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https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1618534546840125440 Just a regular reminder to not trust a single word that Prigozhin says and stop treating him as a big player in politics.
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Jan 26, 2023 11:05
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Norway estimates 180k Russians killed or wounded. https://news.yahoo.com/least-180-000-russian-troops-115500932.html
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Jan 26, 2023 12:59
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fatherboxx posted:https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1618534546840125440 Prigozhin owns his own private military with a pretty solid number of soldiers in a state where mercenaries are "officially" banned. So I wouldn't say he's small time. He's clearly useful to Vladdy in some capacity. Probably keeps the infighting churning at his level instead of going upstairs.
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Jan 26, 2023 13:03
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Nelson Mandingo posted:Prigozhin owns his own private military with a pretty solid number of soldiers in a state where mercenaries are "officially" banned. So I wouldn't say he's small time. He's clearly useful to Vladdy in some capacity. Probably keeps the infighting churning at his level instead of going upstairs. This is what the professional nigerian prince email writer wants you to believe - that the convicts and mercenaries do his bidding and are not on a thin life support from Ministry of Defence and President 's office
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Jan 26, 2023 13:19
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The Will Smith movie Enemy of the State gave people a bad idea of how satellites work. If satellites could get 24/7 color photos through clouds with the detail conveyed by the picture that Trump posted on twitter, we wouldn’t buy all the hundreds of drones and planes with cameras on them that we buy and invest so heavily in scouts. They could be lying, but this point has come up multiple times in DOD briefs regarding why they cannot get perfect clarity of battle lines from hundreds of kilometers away in airplanes through unclear weather. SAR is good but it’s not god vision.
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Jan 26, 2023 13:40
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mlmp08 posted:The Will Smith movie Enemy of the State gave people a bad idea of how satellites work. When it’s not cloudy though, it seems like it’s pretty much 24/7 coverage, at least for spots that are of interest like the Bakhmut area would be. Like all that footage of the NGO aid worker’s car that the US military obliterated with his family during the collapse of the Afghani government - they didn’t seem to have any trouble precisely tracking it for hours. They did seem to have trouble figuring out it was full of cans of water, and was not full of missiles. Granted Kabul in August doesn’t get a lot of cloud cover, and it’s also possible that footage was from loitering Reapers and not satellites, although based on the Trump leak the satellite vision seems to be as good as that from planes.
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Jan 26, 2023 13:51
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Saladman posted:Granted Kabul in August doesn’t get a lot of cloud cover, and it’s also possible that footage was from loitering Reapers and not satellites It’s this. Aircraft provide full motion persistent video and imagery and are live taskable and are hundreds to thousands of times closer to what they are looking at than satellites. And sometimes they just fly for hours on end looking for interesting stuff and activity. This is why the US army, marines, navy, and air force all have multiple models of recon drone, recon manned aircraft, and recon land/surface vehicles and equipment. Satellites are great for getting x number of photos per week of known locations or providing persistent coverage of very specific types of events (like hot, large missiles boosting above cloud cover). Beyond that, I won’t really to go into details.
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Jan 26, 2023 14:04
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Charlz Guybon posted:Norway estimates 180k Russians killed or wounded. Other than intel sharing between NATO members, is there a particular reason why Norway would have a good idea about Russian casualties?
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Jan 26, 2023 14:10
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Nelson Mandingo posted:Prigozhin owns his own private military with a pretty solid number of soldiers in a state where mercenaries are "officially" banned. So I wouldn't say he's small time. He's clearly useful to Vladdy in some capacity. Probably keeps the infighting churning at his level instead of going upstairs. The fact that he has mercenaries at all is a point of some significance, but keep in mind what "pretty solid number" actually means. Prewar it was something like 8k troops compared to the Russian full standing force of 300k or so, and by now it's roughly 50k maybe compared to somewhere between 600k to 1m under arms. It's easy to forget because Wagner likes yelling about themselves but there's not really that many of them and they're not really that significant on the battlefield.
