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Charliegrs posted:So apparently some of the cruise missiles that Russia fired at Kyiv hit apartment buildings. I'm curious, does Russia deliberately pick militarily insignificant targets like that for cruise missile strikes? I mean I know Russia has no problem attacking civilian targets but things like artillery rounds are relatively cheap. Cruise missile are very expensive, they probably have a limited stockpile, and may not even be able to manufacture new ones right now. It seems like it would make more sense to fire them at more valuable targets. Our best guess is that it was a "just do something" temper tantrum after a building that some Russian military leaders were using was hit. Russia's non-nuclear cruise missiles are really not useful in this conflict, and they have been using them in stupid pointless ways here and there for a while.
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Jun 26, 2022 21:40
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Ynglaur posted:Does anyone have a link to the NY times article that isn't behind a paywall? You can read any NYT article by stopping loading the page after the article loads but before the paywall loads. It sometimes takes a few tries to get right but you don’t need to use incognito or a cookie clear or anything. Maybe some day they’ll fix that loophole — the Economist recently did, iirc. Definitely still works on NYT as of like, this morning.
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Jun 26, 2022 21:42
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You can just turn off javascript. If you use firefox, go to about:config, search javascript.enabled, and set it to false. Dunno for chrome but probably similar.
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Jun 26, 2022 21:44
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Charliegrs posted:So apparently some of the cruise missiles that Russia fired at Kyiv hit apartment buildings. I'm curious, does Russia deliberately pick militarily insignificant targets like that for cruise missile strikes? I mean I know Russia has no problem attacking civilian targets but things like artillery rounds are relatively cheap. Cruise missile are very expensive, they probably have a limited stockpile, and may not even be able to manufacture new ones right now. It seems like it would make more sense to fire them at more valuable targets. It could be anything, from old missiles being inaccurate, to imprecise target coordinates entered, to having old maps for flight path so the missile which is programmed to do its final dive hits a high building that wasn't supposed to be there. Could even be bad intelligence, maybe the building was thought to be a legit target, as unlikely as it is. But you can't just really tell from a single case. Sometimes they hit targets that can be called strategic, many times not quite so. But it's difficult to assess what the intent was. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Jun 26, 2022 |
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Jun 26, 2022 21:46
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Rigel posted:Our best guess is that it was a "just do something" temper tantrum after a building that some Russian military leaders were using was hit. Why do you believe these things? Ukrainian leadership has repeatedly stated that Russian missile strikes have been targeting military C2, logistics nodes, bases, military warehouses, etc. Russia is not just randomly firing missiles that don’t matter. Ukraine has cited missile attacks, numerous times, as a reason they are desperate for help with air defense. Sometimes these missiles hit erroneous uninhabited buildings or civilian targets but it’s the exception rather than the rule.
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Jun 26, 2022 21:49
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mlmp08 posted:Why do you believe these things? 70% of Chernihiv a military target? All of Mauripol? Kharkiv? Trying to hit an electrical station to knock out the electrichka in Volovets at nearly max range of their missile capability isn't exactly strategic for the current theater they are fighting in.
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Jun 26, 2022 21:54
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Fwiw I have been told from kyivites that the military factory producing Neptune missiles is across the road from the bombed apartment blocksTipTow posted:For someone who told me they only begrudgingly accepted being an IK, let alone a mod, CZS sure does love smashing the probe button. Now they get to do it all over DnD, and not just in their own petty little fiefdom! Have you contributed anything to this or any other discussion of substance? All you do is whine about you and your moron friends being mistreated. You know you don't have to come out of the stupid american containment zone right (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 26, 2022 22:02
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Militarily speaking, expending 60,000 shells to move 1km is what we call in strategic terms "jerking off." People are staring at zoomed in segments of the map for so long that they've lost sight of the fact that Ukraine is really big, and if a BTG crosses the street after what used to be a shopping mall is turned into gravel with artillery it means gently caress-all for either side. It's not Ukraine being super genius eternal winners, and it's not OMG LINE MOVED RUSSIA STRONK THEY WIN either. It's terrible for the people involved but doesn't change the big picture situation. I think it's understated sometimes how crazy it is that Ukraine, while fighting a war, is trying to phase in NATO gear while also still using shitloads of Soviet era stuff, and trying to maintain and supply both at once. It's the kind of thing that would make a G-4 lose their loving minds. It wouldn't surprise me if their problem is less "we need more poo poo" than "we're doing the logistics equivalent of juggling chainsaws, holy poo poo."
