coming from far away places.  But to leverage full Russian mobilization would require the forced conscription of these territories which might then be the tipping point for the bulk of the population to become more vocal and disruptive.   Basically say, no mas.

If this assumption is only partly accurate, would this make the population base for potentially available Russian conscripts more like 35-45 ml. instead of 144ml?    Are body bags of Russian soldiers being sent with frequency back to Moscow or St. Petersburg?  From what I'm seeing--the answer is no. 

Would welcome the thoughts/opinions of those with a much greater and expanded knowledge of Russian culture and demographics.  Thanks in advance.

 

 

 

This website is cited as a source for casualties by region, if you can get someone to translate the charts and tables for you:
https://zona.media/casualties 

Actually, look at the graphics on this one:
https://zona.media/translate/2022/05/20/casualties_eng

And here are some, rather dated, news articles:
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220517-young-poor-and-from-minorities-the-russian-troops-killed-in-ukraine

https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-61638530

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by cesmonkey

[poesel]

12 minutes ago, Grigb said:

He is relatively young...

Can we please leave personal things out of this discussion? It doesn't help and that road is a slippery one.

[Aragorn2002]

4 hours ago, DMS said:

It's amazing that you openly admit that plans. And that western public "buy" it. "Pushing out of that Russian replacers"!  

Bouncer!!

[akd]

4 hours ago, DMS said:

It's amazing that you openly admit that plans. And that western public "buy" it. "Pushing out of that Russian replacers"!  

They literally stole property in many cases. Would prison be better?

[LongLeftFlank]

More good to know stuff on the artillery war. It isn't just range and ROF. No doubt many here know this, but there are also others like me who don't, and this is absolutely one of the fundamentals of the war right now....

 

 

Oh, and just because.....

 

 

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[riptides]

14 hours ago, Machor said:

 I found something 

Objective:

So, I was playing around with Google Trends to see if I could find a meaningful comparative statistic for Google searches from Russia using "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") and "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine"), and that didn't bring anything up. Instead, I stumbled upon this.

Methodology:

I looked up Google Trends data from Russia for Google searches for the last three months using "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") and "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine").

Findings:

Here are the top five subregions of Russia searching for "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") on Google for the last three months:

1. Chukotka Autonomous Okrug
2. Belgorod Oblast
3. Buryatia
4. Bryansk Oblast
5. Jewish Autonomous Oblast [It is Russian populated; Jews are only 1% of the population today.]

Here are the top five subregions of Russia searching for "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine") on Google for the last three months:

1. Chukotka Autonomous Okrug
2. Kostroma Oblast
3. Buryatia
4. Kamchatka Krai
5. Belgorod Oblast

Moreover, Moscow and St. Petersburg ranked 56th and 55th among Russia's 83 subregions searching for "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") [Since this is the politically correct form, this would include searches by liberals and dissidents.], and they ranked 58th and 75th among the 83 subregions searching for "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine").

Discussion:

Since Belgorod and Bryansk border Ukraine, heightened interest in the war is to be expected. Otherwise, we see that those most actively searching for information on events in Ukraine since the start of the war are far-flung regions where a large percentage of the population are professional military [Kostroma isn't far-flung, but it's piss-poor, and home to a VDV regiment that got wiped out early in the war.], and also the ethnic minority Buryatia and Chukotka, where at least the former are known to have taken very heavy losses in Ukraine. That these regions are actively searching for information on Google can be seen as an indication that they do not trust and/or are not satisfied with the information from the Russian press, and search results from Yandex.

Conversely, Moscow and St. Petersburg seem to have relatively little interest in the war beyond the official channels, in spite of their large populations.

Conclusion:

The war is having an unequal impact on Russian society and Russia's diverse regions, and this is already manifesting itself objectively via online data.

@LongLeftFlank

That's a very interesting way of looking at current events.

metadata don't lie.

[kraze]

51 minutes ago, Grigb said:

Let me give you example - this funny DMS guy. He is relatively young(like 30), has no family, unimportant job and has shooting skill. He is an indoctrinated patriot who literally believe that in 2014 Ukrainian evil Nazis made coup and started killing Russian-speaking people.

He literally believes his people are being murdered all these years and he is sitting it out. 

All you need to know about RU patriots.

