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psydude posted:The contract troops have been pretty heavily mauled, though. A lot were pulled from Kyiv and sent straight to the push through Severodonetsk, before being sent down to defend against the counteroffensive in Kherson. At this point I'd be surprised if half of the original invasion force was left. yeah i'm not saying that they haven't been heavily hosed up over the last 10 months, they're just still clearly a more or less coherent fighting force and the better formations have issues but are still generally effective, particularly for holding ground. idk how much the repeated russian attacks actually involve better troops, looks to be very heavily mobiks. captures also seem to be like 90+% mobiks with occasional exceptions.
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Dec 12, 2022 23:34
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CommieGIR posted:Historically there successes were fighting a less capable enemy and less supplied one than Ukraine. Granted, "Russia has historically succeeded at muddling through their own ineptitude" is kind of a vague generalization to begin with (how far back are we talking, and does Russia's conduct during say the Napoleonic Wars have any direct relevance to the current conflict) but even in relatively recently history I don't know that the Finns or the Wehrmacht was notable for being particularly incompetent, and while the Germans certainly had supply issues these issues were more of a problem when they were trying to attack into Russia than otherwise - they still managed to supply themselves to conduct a running fight all the way back to Berlin. Historical analogies aside, though, I don't know that it's productive to completely dismiss anything the Russians have done for the simple reason that the Ukrainians aren't. If the Ukrainians truly believe that the new Russian reinforcements are less than useless, why haven't they continued their sweeping Kharkiv-style offenses? Why aren't they kicking down the rotten door? The Ukrainians at least seem to be respecting the Russians as a dangerous opponent, albeit one that is probably structurally incapable of living up to their full potential. Shouldn't we do the same instead of assuming that the Russians are harmless?
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Dec 12, 2022 23:37
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If we thought the Russians were harmless we wouldn't feel compelled to assist the Ukrainians. The Russian Federation is very dangerous, so much so that we don't dare check their expansionism directly. I mean, if we weren't taking the Russians seriously, why'd we put the brakes on some of the support Poland offered?
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Dec 12, 2022 23:54
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Tomn posted:Historical analogies aside, though, I don't know that it's productive to completely dismiss anything the Russians have done for the simple reason that the Ukrainians aren't. If the Ukrainians truly believe that the new Russian reinforcements are less than useless, why haven't they continued their sweeping Kharkiv-style offenses? Why aren't they kicking down the rotten door? The Ukrainians at least seem to be respecting the Russians as a dangerous opponent, albeit one that is probably structurally incapable of living up to their full potential. Shouldn't we do the same instead of assuming that the Russians are harmless? Because those huge, sweeping offensive take resources, and Ukraine appears to be playing it safe because they have less manpower to throw around. It makes far more sense to make significant gains then consolidate your resources and defences, rebuild your units, and start striking at Russian logistics prior to another offensive. Ukraine is operating on a really slim build for offensives, and it makes sense for them to stop and take breathers to ensure they don't overstretch themselves. Ukraines units are better trained, but they only have so much to spare for large offensives. Ukraine made a lot of gains and has to consolidate all that and ensure they are not risking losing it by kicking off another offensive and overstretching themselves, which is what Russia did in the early offensive. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Dec 13, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2022 00:12
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CommieGIR posted:Because those huge, sweeping offensive take resources, and Ukraine appears to be playing it safe because they have less manpower to throw around. It makes far more sense to make significant gains then consolidate your resources and defences, rebuild your units, and start striking at Russian logistics prior to another offensive. Entirely true - but then why would such concerns be necessary if the Russians really were no more than a bunch of starving frostbitten conscripts without guns or ammo who can be dismissed as being of no value? The reason why Ukraine has to be careful about this in the first place is that the Russians are at least baseline competent enough to punish mistakes if the Ukrainians AREN'T being careful, which is the point I'm making here. If the Russian Army as a whole really was as badly off as you suggest, there wouldn't be a need to be careful because there wouldn't be much in the way of effective resistance or ability to make an effective counterattack. Again none of this is to say that the Russian Armed Forces are performing well, or up to anywhere close to the potential implied by their actual equipment and numbers. But they're also pretty clearly not totally falling apart yet either. They might get to that point eventually if the Russian war economy is further stressed and further sustained pressure and losses are taken, but from what we've seen I don't think we're there yet.
