(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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Antigravitas posted:Problem is, we don't know much about the actual forces and their equipment on either side, so we don't know if that development is significant or irrelevant and it's impossible to tell. I solve this problem by being completely overconfident in my ability to assess the condition of the war, and have so far concluded that if the current offensive forces russian command to zoom out any further, there will be too many triangles for them to defend against
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Aug 27, 2023 22:37
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You guys are laughing about the triangles but Ukraine has several dozen precision squares ready for deployment in 2034.
Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Aug 27, 2023 |
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Aug 27, 2023 22:39
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Antigravitas posted:But we don't know poo poo. I've been spending a lot of time reading and it always strikes me how little we actually know about what's going on there. Ukraine seems to be gaining the upper hand in artillery and taking out a lot of Russian tubes at least, so that's nice. My own conclusion from seeing Russian artillery getting toasted so badly is that this is caused by a mix of factors: -A growing number of Western gear and ammunition among Ukrainian forces. Gear that both outranges Russian gear and is more mobile. -Russia being forced to keep ammunition depots and HQs further away from the frontlines to prevent painful HIMARS-strikes against hem, which makes both supplying and coordinating artillery far harder. -Russian artillery being forced to move around the hellish landscape they themselves created. All those red triangles makes it harder to put Russian artillery anywhere useful. Especially that third thing has made me curious. After the war I'll be trying to get a more accurate account of what is happening right now, just to count how many Russian tubes accidentally moved through their own minefields and got lost that way. Or how many got stuck due to their own obstacles being in the way and then getting blown up by Ukrainian counter-battery fire.
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Aug 27, 2023 22:57
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Libluini posted:That's interesting. Looks like Ukrainian forces are breaking through at one of the most dense conjunctions of fortifications. The rumors on the ground are that Ukraine is doing exactly what that Emil Kastelhelmi tweet thread is suggesting and trying to take advantage of the relatively softer north/south line linking Verbove with the line of fortifications heading westward--that blue salient has widened and pushed up to the line of triangles in front if it and now seems to be pushing east to slip around the end of that line and outflank it. This is why there's chatter about a "breakthrough." If Ukraine gets into Verbove then that front line becomes untenable very quickly. Russia seems to be banking on Verbove not needing much in the way of hardened defenses, between the existing buildings and the height advantage they enjoy to the south. So, even assuming the rumors are true and Ukraine has punched through the gap they're still potentially in a perilous position. Multiple backup lines converge on Verbove, so even if Ukraine is in the village as we speak Russia theoretically has fortified positions to fire on them and it could get ugly in a hurry. We'll know more in a few days. EDIT: Note also that the big Russian lines are along major roads while the area Ukraine is trying to exploit avoids the main road south of Robotyne, so Russia also has the advantage of faster supply & reinforcement routes. the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Aug 27, 2023 |
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Aug 27, 2023 22:59
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Libluini posted:It's also becoming apparent Ukraine chose a very good point to attack: The defensive lines to the east and west are far further apart, making it harder to just hammer all of them down with artillery. The section we're seeing progress on is not only the densest part, the overlapping defensive lines are far too close together. This puts the Russian armed forces in a bind: If they don't defend that part, more and more of their entire frontline will turn into indefensible traps. But if they do, concentrated Ukrainian artillery can just destroy them where they are. Won't this also work against the Ukranian troops? If they are able to concentrate their artillery against the denser Russian lines, then I would have thought that the Russians would also be able to do this against the Ukranians and presumably since the Russians have been camping there for months, they would have pre-sighted their artillery against likely Ukrainian advances. I'm also still curious where the Russian anti-tank ditches are, as this seems like a major obstacle that Ukraine will probably want to avoid.
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Aug 27, 2023 23:07
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Ukraine has been blowing up a lot of Russian artillery lately, probably a combination of some very fancy CB radars, precision munitions, and good coordination. From what I could gather, Russia is largely incapable of credibly doing CB missions right now.
