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StarBegotten posted:Just saw on BBC news that Germany just announced increasing defense spending to 2% of GDP... good job Putin! GABA ghoul posted:2% has been a goal for some time, but I think this will move the time tables up a lot. DTurtle fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Feb 27, 2022 |
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Feb 27, 2022 12:04
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Feb 27, 2022 12:04
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Are there any good reads on the state of the Ukrainian military? I've been reading plenty of takes linked to from this thread about the Russian military, but I realize I've read nothing about Ukraine's armed forces.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:05
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Saladman posted:The Battle of Baghdad took 6 days ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baghdad_(2003) ). It took about 2 weeks from when Americans first started rolling into Iraq until Baghdad no longer had military opposition, but Baghdad is a lot further from the Kuwaiti border than Kyiv is from the Belarusian border. Depends on whether you count from the beginning of the air bombing campaign or from actual troops moving in on the ground. We spent like a month bombing first.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:06
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Ofaloaf posted:Are there any good reads on the state of the Ukrainian military? I've been reading plenty of takes linked to from this thread about the Russian military, but I realize I've read nothing about Ukraine's armed forces. No And don't ask - that's the kind of information that helps russia.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:09
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bad_fmr posted:At least in our Finnish defence forces infantry doctrine and training creating all sorts of ambushes is central. Logistics convoys are some of the best targets for them. That they can create these kinds of ambushes suggests to me that the Russian attack is getting overextended. Thing is, I'm not seeing any evidence of the standing Ukrainian military doing anything but that (and some drone strikes). I mean, yeah, OPSEC and all, but still. Though I'm suspecting that the vast majority of actual combat engagements are currently happening in the east and away from large population centres, so there isn't anyone there to actually film them.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:09
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Drone_Fragger posted:No And don't ask - that's the kind of information that helps russia. Russia knows. This is very different than posting "yolo about to ambush a russian tank at 8 t.shevchenko vul."
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Feb 27, 2022 12:11
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nurmie posted:Thing is, I'm not seeing any evidence of the standing Ukrainian military doing anything but that (and some drone strikes). I mean, yeah, OPSEC and all, but still. Though I'm suspecting that the vast majority of actual combat engagements are currently happening in the east and away from large population centres, so there isn't anyone there to actually film it. Apparently there is very heavy enforcement among ukrainians of "don't loving post where our guys are, dumbasses." That said yeah the less Ukrainian forces can avoid direct engagement the better. A tank that runs out of gas and then gets molotov'd after the crew abandons it is just as dead as one taken out with a javelin, and with less risk and expense by far.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:11
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FishBulbia posted:Russia knows. It did? Seems surprising in that case they'd keep driving tanks and troops into obvious ambushes.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:11
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Drone_Fragger posted:No And don't ask - that's the kind of information that helps russia. Like drones. I haven't seen anything, but I thought after their use in Armenia this would've been a huge factor here as well.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:12
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mobby_6kl posted:I doubt there's anyting any of us know that Russia doesn't already. Probably what took out that chechen column. Hard to know but that's my guess.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:13
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General_Disturbed posted:See this would make sense to me if the camera people in Ukraine panned over to show there was a 10 mile long convoy of russian vehicles and troops approaching their cities. Just a "You are going to be inundated in a wave of war". But all the videos I'm seeing out of Ukraine are just like, here's a small detachment of russian armor with maybe 100 soldiers if you're being generous. Even if they arrive at their eventual destination without being shot to pieces, what is their plan upon arrival. You could maybe control one city block with that kind of small force. Then what? It's kind of the fog we're stuck in with just having propaganda to try and judge the situation. As a few other goons mentioned, it's likely that they're just probing attacks/recon probes or possibly the other theory that they're throwing their middle troops around to judge resistance and find weak spots. Drive around and see if you get shot at, maybe poke at some infantry and see if you can lure dudes with javelins into firing on you and exposing their position. I think there were a few videos posted of actual armor groups moving around that seem more like proper attackers. It could turn out that they aren't recon and it was disorganized attacks, but we won't know for a little while. The bigger issue is the encirclements and what it looks like on the proper lines.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:13