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Dec 13, 2022 00:25
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Tomn posted:Entirely true - but then why would such concerns be necessary if the Russians really were no more than a bunch of starving frostbitten conscripts without guns or ammo who can be dismissed as being of no value? The reason why Ukraine has to be careful about this in the first place is that the Russians are at least baseline competent enough to punish mistakes if the Ukrainians AREN'T being careful, which is the point I'm making here. If the Russian Army as a whole really was as badly off as you suggest, there wouldn't be a need to be careful because there wouldn't be much in the way of effective resistance or ability to make an effective counterattack. The reason why Ukraine has to be careful is because they simply cannot recover from the catastrophes that Russia has endured. Other than the opening weeks of the war, Ukraine hasn't suffered any serious defeats. If they want to stay in this fight, they have to keep inflicting disproportionate materiel losses on the Russians. That's not to say that Ukraine hasn't been suffering significant losses, but if they'd been losing tanks and ammo dumps at the rate Russia has endured, we'd probably be talking about the insurgency phase of the war.
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Dec 13, 2022 00:43
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There's also that old saw of "the moment you stop respecting your enemy you're dead"
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Dec 13, 2022 01:01
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lightpole posted:Russian KIA estimates are around 100k so According to whom? Or do you mean casualties, not KIA?
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Dec 13, 2022 01:15
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mlmp08 posted:According to whom? Or do you mean casualties, not KIA? Probably casualties, there's no hard KIA numbers that are unclassified for either side afaik, and actual KIA numbers would be hard to verify even if they were unclassified, since the militaries don't really count KIAs, just casualties/combat-ineffective soldiers. Number I saw a month or so ago was around 100k casualties each for Ukraine, and Russia, not counting civilian casualties/deaths. If you wanted to plot KIA counts you'd have to have pretty big error bars because there's wildly varying estimates on total KIA for each side.
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Dec 13, 2022 01:20
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With modern weapons, belt fed machine guns, artillery, and tanks, the required skill *floor* is much lower to.still be dangerous. But without supplies and training it's a brittle formation. A glass cannon. As a meat bag you don't want to be on the receiving end of even incompetent glass artillery.
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Dec 13, 2022 01:50
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orange juche posted:Probably casualties, there's no hard KIA numbers that are unclassified for either side afaik, and actual KIA numbers would be hard to verify even if they were unclassified, since the militaries don't really count KIAs, just casualties/combat-ineffective soldiers. Milley said 'you're looking at well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded in Ukraine' a month ago. 'probably about as many Ukrainians' Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Dec 13, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2022 02:01
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orange juche posted:Probably casualties, there's no hard KIA numbers that are unclassified for either side afaik, and actual KIA numbers would be hard to verify even if they were unclassified, since the militaries don't really count KIAs, just casualties/combat-ineffective soldiers. Im no mathmagician but im fairly sure they know how to do the plus minuses to figure out how many people they should have and how many people they do have and stamp em kia/mia
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Dec 13, 2022 02:33
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also the whole point of dog tags are to identify bodies and to record kias. militaries 1000% want to know whos dead and are pretty good at keeping track
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Dec 13, 2022 02:35
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mlmp08 posted:According to whom? Or do you mean casualties, not KIA? https://www.newsweek.com/russia-loses-24-tanks-day-100000-death-toll-nears-ukraine-winter-casualties-1766403 Most of it seems to be Ukrainian estimates so grain of salt but US and UK are cautiously talking in the same direction
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Dec 13, 2022 03:00
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lightpole posted:https://www.newsweek.com/russia-loses-24-tanks-day-100000-death-toll-nears-ukraine-winter-casualties-1766403 Oh… Ukraine publicly estimates they shot down like 60% of Russia’s air force that exists, so I dunno how much faith I put in that. It has historically been very difficult to estimate enemy bodycounts, even for countries with much better intel assets than Ukraine. 100k dead is a lol, and I doubt it.