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Aug 27, 2023 23:16
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Icon Of Sin posted:Catering, cratering, what’s the difference for him now? War in Ukraine CE: Catering, Cratering, what's the difference? So many good ones!
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Aug 28, 2023 00:07
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I have to imagine american-supplied elint/sigint is helping too. Knowing where the enemy artillery is is step one of blowing it up.
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Aug 28, 2023 01:22
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Libluini posted:That's interesting. Looks like Ukrainian forces are breaking through at one of the most dense conjunctions of fortifications. The best defense work is nature. Rivers, swamps, cliffs. Where the ground slopes. What kind of soil is it. Also man built objects like canals, cities and big factories. Road network has to be considered of course, both from the attacker's point of view, and from the defender's. The same with fields of fire, you must take into account blocking features like forests. Dense woods also act as tank obstacles, so you need fewer fortifications there. And so on. It's details like these that have to be considered when analysing the fortification maps. Otherwise the lines would be straight, as salients are also weak points. As an example, in WW1 Germans after their initial advance in France built fortified positions in advantageous high ground and withdrew there. The Allies followed and dug their lines as close as possible, in lower, muddier fields that were a hell to live in, not to mention that they had to be built in the presence of the enemy who was already well entrenched.
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Aug 28, 2023 03:55
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Llamadeus posted:The number of triangles (presumably fortifications) isn't increasing, the map is just zooming out. These triangles are small, but those triangles are far away.
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Aug 28, 2023 04:56
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Hmm... seems like a pyramid scheme!
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Aug 28, 2023 06:06
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Nenonen posted:The best defense work is nature. Rivers, swamps, cliffs. Where the ground slopes. What kind of soil is it. Also man built objects like canals, cities and big factories. Road network has to be considered of course, both from the attacker's point of view, and from the defender's. The same with fields of fire, you must take into account blocking features like forests. Dense woods also act as tank obstacles, so you need fewer fortifications there. Yeah, the battle of the hedgerows.
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Aug 28, 2023 07:10
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Saw this on Reddit, can't vouch for its accuracy. Somebody earlier in the thread was wondering where the labor force shortage of 300k people comes from if casualties were half of that. I'm guessing this has a hand in it. I had a friend in Georgia last week and he told me the place (Tbilisi in particular) is flooded with Russian expats. They're apparently opening a lot of Russian-Italian restaurants (as in, Russians who have no Italian background whatsoever are opening Italian restaurants and selling the food they remember eating in Rimini and reproducing the dishes by memory and via googling recipes) He talked to some of them. Most seemed to be anti-Putin but still thought Russia was the greatest country in the world. Georgians' opinions ranged from mildly annoyed to livid at the situation
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Aug 28, 2023 08:21
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Russia has had one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe for over a generation now. They wouldn't even needed a war, mass emigration or a mishandled pandemic to have a labor shortage sooner or later.
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Aug 28, 2023 09:47
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Fertility rates and life expectancy were actually increasing since the turn of the millennium until about 2014, when fertility started decreasing again, and 2020, when life expectancy suddenly cratered for mysterious reasons.
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Aug 28, 2023 09:58
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Antigravitas posted:Fertility rates and life expectancy were actually increasing since the turn of the millennium until about 2014, when fertility started decreasing again, and 2020, when life expectancy suddenly cratered for mysterious reasons. Sputnik V vaccine velly stronk.... COUGH!.. COUGH!..  I heard their vaccine inoculation rate was abysmal. 
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Aug 28, 2023 10:39
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Ironically, a lot of the anti vaxer nonsense Russian troll farms produced got translated to Russian and was spread around.
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Aug 28, 2023 11:08
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Just Another Lurker posted:Sputnik V vaccine velly stronk.... COUGH!.. COUGH!.. By all accounts it is a decent vaccine but the vaccination campaign was sabotaged from inside through media because the inmates are running the asylum.
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Aug 28, 2023 11:53
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Deltasquid posted:Saw this on Reddit, can't vouch for its accuracy. This chart has no units. Is it people? Thousands of people? Percent increase? It's useless as presented.