Nah, he's smelling consequences personally hitting him and that's why he is mad. If his army, an army he pays for with his taxes, raped, murdered and looted unopposed - you'd never hear any complaints. But it's a very good example because at the start of the thread DMS was playing a victim, like "I've been seeing too much dead bodies of poor russian soldiers that die at a war started by some old guys, have you no shame", then "our army would never do Bucha, they are all tophat and monocle wearing gentlemen" and now it's a passive aggressive transformation to "b... but Ukrainians deserve it, see they don't like us killing them".

Unfortunately, having a "honor" of understanding their language only due to generations-long occupations, this is not an uncommon character development there.

[SeinfeldRules]

36 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

More good to know stuff on the artillery war. It isn't just range and ROF. No doubt many here know this, but there are also others like me who don't, and this is absolutely one of the fundamentals of the war right now....

 

 

 

 

Well his second thread isn't exactly accurate, as we absolutely have and account for manufacturing deviations between howitzers, and have several processes to identify these differences. We also have differences between the efficiencies of our propellants and the weight of our shells, which is why we segregate them into similar lots and track the differences between the various lots... that's probably the main difference between western and Soviet equipment, not necessarily purely a quality thing (though it plays a factor) but the fact that we more accurately account for those differences... looking at the Tabular Firing Tables of a Soviet D-30 and comparing it to ours, the amount of data they used was noticeably less. We have extremely detailed firing tables that account for many different variables, and I'm not sure if more recent Russian howitzers have improved, but I would argue that's a bigger factor then it being purely a manufacturing issue. Not every Russian howitzer is from the 1980s with completely shot out tubes, but if you have incomplete firing tables you will not be as accurate.

Edited June 14, 2022 by SeinfeldRules

[c3k]

17 hours ago, cesmonkey said:

I didn't read that NYT article the other day complaining about the lack of visibility into Ukraine's military operations by US intelligence. That's because I'm not a NYT subscriber.

However, the NYT does offer a free podcast and today they looked at that same issue.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/13/podcasts/the-daily/ukraine-war-intelligence.html

The reporter's argument is that Ukraine should provide more information to the US in order for the US to know whether the aid they are providing is being properly used - and what is truly needed. 

I'm not sure I agree.
 

I disagree. (I did not read the article.)  Any sharing of intelligence to the US would mean that intel would then be liable to be used for political purposes. Ukraine would have no control of it in that case and, if US domestic politics would benefit to Ukraine's detriment...guess which way the US politicians would decide?

 

[c3k]

17 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Speaking of EW...

 

Here's the EDM4S:   https://www.armedconflicts.com/Lithuanian-anti-drone-jammer-EDM4S-Sky-Wiper-portable-equipment-REW-t249674

EW is interesting...especially Russian use. Handheld jammers, like the EDM4S, are difficult to counter. However, they are similar to (early) MANPADs in that they are not kept turned on. They're only used AFTER a drone has been identified. (Manpads are limited by their IR targeting/seeker needing to be cooled, by boiling off cryogenics or using limited battery power.) The question remains...how would the jammer-user know when to use it?

Stand-off UAVs are undetectable without radar, IR, or staring focal arrays.

Russian area-jammers are useful to deny areas...  It would be great if they start using them. Nothing is easier than guiding a missile onto an active transmitter. Targeting beacons make for simple solutions. 

[LongLeftFlank]

Izyum-Sloviansk update

View of the ground.

 

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[DMS]

Well, I am glad to read that you don't support "collective punishing" and think that any punishment should be set by trial. Just wanted to know that. I think that Haiduk is also interested in this question, "probing" you, is it ok to write such things  or not. How far Western sympathies go.

Assumptions about my person are interesting, but I don't want to flood this topic, you know where PM button is. And no, I probably won't get any consequences personally to me, sitting in armchair, that doesn't mean that I shouldn't care.

[The_MonkeyKing]

analyst of analysts on analysists doing analysis:

 

[sburke]

4 hours ago, DMS said:

No, I didn't mean Russian citizens. But Haiduk already answered, I see. Sudetes, Volhynia. Very progressive.

“they that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind”

[Desertor]

3 hours ago, DMS said:

"Collective guilt" and trial? 100 thousands of trials, 200 thousands? Well, ok. 

It will take what it needs, but not be surprised if some trials are group trials, Nuremberg style ... by the way, are you still living in the Soviet Union?

