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A quick search suggests that Lancets run between 20 and 40k USD. A Shahed, similarly, is about 20k. I'd say that just on dollar value alone the Ukrainians came out ahead in that exchange.
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Jun 12, 2023 21:32
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It's not just sticker price either. It's the opportunity and logistic cost of a dead weapons platform and/or dead trained crew. Neither side is able to replace it's heavy equipment domestically with any regularly
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Jun 12, 2023 21:48
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Theres a video circulating of drone footage of some retreating Russians being executed by barrier troops. It's from drone distance so you can't make out much... but you watch people drop. I won't post it here for obvious reasons but it's out there for the morbidly curious. Some people are doubting its authenticity. I think its genuine as it's not unusual for Ukranian drones to follow retreating russian soldiers. Plus, we were hearing about Russian barrier battalions months back.
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Jun 12, 2023 22:51
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Are the identities of the retreating forces and the blocking units known?
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Jun 12, 2023 22:54
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stealie72 posted:I'm sure someone in here has access to the underwriting tables and can tell us what that's worth. it's amazing how the same lawyer keeps popping up every time this question has to be asked https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Feinberg
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Jun 12, 2023 23:04
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A.o.D. posted:Are the identities of the retreating forces and the blocking units known? Wasn't mentioned in the tweet I found. If we had that info it would definitely help verify that it's genuine for sure.
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Jun 12, 2023 23:37
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https://open.substack.com/pub/thanegustafson/p/tanks-or-trains-russia-is-bearing?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=webquote:Faced with the loss of at least 2000 tanks in Ukraine since the invasion began, the Kremlin is pressing UVZ harder to produce more of them. In May former president Dmitri Medvedev, now deputy chair of the Russia Defense Council, unveiled a plan to produce 1500 tanks in 2023. Since UVZ’s annual capacity to produce new tanks is only somewhere between 150 and 200, this target implies that most of Medvedev’s target would have to be met with upgraded versions of older systems that are now in storage. Even that seems beyond reach, although UVZ gets some help from one of its subsidiaries, located in Omsk, which specializes in refurbishments. At best, they might be able to produce 300 modernized T-72s and T-90Ms in 2023, far short of Medvedev’s target. An interesting article about Uralvagonzavod. 300 doesn't sound like a lot compared to what they've lost, but I can't help but wonder how many Leopards and Abrams can be built and/or refurbished for Ukraine in a year.
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Jun 13, 2023 00:12
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Hannibal Rex posted:https://open.substack.com/pub/thanegustafson/p/tanks-or-trains-russia-is-bearing?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web I think Ukraine probably has more functioning tanks at this point than Russia does, but Russia has much larger reserves in depot, how many can be resurrected is anyone's guess. As far as providing Western tanks to Ukraine, if Western defense manufacturers like GDLS and Rheinmetall turned their entire output to Ukraine (expensive, requires breaching existing contracts with other customers), they could definitely outstrip Russia's capability to produce hardware, but they're not going to be able to keep up if it's piecemeal support. War is really good at chewing up equipment. Tanks die to air power and artillery, so pushing the ability of Ukraine to secure its skies against Russian overflight will reduce armor losses by a lot.
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Jun 13, 2023 00:40
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orange juche posted:I think Ukraine probably has more functioning tanks at this point than Russia does, but Russia has much larger reserves in depot, how many can be resurrected is anyone's guess. Several decades of planning for the "come as you are war," in which the brevity of the conflict means war-production capability isn't relevant, may be against Ukraine's long term prospects, here.
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Jun 13, 2023 00:53
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orange juche posted:I think Ukraine probably has more functioning tanks at this point than Russia does, but Russia has much larger reserves in depot, how many can be resurrected is anyone's guess. Russias ability to re-arm/refit their tanks is significantly handicapped due to sanctions. IIRC a significant amount of their internal electronic components are sourced from the west, which are now unavailable. Which is why you're seeing Russian tanks deployed with really old optics lately.
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Jun 13, 2023 01:02
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Action-Bastard posted:Russias ability to re-arm/refit their tanks is significantly handicapped due to sanctions. IIRC a significant amount of their internal electronic components are sourced from the west, which are now unavailable. Big old THALES markings on the thermal scope controls in the T-80u comes to mind
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Jun 13, 2023 01:08
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Madurai posted:Several decades of planning for the "come as you are war," in which the brevity of the conflict means war-production capability isn't relevant, may be against Ukraine's long term prospects, here. The saving grace is that Russia wasn’t prepared for a long war either.