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Aug 28, 2023 14:38
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KillHour posted:This chart has no units. Is it people? Thousands of people? Percent increase? It's useless as presented. I believe the '000 after the date range is supposed to indicate units of thousands, but that is a weird format I've never seen before.
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Aug 28, 2023 14:40
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I EVER SPENT
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KillHour posted:This chart has no units. Is it people? Thousands of people? Percent increase? It's useless as presented. And that's really not how you're supposed draw error bars. It's a very poorly made graph.
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Aug 28, 2023 14:48
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To balance it out, Russia gave more permits to immigrant workers in 2022 (~3.5 mil in total, ~850k more than usual).
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Aug 28, 2023 14:51
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Paladinus posted:To balance it out, Russia gave more permits to immigrant workers in 2022 (~3.5 mil in total, ~850k more than usual). I'm sure they will make excellent conscripts. 
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Aug 28, 2023 15:31
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fatherboxx posted:By all accounts it is a decent vaccine but the vaccination campaign was sabotaged from inside through media because the inmates are running the asylum. I also read that there is so much apathy or distrust amongst the Russian people for their government that the vaccination campaign was facing pretty hefty obstacles from the get-go. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/world/in-russia-vaccines-are-free-but-public-distrust-is-high.html https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/08/03/russia-s-vaccine-diplomacy-is-mostly-smoke-and-mirrors-pub-85074 Like a lot of problems that Russia faces, the vaccination seemed to me like another illustration of how the Russian people know their government cannot be trusted, but there's no consensus on what to do about it other than try to avoid it.
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Aug 28, 2023 15:47
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Just Another Lurker posted:I'm sure they will make excellent conscripts. The initial attempt to just pressure disenfranchised workers into joining the army ended with a couple of them shooting up a shooting range. There was a new push to attract more foreign citizens to sign contracts, though. There is even a new law that makes it easier to obtain Russian citizenship for those who served in the military. Haven't seen any stats on how successful it was, but there wasn't another mass shooting at least.
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Aug 28, 2023 15:58
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Imagine joining the army and getting shot because some Lt decided he wanted to be an edgelord and started spouting off about religion
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Aug 28, 2023 16:04
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Just Another Lurker posted:I'm sure they will make excellent conscripts. quote:Russia is hiring young Cubans to sign contracts and go to Ukraine, at arrival in Russia they take the passports and documentation, make them sing contracts without translation and send them to die and work digging trenches, they end up not being paid also, and are asking for help to escape. https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/1620eoy/russia_is_hiring_young_cubans_to_sign_contracts/
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Aug 28, 2023 17:09
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Xiahou Dun posted:And that's really not how you're supposed draw error bars. Those are reverse error bars. Very post-modern.
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Aug 28, 2023 22:08
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Chalks posted:Edit: FYI, this particular account posts all sorts of unsourced and unlikely "rumors" (read: clickbait) mixed in with reposts of genuine reports put together by others. I would not rely on them as a source. Here is one of their latest totally real hits: https://twitter.com/astraiaintel/status/1695909327326839118
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Aug 28, 2023 22:52
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Vox Nihili posted:FYI, this particular account posts all sorts of unsourced and unlikely "rumors" (read: clickbait) mixed in with reposts of genuine reports put together by others. I would not rely on them as a source. Here is one of their latest totally real hits: This Robotyne thing has been blown out of proportion by the same usual suspects on twitter. Some of them are somehow claiming that Robotyne was somehow part of the main defence line and they are now breaching the "2nd" defence line, which I guess depends on what fortifications you count as the initial line. Most observers have view Robotyne as part of the buffer zone since the start though. Defmon has a more reasonable take on the situation with identified Russian units being moved in following the loss of Robotyne https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1696101932090220795 He references the unknown offensive potential of the UA. Someone else has tried to track the locations of Ukrainian mechanized infantry formations via social media postings and geolocated posts and has basically identified 37 of 43 known formations as having at least some elements involved in front-line fighting as of mid-August. We know some that are not listed (like the 21st Mech) on there to already have taken part in the fighting in July and were presumably rotated out. So the narrative that the Ukrainians still hold a sizable reserve in case of a Russian breakthrough seems less plausible than before now. This guy makes a point that perhaps it was a mistake to use valuable Western equipment to stand up new formations rather than rotating some of their most veteran formations into the rear to be reconstituted and re-equipped. https://thelookoutn.substack.com/p/autumn-approaches-part-1?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
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Aug 29, 2023 00:51
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Some folks will be proclaiming imminent Ukrainian doom as they march through Moscow.