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Jun 26, 2022 22:09
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mlmp08 posted:We have to look at what those civilian casualties are- just because they're civilian doesn't make them innocent! Lets take a look at a few possibilities: 
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Jun 26, 2022 22:29
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the forums should implement a twitter-style disclaimer that pops up whenever someone references the Grover Iraq post
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Jun 26, 2022 22:35
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Shes Not Impressed posted:70% of Chernihiv a military target? All of Mauripol? Kharkiv? Was Chernhiv damaged only by cruise missiles? All of Mauripol? Kharkiv? You were being disingenuous to the discussion about why a cruise missile might hit an apartment block, apparently across the road from a cruise missile factory.
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Jun 26, 2022 22:35
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The number of apartment complexes hit by cruise missiles since Feb 24 shows that Russian command is very indiscriminate towards lobbing them at the cities and does not care when they miss the target and result in civilian deaths. They still sell the "surgical strikes" narrative to the domestic audience and claim that every house hit was a false flag. The Kramatorsk railway station strike was the most brutal (although that was Tochka and not Kalibrs used to hit any point in Ukraine from Black sea) - their intelligence probably pointed to the military arrival and yet they hit civilians boarding evacuation trains. fatherboxx fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Jun 26, 2022 |
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Jun 26, 2022 22:42
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On the topic of Russia's use of artillery shells and whether or not they will run out, let pretend that they have a balance sheet called something like 'Putin's-Special-Operation-Dumb-Bombs.xlsx' By all accounts, Russia is burning through a huge amount of artillery shells. Obviously, they are actively manufacturing them too. However Russia they simply cannot just magically turn X rubles into Y shells. To manufacture shells you need several things, including labor (which Russia is having a shortage of, like the rest of the world) and factories. They are naturally constrained in amount of shells can produce. They are almost certainly burning through them faster than they are making them. Seems very likely that they are running in the red, but it's extremely hard to know how big their reserves are. They could have mountains upon mountains in storage, but it's impossible to know for sure without looking at Putin's magic spreadsheet. But there are places we can look for hints. When you start running out of any resource, you start to scraping the bottom of the barrel and looking for it somewhere else. Russia has a huge stockpile in Cobasna. Legend has it that there are mountains of Soviet artillery shells there, just waiting to be uncovered by a plucky group of Russian special ops, and sailed down the Dniester. When Russia starts getting really desperate for shells, we'll probably start seeing things heat up again in Transnistria. Another place to look at is Belarus. They probably have stockpiles of soviet era shells lying around. As of the last few days, the Russian regime has been giving missiles and moving troops through to Belarus. I would assume a part of the reason they are doing this is to trade for and retrieve old soviet artillery stuff. The Belarusian Regime has no use for artillery right now, or likely ever, so if I was in Lukashenko's shoes, I'd just want deterrence, and be happy to trade old soviet garbage for it. Plenty of post-soviet states like Kazakhstan probably still have lots of soviet artillery lying around, but I cannot find anything about them giving it to Russia, so maybe they are doing under the table, or maybe Kazakhstan is waiting for a time when trading shells will give them maximum political leverage over Russia, or maybe they are afraid to because of western sanctions. I dunno. Also I have no idea if China or India even manufactures soviet-compatible artillery, but maybe someone else does. The Russia Regime is likely very concerned about running out of artillery, and if they were smart, they would do whatever it takes to circumvent it. Thinking that artillery a non-issue for them seems shortsighted. In a war of attrition, all resources are finite and the one you don't consider is the one that fucks you. This is the idea I came up with in the shower.
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Jun 26, 2022 23:29
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This is all assuming those shells were kept in a special and stable environment (they weren’t) and their insides are not full of mildew and ants (they are).
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Jun 26, 2022 23:36
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Shes Not Impressed posted:70% of Chernihiv a military target? All of Mauripol? Kharkiv? You’re talking about a completely different topic. I was referencing cruise missiles. You’re talking about?
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Jun 26, 2022 23:38
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Russia absolutely has used missiles to punitively hit non-military targets. A certain amount of Russia's total target selection is punitive and non-military and that has been consistent regardless of delivery platform.
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Jun 26, 2022 23:46
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What are you quoting?
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Jun 26, 2022 23:49
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Russia absolutely has used missiles to punitively hit non-military targets. A certain amount of Russia's total target selection is punitive and non-military and that has been consistent regardless of delivery platform. It is still an absurd claim to say missiles do not help their war effort and are aimed at nothing in particular, which is what I was responding to from Rigel.
