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Tesseraction posted:Crimea is another part that I would have thought of (ironically) a bridge too far, but them crippling the Russian supply line from the Kerch Strait means it's actually becoming very possible. Doubly so if they can keep the Azov sea clear and launch naval support from the western mainland... Idk about vessels, but Wikipedia says the naval infantry were present at Mariupol, and lost a whole brigade there (as prisoners, not fatalities). ~2,600 as POWs, out of 6,000 total naval infantry. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/36th_Separate_Marine_Brigade
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Oct 11, 2022 21:05
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Would like a rain check on something from the thread. Would there be interest in me doing more structure structured, regular summaries of the ongoing discourse? Say, around my morning coffee time, and a follow-up in the evening on the days when I have time for that? I mostly lurk here, but I’d also appreciate these if you’ve got the spare mental capacity for it.
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Oct 17, 2022 14:41
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Cicero posted:Why fly that low specifically right over the road, instead of right next to the road? Is it a radar thing, so that the helicopter will look like a car? I’ll hazard a guess that telephone poles or other assorted tall things that helicopters don’t like* tend to hang out there, but those aren’t above the roads. *a helicopter’s natural state is crashing, and they will do everything in their power to achieve this act.
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Oct 21, 2022 16:36
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Endjinneer posted:It doesn't matter how badly damaged the ships are or not, so much as that the attack happened despite the safety of their home port. It'll be a brave captain that takes them out to enforce a naval blockade from this point on. Yea, getting attacked in your home port feels like a pretty big deal. That means that something hostile is potentially hunting you the literal second you pull away from the dock (if not before), instead of being days away and only if you’re close to shore (thinking of Neptun in particular here).
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Oct 30, 2022 22:54
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Electric Wrigglies posted:The launchers are just a glorified Studebaker, right? The sekret sauce is the relatively cheap miniaturized guidance electronics and servos/aero to mount onto economical rockets. If the Studebakers are getting blowed up, it would be child's play to surreptitiously supply enough parts to fix them up again without calling it a replacement or a new unit. They’re also running a ton of decoys, which might be partly responsible for how many the Russians were claiming to have blown up earlier this year.
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Nov 4, 2022 14:37
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Pizdec posted:From a couple of pages back, but I do love this part: They delivered stickers to me at least, one on my water bottle and another on some tabletop game stuff to piss off any Russian sympathizers that happen to look at it. Accounts I trust also post fundraisers/announcements for them, so I’m fairly sure they’re legit.
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Dec 4, 2022 16:52
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Charlz Guybon posted:But why? Why here? Sounds like the only place they’ve had any successes? Or maybe Wagner is pulling some strings to get reinforcements
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Dec 8, 2022 14:39
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AtomikKrab posted:Sadly its in a dock so it can't really SINK, but who knows how bad the fire gets it could always be cored out from the damage. It already sank one dry dock, there’s no reason it can’t try again!
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Dec 22, 2022 18:31
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cr0y posted:Has Russian been able to confirm the kill of *any* HIMARS? They’ve gotten a few decoys iirc, which they immediately claimed as the real thing (despite the rain of rockets never slowing down).
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Jan 4, 2023 15:40
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cr0y posted:I didn't know they were using decoys, that's awesome, please tell me they are the inflatable kind from.....WW2? Even better, made of wood! https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a41043604/ukraine-himars-decoys/
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Jan 4, 2023 16:41
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Rinkles posted:Is a tank without treads formally a tank? Idk, there’s a Stryker infantry-carrier variant that strips out everything to stick a turret with a 105mm cannon (same as an Abrams) on the drat thing, and all the internals to support it/store ammo. When they were new they couldn’t shoot with the barrel traversed more than ~45° from forward, for fear of tipping the drat things over (the Stryker chassis has always been a bit top-heavy).
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Jan 4, 2023 20:24
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And sabot rounds for the 25mm cannon up top.