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Jun 13, 2023 01:13
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Kesper North posted:Big old THALES markings on the thermal scope controls in the T-80u comes to mind I'm a bit surprised that their sales of armored vehicle optics to Russia doesn't show up under the "controversies" section on the Thales wikipedia page. Wasn't just T-80's either, I don't have enough internet detective juice in me right now to dig up the video, but shortly after they kicked the Russians out of the Kyiv suburbs there was a clip of a Ukrainian dude showing a civilian car riddled with large bullet holes and explaining how the family inside were fleeing from Bucha when they had been blown to pieces by autocannon fire from a Russian BMP with Thales optics. e: found it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FPgEIrMG7M Nuclear Tourist fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Jun 13, 2023 |
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Jun 13, 2023 01:28
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You can’t spell “war profiteer” without “profit”
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Jun 13, 2023 01:33
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Hannibal Rex posted:https://open.substack.com/pub/thanegustafson/p/tanks-or-trains-russia-is-bearing?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web A few points on this: quote:Faced with the loss of at least 2000 tanks in Ukraine since the invasion began, the Kremlin is pressing UVZ harder to produce more of them. In May former president Dmitri Medvedev, now deputy chair of the Russia Defense Council, unveiled a plan to produce 1500 tanks in 2023. Since UVZ’s annual capacity to produce new tanks is only somewhere between 150 and 200, this target implies that most of Medvedev’s target would have to be met with upgraded versions of older systems that are now in storage. Even that seems beyond reach, although UVZ gets some help from one of its subsidiaries, located in Omsk, which specializes in refurbishments. At best, they might be able to produce 300 modernized T-72s and T-90Ms in 2023, far short of Medvedev’s target. Medvedev and Putin's predictions for the # of tanks that they can produce this year have been viewed skeptically by basically everyone. Putin in particular has at several points suggested a number several times the above and even the russian nationalists were openly incredulous. There was an MoD statement back in march suggesting that they'd had ~300 tanks delivered (over what time period was not made clear), which that piece also appears to be taking at largely face value and it would be much more revealing if it broke down the ratio of refurbished t72s and upgraded t72Bs being turned out vs the actual number of new T90Ms. For obvious reasons they've been completely obfuscating any breakdown of what they're producing, so the quality of sourcing currently is basically russian MoD going 'trust me bro,' Russia's output of highly modern tanks is, as far as anyone can tell, quite low for a multitude of reasons and instead they've been focusing substantial resources on refurbishing older models with the lower end of thermals and modern firing computers. idk if it's even a bad idea, the intention appears to be to get as many vehicles operation as quickly as possible with the minimum of what it takes to be a threat on a modern battlefield so from a perspective of rapidly generating combat power, it's probably a decent approach. wrt T90s in particular, afaik historical production has been in the realm of dozens per year, not hundreds. My strong suspicion at this point is that the Russian defense industry is really struggling to actually ramp up production both to the maximum of current capacity (eg running third shifts consistently, sourcing enough materials in the first place, finding enough workers, paying people) as well as struggling to find capital to get new production lines going. Russians clearly treat ammunition stocks as a matter of opsec, but there are enough complaints about all kinds of munition shortages on both micro and macro levels that clearly they are having issues. There was also an interesting verstka piece about a month ago where they were interviewing people working in russian defense manufacturing and pretty much everyone talked about struggles to actually attract workers in the first place (due to low pay, lovely hours, irregular pay, and a widespread skilled labor shortage in general), much less for a new third shift. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that Russia isn't producing a ton of materiel or that its production of a bunch of critical gear is going to grind to a halt, but they're clearly having a rough go of it too. e: verstka piece I mentioned above, goes through several major munition plants in detail https://verstka.media/sotrudniki-rossiyskogo-vpk-rasskazali-o-problemah-svoey-raboty-i-pomehah-v-proizvodstve-oruzhiya Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jun 13, 2023 |
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Jun 13, 2023 02:13
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Action-Bastard posted:Russias ability to re-arm/refit their tanks is significantly handicapped due to sanctions. IIRC a significant amount of their internal electronic components are sourced from the west, which are now unavailable. Russia is still able to dodge sanctions via corrupt individuals and shell companies, but yeah it's significantly less than they need for their war industries.
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Jun 13, 2023 03:13
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A.o.D. posted:Are the identities of the retreating forces and the blocking units known? Both are wearing normal Russian Army uniforms, anything more is impossible to make out because of the distance.
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Jun 13, 2023 07:37
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Where are you seeing this video? If it is/was true, one would think Ukraine would be posting and talking about it a lot, especially towards the Russians.
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Jun 13, 2023 07:42
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Tuna-Fish posted:Both are wearing normal Russian Army uniforms, anything more is impossible to make out because of the distance.