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Jun 26, 2022 23:50
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Russia absolutely has used missiles to punitively hit non-military targets. A certain amount of Russia's total target selection is punitive and non-military and that has been consistent regardless of delivery platform. Well, they clearly targeted grain storage and shipment facilities with advanced missiles.
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Jun 26, 2022 23:50
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mlmp08 posted:You’re talking about a completely different topic. I was referencing cruise missiles. You’re talking about? I'm not sure why posters are trying to tie themselves into knots coming up with reasons why a cruise missile hits an apartment block when there is a fairly simple answer. Because it was a deliberate act.
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Jun 26, 2022 23:52
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mlmp08 posted:What are you quoting? A notorious goon “explaining” “legitimate” civilian casualties.
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Jun 26, 2022 23:52
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@chill monster To back your point up, Belarus was shipping arms to russia a few days ago. Upon looking I can't find a source for this so take it for what you will.
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Jun 27, 2022 00:01
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Some 2-3 weeks back, there was a separatist account that they were running out of 122mm ammo for the artillery pieces Russia gave them, as it's no longer producing shells for those. They had to be reequipped and retrained on old 152mm pieces from stockpiles.
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Jun 27, 2022 00:05
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cinci zoo sniper posted:A notorious goon “explaining” “legitimate” civilian casualties. Oh. Seems pointless to misquote someone when the OG claim was that the Ukrainian military does not believe Russian missiles are useless and never hit military targets.
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Jun 27, 2022 00:15
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I'll paste some of the good bits. A lot of it is like "The Pentagon is training a lot of Ukrainians but we don't know the details". WASHINGTON — As Russian troops press ahead with a grinding campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to resist the onslaught depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials. Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials. At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine. The United States withdrew its own 150 military instructors before the war began in February, but commandos from these allies either remained or have gone in and out of the country since then, training and advising Ukrainian troops and providing an on-the-ground conduit for weapons and other aid, three U.S. officials said. ...Army Secretary Christine E. Wormuth offered a glimpse into the operation last month, saying the special operations cell had helped manage the flow of weapons and equipment in Ukraine. “As the Ukrainians try to move that around and evade the Russians potentially trying to target convoys, you know, we are trying to be able to help coordinate moving all of those different sort of shipments,” she said at a national security event held by the Atlantic Council. “Another thing I think we can help with,” she said, “is intelligence about where the threats to those convoys may be.” The cell, which was modeled after a structure used in Afghanistan, is part of a broader set of operational and intelligence coordination cells run by the Pentagon’s European Command to speed allied assistance to Ukrainian troops. At Ramstein Air Base in Germany, for example, a U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard team called Grey Wolf provides support, including on tactics and techniques, to the Ukrainian air force, a military spokesman said. The commandos are not on the front lines with Ukrainian troops and instead advise from headquarters in other parts of the country or remotely by encrypted communications, according to American and other Western officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. But the signs of their stealthy logistics, training and intelligence support are tangible on the battlefield. Several lower-level Ukrainian commanders recently expressed appreciation to the United States for intelligence gleaned from satellite imagery, which they can call up on tablet computers provided by the allies. The tablets run a battlefield mapping app that the Ukrainians use to target and attack Russian troops.
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Jun 27, 2022 00:39
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sean10mm posted:People are staring at zoomed in segments of the map for so long that they've lost sight of the fact that Ukraine is really big, and if a BTG crosses the street after what used to be a shopping mall is turned into gravel with artillery it means gently caress-all for either side. It's not Ukraine being super genius eternal winners, and it's not OMG LINE MOVED RUSSIA STRONK THEY WIN either. It's terrible for the people involved but doesn't change the big picture situation. It's been pretty amazing watching the narratives in some circles shift over time and what counts as Russian victories these days. February: Kyiv will fall in 3 days. March: Ukraine is big but it's over in a few weeks April: The invasion of Iraq took 6 weeks and Ukraine is way bigger May: Ukraine is a peer adversary and no one has fought a peer war at this scale before. June: Only Russia could fight a war like this. NATO would collapse. Russia is actually strong. Ukraine is being bombed from end to end by an enemy with 14 times the military budget while trying to incorporate unfamiliar second-hand gear from a dozen countries on the fly. By every metric Russia should have won this handly by now but refusal to deploy sufficient forces is dragging it out and attriting material and consumables which will absolutely necessitate a recalibration of objectives. Obliterating every city in their path is not a viable strategy unless they limit their goals to Donbas and the south. Mariupol was the 11th largest city in the country, it was mostly destroyed and it took almost 3 months to take it. Kharkiv is 3 times larger, Kyiv 7 times larger. Unless Russia plans on transitioning to a full war time economy and spending years on this expedition it is unsustainable.