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Jan 26, 2023 14:25
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For those interested, another difference between the M1A1 and M1A2+ is the M2 .50 caliber machinegun mount. In the M1A1, the tank commander can fire from inside the tank, even fully buttoned up. He can manually traverse and elevate/depress, and uses a day sight with some magnification (3x, I think, but don't quote me on that). I preferred it to the M1A2 which could only be fired by standing out of the hatch while holding the back handles. We called this "John Wayne" style and most of the junior officers I worked with preferred it because "it was more fun". I preferred the M1A1 because it was more accurate. It's hard to hit jack and poo poo manually holding a firing .50 cal if it's more than ~300m away. In fact, you'd do a little trick during gunnery tests by turning a locking pin sideways to force a bit of up/down recoil jitter to give you a better chance of hitting a point target (1 bullet is enough to "count"). During gunnery with the M1A1 I could hit stuff 800m away within a couple seconds. That said, the M1A2 had an independent commander's thermal sight for the main gun (120mm) and the coaxial machine gun, and having two, independent sights able to search for targets is a major advantage compared to the M1A1. Anyways, my understanding is that the newer M1A2SEP versions replace it with a CROWS system, which is definitely better than a 3x day time sight. I think they've essentially merged the commanders independent sight from the original M1A2 and the .50cal mount from the M1A1. /end nerdy tank-chat.
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Jan 26, 2023 14:54
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Azov have just gone through rebranding, as they are now officially the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/01/26/7386607/ Instead of the old controversial 'Nation's Idea', the new logo, although evocative of the old one, is just three lines  In their fiery promo video they use them to mean the roman number III and the letter Ш in the word 'Штурмова' (Assault).
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Jan 26, 2023 15:02
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Judgy Fucker posted:Other than intel sharing between NATO members, is there a particular reason why Norway would have a good idea about Russian casualties? Intel can be shared, but everyone will be doing their own analysis as to a) how they interpret it and b) if they are confident enough in their conclusion to announce it publicly.
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Jan 26, 2023 15:02
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Paladinus posted:Azov have just gone through rebranding, as they are now officially the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade. That's a loving default Call of Duty game tag wtf
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Jan 26, 2023 15:05
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Satellite images hint at scale of Russian mercenary group's losses in Ukraine
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Jan 26, 2023 15:12
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Tomn posted:The fact that he has mercenaries at all is a point of some significance, but keep in mind what "pretty solid number" actually means. Prewar it was something like 8k troops compared to the Russian full standing force of 300k or so, and by now it's roughly 50k maybe compared to somewhere between 600k to 1m under arms. It's easy to forget because Wagner likes yelling about themselves but there's not really that many of them and they're not really that significant on the battlefield. I dunno, it's hard to say how many mercs they have or exactly what Wagner's position is in the big picture based on publicly available information. But considering the whole Bakhmut thing they seem to be pretty important. I also recently saw this video by Anders Puck Nielsen about the growing role of PMCs in the war and what it could mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnnP38wtDIs
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Jan 26, 2023 15:20
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I keep seeing videos on Youtube with titles like "Ukrainian Paratroopers kill Russian forces with artillery near Bakhmut". What I don't understand is: 1. How Ukrainians would keep using paratroopers with the massive amount of Russian anti-air around, 2. Why they'd bring artillery with them since they need to be mobile and artillery would slow them down if they were spotted 3. Why Ukraine needs small portable artillery dropped near Bakhmut since they already have their massive guns just outside the city.
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Jan 26, 2023 15:23
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SaTaMaS posted:I keep seeing videos on Youtube with titles like "Ukrainian Paratroopers kill Russian forces with artillery near Bakhmut". What I don't understand is: 1. How Ukrainians would keep using paratroopers with the massive amount of Russian anti-air around, 2. Why they'd bring artillery with them since they need to be mobile and artillery would slow them down if they were spotted 3. Why Ukraine needs small portable artillery dropped near Bakhmut since they already have their massive guns just outside the city. They just mean "Ukrainian elite infantry" when they say "paratroopers", not that Ukrainian paratroopers are actually jumping out of planes.
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Jan 26, 2023 15:32
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Gort posted:They just mean "Ukrainian elite infantry" when they say "paratroopers", not that Ukrainian paratroopers are actually jumping out of planes. Yeah usually paratroops jump maybe once and the rest of the time they're just a light infantry division and even that gets muddied up as people capture/adapt/steal/receive equipment.
