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Torrannor posted:There would presumably be a security agreement with the West/NATO that's shy of full NATO membership, but would still offer Ukraine reassurance that they wouldn't be as on their own if Russia were to invade again. And the Ukrainian armed forces would probably be highly subsidized by the West. Couple that with EU membership in the medium term, and this could be an acceptable deal for Ukraine, as opposed to waging a long, disastrous war in their country, with Russia maybe leveling the biggest cities in the country. Already about 5% of the entire Ukrainian population has fled the country, this is already a huge catastrophe for Zelenskyy and his people. Ending it sooner rather than later might be worth some sacrifices. And realistically, I don't see anybody seriously entertaining the notion that Ukraine will regain Crimea and the two rebel "republics". If the pressure keeps mounting on Putin domestically, i’m not entirely sure about that. Especially if other occupied by Russian territories start screwing around. There’s only so much they can deploy and even less they can transport effectively and supply.
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Mar 8, 2022 17:22
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It is possible that both Zelensky and Putin would like to stop losing troops, and equipment and economic calamity, and Zelensky in particular would like to stop losing civilians to death and emigration and to stop losing civil infrastructure. This could cause either of them to eventually accept terms, even if they are interim terms, that do not satisfy sideline watchers who want to see a black and white VICTOR screen pop up on twitter for one side or the other. It's also possible it all results in weeks or months or years more of miserable slog warfare.
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Mar 8, 2022 17:24
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This is common in US military aircraft as well, it was pretty common for us to find handheld units exactly like that mounted on the windows of aircraft.
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Mar 8, 2022 17:26
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CommieGIR posted:This is common in US military aircraft as well, it was pretty common for us to find handheld units exactly like that mounted on the windows of aircraft. Yeah seems like a practical backup means of navigating, particularly given the reports of Russians having severe communication issues. I recall the US shut down GPS access during one of Russias prior bouts of military adventurism.
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Mar 8, 2022 17:28
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mlmp08 posted:It is possible that both Zelensky and Putin would like to stop losing troops, and equipment and economic calamity, and Zelensky in particular would like to stop losing civilians to death and emigration and to stop losing civil infrastructure. Again: when Russia does honor a humane evacuation route, I'll believe it, right now we have Russian forces mining possible evac routes, shelling both the routes and civilian buildings, and videos of  Russian forces shooting civilian cars and murdering civilians
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Mar 8, 2022 17:29
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Torrannor posted:There would presumably be a security agreement with the West/NATO that's shy of full NATO membership, but would still offer Ukraine reassurance that they wouldn't be as on their own if Russia were to invade again. I hope when they're doing that calculus they're not factoring in the US. Our country tends to get brain worms every so often that makes us forget our international responsibilities.
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Mar 8, 2022 17:30
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Is that a new picture? I know the "commercial handheld gps in the cockpit" angle has been floating around for years. Not that I expect the Russians to have fixed it since then, but still.
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Mar 8, 2022 17:31
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CommieGIR posted:This is common in US military aircraft as well, it was pretty common for us to find handheld units exactly like that mounted on the windows of aircraft. How old were they though? Su-34 was introduced in 2014 is the point.
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Mar 8, 2022 17:33
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CommieGIR posted:Again: when Russia does honor a humane evacuation route, I'll believe it, right now we have Russian forces mining possible evac routes, shelling both the routes and civilian buildings, and videos of Again: I do not control Ukraine’s foreign policy. I am just linking to a video of Zelensky so you can hear his own words and trying to explain why Zelensky might be making this shift. He knows a hell of a lot more about the situation in Ukraine than I do. Some sort of compromise has generally been expected since the outset, with a lot of less partial observers predicting that this would shock or surprise the people mostly seeing the infowar via Twitter.
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Mar 8, 2022 17:36
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Congress made clear they were about to pass a law banning all imports of Russian oil, so Biden moved on it: https://twitter.com/biannagolodryga/status/1501233193680179202?t=Ow5UrGrYBUC1w3DUsq8UNw&s=19 https://twitter.com/ccadelago/status/1501233437465788420?t=Ni5fTazKA-Tr481VksNlkQ&s=19
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Mar 8, 2022 17:38
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mlmp08 posted:Again: I do not control Ukraine’s foreign policy. I am just linking to a video of Zelensky so you can hear his own words and trying to explain why Zelensky might be making this shift. He knows a hell of a lot more about the situation in Ukraine than I do. The constant NFZ requests are a bit confusing, because it seems at this point the bigger problem is coming from Russia's artillery. Unless NATO starts bombing those, I don't think it's going to change the pain very much. e: Notably absent has also been discussion about providing better air defense capabilities. What about something like the Iron Dome? psydude fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Mar 8, 2022 |
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Mar 8, 2022 17:43
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Photoshop thread on Putin's table, for those of you that don't frequent GBS.
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Mar 8, 2022 17:57
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Defenestrategy posted:I hope when they're doing that calculus they're not factoring in the US. Our country tends to get brain worms every so often that makes us forget our international responsibilities. The world should absolutely be planning for Trump 2.0. Democrats will almost certainly shoot themselves in the dick by running Biden again or more likely something stupider I can't even predict.