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Aug 29, 2023 01:47
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MikeC posted:This guy makes a point that perhaps it was a mistake to use valuable Western equipment to stand up new formations rather than rotating some of their most veteran formations into the rear to be reconstituted and re-equipped. This also seems to mirror Michael Kofman’s take, near as I can tell from his last few appearances on the War on the Rocks podcast. He noted that while the newly formed units using NATO equipment did not initially see much success, veteran units using Soviet equipment generally fared much better, and likewise suggested that things may have gone better if the experienced forces were retrained on the new equipment instead. Still, Ukraine has their own pressures with respect to maintaining force readiness that may have made it difficult to rotate out those troops for retraining while also training new formations, so it’s hard to say how that counterfactual would have gone in practice. Similarly, he also noted how the Ukrainians (and people following their media) will say “first line of defense” for what most Western militaries would consider a forward or buffer zone ahead of the main line. So, when some people are claiming Ukraine has reached the second line of defense, it’s what other would consider the first (main) defensive line. In any case, I think it’s hard to say with open source knowledge how much Russia has already committed to its defense, and whether or not things will get much more difficult from here.
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Aug 29, 2023 02:40
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Wishful thinking here: The 2nd line of defence is supposed to be fortifications and trenches, which the well-equipped army should be able to deal with, particularly with an artillery advantage and HIMARS. The first layer was just randomly spread minefields, which were a lot trickier to clear.
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Aug 29, 2023 06:50
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There have already been videos of Russians retreating from the forward positions and running into their own minefields, haven't there? So, my understanding is that the first primary line of defense will be more of the same + those famous hollowed-out dragon's teeth that we've been seeing since last year. The only unknown, as we've been saying, is the shape of Russian reserves. Oh, and ISW was reporting that Russia is committing their remaining (?) elite forces to the battle now, so I suppose that means both sides are more-or-less considering this the last push of 2023.
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Aug 29, 2023 07:14
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OperaMouse posted:Wishful thinking here: https://cepa.org/article/ukraine-victory-is-closer-than-you-think/ Another maybe overly optimistic piece? Don't know anything of the author. Basically claims that if they manage to push just another 10-15k, Ukraine can start cutting the land bridge with himars/mlrs, and Russia will have a hard time keeping on to the southern front. A lot of its supplies comes through trucks from private companies carrying 15-30 tons as opposed to army trucks with only a couple of tons, and they might start pulling out once their trucks/drivers get taken out.