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Dec 13, 2022 03:04
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mlmp08 posted:Oh… Ukraine publicly estimates they shot down like 60% of Russia’s air force that exists,
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Dec 13, 2022 03:09
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mlmp08 posted:Oh… Ukraine publicly estimates they shot down like 60% of Russia’s air force that exists, so I dunno how much faith I put in that. It has historically been very difficult to estimate enemy bodycounts, even for countries with much better intel assets than Ukraine. We've seen videos of a lot of aircraft getting shot down or otherwise crashing on their own. We've see many videos of russian airfields blowing some, one by a presumed russian saboteur. We've seen wave after wave of mobiks and prisoners dead at bahkmut. Hell, we've seen them press gang foreigners during conacription. Things arent going well for russia. Russia doesnt have unlimited planes laying around and they resorted to a chaotic forced mobilization of untrained yahoos. 60% of their air force and 100k troops might be exaggerations, but theyre probably not gross exaggerations. And of course ukraine will play up their enemy's losses, like how russia will downplay their losses. But each side knows roughly how much the other side lost and exactly how much their side lost. Its not very good for your troops morale to know exactly how many of your fellow invading scum have actually died and just how much of your air force these supposed nazis have destroyed.
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Dec 13, 2022 03:15
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My Spirit Otter posted:60% of their air force and 100k troops might be exaggerations, but theyre probably not gross exaggerations. The KIA vs so wounded they’ll never return to battle might not be terribly functionally different. But the estimates of number of units destroyed are just wild. Similarly, Russia claims it has blown up more TB-2s than have ever been manufactured worldwide and that they’ve killed 2-3x more HIMARS than Ukraine ever received. Ukraine claims almost 300 fixed-wing jets shot down. The US could corroborate 55 downed Russian jets as of September.
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Dec 13, 2022 03:27
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Still surprised that while he has flaws, Ukraine was lucky enough to have a wartime leader with a mix of competence/charisma/bravery who has been doing excellent work. Odd Russia hasn’t got him yet, guessing pre-war they thought it would be over so soon so why bother, then when he emerged as a Churchillian figure he seems to have had a mix of luck and good bodyguards so doing just fine. Something I was wondering about is whether Ukraine would take a shot at Putin if they thought they had decent odds, on one hand his replacement might make peace (kinda doubt it) but also huge risk if he were only injured the nuclear genie would be loosed.
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Dec 13, 2022 03:27
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mlmp08 posted:The KIA vs so wounded they’ll never return to battle might not be terribly functionally different. I feel like you read what i wrote, are parroting what ive said back to me but not really understanding what i wrote
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Dec 13, 2022 03:31
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My Spirit Otter posted:I feel like you read what i wrote, are parroting what ive said back to me but not really understanding what i wrote More simply: I disagree with your assessment that these are not gross exaggerations, and I think the Ukrainian claims on KIA and various equipment kills are gross exaggerations.
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Dec 13, 2022 03:33
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lightpole posted:https://www.newsweek.com/russia-loses-24-tanks-day-100000-death-toll-nears-ukraine-winter-casualties-1766403 Considering that "casualties" is KIA/WIA/MIA, and that we're talking about a news media that can't identify the standard weapon of the US Military consistently. Then its easy to assume that the US/Western news media is using "death toll" and "casualties" synonymously. That said, the US military is at a casualty rate of roughly 1 dead to 3 to 10 wounded (the numbers for GWOT are completely hosed because of how DOD reported them, about 7k reported US dead with 52k wounded between AFG and Iraq). Vietnam has reported US numbers of 58k dead and 153k wounded, US troops only, for comparison. And this is a military that largely gives at least half a poo poo about their personnel (or at least their gear). To compare, Russian numbers for their Afghanistan adventure are roughly 14k dead and 54k wounded (these are the Kremlin's numbers, other sources have Russian dead at upwards of 26k, including 3k officers). What's interesting here is the Russians do break down their dead into reasons: 9500 from combat, 1000 from disease/accident/misadventure, and 4000 from wounds. I had a different point when I started, that the Russian military doesn't really care about wounded, but it kinda looks like war will always have a 1:3 - 1:10 dead:wounded ratio no matter how poo poo you are with your wounded.