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Jan 6, 2023 03:39
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Bradley platoons roll with 4 vehicles, too. I found a GAO report written in 1992 as an after-action report on Gulf War I talking about Bradleys and Abrams during that conflict, on page 17 they talk about some of the Bradley vs tank engagements. quote:The Bradley’s weapon systems proved to be lethal and effective against a variety of enemy targets. Commanders, crews, and officials from the Whole report: https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-92-94.pdf
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Jan 6, 2023 05:05
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:AFAIK it's actual use in french service, it has spent far more time supporting infantry than actually being a recon tank. Sounds about right. Any vehicle showing up with even a decent gun on top is a godsend for whatever poor soldiers are getting shot up, all the better if it was attached to your platoon to start with.
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Jan 6, 2023 16:11
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Gort posted:Always feels like anyone who could actually authoritatively answer a question like that has signed terrifying documents to ensure that they can't There’s always a surprising amount of info available publicly for any US platform. Most of our combat doctrine is unclassified, and the general info about a thing will usually be available. It might be in an obscure place (like the GAO report I found earlier on Bradley/Abrams combat effectiveness in the first gulf war), but it’s typically out there somewhere. If you’re lucky it’s not buried in a few thousand pages of congressional reports 
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Jan 9, 2023 15:34
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Xarn posted:This time they will be prepared for it though, right? I can't imagine the level of incompetence it would take not to be prepared for it this time. There’s no preparing for it. You stick to the roads, or your vehicle stays where it sank up to above the tires until the mud dries. The only thing that could make it through that soup is a hovercraft, and that’s less “through” than “gently caress it, we’re not touching it and you can’t make us”.
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Feb 10, 2023 14:54
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Ynglaur posted:The other big enabler would be night vision. Soviet-era tanks largely have passive night vision nights; American tanks have thermal sights. The latter is significantly better in terms of target acquisition, both in speed and in distance. The US Army also practices extensively at night-time operations. I'd estimate at least half of the gunnery and maneuver exercises I participated in were at night. Think about that for a moment. I came from the infantry side of things, but the attitude still seems to hold: if you can’t do fire/maneuver with live rounds at night/low-vis conditions, you’re way the gently caress behind as even a basic platoon leader. There’s an expensive logistical tail to putting a set of basic night vision optics on every soldier’s helmet, but there’s a very good reason it’s been pursued by nearly everybody since the first ones were introduced.
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Feb 15, 2023 00:16
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Kraftwerk posted:I was wondering, don't the Russians have spy satellites just the same as the Americans? It surprises me they never figured out when Ukraine is driving stuff like AFVs across the polish border and just launching missiles at it after the handover. How have they been able to hide that stuff? If you check this site, you can see exactly what’s passing over Ukraine right now and who it belongs to. https://heavens-above.com There’s no hiding literally anything in space. There’s currently a Russian satellite passing over central Ukraine (Cosmos 2248), but it seems to be a radio-interception satellite rather than imagery. Naturally it’ll be hard to say exactly what it is/does, anyone that launches satellites has launches that they’re enormously tight-lipped about (see: any NRO satellite launch on the US side). Not an exact answer to your question, but this kind of thing would’ve been the domain of state-level intel services 30 years ago. Now it’s a bunch of nerds publishing their work for everyone to see.
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Feb 23, 2023 15:33
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cinci zoo sniper posted:According to Pravda, this was a drone attack by local partisans, in the works for months. https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2023/02/26/7391117/ Luka: I can’t help with Ukraine right now, I’ve got partisans to deal with!!! Seriously though, the man has danced on the world’s thinnest tightrope for a year now re: Ukraine.
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Feb 26, 2023 21:18
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Bug Squash posted:"If launched from Ukrainian territory" may be doing some heavy lifting here. Is it more probable that the drone was launched by operators who have infiltrated Russia with the equipment, rather than a long distance drone? It’s wheeled, so they’d have to set up enough of a runway for it to take off. Idk how long that is, but that sounds like the exact thing you’d want to avoid having to do if you’re trying to stay unnoticed.
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Feb 28, 2023 14:27
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Huh, Saudi Arabia is sending aid to Ukraine. Feel a bit of a “Iran bad” type of gesture, rather than a profound interest to get into the game, but, hey, $400m is $400m. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-26/ukraine-eyes-support-from-saudi-arabia-after-minister-s-visit Probably also a little bit of kneecapping some wannabe competition on the energy market too. Also this is brand new for me, but I probably missed it along the way somewhere. quote:The parties also talked about Saudi Arabia’s prior help setting up prisoner swaps with Russia and prospects for additional exchanges, to strengthening both Kyiv’s and Riyadh’s positions in the global south, including Africa.
