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orange juche posted:MICLICs seem really cool and I wonder if NATO is providing Ukraine with minefield clearing equipment. They have/are providing mine clearing equipment. In fact I have seen videos on Reddit of Ukraine utilizing MICLICs (or similar vehicles) to clear mines during recent assaults, though it hasn’t been as ubiquitous as I’d have liked from anecdotal evidence.
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Jul 16, 2023 00:06
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Ragaman posted:They have/are providing mine clearing equipment. In fact I have seen videos on Reddit of Ukraine utilizing MICLICs (or similar vehicles) to clear mines during recent assaults, though it hasn’t been as ubiquitous as I’d have liked from anecdotal evidence. I'm guessing that just about every weapon and tool in Western (especially American) stockpiles that's never been tested in real war conditions against a peer opponent is either in Ukraine right now or in a neighboring country. I find this war rather fascinating in a technological sense. We're seeing so many tools that were built, sold to Western militaries, and used for decades without ever seeing their actual intended use case against a peer opponent, finally being used for what the Western militaries theoretically bought those weapons for. And most of them seem to be working incredibly well, like the Javelin. And a bunch of our older equipment has been well received to, according to videos and articles by Ukrainians. Like their growing love affair with the M113, which the Ukrainian army is finding incredibly handy for just getting people around in any terrain behind the front lines, particularly for medical evacuation with that huge rear bay and open door that makes it easy to get wounded people in and out.
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Jul 16, 2023 00:11
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Ragaman posted:They have/are providing mine clearing equipment. In fact I have seen videos on Reddit of Ukraine utilizing MICLICs (or similar vehicles) to clear mines during recent assaults, though it hasn’t been as ubiquitous as I’d have liked from anecdotal evidence. IIRC, mine-clearing was one of the reasons the TOS-1 got built (like its never-deployed US counterpart, SLUFAE)
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Jul 16, 2023 00:12
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:My experience with War Radio Nerd was that he showed up on an episode of Chapo *mechanic voice* now there’s your problem right there.
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Jul 16, 2023 00:14
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:Is it just that the WRN is kind of too biased by his politics, or is he just not really as much a warfare expert as he is a historian or something? Or did I get the wrong idea? He's a complete fool who has no military or historical background. Always has been.
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Jul 16, 2023 00:19
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Soon as putin started going off about how "ukraine isn't real" after building up troops on the border it was pretty obvious the invasion was going to happen
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Jul 16, 2023 00:20
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Madurai posted:(like its never-deployed US counterpart, SLUFAE) That thing looks like the sort of thing I'd doodle in the margin of notepads when I was 12. That rules.
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Jul 16, 2023 00:42
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mark ames is a complete hack who is adjacent to RT/gray zone/blumenthal. dude is a completely poo poo source.
Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Jul 16, 2023 |
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Jul 16, 2023 00:44
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GD_American posted:I'm not going to judge anyone for getting the call wrong on Russia invading before the fact. I will ruthlessly judge them on how well they handle being wrong. 
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Jul 16, 2023 00:47
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Cythereal posted:I'm guessing that just about every weapon and tool in Western (especially American) stockpiles that's never been tested in real war conditions against a peer opponent is either in Ukraine right now or in a neighboring country. Definitely! There was some initial surprise (at least for me) at how useful Gepards turned out to be for example . They may not be shooting down low flying Migs or Mi-24s at the front line, but the Ukraine is getting their moneys worth using them to kill Shaheed loitering drone munitions before they strike critical infrastructure. I’m sure it’s been a huge learning (or validating) experience for many armies across the globe.
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Jul 16, 2023 01:01
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Madurai posted:IIRC, mine-clearing was one of the reasons the TOS-1 got built (like its never-deployed US counterpart, SLUFAE) Seems as though the Russian calculus is that it’s better to use the TOS to target enemy infantry in fortifications/trenches and instead just use mobiks as their de facto mine clearing “equipment”.