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Jun 27, 2022 00:49
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Generic DOD SDO take (two days old) https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/3073420/senior-defense-officials-hold-a-background-briefing-june-24-2022/quote:Q: I believe the first time you described the retrograde from Severodonetsk you said that it was a marginal gain by the Russians at great cost. So if you can't give us an estimate of Russian casualties, what is the basis for the statement that they have made these incremental gains at great cost? fatherboxx posted:The Kramatorsk railway station strike was the most brutal (although that was Tochka and not Kalibrs used to hit any point in Ukraine from Black sea) - their intelligence probably pointed to the military arrival and yet they hit civilians boarding evacuation trains. We do have some very clear examples of Russia just blowing up a ton of civilians for the sake of just generally being awful. The theater in Mariupol is perhaps the most explicitly clear example, and the AP did a quality piece on it and how many civilians it killed (maybe ~600!) for no good reason: https://apnews.com/article/Russia-ukraine-war-mariupol-theater-c321a196fbd568899841b506afcac7a1 Here is what the USA said about targeting the railway station in Kramatorsk https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/2994883/senior-defense-official-holds-a-background-briefing/: US Senior Defense Official posted:Day 44. I know everybody's interested in this missile strike on the Kramatorsk train station. Obviously, we are not buying the denial by the Russians that they weren't responsible. I would note that they originally claimed a successful strike, and then only retracted it when there were reports of civilian casualties. So it's our full expectation that this was a Russian strike. We believe they used a short-range ballistic missile, an SS-21, and we'll leave it to local authorities to speak to the casualties and the damage. We don't have perfect visibility into that. The US has been pretty clear about war crimes in other areas, deliberate civilian targeting for the sake of being punitive, etc, but when it comes to the railway station, the US statement implies in a less crass way that bombing railroad stations during a war is a thing the US and allies have done done plenty of times and would probably do in a future war, even if with modern tech the US would attempt this without killing so many civilians.
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Jun 27, 2022 01:30
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FishBulbia posted:They have a fuckload of shells tho. People have been saying since march that Russia no longer has offensive capacities, if in a week we're sitting here and the lines haven't changed, I'll agree. Until then it is speculation. Well, from what I understand the Russian Army is now using shells left over from 1945 in some cases. So the vaunted endless Russian artillery does have an end, and it cannot exactly be safe using artillery shells from the Second World War, 1950s, and 1960s. mlmp08 posted:Why do you believe these things? Speaking of, Russia has been largely reduced to firing ASMs at land targets; this is a testament to that the Russian really are scraping the bottom of the barrel to prosecute this war. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Jun 27, 2022 |
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Jun 27, 2022 01:59
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ZombieLenin posted:Well, from what I understand the Russian Army is now using shells left over from 1945 in some cases. It very much is *not* safe. If you’ve ever held a rifle cartridge, you can shake it and hear the powder move around. Thing is, the more it’s shaken, the finer that powder gets, meaning it burns faster than intended. Which is not good and has resulted in some catastrophic failures of small arms. I’m sure the same principle applies to artillery, provided it’s using powder propellant and not some weird rear end solid or liquid magic propellant.
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Jun 27, 2022 02:05
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Owling Howl posted:Obliterating every city in their path is not a viable strategy unless they limit their goals to Donbas and the south. Mariupol was the 11th largest city in the country, it was mostly destroyed and it took almost 3 months to take it. Kharkiv is 3 times larger, Kyiv 7 times larger. Unless Russia plans on transitioning to a full war time economy and spending years on this expedition it is unsustainable. Isn't this the goal now though? It allows Putin to save face and still declare some kind of victory. Granted, I don't understand how they'll ever fully control occupied regions with their current troop levels. A low level insurgency will make this impossible and they'll just have to withdraw in a couple years.
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Jun 27, 2022 02:07
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ZombieLenin posted:Well, from what I understand the Russian Army is now using shells left over from 1945 in some cases. I mean, that may be, but ultimately artillery shells aren't hard to make and the Russian army won't run out of shells to use so I don't think it really matters. Some factory will ramp up production because no matter what Russia will need to replenish its stockpiles anyway. But I don't think any of the recent developments are in any way surprising and I'm not worried about Ukraine suing for peace anytime soon.