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Jan 26, 2023 15:33
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Kraftwerk posted:Yeah usually paratroops jump Fixed.
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Jan 26, 2023 15:36
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"Paratroopers" sounds cooler on Youtube and is more likely to get clicks. If it's not just a catch-all for a light infantry battalion that has never deployed from planes as people have said, it's cynical clickbait. Regarding satellites and coverage, they are most useful for detecting large concentrations, such as the beginning of the way. They're useful for strategic planning or ID-ing semi-static targets at somewhere like an airfield, but you wouldn't want to rely on them for realtime info.
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Jan 26, 2023 15:38
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SaTaMaS posted:I keep seeing videos on Youtube with titles like "Ukrainian Paratroopers kill Russian forces with artillery near Bakhmut". What I don't understand is: 1. How Ukrainians would keep using paratroopers with the massive amount of Russian anti-air around, 2. Why they'd bring artillery with them since they need to be mobile and artillery would slow them down if they were spotted 3. Why Ukraine needs small portable artillery dropped near Bakhmut since they already have their massive guns just outside the city. 1. Paratroopers are regular infantry, they don't descend from planes/helicopters although they might do it in training. The paratroopers is mostly just a title for a more mobile version of regular mech brigade. 2. They use mostly SPGs - Gvozdika, Akatsiya, Nona etc not towed artillery. 3. Ukraine has never had the capacity to drop anything, everything moves on ground.
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Jan 26, 2023 15:43
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Alchenar posted:Intel can be shared, but everyone will be doing their own analysis as to a) how they interpret it and b) if they are confident enough in their conclusion to announce it publicly. So why Norway? I hadn't really figured the Norwegians to be an intelligence powerhouse, and besides being in NATO not really sure why they're invested in trying to ascertain casualty figures for the conflict. I guess they do share a small border with Russia in the Arctic. The article cited says the official didn't announce their sources, which is both well understood but also muddles the authority of such figures. I guess what I'm really trying to get at is: why believe a casualty figure from Norway of all places? More than happy to be enlightened, hence the questions. If it was, say, Poland releasing their estimates I wouldn't be nearly as curious.
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Jan 26, 2023 15:48
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Paladinus posted:Azov have just gone through rebranding, as they are now officially the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade. Cannot wait for seawater Monster energy drink. mobby_6kl posted:I dunno, it's hard to say how many mercs they have or exactly what Wagner's position is in the big picture based on publicly available information. But considering the whole Bakhmut thing they seem to be pretty important. I also recently saw this video by Anders Puck Nielsen about the growing role of PMCs in the war and what it could mean: Bakhmut thing is that they’re loud about Bakhmut being a thing. Russia’s position in the war to me doesn’t change at all if you magic wand Wagner away and UAF can use Bakhmut as a sanatorium. Charlotte Hornets posted:3. Ukraine has never had the capacity to drop anything, everything moves on ground. While this is not relevant to the question, this isn’t strictly true either.
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Jan 26, 2023 15:59
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I had time to read through the articles Libluini posted about depleted uranium (DU) versus tungsten carbine (TC) penetrators and their effects (thanks for the links!). It looks like overall DU has about a 50-100mm RHA penetration advantage over TC at any given time. Germany created a TC round in the early 2000's that matched the US DU round from the early 1990s, but a couple years later the US created a new DU round that had greater penetration than the German TC round. Russia has two armor piercing ammunition types for its 125mm guns: one is TC and one is DU. The DU one outperforms the TC one by 100mm. This, of course, is just penetration, and doesn't get to the pyrophoric effects of DU. I.e. It basically bursts into very hot flame and so causes ammunition and fuel in its target to ignite. (Hell, it causes the air inside the vehicle to ignite.) In summary, I think there are very legitimate reasons for militaries to continue using DU over TC, even with the higher health risks of subsequent people inhaling DU particles over the still-pretty-awful health risks of inhaling tungsten particles.
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Jan 26, 2023 16:20
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Kraftwerk posted:Yeah usually paratroops jump maybe once and the rest of the time they're just a light infantry division and even that gets muddied up as people capture/adapt/steal/receive equipment.