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Depends on whether you count from the beginning of the air bombing campaign or from actual troops moving in on the ground. We spent like a month bombing first. That's what was so peculiar about that first night. I was expecting constant bombardment to degrade and eliminate the air force and air defense for at least a week with maybe some moves in the east while Kyiv is occupied, but it hasn't materialized. They went straight for moving on Kyiv, first with the air assaults then the armor columns.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:16
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Young Freud posted:That's what was so peculiar about that first night. I was expecting constant bombardment to degrade and eliminate the air force and air defense for at least a week with maybe some moves in the east while Kyiv is occupied, but it hasn't materialized. They went straight for moving on Kyiv, first with the air assaults then the armor columns. They don't have the ammo for long range bombardment.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:19
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Young Freud posted:That's what was so peculiar about that first night. I was expecting constant bombardment to degrade and eliminate the air force and air defense for at least a week with maybe some moves in the east while Kyiv is occupied, but it hasn't materialized. They went straight for moving on Kyiv, first with the air assaults then the armor columns. Russian forces do seem to try real hard to limit the damage to civilian infrastructure. This is Borys Filatov's opinion too, btw, before someone accuses me of being a tankie putinist again lol That said, I'm also pretty sure that the majority of the Ukrainian air force is down by now, and most (if not all) of Russian aviation losses are from ground fire.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:20
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  Over turned T90 in a river. Can't imagine the crew got out. https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1497862378402295808?s=20&t=clTqnOVKEI2qIpGv9vUPog There's another one of an abandoned T90 and a SPG artillery piece stuck in the mud, but now I can't find a working link for it. That sums up the Russian advance I think. Things are not going well, but are still going.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:20
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I knew Zelenskyy was an actor but I didn't realise directly before entering politics, he played the headline role in a satirical political drama, about a high-school history teacher in his thirties who is unexpectedly elected President of Ukraine. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is probably crossing 'get elected as President' off her todo list...
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Feb 27, 2022 12:20
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Zelenskyy has a law degree. Lets not forget in our profiling of him that he's always been a smart serious person, he just chose a career in entertainment.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:23
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FishBulbia posted:Russia knows. If half the claims you made about Russian prowess were true they'd be over the Rhine yesterday. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 27, 2022 12:23
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This Russian remake of Kellys Heroes is getting out of hand. https://twitter.com/markito0171/status/1497893191890178051?s=20&t=NKtNRtUWcswvSHZ_AnEIWA To a New Yorker like you, a hero is some kind of weird sandwich.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:26
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Rust Martialis posted:If half the claims you made about Russian prowess were true they'd be over the Rhine yesterday. Russia has inflicted horrific losses to civilians and the Ukrainian military. It's only due to their resilience and organization that Ukraine is holding on. Having a depth of defense also seems to be helping. Russia has satellites and intelligence agencies. a war on the rocks article based on Janes stats or something isn't going to give them an edge.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:26