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Aug 29, 2023 07:35
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OperaMouse posted:Wishful thinking here: While I want Ukraine to succeed, this seems like deeply wishful thinking. Check out this video about how the US plans for similar breaching operations against minefields and anti-tank ditches. This is one of the most complex operations that a modern army can carry out, and NATO armies spend multiple years (~2) training soldiers for this scenario, in brigade (?) size formations. Compare and contrast with the Ukranian counter-offensive to date. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ-sCT_maAQ They attack in multiple lines simultaneously, compared to Ukraine who attacks in one line. They attack under cover of a smoke screen fired by artillery. Ukraine has not done this. They have air-cover, both jets and helicopters. Ukraine does not, due to shootdown danger. They clear the first minefields in <30 mins with both explosives and mine-sweeping engineering vehicles. Ukraine has taken 2-3 months to clear the first minefields, with documented heavy losses to their mine-clearing vehicles (which they have a limited number of). They use an armoured vehicle carrying a bridge to breach the anti-tank ditch. How many of these does Ukraine even have? They use overwhelming artillery strikes. Western sources have admitted that the Russians are unfortunately outshooting Ukraine by a 10:1 ratio. The video shows a single band of defences (wire, minefields, anti-tank ditch). The Russians have 2-3 of these bands. So, to summarize, Ukraine is attacking fixed defences without many of the necessary components to perform the task successfully (air superiority, smoke cover, artillery superiority). They have taken 2-3 months (and great losses) to make the same progress that a US army would plan 30 minutes for. They still have not completed the main task (breaching the first full defensive line), and there are 1-2 more lines after that. Even once they have breached those 3 lines, there are many tens of kilometres to go before they reach the Sea of Azov or Melitipol (and there are also fortifications there too). I am firmly in the pro-Ukraine camp, but if we look realistically at their progress so far, it is not looking good at all. (And many US army sources are saying the same lately too).
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Aug 29, 2023 09:59
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And surely as Ukraine slowly goes through these lines, Russia can just build more fortifications further back that they can drop back to and have more ridiculous minefields?
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Aug 29, 2023 10:04
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Mr SuperAwesome posted:
This was true at the beginning of the war, but doesn't seem to be true anymore. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davida...sh=1e0f320bfcc0 https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/10/politics/russian-artillery-fire-down-75-percent-ukraine/index.html
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Aug 29, 2023 10:12
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Charlz Guybon posted:This was true at the beginning of the war, but doesn't seem to be true anymore. The CNN article you linked literally supports my point. It says that, according to the Ukrainians, the Russian artillery is outshooting them by a large margin. Furthermore: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-03-01/ukraine-outgunned-10-to-1-in-massive-artillery-battle-with-russia.html (source, the European Commission, March 23) quote:According to data from the European Commission to which EL PAÍS has had access, Russia fires between 40,000 and 50,000 artillery shells per day, compared to 5,000-6,000 Ukrainian forces expend. July 23: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/18/politics/ukraine-critical-ammo-shortage-us-nato-grapple/index.html quote:Ukrainian troops now typically fire between 2,000 and 3,000 artillery shells per day at Russian forces, a US defense official told CNN. Mr SuperAwesome fucked around with this message at 10:36 on Aug 29, 2023 |
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Aug 29, 2023 10:30
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Vox Nihili posted:FYI, this particular account posts all sorts of unsourced and unlikely "rumors" (read: clickbait) mixed in with reposts of genuine reports put together by others. I would not rely on them as a source. Here is one of their latest totally real hits: Posted as evidence of Ukrainian reports of events mentioned by Russian sources. I think describing it as reports of "something" in that direction is fair and I don't think including that as an addendum to several other sources implies this was the sole source. You can use judgement on a case by case basis. The general staff and 46th brigade have since confirmed advances in that direction (and for what its worth, this account apologised for describing it as a "breakthrough") MikeC posted:This Robotyne thing has been blown out of proportion by the same usual suspects on twitter. Some of them are somehow claiming that Robotyne was somehow part of the main defence line and they are now breaching the "2nd" defence line, which I guess depends on what fortifications you count as the initial line. Most observers have view Robotyne as part of the buffer zone since the start though. This is a terminology issue, but the majority of sources I've seen reference 3 defensive lines with Ukraine now positioned against the second. It's hard to claim the first line is a "buffer zone" when Russia has expended huge amounts of equipment and personnel defending it. If that's not something indicative of a defensive line I don't know what is. There's been plenty of criticism of the Russians for not falling back to their more substantial defensive lines, but you can't really ignore that they have attempted to hold Ukraine at the first line, and generally succeeded, for several months. There's been some discussion about why they have done this and what it implies about the state of their main two defensive lines (despite how impressive they appear in satellite imagery) Chalks fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Aug 29, 2023 |
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Aug 29, 2023 10:54
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