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Jul 16, 2023 01:04
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Herstory Begins Now posted:mark ames is a complete hack who is adjacent to RT/gray zone/blumenthal. dude is a completely poo poo source. Oh wow, never noticed that one of those guys was Mark Ames. Yeah, that'll explain it.
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Jul 16, 2023 01:08
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Oh wow, WRN is Mark Ames. That would explain why he's so drat wrong and stupid.
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Jul 16, 2023 01:10
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Alchenar posted:There were two groups of people looking at the situation pre war and they each split into two groups: IDK if I'd break it down exactly like that, but more or less yeah. Particularly the part there about Putin's circle getting exceptionally small is the really key bit wrt how people got it so wrong. There also were a huge number of (even very influential) people on every side that were stuck in 2014 wrt their estimation of Ukraine's ability to resist. As in they had literally no idea that Ukraine had become one of the most formidable militaries in Europe in the prior 8 years. You'd think that missing something like that would by nature make people not experts, but lol plenty of people who had no excuse not to know better did not know better. Of particular note wrt why a lot of people got it wrong who shouldn't have: in the leadup to it you could talk to very well connected Russians who were almost unanimously convinced that it was not happening. If your informational inputs included talking to extremely connected or highly placed Russians you were getting wrong info (as they were, too, it turned out: the shock and dismay in response to the invasion was genuine and indeed was a rare moment of the whole russian stoic facade cracking). The line you'd hear over and over from Russians who were otherwise very dependably sources for info on what's going on behind the scenes in Russia was "Putin would have to be insanely stupid to invade.' This includes people directly in oligarch orbits, as well. The ubiquity of that position is why even people and indeed even entire agencies that should've had better info got it wrong. Basically it was a situation where actually having good quality sources made you less likely to get it right. That said, imo the scale and scope of the buildup was a massive red flag that something was about to happen. Putin could've put a plenty disruptive economic and social sword of Damocles over Kyiv without staging virtually his entire combat-ready military on Ukraine's borders. On a smaller note, there were signs of internal dispute within Russian military about the wisdom of the idea of invading Ukraine and the sheer cost and disruption of the buildup was something decidedly atypical of the spending-averse Russian military. By the time of Putin's irredentist speech, I don't think there should've been really any question left. American intelligence agencies reporting that the decision had been made was, imo, as credible as something like that could be, though I can also understand why people prone to doubting public declarations of intelligence agencies would've treated that as suspect. still, the consensus on both sides had for quite some time been that US sources included Putin's direct orbit. It wasn't reported on until March, but Putin firing his entire household staff in mid February is a very peculiar data point in there, too. Probably the one big surprise in the leadup to the war was how effectively the invasion was kept secret from the Russian elite. You could see both genuine shock and, more significantly from a predictive pov: that they had genuinely not expected a war because very few steps had been taken to insulate themselves from the inevitable economic fallout of a war and the inevitable sanctions. I spent a bunch of the leadup to the war arguing that Russia was preparing to invade, but idk I definitely can understand how people got that wrong. Personally, the thing I think no one had any excuse to get wrong was missing 8 years of Ukrainian military development and growth. GD_American posted:I'm not going to judge anyone for getting the call wrong on Russia invading before the fact. I will ruthlessly judge them on how well they handle being wrong. basically this. though I do have actual disdain anyone who claimed to have even a casual interest in Russia-Ukraine issues who was entirely unaware of how much Ukraine had developed their military after 2014. Coquito Ergo Sum posted:I also think people don't give Ukraine enough credit. I listen to a podcast hosted by a US Army urban warfare expert, and they did an episode on the Defense of Kyiv: haven't listened to that yet but that's been a recurring theme among people who have been in Ukraine studying what went on and it boils down to 'western weapons, while vital and absolutely needed get hugely over-credited with having stopped Russia's invasion when most of what stopped Russia was just well-applied defensive warfare fundamentals and Ukrainians fighting like loving angry demons with a fair number of donbass veterans mixed in with the tdf units.' western weapon systems were absolutely impactful but not ubiquitous enough to get as much credit as they do. Kofman is the most notable voice along those lines, but you see it pop up quite a bit. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Jul 16, 2023 |
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Jul 16, 2023 01:46
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Madurai posted:IIRC, mine-clearing was one of the reasons the TOS-1 got built (like its never-deployed US counterpart, SLUFAE) The US apparently used the BLU-73 warheads that would have been in the SLUFAE in the CBU-72, which was a 550lb cluster bomb with 3x 100lb FAE submunitions. The CBU-72 inventory was basically entirely used up in the Gulf War, where it was extremely effective in clearing the thick minefields blocking Coalition forces from crossing in from Saudi Arabia. While they were quite effective in clearing mines, their psychological effect on enemy troops was noteworthy as well, leading defenders to surrender after seeing the bombs being dropped on the minefields. I imagine seeing the biggest explosion of your life a thousand yards away would make you consider whether you actually want to be in that trench.