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Jun 13, 2023 07:50
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just be mindful of the possibility of any video or report being a disinfo thing, check to see if it is covered in anywhere other than a random 5s clip via bird fart Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, Russians shooting their own troops with blocking detachments would need very credible sourcing, before I would believe it happening. If ISW wrote up in their daily conflict report that a group of Russians got smoked by their own guys to halt a retreat, I'd definitely believe that, because they go indepth when it comes to verifying poo poo before they report on it. E: ISW does have a bullet point on the footage, but caveats it with "ISW is unable to confirm whether the footage is authentic at this time", so a low-confidence assessment that "Russians may be shooting Russians to stop retreats" orange juche fucked around with this message at 08:45 on Jun 13, 2023 |
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Jun 13, 2023 08:03
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How likely are unintentional friendly fire incidents in situations like this? I'm a civilian lurker but to me it would seem a lot more plausible that the shooters believed there would only be Ukrainians in front of them and reacted to soldiers running towards their position based on that than copying tactics from Enemy at the Gates.
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Jun 13, 2023 09:03
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Asehujiko posted:How likely are unintentional friendly fire incidents in situations like this? I'm a civilian lurker but to me it would seem a lot more plausible that the shooters believed there would only be Ukrainians in front of them and reacted to soldiers running towards their position based on that than copying tactics from Enemy at the Gates. It's possible that it is a friendly fire incident, but there's not enough footage to confirm one way or the other. If it were clear footage of a unit executing soldiers retreating from the line of contact(there's not enough footage to ascertain how the solders wound up being engaged), then it would be pretty unambiguous proof of the existence of blocking units. There's just not enough footage leading to the event to grant it more than "just trust me bro" levels of credibility. orange juche fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Jun 13, 2023 |
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Jun 13, 2023 09:32
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Are we talking about the same footage? CW: description of war footage I saw drone footage of maybe five soldiers running towards a tree line where two or three other soldiers are walking in the opposite direction. The walking soldiers push one of the runners briefly, then fire shots in the air. As the runners turn away, the walking soldiers just shoot them. It's clearly not friendly fire in that it's no accident. They are also on the same side since the running men didn't expect to get shot.
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Jun 13, 2023 10:57
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https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1668555889429684224 Ukraine's posted some interviews with captives and intercepted calls that seem to verify that the barrier troops really do this sort of thing. It could, of course, just be lying, but so far I feel like Ukraine has been found to be telling the truth in 99% of cases, so I'm believing them.
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Jun 13, 2023 11:15
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crusty posted:Are we talking about the same footage? I haven't seen the footage as I don't really want to look at people shooting each other, but it still raises a question of exactly who is shooting who. All we have is an obvious case of people getting shot by people who they didn't expect to get shot by, with no confirmation of whose side those people were on. I'm not carrying water for the Russians on this, it's just there's credible groups who have seen it who are uncertain of its veracity.
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Jun 13, 2023 11:17
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orange juche posted:I haven't seen the footage as I don't really want to look at people shooting each other, but it still raises a question of exactly who is shooting who. All we have is an obvious case of people getting shot by people who they didn't expect to get shot by, with no confirmation of whose side those people were on. Understood, it was a genuine question. Agreed that there's no way (for me) to tell which side, when taken, or if staged or not. Given the above though, it's clearly deliberate action against same-side forces.
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Jun 13, 2023 11:34
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https://youtu.be/6z4rhBKTT5U This may have been posted before in one of the other Ukraine threads, but I looked at it because CIT also linked to it. It's a decent overview how dam collapses can happen from a civil engineering perspective, and whether or not that applies to Kakhovka. I don’t know the reputation of this particular OSINT guy, but a bunch of civil engineers and scientists were OK with having their names attached to his conclusion. tl;dr - Russian negligence and incompetence seems more likely than explosive demolition. Some experts have argued for an explosion, but I find this more compelling. I'll add my own take: if Russia had any kind of professional monitoring of the dam, they probably had advance warning that the collapse was about to happen, even if they didn't plan for it from the start.
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Jun 13, 2023 11:44
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PurpleXVI posted:
POW confessions are a notoriously unrealiable source for obvious reasons
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Jun 13, 2023 11:57
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Not discounting negligence, but even NPR was reporting a geological agency detected a blast in the area large enough to register on their seismic stations before it collapsed.
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Jun 13, 2023 12:05
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bird food bathtub posted:Not discounting negligence, but even NPR was reporting a geological agency detected a blast in the area large enough to register on their seismic stations before it collapsed. About that: https://twitter.com/QuentinBrissaud/status/1668219697613905920
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Jun 13, 2023 12:35
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They haven't released their raw data, and there is no indication of scale on that graph. On their site, they say the 2:55 spike was between 1-2 magnitude. I can certainly imagine the Russians deciding to blow up already set charges in the machine hall, after realizing that they need to evacuate after the 2:35 collapse. There's video footage of the building still standing after the dam has already collapsed.