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Feb 28, 2023 23:22
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Libluini posted:This is factually wrong. Well, just sending a tiny troop over for propaganda purposes, that's just silly if it's not at the same time recon in preparation for a larger operation, I agree with you there. I'm just disagreeing with your more general assumption that all border incursions from Ukrainian forces are useless. It's a good move. Either Russia is forced to do something about it (diverting soldiers, assets, or both), or the incursions can continue until a GPS-guided JDAM lands in a depot and then the russians finally do something about it.
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Mar 2, 2023 16:56
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Deltasquid posted:I'm starting to wonder if the Ukrainians are ever going to pull back from Bakhmut. I'm no longer convinced they will. Assuming that Bakhmut's main strategic relevance is indeed its ability to tie up Russian troops who cannot be deployed elsewhere, the intention might be to willingly turn it into a second Mariupol that buys time for the Ukrainian counteroffensives later this year (probably elsewhere in the country, but perhaps even a counteroffensive to liberate or envelop Bakhmut before the Russians can properly dig in?) instead of pulling back. There’s also gotta be some propaganda value in shutting down the Russian offensive, in which Bakhmut seems to be their objective/main effort. Even now they’ve successfully blunted that main effort, and made the Russians pay absolutely dearly for every meter of ground they’ve taken.
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Mar 3, 2023 13:44
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Ynglaur posted:Yes, and...it's a battle drill. It's something a well-trained platoon practices constantly. Absolutely poo poo goes south in a hurry when rounds start to fly, but Russian tactical formations constantly display an absolutely amateur level of tactical competence. Echoing the battle drill part. React to ambush (near or far) in particular is something we (US army) trained on a fair bit. You don’t stay alive by staying in the killbox, you stay alive by getting out of it via assault or withdrawal (the opening blows are typically meant to remove withdrawal as an option). I know it sounds hideously aggressive and kind of counter-intuitive, but assaulting out of it is usually your absolute best option.
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Mar 3, 2023 16:00
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Can’t be reinforced either, I believe. Turkey has that straight on lockdown, as far as the Russians are concerned.
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Mar 4, 2023 01:47
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OddObserver posted:I can see Ukrainians emotionally wanting to blow them up --- they are after all symbols of European appeasement of Russia --- but it seems hard to do for people w/o some specialized stuff (which as I just said, might be less specialized than I think since I don't know anything about diving...) The depths they’d be operating at to do that require extremely specialized gear and training. I’ve got an effortpost kicking around one of the Ukraine threads from when it first happened that I can try and dig up as to exactly how much training and gear would go into something like that, I can try and dig it up.
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Mar 7, 2023 17:37
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This was in response to one of mlmp08's "excerpts as I choose them" posts from an SDO briefing on 29 Sept. In that excerpt, SDO mentioned that the bombed area of the pipeline was 80-100m down, which is where I got those numbers form. My own background: I'm a former PADI divemaster who never got into the technical diving* world, but was on the verge of taking the plunge (  ) before covid hit. The shop I worked for was owned by a tech diving instructor who was constantly trying to lure me into those depths, and a lot of our other staff was tech-certified to some degree or another...so I've had some exposure to that world. My own gear was set up as the self-reliant diver type, which was done as a precursor to a tech setup (particularly the 'carrying multiple independent tanks' aspect).Icon Of Sin posted:80-100m down is pretty far, even for the technical divers I used to know. It’s still doable by divers, but there would be a lot of moving parts, specialized gear, hell even special gas mixes just to even breathe at that depth as a diver (some version of trimix with almost all of the O2 pulled out would have to be the breathing gas at depth, for how the pressure and biochemistry interact). *technical diving: any diving where either by time or depth, you are required to do decompression stops of some sort. This is as opposed to recreational diving, where decompression stops are inherently not mandatory (but still encouraged as "safety stops". The depth at which things change from recreational diving to technical diving is generally held to be around 40m/130ft, by the civilian training agencies. If you're going by USN dive tables, they don't give a gently caress about decompression until you hit the maximum operating depth for whatever gas mix you're breathing (approximately 190ft for atmospheric gas, this depth moves upwards if you take out nitrogen and mix in more oxygen).