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Jul 16, 2023 02:05
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I'm old enough that I was reading Radio War Nerd when he was writing columns as just the War Nerd, with an actual secret identity under the nom de plume Gary Brecher. 
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Jul 16, 2023 04:44
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Powered Descent posted:I'm old enough that I was reading Radio War Nerd when he was writing columns as just the War Nerd, with an actual secret identity under the nom de plume Gary Brecher. He was blatantly obviously wrong about stuff back then too.
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Jul 16, 2023 05:50
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:He was blatantly obviously wrong about stuff back then too. My favorite was "Aircraft carriers are completely useless now thanks to missiles!"
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Jul 16, 2023 06:41
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Handsome Ralph posted:My favorite was "Aircraft carriers are completely useless now thanks to missiles!" That was the first time I ever encountered him and it instantly convinced me he had nothing worthwhile to say.
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Jul 16, 2023 07:01
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For me the moment the penny dropped was when Russia published its peace plan that literally went 'disband NATO, no US presence in Europe east of Portugal'. That was clearly the Kremlin venting the full 30 years of frustration over things had turned out in Europe and that it saw this moment as the last chance to turn back the tide. Ironically it was the Putin whisperers in Europe who clearly least understood what he actually believed. And yeah, I fall into the 'rabid mobilisation saved Ukraine' camp. For all of the problems the Russians had with their advance, its hard to see how they don't take Kyiv if multiple brigades of TDF don't start materialising out of nowhere in front of them in the first two weeks.
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Jul 16, 2023 10:07
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Alchenar posted:And yeah, I fall into the 'rabid mobilisation saved Ukraine' camp. If that's a typo, keep it
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Jul 16, 2023 10:44
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Alchenar posted:For me the moment the penny dropped was when Russia published its peace plan that literally went 'disband NATO, no US presence in Europe east of Portugal'. That was clearly the Kremlin venting the full 30 years of frustration over things had turned out in Europe and that it saw this moment as the last chance to turn back the tide. Ironically it was the Putin whisperers in Europe who clearly least understood what he actually believed. Yeah pretty much every single demand on that was pure fantasy land stuff and ironically, while it seems like it was meant to be sort of a political smoke screen to give cover to military aims, if anything it had the opposite effect because the demands were so outrageous that there was nothing to engage with, even for the politicians and pundits that were, for whatever reasons, particularly inclined to give Russian demands the time of day. It's also a trip to go back to that December 2021 stuff and you can see in it how Russian leadership believed that they had a real shot of cleanly sweeping into Ukraine and displacing Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian government with a Russian friendly puppet, probably Medvedchuk, demilitarizing Ukraine completely, critically undermining NATO and EU security assurances (and ultimately the security guarantees holding NATO together) and making clear that the unspoken rule of the EU and NATO was 'no anglo/western European deaths to protect Slavic countries' and then proceeding to repeat the process on the Baltic states and eventually Poland while the EU and the US sent angry letters and sputtered in the UN. It was a helluva fantasy. Those weren't just demands to roll NATO back to central Europe, it was meant to be the opening of a grand plan to forcibly disprove NATO's security guarantee and break American influence in Europe. then reality happened and instead we're in a timeline where Russia has lost 3 times as many men in 17 months as they did in a decade in Afghanistan, thousands of tanks, and a mutinous cook rolled a military convoy close enough to Moscow that Putin fled Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Jul 16, 2023 |
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Jul 16, 2023 11:48
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Putin thought NATO members would treat each other the way he treats the rest of the CSTO.