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Dec 13, 2022 03:48
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mlmp08 posted:More simply: I disagree with your assessment that these are not gross exaggerations, and I think the Ukrainian claims on KIA and various equipment kills are gross exaggerations. What do you make of milley saying 'well over a hundred thousand casualties' Tbh I find the large casualty numbers the most believable part of this on both sides. Both sides have fired a ridiculous amount of ordinance at each other, including a mountain of precision ordinance, and both Russia and Ukraine have very good targeting and surveillance data. Russia has been sending cruise missiles into anything that they suspect is being used as a barracks, warehouse, hospital, or vehicle repair workshop and Ukraine has been doing the same back. I make no claim of having the first idea about what the actual numbers are, but I find the high casualty numbers on each side particularly believable. vehicle numbers are probably fuzzier and I doubt anyone trusts official numbers there very much, particularly so for jets/helicopters. With that said, oryx doesn't seem to be wildly off and you can simply go look through the stuff for duplicates if you think there's a lot of double counting going on (spoiler, there really does not seem to be, even in the cumbersomely long categories) and last time I looked at the Russian equivalent they were tracking Ukrainian losses to within 10% of what Oryx put Ukrainian vehicle losses at. There's some significant limitations to tracking aircraft losses purely off of documented losses (+ MoD's announcing losses) , but even still it's clearly been a bloody air war, too. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Dec 13, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2022 03:59
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CoffeeQaddaffi posted:Considering that "casualties" is KIA/WIA/MIA, and that we're talking about a news media that can't identify the standard weapon of the US Military consistently. Then its easy to assume that the US/Western news media is using "death toll" and "casualties" synonymously. I'm not going to bother to read since you didn't bother to read the article and will just point out that Newsweek was able to differentiate casualties and KIA with Ukraine estimating 100k dead 300k casualties or whatever
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Dec 13, 2022 03:59
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Any decent war sources on Mastodon? I finally pulled the plug on Twitter
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Dec 13, 2022 04:03
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Still surprised that while he has flaws, Ukraine was lucky enough to have a wartime leader with a mix of competence/charisma/bravery who has been doing excellent work. Odd Russia hasn’t got him yet, guessing pre-war they thought it would be over so soon so why bother, then when he emerged as a Churchillian figure he seems to have had a mix of luck and good bodyguards so doing just fine. They COULD. But at this point, Poots is on borrowed time anyway, so you'd be better to let someone take him out for you, rather than risk reprisals for killing the head of a superpower.
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Dec 13, 2022 04:13
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GD_American posted:Any decent war sources on Mastodon? I finally pulled the plug on Twitter most people i recognize haven't been using it much. https://journa.host/@EilishHart/following has a bunch of the journos and academics that are sorta maintaining a dual presence https://medium.com/@nayloraliide/mastodon-a-guide-for-the-lost-eurasianist-1c9af116bef0 is a longer list but a bunch of those post even less
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Dec 13, 2022 05:03
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Tbh I find the large casualty numbers the most believable part of this on both sides. Both sides have fired a ridiculous amount of ordinance at each other, including a mountain of precision ordinance, and both Russia and Ukraine have very good targeting and surveillance data. Russia has been sending cruise missiles into anything that they suspect is being used as a barracks, warehouse, hospital, or vehicle repair workshop and Ukraine has been doing the same back. I make no claim of having the first idea about what the actual numbers are, but I find the high casualty numbers on each side particularly believable. You really sure about that part?
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Dec 13, 2022 05:19
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VSOKUL girl posted:most people i recognize haven't been using it much. https://journa.host/@EilishHart/following has a bunch of the journos and academics that are sorta maintaining a dual presence I appreciate it
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Dec 13, 2022 05:48
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VSOKUL girl posted:most people i recognize haven't been using it much. https://journa.host/@EilishHart/following has a bunch of the journos and academics that are sorta maintaining a dual presence I'm a bit confused about Mastodon. When you sign up you have to pick a server to make an account on, and typically the server is described as catering to a specific set of likeminded people in a specific region of the world. Doesn't this just result in a bunch of hyper-compartmentalized miniature communities that have little to no interaction with each other? To me, the thing that made twitter worthwhile was that if you managed to find the right people to follow, you could (on occasion) get very interesting insights into topics that you would otherwise know nothing about. With all the different servers for different people, doesn't that kill a lot of that diversity? Just seems like a weird way to go about social media for something that has been branded as a legit twitter competitor. Maybe I'm missing something obvious. Is there a way for different servers to interact with each other? I mean, I want to like it and I'm certainly not going to touch twitter with a 10 foot pole as long as Musk is in charge. Nuclear Tourist fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Dec 13, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2022 05:48
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Nuclear Tourist posted:I'm a bit confused about Mastodon. When you to sign up you have to pick a server to make an account on, and typically the server is described as catering to a specific set of likeminded people in a specific region of the world. Doesn't this just result in a bunch of hyper-compartmentalized miniature communities that have little to no interaction with each other? To me, the thing that made twitter worthwhile was that if you managed to find the right people to follow, you could (on occasion) get very interesting insights into topics that you would otherwise know nothing about. With all the different servers for different people, doesn't that kill a lot of that diversity? Just seems like a weird way to go about social media for something that has been branded as a legit twitter competitor.