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Jan 26, 2023 16:25
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Actually jumping infantry out of planes is basically useless in real life. The potential benefits of air insertion do exist in some very specific situations. They are heavily counter balanced by the effectiveness of other methods of arrival in almost every other situation and the benefits of not having a huge amount of your personnel injured before they even get to the fight. gently caress Airborne is what I'm saying. I like my spine not being compressed and my ankles/hips unbroken.
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Jan 26, 2023 16:31
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Ynglaur posted:I had time to read through the articles Libluini posted about depleted uranium (DU) versus tungsten carbine (TC) penetrators and their effects (thanks for the links!). It looks like overall DU has about a 50-100mm RHA penetration advantage over TC at any given time. Germany created a TC round in the early 2000's that matched the US DU round from the early 1990s, but a couple years later the US created a new DU round that had greater penetration than the German TC round. Russia has two armor piercing ammunition types for its 125mm guns: one is TC and one is DU. The DU one outperforms the TC one by 100mm. There are, and his reply was needlessly dismissive. Polyphoric effects for DU munitions are a key element of DU penetrators, and all the Wikipedia armor penetration links in the world wont change that.
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Jan 26, 2023 16:32
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Looks like there's a timescale for C2s https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1618631759477997568
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Jan 26, 2023 16:34
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Ynglaur posted:I had time to read through the articles Libluini posted about depleted uranium (DU) versus tungsten carbine (TC) penetrators and their effects (thanks for the links!). It looks like overall DU has about a 50-100mm RHA penetration advantage over TC at any given time. Germany created a TC round in the early 2000's that matched the US DU round from the early 1990s, but a couple years later the US created a new DU round that had greater penetration than the German TC round. Russia has two armor piercing ammunition types for its 125mm guns: one is TC and one is DU. The DU one outperforms the TC one by 100mm. DU is evil stuff, because as you point out, DU burns. So it's got a serious advantage as a penetrating round over Tungsten in as much as a Tungsten round penetration has a chance to not kill everyone in the vehicle him by either causing a ammunition cook-off or just burning everyone inside the vehicle to death. Whereas if you are inside an AFV penetrated by a DU round you are going to be very dead in a probably horrible way. Does anyone know if the Abrams the US is offering up to the UAF are going to be American or export variants? My reading of the performance of the American M1A2 during the war on terror is that, of the three combat losses US forces suffered none resulted from crew compartment breaches, though only one of those lost tanks was likely hit by a Kornet. This could also be propaganda, honestly, but in addition the one M1A2 lost in Afghanistan that was deemed not recoverable also was reportedly unable to be penetrated by other Abrams firing American DU shells at it, and ultimately had to be destroyed by aircraft to prevent it from being captured and passed on to China or Russia. If that's the case, assuming a whole lot of logistical issues can be overcome, the M1A2s in offer for the UAF should be really loving helpful to the UAF... though I am not sure if 31 tanks is going to make a huge difference.
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Jan 26, 2023 16:44
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mobby_6kl posted:I dunno, it's hard to say how many mercs they have or exactly what Wagner's position is in the big picture based on publicly available information. But considering the whole Bakhmut thing they seem to be pretty important. I also recently saw this video by Anders Puck Nielsen about the growing role of PMCs in the war and what it could mean: Bakhmut exists basically because Wagner is pushing it as a way to increase their prestige and influence in Kremlin court politics, rather than because Wagner is already a bigshot elite force. It's a lot of noise, but in terms of actual boots on the ground Wagner isn't remotely in the same weight class as the actual Russian military, and the distinct impression I get is that Prigozhin is important less for the money and troops he can throw around and more for the fact that he has Putin's ear - and Bakhmut is all about trying to get more of that by "proving" to Putin that Prigozhin can get poo poo done, nevermind the cost or the real significance of what was accomplished. In other words it's largely a PR job, which would be why it keeps coming up in the news. Taking a quick skim at the video you linked, I notice this guy actually agrees with my figure on Wagner's current numbers, i.e. "about 50k." Even if you're generous and add 10k one way or another that's still a small fraction of the Russian army, and that's leaving aside access to heavy equipment. Aside from that, I suspect the analyst is making a mistake by treating Wagner as an actual corporation in it to make money and motivated by such - instead, the real currency seems to be Kremlin influence for the person controlling it. Operating at a loss and driving the company and its manpower into the ground would in those terms be a perfectly acceptable tradeoff if it means Putin approves of Prigozhin more and allows him more influence in decision-making. Speaking of Tiktok warriors, how's Kadyrov doing these days? Don't think he's been making too much noise lately.