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Young Freud posted:That's what was so peculiar about that first night. I was expecting constant bombardment to degrade and eliminate the air force and air defense for at least a week with maybe some moves in the east while Kyiv is occupied, but it hasn't materialized. They went straight for moving on Kyiv, first with the air assaults then the armor columns. Yeah, exactly. The big question right now at least that I have is "why the gently caress doesn't Russia have air superiority, and why aren't they using that air superiority they should have by now to obliterate anything visible in an Ukrainian uniform before moving in troops and armor?" You don't take territory with troops; you take territory with air power and bombardment, you *hold* territory with troops. Even I know that and the extent of my combat experience is entirely RTS based. Only answers I can think of: 1) Russia doesn't *have* functional air power / long range bombardment ability at the level needed. If this is the case then the explanation is mass and systemic institutional rot at a level that is difficult to conceive, and that nobody, including Putin, would have planned for; if this is the explanation and Russia's army is a paper tiger then Ukraine might actually win this thing eventually. 2) Russia didn't want to blow up their shiny new country, they wanted to capture it whole, so the made strategic errors out of racism and bias. "We don't need to blow them all up, they're all cowards, they'll just run when we swing our big superior Russian dicks at them" type thing. If this is the explanation then at some point the Russian military is going to go full angry ex husband "if I can't have you, nobody can" and start firebombing and this could all end up ending very, very badly. I can imagine either of those being true or even both of them overlapping to different extents. Guess we'll find out.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:27
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Russia has a numerical advantage but everything else looks like poo poo. Their newer gear just seems like incremental/marginal improvement over what Ukraine has, rather than generational leaps ahead. Their advanced tanks looked suspiciously like dressed up T-72 shitboxes and die to Javelins just as fast. They can't get air supremacy against MiG-29s and MANPADS, somehow. Their command and control can't seem to coordinate basic poo poo so everything is piecemeal and the most rudimentary infantry-armor-artillery cooperation seems nonexistent. SF units are dropped without fire support far from the conventional forces' reach and keep eating poo poo as a result. Areas get shelled and there is no follow up on the ground. Just basic poo poo that gets a US army captain fired on the spot if they can't sort it out. Russia can win the conventional invasion still with sheer mass, but the cost is going to be stupidly high in lives on both sides, and then what? Neverending insurgency bleeding them out? Did the US Army leave Afghanistan in 2002 because they'd already "won" against initial organized resistance?
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Feb 27, 2022 12:29
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Comstar posted:There's another one of an abandoned T90 and a SPG artillery piece stuck in the mud, but now I can't find a working link for it. Found it. https://twitter.com/EuroMaydan/status/1497890325758681088?s=20&t=NKtNRtUWcswvSHZ_AnEIWA It's missing the "Z" or "V" or "O". Does Ukraine run these tanks?
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Feb 27, 2022 12:30
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sean10mm posted:Russia has a numerical advantage but everything else looks like poo poo. The key thing is they have a massive airforce which "should" be operating with impunity over the battlefield This was I thought the best prediction of what this would look like right before: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-02-21/russias-shock-and-awe "The Ukrainian military has substantially improved since 2014, thanks to Western assistance, and it has gained combat experience from the war in the Donbas. But the experience is largely limited to trench warfare and artillery skirmishes. Kyiv is still ill prepared for a renewed Russian invasion of this scale. Ukraine’s military is generally understaffed and has limited familiarity with warfare designed to surprise and disrupt enemies. Its ground forces are composed of thousands of conscripts with limited experience. Russian battalion tactical groups, by contrast, are filled with more skilled, contract servicemen. Ukraine’s air force is dated and stands no chance against its Russian counterpart. The Ukrainian navy is essentially a “mosquito navy” of small, armored gunboats. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, Ukraine’s ground forces might field 50 to 60 battalions against the more than 120 currently mustered by the Russian army, and these battalions do not have the same levels of combat effectiveness. Russia has far more—and far better—artillery, reconnaissance, and logistical capabilities than Ukraine does. The Russian military would have the advantage along every axis of attack. Ukraine is vast, which makes it impractical for the country’s inferior force to mount an effective defense against an invasion. The most logical strategy for the Ukrainian military would therefore be to fight an organized retreat, imposing as high a cost as it can on any Russian advance. Falling back to more defensible terrain, such as the Dnieper River, which runs through the middle of Ukraine, could help deplete Russian forces. But Ukrainian forces would fall victim to Russian air attacks as they retreated, and Russian ground forces would move quickly to try to surround Ukrainian formations. The Russian military would also move in from Belarus in the north, allowing many troops to avoid crossing the Dnieper River. They could then attack from both