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Jun 13, 2023 12:59
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Ukrainians bagged another Russian general. https://www.theguardian.com/world/l...f08a1fc1d20f910
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Jun 13, 2023 14:13
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fatherboxx posted:POW confessions are a notoriously unrealiable source for obvious reasons Yeah, of all the sources of info available to us I'd put the warcrime interviews on a par with a rando twitter user posting combat footage taken from Arma in terms of reliability. Edit: psydude posted:Ukrainians bagged another Russian general. At the rate they're going it can't be much longer until Ukraine catch up to Putin's score for killing Russian generals. Lovely Joe Stalin fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Jun 13, 2023 |
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Jun 13, 2023 15:54
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Lovely Joe Stalin posted:Yeah, of all the sources of info available to us I'd put the warcrime interviews on a par with a rando twitter user posting combat footage taken from Arma in terms of reliability. WSJ interviewed two PoWs and they mentioned the blocking units killing Storm-Z detachment personnel: https://www.wsj.com/articles/just-t...share_permalink (Non-paywalled link.) quote:A former soldier from St. Petersburg, the rifleman was serving a prison sentence for drug-dealing when Storm Z signed him up with the promise of a pardon if he fought in Ukraine for six months. On the Donetsk front, he and his comrades were threatened with being shot by an antiretreat unit if they refused to advance, he said. He heard one such shooting ordered over the radio, and reported as carried out. “They treat us like livestock,” he said. It's believable, because Wagner group operated the same way (albeit via internal policing, versus FSB officers shooting retreating forces). And while I'm sure there was a Ukrainian PAO in the room, this isn't exactly the same as a taped confession from someone held at gunpoint.
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Jun 13, 2023 15:59
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Lovely Joe Stalin posted:Yeah, of all the sources of info available to us I'd put the warcrime interviews on a par with a rando twitter user posting combat footage taken from Arma in terms of reliability. Its been heavily documented and even discussed by non-POW Russian soldiers. Russia is using blocking units. Its well established. Multiple intercepted conversations and video appeals talk about them being unable to retreat or leave because of rear guard units threatening them. Be skeptical of POW interviews to be sure, but this claim is well validated by multiple sources. Hell that's almost all the Kayrovites are being used as - bullies to force front line troops to advance or die. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jun 13, 2023 |
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Jun 13, 2023 16:05
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POW interviews are not warcrimes.
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Jun 13, 2023 16:08
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M_Gargantua posted:POW interviews are not warcrimes. I think the only real reference I could find that might forbid them would be: quote:Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity. You could absolutely argue that this means prisoners of war should remain hidden from the public eye as far as is possible. EDIT: That's from Part II, Article 13 of the part of the Geneva Conventions that are about prisoners of war.
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Jun 13, 2023 16:29
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PurpleXVI posted:I think the only real reference I could find that might forbid them would be: Interviews aren't 'public curiosity'; that means displaying them for the public, allowing the public to take revenge, etc. Interviews- provided they are not made or designed for propaganda- are a standard part of captivity, as I recall.
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Jun 13, 2023 17:05
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bulletsponge13 posted:Interviews aren't 'public curiosity'; that means displaying them for the public, allowing the public to take revenge, etc. Interviews- provided they are not made or designed for propaganda- are a standard part of captivity, as I recall. I personally don't think it's a problem as long as the prisoners of war consent 100% to it, but it's pretty hard to confirm that they're consenting completely of their free will and don't worry that they might, say, be mistreated if they don't let themselves be recorded and said recordings showed publicly. I don't think most Ukrainians would do anything like that, but even if the worry is entirely in the prisoners' minds, then they're still not quite free to say no. Also the interviewing itself isn't the potential problem, it's the posting said interviews on social media afterwards that some organizations like the ICRC react to. I think the potential harm here is more whatever consequences these prisoners might face if they ever return to Russia, which also needs to be considered.
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Jun 13, 2023 17:17
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bulletsponge13 posted:Interviews aren't 'public curiosity'; that means displaying them for the public, allowing the public to take revenge, etc. Interviews- provided they are not made or designed for propaganda- are a standard part of captivity, as I recall. I'm in line with this interpretation. Public curiosity Mena's parading POWs to be heckled by the crowds, or displaying them like animals in a zoo. A calm interview in a controlled setting, even if the POW may or may not be a voluntary participant (I don't mean torture in this instance) doesn't really injure the dignity of the POW, the protection of which was the purpose of that restriction. Edit: Russia's treatment of their own citizens is not Ukraine's problem to fix.
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Jun 13, 2023 17:21
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