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Dec 13, 2022 05:57
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You can follow anyone from any server, but each server also has a local feed where you can see people you aren't following. It's useful to find new people with your interests.
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Dec 13, 2022 05:57
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Diarrhea Elemental posted:You really sure about that part? Between satellites and extensive humint networks in Ukraine plus significant cyber/sigint (and there's a whole russian osint world that is quite busy as well) yes russia absolutely has had no problem finding targets to hit. Like it's certainly a relative statement to some extent, but twitter propaganda bullshit aside, Russia's ability to find Ukrainian military assets and queue up some missiles for them has been one of the few things they've consistently done decently. Hell, rooting out russian collaborator networks that are supplying targeting info is practically the main task of the SBU these days. like there's a reason why the recent Ukrainian tank repairman interview shows them working in an empty, abandoned warehouse with hand tools Yes Ukraine messages that 100% of russian attacks are punitive strikes at useless civilian targets, but I'd view that as a messaging strategy to make the most out of what they know will be inevitable russian attacks rather than as an objective statement of the effectiveness of Russian targeting. Kofman in his early nov podcast episode immediately after he got back from kharkiv region I believe goes into some depth about how, yes, russian artillery and missiles are absolutely still very impactful and effective in spite of the huge mass of messaging to the contrary
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Dec 13, 2022 05:58
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Mastodon is well meaning but dumb as poo poo in practice. Not a viable alternative to twitter unfortunately.
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Dec 13, 2022 07:10
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Diarrhea Elemental posted:You really sure about that part? From what I've read, yes they are really good at it. Their problem tends to be in translating that knowledge into a cleared and actioned strike. Delays between knowing and doing are allowing the Ukrainians to move high value assets before the strikes come in.
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Dec 13, 2022 07:57
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Lovely Joe Stalin posted:From what I've read, yes they are really good at it. Their problem tends to be in translating that knowledge into a cleared and actioned strike. Delays between knowing and doing are allowing the Ukrainians to move high value assets before the strikes come in. I've seen the same. The Russians have good targeting intel, but they're slow at pulling the trigger - like to the point where it takes 2-3 days for someone to give the go-ahead to shoot. Ukraine's managed to keep their assets on the move, which means that Russia's stuck bombing empty fields. Meanwhile, Ukraine's intel is up to the minute and they're occasionally able to hit munitions depots and other HVTs behind enemy lines in as little as 20-30 minutes, and something like 2-3 minutes for fire support in tactical environments. psydude fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Dec 13, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2022 10:09
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Cugel the Clever posted:They do stitch together, but the local admins can gently caress with that. I joined an urbanist Mastadon, for example, and discovered that one of the owners must be a tankie poo poo because they banned Anne Applebaum's account from being viewed by members. It is effectively Twitter with a glaze of "decentralized for freedom" with an underlying reality of "decentralized for the implementation of cyber-feudalism".
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Dec 13, 2022 13:01
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quote:
Napoleonic ratios suggests offense needs at least a 3:1 advantage over defense. The fact that Russia is only on the attack in Bakhmut and is frantically digging in elsewhere suggests the Russians recognize they are at a disadvantage now. The core of the Russian military, artillery, is still a deadly force, it just needs steady supply of disposable infantry to probe the enemy. In related news, since the Donbas is out of men, the puppet government is considering drafting women. https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1602359990211285016
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Dec 13, 2022 13:11
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If Russian infantry is so weak, why isn't Ukraine just overrunning them?
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my kinda ape posted:Mastodon is well meaning but dumb as poo poo in practice. Not a viable alternative to twitter unfortunately. Who wouldn’t want to use a social media service where you have to work even harder to make sure you’re not under the thumb of some petty weirdo
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Dec 13, 2022 13:19
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The decision with Twitter is whether continuing to use it crosses your particular moral line, even recognizing that there is no readily acceptable substitute. I crossed it a few days ago, and yeah Mastodon is not (and never will be) as capable as Twitter, but I'll accept the reduced utility in exchange for feeling better.
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Dec 13, 2022 15:49
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