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Jun 27, 2022 02:08
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NASAMS incoming from US https://twitter.com/natashabertrand/status/1541179512561582085 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASAMS
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Jun 27, 2022 02:20
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WarpedLichen posted:I mean, that may be, but ultimately artillery shells aren't hard to make and the Russian army won't run out of shells to use so I don't think it really matters. Some factory will ramp up production because no matter what Russia will need to replenish its stockpiles anyway. I think you underestimate just how many shells several thousand guns expend in this kind of conflict.
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Jun 27, 2022 02:27
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Isn't this the goal now though? It allows Putin to save face and still declare some kind of victory. Granted, I don't understand how they'll ever fully control occupied regions with their current troop levels. A low level insurgency will make this impossible and they'll just have to withdraw in a couple years. Seems to be for now, yes. Not even Donbas from get-go, but piecemeal claimed proxy territories, because Luhansk oblast’ was already 95% controlled by Russia before the fall of S-D. To add some fresher context to Owling Howl’s numbers, that long rear end thread in Russian that I dropped has the guy really going into detail - according to his account of events, Russia spent slightly over 80 days to capture and secure a 20x20km grid in Zolote and Popasna area. Those of you that follow all the combat maps would very likely find the whole thread interesting enough to bear with machine translation. Under unrealistic napkin math with some impossible to ascertain assumptions, and hypothetical premise that Russia is going to move through Donetsk oblast’ at 10x the suggested Popasna pace, they’ll need over 240 days to sweep through government-controlled area of Donetsk oblast’. cinci zoo sniper fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Jun 27, 2022 |
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Jun 27, 2022 02:29
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I've done some very light research--and artillery logistics are not my expertise--but it looks like the USSR averaged between 100K and 270K gun and mortar shells and rockets per day during WW2 (75mm and larger). But most of that (~2/3rds) were 82mm mortars and 76mm field guns. If you remove those, the Red Army was using between 30K and 80K of shells and rockets per day. In other words, Russia today is using WW2 levels of artillery volume, akin to the Red Army in 1943 and 1944. I have no idea what their artillery ammunition stockpiles look like, but that's an obscene amount of shelling, especially given that it's concentrated on a much smaller front (~40% of the length of the Eastern Front in WW2). That said, I wouldn't expect them to run low on basic, unguided artillery any time soon. When I was in Iraq in 2003, one of the Iraqi Army's ammunition dumps measured 5km x 8km. I'm not exaggerating: it was 40 square kilometers of just bunker after bunker full of munitions. EOD teams were doing 10,000lbs. (~4500 kg) of demolitions a day and it wasn't making a dent. At the time they estimated it would take that level of operations 10 years to clear just that one depot, and there were others scattered around. The point is that there was a lot of 122mm and 152mm and Warsaw Pact-standard rockets made during the Cold War, and Russia probably didn't lose all of it when the USSR split. Ultimately Ukraine needs the abilityt to engage and destroy Russian artillery. Knocking out 4-6 guns and rocket launchers a day--which is their current rate--isn't going to cut it.
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Jun 27, 2022 02:38
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Warbadger posted:I think you underestimate just how many shells several thousand guns expend in this kind of conflict. Doubly so when supply depots keep managing to blow up regularly
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Jun 27, 2022 02:38
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Map time! https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1541210396463431681?s=20&t=AJTxxw_jqobiotbDI717WQ Not much change. ISW updates https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1541144877425205250?s=20&t=bRf9q683vMOupxjpp2HWvQ Today's article: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-26 quote:... https://twitter.com/bradyafr/status/1541164399448268800?s=20&t=AJTxxw_jqobiotbDI717WQ
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Jun 27, 2022 02:42
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-26/russia-defaults-on-foreign-debt-for-first-time-since-1918Bloomberg News posted:
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Jun 27, 2022 02:48
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Another dawn is breaking in Kyiv, and it's still Ukrainian.   
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Jun 27, 2022 02:48
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WarpedLichen posted:I mean, that may be, but ultimately artillery shells aren't hard to make and the Russian army won't run out of shells to use so I don't think it really matters. Some factory will ramp up production because no matter what Russia will need to replenish its stockpiles anyway. Once their reserve runs out, they will have to scale back dramatically. They do not have the ability to make 60,000 shells a day. Then they will be firing at each other at about the same rate except Ukraine's artillery will hit what it is aimed at, from further away.
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Jun 27, 2022 02:50
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