west and east of Kyiv and cut off the city from most of the Ukrainian army. The fight outside Kyiv might then entail a handful of Ukrainian brigades battling far more and far more powerful Russian forces, which would be supported by airborne units. This is a fight that Ukraine would almost certainly lose. If it quickly found itself overwhelmed, Ukraine’s military could embrace guerrilla warfare, breaking itself into smaller tactical formations with maximum autonomy. That would entail abandoning most of its heavy armor and artillery and focusing instead on infantry armed with shoulder-fired missiles to hit tanks or aircraft. But such a shift is easier in theory than in practice. The Ukrainian army is trained to operate in larger units with armor and artillery; it cannot easily turn to partisan warfare. Moreover, these tactics would be less effective than in previous wars, thanks to the rise of new technologies, such as drones using thermal cameras and cheap, high-resolution satellite imaging. Today, small groups of fighters may struggle to hide and to win on the battlefield. The Ukrainian military could retreat to cities as a last resort, forcing Russian units into urban terrain. Cities consume armies. Russia’s force may look big, but it would quickly prove paltry given the demands of urban warfare. Yet Ukraine would not make this choice lightly. Urban warfare is a bloody business, and battles over Ukraine’s main cities would likely kill substantial numbers of civilians, destroy entire neighborhoods, and do untold damage to the economy. Russia’s leadership likely hopes that it could avoid protracted urban combat by cutting deals with regional elites who would flip control over cities to pro-Russian politicians. Moscow is undoubtedly planning to marry political schemes with its military operation in other ways, as well. If it succeeds in its political maneuvers, Russia could indeed attain a decisive initial victory. But that is a perilous assumption. Few things go as planned in war, and it is hard to predict what will happen after the opening shots are fired." We're basically in the middle of para 2 right now with a bit different outcome so far FishBulbia fucked around with this message at 12:34 on Feb 27, 2022 |
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Feb 27, 2022 12:32
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https://twitter.com/iaponomarenko/status/1497895878253858822
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Feb 27, 2022 12:38
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Two Russian T-80U tanks abandoned and found by Ukrainian civilians. Looks like they were trying to get a tow working when someone enabled ramming speed. https://twitter.com/markito0171/status/1497886929089708033?s=20&t=NKtNRtUWcswvSHZ_AnEIWA This is not the results of a successful assault when you get 2 civilians walking up to 2 empty MBT's!
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Feb 27, 2022 12:38
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I feel like the US could pre-bomb everything in iraq because we kinda didn't care about or like iraqi cities. If we smashed it up that was fine. We were going to tear down the monuments and important buildings in the end either way and replace them. Russia sees a place like Kiev as a russian historical city that is currently in the wrong hands. Like ending up with the streets and the buildings and all the landmarks in russian hands is the end goal. You are going to be very delicate with anything that could break any of that stuff, but not mind walking through killing the people you see as 'wrongfully' occupying it.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:39
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FishBulbia posted:Russia has inflicted horrific losses to civilians and the Ukrainian military.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:41
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So if true, this basically eliminates all Russian progress from the night, after Putin had declared that advances on all sectors in full force were ordered?
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Feb 27, 2022 12:42
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Luigi's Discount Porn Bin posted:Where are some plausible estimates of Ukrainian losses? I've only seen UKR government estimates here and those are (unsurprisingly) very low. No systematic reporting from either side AFAIK Owlofcreamcheese posted:I feel like the US could pre-bomb everything in iraq because we kinda didn't care about or like iraqi cities. If we smashed it up that was fine. We were going to tear down the monuments and important buildings in the end either way and replace them. What I remember from the time was a lot of the myth / cult of smart weapons. People were passing around really outlandish claims about the precision with which the shock and awe bombing was going to surgically excise the "right" targets while protecting the civilians, while ignoring the blatant contradiction in the notion of a surgical strike that is simultaneously a demoralizing bombing campaign to paralyze the whole country. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Feb 27, 2022 |
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Feb 27, 2022 12:42
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Which paragraph is the bit about piecemeal unsupported attacks into defended population centers eating poo poo being a central Russian strategy?