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Mar 8, 2022 17:58
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US DOD briefing going on now (not broadcast). https://twitter.com/jackdetsch/status/1501241427187179521?s=21
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Mar 8, 2022 18:09
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mlmp08 posted:US DOD briefing going on now (not broadcast). Holy poo poo
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Mar 8, 2022 18:11
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mlmp08 posted:US DOD briefing going on now (not broadcast). I wonder how much is considered combat effective though? Because those conscripts and Russian National Guard troops loving suck.
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Mar 8, 2022 18:12
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mlmp08 posted:US DOD briefing going on now (not broadcast). That's a lot of percents
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Mar 8, 2022 18:15
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The DOD does not say a unit is 95% strength as a “but not really.” The Russian forces sure appear less effective than a numerically identical force of US BCTs, but I take the SDO at his word when he says it’s about 95% of the starting combat power remaining.
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Mar 8, 2022 18:15
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Marshal Prolapse posted:I wonder how much is considered combat effective though? CIA's estimate put it in the 2000-4000 RU KIA. Factoring in PoWs, deserters, WIA, etc. you're maybe getting close to 10,000, which is right around 5% of the ~190,000-200,000 troops they had pre-staged. But to your point, I don't think that measures their actual effectiveness.
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Mar 8, 2022 18:15
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Milo and POTUS posted:Holy poo poo Yeah this is generally consistent with everything above. Russia is experiencing like 5 or 6 percent losses across the board on a huge force, which is a *lot* but also a small percentage of the huge force. The part of the question this doesn't answer is how much of that force is in a position where it can be combat effective vs. How much of it is just blowing up apartment buildings.
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Mar 8, 2022 18:15
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The part of the question this doesn't answer is how much of that force is in a position where it can be combat effective vs. How much of it is just blowing up apartment buildings. Given a fair amount of the recent video from recent AT teams’ successful hide sights and Russian forces’ closure on built up areas, these are unfortunately becoming the same thing.
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Mar 8, 2022 18:18
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It's been a while, but if I'm not mistaken, company-level US doctrine considers a unit combat-ineffective once it's lost 33% of its combat power. I'm not sure how that's measured against a force the size of what Russia has deployed right now, but I'm guessing things like logistics plays a much bigger factor at that scale.
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Mar 8, 2022 18:20
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These losses are based purely on numbers and it's harder to pin a solid number on combat effectiveness that's been lost due to logistics issues, morale and other soft factors?
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Mar 8, 2022 18:31
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Fragrag posted:These losses are based purely on numbers and it's harder to pin a solid number on combat effectiveness that's been lost due to logistics issues, morale and other soft factors? Right, that's what it looks like. It also doesn't seem to be counting immobilized or tactically ineffective units (e.g, the convoy) as lost.
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Mar 8, 2022 18:36
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Clarification: https://twitter.com/jackdetsch/status/1501244677974069253?s=21 https://twitter.com/jackdetsch/status/1501250051452067843?s=21 Those stopped by resistance and bridge demo clearly count as available combat forces. https://twitter.com/jackdetsch/status/1501243604651716613?s=21
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Mar 8, 2022 18:38
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psydude posted:The constant NFZ requests are a bit confusing, because it seems at this point the bigger problem is coming from Russia's artillery. Unless NATO starts bombing those, I don't think it's going to change the pain very much. A chicken in every pot, a javelin in every hand, and a CRAM on every intersection. And those old British home guard tin hats for every head, I suppose. Arrath fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Mar 8, 2022 |
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Mar 8, 2022 18:45
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Uh so doesn’t that sound like Russia has a whole lot more people/resources to expend? I can’t tell if he’s actually deployed 100% of his resources or not, though I think the first tweet mentioned that.
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Mar 8, 2022 18:46
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nwin posted:Uh so doesn’t that sound like Russia has a whole lot more people/resources to expend? Nah, not all his resources. The US assessment is that about 100% of the forces that were staged for this operation have been sent into Ukraine. The other active and reserve forces that were never committed to Ukraine remain at their respective posts, inactive, doing other stuff, etc. Twitter folk have been posting about old vehicles in Siberia, but the US has not confirmed that any of those movements were current, relevant or mean anything.
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Mar 8, 2022 18:50
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mlmp08 posted:It is possible that both Zelensky and Putin would like to stop losing troops, and equipment and economic calamity, and Zelensky in particular would like to stop losing civilians to death and emigration and to stop losing civil infrastructure. An agreement between Ukraine and Russia will not end the economic calamity. That is going to be a separate decision that Ukraine doesn’t control, and I bet the US and EU will end up making some long-term moves. The Russian energy independence movement just got a huge boost and I don’t think that’ll go away.
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Mar 8, 2022 18:52
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And remember, Ukraine's economy got a fair chunk of change from russian shipping through them
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Mar 8, 2022 18:57
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mlmp08 posted:US DOD briefing going on now (not broadcast). Does this mean that Ukraine's only dealt with 5% of Russian fighting troops, or is this "Out of the 100 people we sent to ukraine, 30 of which where logistics related dudes, ukraine's dealt with 5 people."