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Jan 26, 2023 16:45
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Charliegrs posted:It's going to be pretty wild what the Ukrainian military looks like in a year or 2. Like you'll have a military with Abrams Tanks, patriot missiles, and submarine drones, alongside BMP1s, GRAD rocket launchers, and MI8 helicopters etc. Like a mix of some of the most high tech equipment the west can provide with all the really old Soviet era legacy stuff they still have. Nevermind a year or two when the transition will still be ongoing, the five year window is more interesting I think. Ukraine will probably end up as a bigger, even more militarized, Israel. It could end up as one of most capable local force projection militaries on the planet given its combat experience and ever increasing Western support.
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Jan 26, 2023 16:48
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mlmp08 posted:It’s this. Aircraft provide full motion persistent video and imagery and are live taskable and are hundreds to thousands of times closer to what they are looking at than satellites. And sometimes they just fly for hours on end looking for interesting stuff and activity. This is why the US army, marines, navy, and air force all have multiple models of recon drone, recon manned aircraft, and recon land/surface vehicles and equipment. public perception of UAV capabilities seems to be specifically about 15-20 years behind. Hell the best known mq-1 predators are 30 year old tech and mq-9 reapers are 20+ year old. even stuff like the switchblades are nearly 15 year old tech. plus all the sensor packages have been heavily and continuously iterated upon and there are some very sneaky platforms
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Jan 26, 2023 16:49
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ZombieLenin posted:This could also be propaganda, honestly, but in addition the one M1A2 lost in Afghanistan that was deemed not recoverable also was reportedly unable to be penetrated by other Abrams firing American DU shells at it, and ultimately had to be destroyed by aircraft to prevent it from being captured and passed on to China or Russia. That just sounds like it was buried or fell down a crevasse or something so there wasn't enough poking out to meaningfully destroy, not that the Abrams is immune to it's own guns. That would be a wild claim to make.
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Jan 26, 2023 16:49
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Question - does the Abram and Leopard-2 use DU?
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Jan 26, 2023 17:10
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Abrams can. Export variants do not, and there are non-DU ammo options. Leopard 2 doesn't use it. Ukraine getting the DU-armored Abrams seems unlikely imo.
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Jan 26, 2023 17:15
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Is DU really something used in armor too? I thought it was ammo only.
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Jan 26, 2023 17:21
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Kraftwerk posted:Is DU really something used in armor too? I thought it was ammo only. Yes, it’s the super secret US-make Chobham armour.
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Jan 26, 2023 17:27
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British made*, hence the british name
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Jan 26, 2023 17:40
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Yes, it’s the super secret US-make Chobham armour. Unless there's some unofficial military leak stuff that's not my understanding of what Chobham armor is. It's supposed to be a matrix of ceramic tiles forming some sort of complicated composite armor that can absorb HEAT rounds fairly easily and disrupt KE-Penetrators. I don't think depleted uranium is a component of this armor and Chobham gets used by default in challenger 2s, and I don't think they strip this out and sell rolled steel models.
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Jan 26, 2023 17:47
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Herstory Begins Now posted:British made*, hence the british name British-invented, Brits make their own without DU for Challengers.  Kraftwerk posted:Unless there's some unofficial military leak stuff that's not my understanding of what Chobham armor is. It's supposed to be a matrix of ceramic tiles forming some sort of complicated composite armor that can absorb HEAT rounds fairly easily and disrupt KE-Penetrators. I don't think depleted uranium is a component of this armor and Chobham gets used by default in challenger 2s, and I don't think they strip this out and sell rolled steel models. Americans took Chobham and added uranium to it.
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Jan 26, 2023 17:57
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