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Jul 16, 2023 13:32
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Herstory Begins Now posted:IDK if I'd break it down exactly like that, but more or less yeah. Particularly the part there about Putin's circle getting exceptionally small is the really key bit wrt how people got it so wrong. There also were a huge number of (even very influential) people on every side that were stuck in 2014 wrt their estimation of Ukraine's ability to resist. As in they had literally no idea that Ukraine had become one of the most formidable militaries in Europe in the prior 8 years. You'd think that missing something like that would by nature make people not experts, but lol plenty of people who had no excuse not to know better did not know better. I don't take any credit away from Ukraine's armed forces bit the big piece of incorrect information that changed the calculus on Russian's success was Russia's incredibly poor performance. I remember watching the first 24 hours and distinctly thinking that if Ukraine had a chance of prevailing Russia was making all the mistakes needed to make the possibility real. There were some logistics and planning fuckups that were truly breathtaking and indicative of deeper issues.
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Jul 16, 2023 14:17
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Jarmak posted:I don't take any credit away from Ukraine's armed forces bit the big piece of incorrect information that changed the calculus on Russian's success was Russia's incredibly poor performance. Russia believed it's own hype basically. It's been the longest running con in world politics that the Russians had "second best army in world". The tragic thing is that someone must have known this and was either too low level or scared to just say "er... hang on a minute here."
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Jul 16, 2023 14:28
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Jarmak posted:I don't take any credit away from Ukraine's armed forces bit the big piece of incorrect information that changed the calculus on Russian's success was Russia's incredibly poor performance. Yeah I agree and I don't think Ukraine doing an immense amount right asap (albeit with some very costly mistakes of their own) and Russia making a multitude of grave miscalculations and avoidable errors at almost every stage of planning and execution are mutually exclusive explanations at all.
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Jul 16, 2023 14:42
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Burt posted:Russia believed it's own hype basically. It's been the longest running con in world politics that the Russians had "second best army in world". The tragic thing is that someone must have known this and was either too low level or scared to just say "er... hang on a minute here." It reminds me about the fears leading up to Desert Storm and how the Iraqi army was this battle hardened 4th largest military in the world at the time and how the US and coalition forces were in for a big knock down drag out fight. That the massive stockpile of body bags for casualties ended up going almost entirely unused was not the expected result at the time. But now that we look back, how could there have been any other result knowing what we now know about their broken military.
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Jul 16, 2023 14:55
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I would be extremely unsurprised if the Ukrainian and NATO planners were well aware of the state of Russia's military and deliberately kept quiet about it.
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Jul 16, 2023 15:02
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One thing that has to be remembered about Russian supply is that the ”exercise” that was the cover story for Russian troops in belarus began in december; already by beginning of february Finnish news media ran horror stories how they had begun harvesting supplies from locals a’la 30-years war as their exercise stock for food and fuel had ran out.
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Jul 16, 2023 15:03
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psydude posted:I would be extremely unsurprised if the Ukrainian and NATO planners were well aware of the state of Russia's military and deliberately kept quiet about it. Nobody could have known the extent of the rot; even Russias own internal documentation didn't know, Putin didn't know. It could have been supposed or guessed or inferred but not known.