[dan/california]

17 minutes ago, SeinfeldRules said:

Well his second thread isn't exactly accurate, as we absolutely have and account for manufacturing deviations between howitzers, and have several processes to identify these differences. We also have differences between the efficiencies of our propellants and the weight of our shells, which is why we segregate them into similar lots and track the differences between the various lots... that's probably the main difference between western and Soviet equipment, not necessarily purely a quality thing (though it plays a factor) but the fact that we more accurately account for those differences... looking at the Tabular Firing Tables of a Soviet D-30 and comparing it to ours, the amount of data they used was noticeably less. We have extremely detailed firing tables that account for many different variables, and I'm not sure if more recent Russian howitzers have improved, but I would argue that's a bigger factor then it being purely a manufacturing issue. Not every Russian howitzer is from the 1980s with completely shot out tubes, but if you have incomplete firing tables you will not be as accurate.

How frequently does the U.S. actually measure the muzzle velocity during combat operations? One of the more amazing videos of this whole war is Ru soldiers sliding shells down an icy hill. That can't have done the ammo any good, so much of it just the overall quality of operations.

 

[sburke]

10 minutes ago, DMS said:

Well, I am glad to read that you don't support "collective punishing" and think that any punishment should be set by trial. Just wanted to know that. I think that Haiduk is also interested in this question, "probing" you, is it ok to write such things  or not. How far Western sympathies go.

Assumptions about my person are interesting, but I don't want to flood this topic, you know where PM button is. And no, I probably won't get any consequences personally to me, sitting in armchair, that doesn't mean that I shouldn't care.

Really, worried about collective punishment... then maybe Russia can explain where all those folks went.

Thousands of Ukrainian children reportedly have gone missing since the start of the war on Feb. 24. A growing body of evidence suggests that some of these children have been forcibly taken to Russia. According to Ukrainian Permanent Representative to the U.N. Sergiy Kyslytsya, more than 234,000 children had been transferred to Russia by early June.

The kidnapping of minors is a violation of both the U.N. Genocide Convention and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet recent research suggests such tactics have stark precedents. In the past, authoritarian regimes in Spain and in Argentina, among others, resorted to child kidnapping to target their opponents — just as these regimes entered their most lethal and repressive phases. These historical cases offer lessons about how Ukraine can hold perpetrators accountable.

What do we know about Ukraine’s missing children?

Rumors about the abduction of Ukrainian minors date to March 19, when the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported that Russian forces had taken 2,389 children from the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Simultaneously, Pyotr Andryushchenko, assistant to the mayor of Mariupol, reported that around 4,500 city residents had been taken against their will across the border into Russia.

Although the exact numbers of kidnapped adults and children remains unclear, growing evidence suggests these are large numbers. In mid-April, an Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe report detailed claims by Ukraine officials that Russian troops had deported approximately 500,000 civilians. The numbers have grown since then, with Ukrainian authorities recently estimating that 1.2 million Ukrainians have been deported against their will.

These claims have yet to be verified, and locating specific children and families has proved difficult in wartime. But the reports of forced deportations to Russia and the threat to Ukraine’s most vulnerable citizens have raised alarm in the European parliament.

Why Russia may be taking Ukrainian children (msn.com)

[Huba]

Just now, dan/california said:

How frequently does the U.S. actually measure the muzzle velocity during combat operations? One of the more amazing videos of this whole war is Ru soldiers sliding shells down an icy hill. That can't have done the ammo any good, so much of it just the overall quality of operations.

 

AFAIK most contemporary SPGs have the radar sensor built in to the FCS and measure each shot. I'm sure PzH2000 does, Krab too.

[Grigb]

 

19 minutes ago, DMS said:

Assumptions about my person are interesting, but I don't want to flood this topic, you know where PM button is.

No need to flood. When are you going to enlist? Are you ready to provide photo proof? 

EDIT I am enlisting the moment NATO attacked. I am ready to provide photo proof. 

Edited June 14, 2022 by Grigb

[Beleg85]

14 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

@Beleg85, I used 'Western Way of War' deliberately and you picked up on the Hanson reference nicely, full marks.

I found his thesis interesting, if underdocumented as you say (fine, him and Gladwell and a bunch of other popularisers too -- he doesn't write for academics or wonks). Sadly, I have found Hanson himself (like Paul Krugman on the other team) a disappointingly dull reciter of partisan talking points.

Hehe, thanks. I am mainly interested in the light of his views of antiquity- for some time he was actually very prominent classical scholar that kicked the whole discipline forward in a way. But as was the case with other guys of his type (D.Kagan,  E.Luttwak et all.), his personal neocon bias become really unbearable as time progressed. 'Carnage and Culture" and "Father of us All" were just painful to read- a shameful mix of political agenda, unfounded stereotypes and selected reading of sources, all dressed as military history.