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Feb 27, 2022 12:43
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I feel like the US could pre-bomb everything in iraq because we kinda didn't care about or like iraqi cities. If we smashed it up that was fine. We were going to tear down the monuments and important buildings in the end either way and replace them. Again, people are conflating 1991 and 2003 a lot. There was a lengthy bombing campaign in 1991. In 2003 day one was the start of airstrikes and then on day two the ground invasion started.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:43
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FishBulbia posted:The key thing is they have a massive airforce which "should" be operating with impunity over the battlefield where are all their freaking tanks
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Feb 27, 2022 12:43
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I would drop a Molotov in the hatches of those tanks and speedily retire
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Feb 27, 2022 12:45
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, exactly. Probably more of the 1st than the 2nd, largely because they have no hesitation using artillery and thermobarics on population centers. sean10mm posted:Russia has a numerical advantage but everything else looks like poo poo. I'm beginning to doubt these claims of the Russians having numerical advantage and overmatch now, especially at the level of competency, logistics, and morale in the lower ranks. Having 3 million soldiers but unable to feed, pay or train most of them is just number padding. And the elite units, the people who Putin should be and have invested time and resources in, the people you want to keep around as examples and teachers, being used flushed away in suicidal assaults? Harms the organization as a whole. I also suspect that most of the Russian army's bulk is directed at keeping its civilian population in line and if they start pulling away from that, then things start unraveling. Also, the Chechen units have been identified. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1497888359401889792?s=20&t=e77nGerizyf__6k0waILag
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Feb 27, 2022 12:45
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Alchenar posted:Again, people are conflating 1991 and 2003 a lot. There was a lengthy bombing campaign in 1991. In 2003 day one was the start of airstrikes and then on day two the ground invasion started. Yeah i think 2003 is a pretty good comparison because the US military did similar coup-de-mains like this and it worked, mostly. They got away with a lot using an undersized force for the invasion and it worked out because the Iraqis collapsed even more quickly and even when they hadn't- they missed a lot of opportunities when US columns showed their asses. I'm not going to say what happened after the two week invasion was what anyone would call successful, and certainly, the way the invasion worked out in some ways led to it(that force was nowhere near big enough to secure Iraq's massive supply of military arms) but I suspect Putin and the general staff probably had a less comprehensive political idea in mind. I think NATO's intelligence support is decisive in why things have not gone to plan for the Russians at the moment, but we'll never really know much of anything provable for years.
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Feb 27, 2022 12:47
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I feel like the US could pre-bomb everything in iraq because we kinda didn't care about or like iraqi cities. If we smashed it up that was fine. We were going to tear down the monuments and important buildings in the end either way and replace them. Yeah, I mentioned this above but it's really "interesting" in a dark way how much racism is playing a role in this conflict and how much the racism here highlights the different kinds of racism at play in prior conflicts. Every prior country that America or Russia has blown up since WW2, Europe has been mostly fine with, and a big part of that, let's face it, has been racism. We and they have both blown up a lot of brown people in Iraq and Syria and Libya and so forth and Europeans haven't really minded. (Compare the way Ukrainian refugees are being treated vs. how Europe (and America!) have treated Syrian refugees). Putin is apparently super racist against Ukrainians so he probably thought this would just be another unopposed little adventure just like all the others he's gotten away with in the past. But he didn't realize that to Americans and Europeans who aren't gassed up on his particular brand of insane russo-slavic nationalist racism, Ukrainians are just white Europeans like any other French or German person or whomever. And then tactically and strategically, yeah, because of his weird paternalistic racism, he both doesn't want to blow up Ukrainian cities, and he also thought Ukrainians wouldn't put up significant resistance. Just mind boggling how pervasive and how bizarre racist thinking can be and how much it impacts even poo poo like this. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Feb 27, 2022 |
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Feb 27, 2022 12:49
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break-up breakdown posted:where are all their freaking tanks Either the anti-tank support is helping or Russia is just now going all in on the invasion it prepared for.
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Glad to see Zelenskyy is back in communication - first tweet in 15 hours https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1497885721931268103?cxt=HHwWjoC-nZjIx8kpAAAA
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