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Jul 16, 2023 15:06
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Nobody could have known the extent of the rot; even Russias own internal documentation didn't know, Putin didn't know. IDK if it's even about rot so much as 1) the plan itself was unworkable and built on huge misestimations of Ukrainian strength and resolve (and ultimately of foreign response, as well) 2) the plan did not play to Russia's strengths and comparative advantages and 3) the opening blunders crippled Russia's offensive power in a way that they could not rapidly recover from. Had Russia started the war with their traditional doctrine of maximizing artillery mismatch and grinding Ukraine down instead of trying to capture the country intact within hours, we might be having a different conversation. Russia's artillery capabilities historically have been far less affected by 'rot' than most of their other capabilities. On a related note, 1 and 2 above were certainly knowable and a number of former officers were writing about how suicidally stupid the planning was in advance of the invasion, but the military leadership (as in the part of the military leadership that came up through the military and not as political appointees) were heavily sidelined from the planning for as long as possible. this piece is practically a meme at this point, but it remains an entirely prescient refutation of most of the fundamental assumptions that the Russian invasion was planned under https://archive.is/k8qGV (original link is https://nvo.ng.ru/realty/2022-02-03/3_1175_donbass.html, but I archived it for people who understandably do not click .ru links) wrt psydude posted:I would be extremely unsurprised if the Ukrainian and NATO planners were well aware of the state of Russia's military and deliberately kept quiet about it. They certainly were aware of Russia's operational intentions and goals, particularly the plan to rush the capital and regime change Kyiv overnight, which yeah they should've been able to tell that that would be a stretch for Russian capabilities and would require more effective intraforce cooperation than the Russian military has historically been known for. That's not to say that that part was impossible, just that it was always going to be a gamble at best. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Jul 16, 2023 |
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Jul 16, 2023 15:34
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psydude posted:I would be extremely unsurprised if the Ukrainian and NATO planners were well aware of the state of Russia's military and deliberately kept quiet about it. I wouldn't be surprised if they were much more aware of the rot than we were. I would be shocked if they knew it was as bad as it ended up being. It's the sort of extreme appraisal institutional culture almost always fights to hedge against. It's one of those things where it's easy to make a lot of individual assessments about weaknesses but fail to see how the weaknesses would interact and amplify each other. That said, there's some analyst somewhere in the DoD or CIA who connected those dots and has worn tracks in the carpet doing victory laps. Very open question as to whether anyone listened to them.
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Jul 16, 2023 15:42
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In the late 20-teens and 2020-2021 timeframe, a lot of discussion was about how the bad news was that Russia appeared pretty willing to go attack neighbors militarily in response to politics it didn't like. The good news was that their logistical core was not really up to the task to support these incursions beyond small, limited operations.
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Jul 16, 2023 15:49
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ukrainian intelligence generally appears to be much more aware of the minutiae of russian capabilities than anyone else. if anyone would've been in a position to accurately judge ukrainian preparations relative to russian capabilities and goals it would've been them
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Jul 16, 2023 15:49
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Kind of, but Ukraine was caught off guard by Russia's decision to attack in 2022.
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Jul 16, 2023 15:50
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heh that's a huge can of worms to try to figure out just how much they were actually caught unaware
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Jul 16, 2023 15:54
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IMO, Russia's poor performance and Ukraine being caught unawares both come from the same place - Russia didn't tell their own troops that they were gonna attack. So Ukraine's informants were probably just hearing the usual complaints about exercises and saber rattling, which is why they didn't truly take the threat seriously. So, end result, some Ukrainian units did get caught with their pants down, but the majority of the invasion force was simply unprepared for the task at hand. Of course, even with Russia successfully keeping the attack under wraps, their logistical preparations (as shared by the US) were uncharacteristically thorough enough that Ukraine still dispersed its ADA and other assets in the Kyiv area; if any one thing kept Ukraine in the war that was probably it.
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Jul 16, 2023 16:42
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Hyrax Attack! posted:On topic of bad podcast predictions, Radio War Nerd made it quite clear Russia had zero chance of invading and to think otherwise was ludicrous. I had been enjoying episodes on topics I didn’t know much about but had concerns about some stuff they had said on topics I did know about, so that was enough for me to unsubscribe as I lost faith in their expertise. that guy was a huge idiot who didn't know poo poo about anything even before the war
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Jul 16, 2023 16:56
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Does anyone have any links to the threads immediately before the invasion? (archives no doubt). Id be fascinated to read how it was going down hour to hour and day today.
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Jul 16, 2023 17:08
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So which Russian Eve player who burned out a decade ago and became a Russian military planner decided that this time head shotting VFK would work?
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