I sometimes wonder if US public even know how much this group (and their interpretation of Thucydides and views of America as New Rome) actually influenced Rumsfeld and company to push their wars...

And this blog by Tooze is great. Had no idea before that US military was so much influenced by Germans beyond maybe Halder and this cocky liar Guderian . Can it be true that 80's helmets were really inspired by staahelme in any other way than practicallity?

8 hours ago, G.I. Joe said:

It looks like this may well be the war where drones "come of age." Of course, in some ways that could be said of Vietnam, the 1982 Lebanon War, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and/or Iraq...we're coming up on the 78th anniversary of the first drone strike this September. Sometimes revolutions in warfare happen gradually at first and then the floodgates open. Just look at the trickle of submarine technology from the American War of Independence to World War I...

Yep. I wonder of long-term consequences for civil culture here, too. As for now, there was a visible reluctance on the part of young engineers and startupers in Europe to put their hands on anything military. You know- bobos, Silicon Valley, Facebook etc. But now they seem to enjoy using their geeky skills to constructs those killing toys. This may be cultural shift that will stay for a longer time.

Edited June 14, 2022 by Beleg85

[SeinfeldRules]

30 minutes ago, dan/california said:

How frequently does the U.S. actually measure the muzzle velocity during combat operations? One of the more amazing videos of this whole war is Ru soldiers sliding shells down an icy hill. That can't have done the ammo any good, so much of it just the overall quality of operations.

 

Theoretically a fully digital system will calibrate on every round, to build up a historical database to help correct each individual howitzer.... in reality it can be more complicated then that, so units will typically conduct an eight round calibration with all their howitzers for their "base" lot (ie the one they have the most of), and can do inferred calculations with a single howitzer shooting subsequent lots to get all required muzzle velocity variations (MVVs) for a battery/battalion. For places like Iraq and Afghanistan this wasn't too complicated as you had all your ammunition on the firing point and knew well in advance what you were shooting. In the field it's much harder because who knows what the distribution unit will show up on their trucks... so it becomes more complicated. At the very least you can account for tube wear pretty reliably, and hope for the best when it comes to propellant efficiencies. Things like prop temperature is updated fairly regularly and I've seen evidence of both Russian and Ukrainian units doing this. I've also seen Soviet ammo with marking indicating that they are accounting for shell weight variations as well.

As for rolling rounds down hill, it's not the best but realistically might not have much of an effect, as long as the obturating band is covered and the fuze well is protected. Most ammunition I've seen comes with all that covered in the packaging. We've had rounds fall off trucks and still shot them with no issues, artillery rounds are fairly hardy.

Edited June 14, 2022 by SeinfeldRules

[Centurian52]

On 6/9/2022 at 10:28 PM, Rice said:

I believe @Battlefront.com mentioned that there was a desire to make a historical CM title based on this conflict a bit down the road, if so, how granular do you think the modeling of different tank models would be? We have seen enough tank variety that modelling most of them would surpass the WW2 titles. Same question for equipment and small arms too, but I'm not sure how much the engine could support that variety. Having CMPE, the amount of variance in individual soldiers kit that you can program seems to be a swap between a regular and an alt if I recall correctly, meaning there are two possibilities per role/soldier.

For full granularity the Russian forces would need 16 different tanks (T64BV, T72A, T72AV, T72B, T72B Obr. 1989, T72BA, T72B3, T72B3 Obr. 2016, T80BV, T80U, T80UK, T80UE-1, T80UM2, T80BVM, T90A, and T90M), while Ukraine would need 14 different tanks (T64A, T64B, T64BV, T64BV model 2017, T64B1M, T64BM, T64BM2, T72 Ural, T72M1, T72A, T72AV, T72B, T72AMT, and T80BV).

But if you just want to represent 90% of the Russian tanks you just need the 8 most common tanks (T72B, T72B3, T72B3 Obr. 2016, T80U, T72B Obr. 1989, T80BV, T80BVM, and T64BV). And if you are fine with getting 80% of the Russian tanks than you only need the 6 most common tanks (T72B, T72B3, T72B3 Obr. 2016, T80U, T72B Obr. 1989, and T80BV).

For the Ukrainians if you just want to represent 90% of their tanks you only need the 5 most common tanks (T64BV, T64BV model 2017, T80BV, T72B, and T72AMT). And if you are fine with 80% of the Ukrainian tanks then you just need the 3 most common tanks (T64BV, T64BV model 2017, and T80BV).