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Mar 8, 2022 19:00
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Defenestrategy posted:Does this mean that Ukraine's only dealt with 5% of Russian fighting troops, or is this "Out of the 100 people we sent to ukraine, 30 of which where logistics related dudes, ukraine's dealt with 5 people." It means that roughly 5% of Russia's forces have been destroyed or incapacitated. That doesn't include, e.g., the convoy that's immobilized because the bridges in front of it and behind it are gone and there's no fuel left, or forces that are stuck in positions where they can't advance right now, etc. Just that Russia has sent 100% of the people it was intending to send into Ukraine, and out of those 100%, roughly 5% are no longer on the field at all. How that 5% divides between front line and logistics support etc. isn't clarified there.
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Mar 8, 2022 19:08
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mlmp08 posted:Nah, not all his resources. The US assessment is that about 100% of the forces that were staged for this operation have been sent into Ukraine. The other active and reserve forces that were never committed to Ukraine remain at their respective posts, inactive, doing other stuff, etc. Twitter folk have been posting about old vehicles in Siberia, but the US has not confirmed that any of those movements were current, relevant or mean anything. To add to this, Russia deployed about 60% of its active military manpower to the border. So they've lost about 3% of their total manpower.
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Mar 8, 2022 19:11
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It means that roughly 5% of Russia's forces have been destroyed or incapacitated. One of the things I remember from WWII was how one big difference between Soviet and German logistics was that Soviets: Everyone was infantry first above all. There were no dedicated cooks or logistics people. Germany had thousands of dedicated cooks, logistics teams, etc. It seems like that's changed a little bit?
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Mar 8, 2022 19:12
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psydude posted:To add to this, Russia deployed about 60% of its active military manpower to the border. I've seen statements like this a few times now and they confuse me. I am under the impression that the bulk of the forces currently deployed are conscripts that are poorly trained. I am also under the impression that the Russian military uses these conscriptions to make up their force, with very few being a "career soldier". Under a system like this, why do they place the "strength" of the military at peak conscription levels? Are they just counting bodies/vehicles with no regard to their effectiveness/training? On a scale of just counting bodies/vehicles, yeah the Russian military is huge. When we apply quality to that scale, it seems like they are much smaller, less effective military than what people are/have been saying.
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Mar 8, 2022 19:16
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Russia is also fine using it's undesirables as conscripts and also fine taking heavy casualties in the invasion.
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Mar 8, 2022 19:19
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CommieGIR posted:One of the things I remember from WWII was how one big difference between Soviet and German logistics was that Soviets: Everyone was infantry first above all. There were no dedicated cooks or logistics people. Germany had thousands of dedicated cooks, logistics teams, etc. I can't believe that's true, even if everyone has a rifle they still need to do their job otherwise modern warfare just doesn't work out. At the very least You need dudes to take supplys from supply dumps to wherever they are needed. Even if you allow your soldiers to raid and graze off the land of what ever they conquer they still need ammo, replaced equipment, and vehicles that they can't just take off of civilians.
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Mar 8, 2022 19:21
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nwin posted:Uh so doesn’t that sound like Russia has a whole lot more people/resources to expend? Expend in this case is a loaded word. Armed forces are incredibly expensive to recruit, train, and supply. Keeping their infantry and mechanized numbers up domestically is expensive, and that price skyrockets the moment they're on campaign. The day by day upkeep of these forces is 100x (Someone somewhere will have a real number for this) what it was sitting in domestic basing. Now you're paying that regardless of if those units are sitting in the woods or casualties. You're paying doubly if you have losses among your supply lines since now you've lost the supplies outright rather than just them having been consumed. 5% "expended" is the forces hemorrhaging manpower and money. That is years of capital expenditure to build it back up.
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Mar 8, 2022 19:33
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ASAPI posted:On a scale of just counting bodies/vehicles, yeah the Russian military is huge. When we apply quality to that scale, it seems like they are much smaller, less effective military than what people are/have been saying. Yeah, Russia has large and modern armed forces. The modern armed forces are not large and the large armed forces are not modern.
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Mar 8, 2022 19:35
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CommieGIR posted:One of the things I remember from WWII was how one big difference between Soviet and German logistics was that Soviets: Everyone was infantry first above all. There were no dedicated cooks or logistics people. Germany had thousands of dedicated cooks, logistics teams, etc. I read A Taste of War that had more info on how different WWII armies managed food and cooking. I don't recall exactly how Germany and the Soviets managed it although I would assume the Soviets had some dedicated logistics people so they didn't have to throw truck drivers and train engineers into trenches as a matter of policy. On the light hearted side there were photos of grinning Australian sailors who got to visit US ships and had heaping plates of food including ice cream, on the flip side Japanese infantry on islands were given sacks of rice and expected to figure it out, leading to tens of thousands of Japanese non-combat deaths.
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