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Mar 7, 2023 17:56
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ought ten posted:Hold on, the PADI taught decompression stops aren’t actually necessary? That’s hilarious somehow, I’ve always been so diligent and felt like I was doing something important. Yes and no. They’re always a good idea no matter what you did, and every dive computer will tell you to do a safety stop no matter what now. On the navy tables (designed for hyper-fit 18-26 year olds), safety stops don’t exist. Tue navy tables also allow for a 100ft per minute ascension rate (also an 80ft per minute descent rate!), and these concepts fill me with a terror I can’t properly articulate. always do your safety stops anyways, especially if you’ve been diving a lot that day/the previous few days. It’s a good habit to have.
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Mar 7, 2023 19:45
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mlmp08 posted:In some cases, the troops on the receiving end have stated that while there's rather little chance of being killed by such rocket attacks, it keeps people up, causes reporting, etc, so is just a way to generally harass and exhaust troops at night. Weird to see an actual army employ the afghan insurgent method of rocket attacks.
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Mar 8, 2023 14:48
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Charlotte Hornets posted:
Pretty sure anything AT is going to look similar-ish. Until there’s a breakthrough, that is
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Mar 8, 2023 15:54
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evil_bunnY posted:Absolutely loving not It was a throwaway line in my old PADI deep diver manual, probably in reference to a quote attributed to CDR Doug Fane from the 1950's about what he wanted his divers to do. He was a proto-SEAL and did end up getting bent, for whatever that's worth Supposedly 60ft/min was the compromise USN came up with in the 1970's between free-swimming divers and commerical/hard-hat divers*. I only remember it because it was hilariously out of line with what every other agency said before or since.Maybe they got tired of people getting bent, but I looked up their newer tables and they've since changed. The real fight will be arguing with the VA after they leave the navy, though. *Source: https://blog.padi.com/history-of-th...der%20audience.
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Mar 8, 2023 22:08
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OddObserver posted:They committed virtually all of the army. This isn’t an exaggeration, I saw an estimate (from UK MoD, I think?) that somewhere around 95% of their entire army is in Ukraine.
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Mar 9, 2023 13:41
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Wait in order to capture the rest of bakhmut they'd have to do a river crossing? That's amazing Hahaha yep, but looking at the map it seems like the river narrows a bit towards the north end of town (near Yahidne). Still, Russians get absolutely punished whenever they try to cross rivers in Ukraine. e: there’s a whole reservoir on the south end of town (Berkhivs'ke Reservoir). The river in town looks like it’s artificially constrained to its banks, and becomes little more than creeks/canals once it’s up to Yahidne. Icon Of Sin fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Mar 10, 2023 |
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Mar 10, 2023 16:43
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mobby_6kl posted:Wouldn't just pairing them with regular NVGs work for that? Regular NVGs aren’t thermal/IR. They’re usually just image intensifiers, they brighten up what you could already see but don’t necessarily let you see in a different part of the spectrum.
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Mar 10, 2023 22:57
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saratoga posted:Kofman had a cryptic mention after his trip to Bakhmut that the US was observing how different weapon systems were performing and would be making adjustments going forward. So yeah, people are watching and will be studying this war for many years to come. There’s always something to learn from exposing your equipment to combat conditions, especially since we haven’t really used them in that environment (Ukraine is going to be different than the deserts we sent those to for 2 decades) or used them against a (supposed) peer army specifically.
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Mar 14, 2023 01:52
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khwarezm posted:The Trotskyite site World Socialist Web Site (I'm not trying to lazily call them tankies or something, they call themselves Trotskyite) put up an article claiming that 100K Ukrainian troops have been killed in the war (as opposed to total casualties including killed, wounded and captured) and links back to this article from Politco making the claim. This seems like a massive escalation since last I heard the 100k figure was more for the total casualties of Ukrainian forces. Is this reliable, considering its more Politco making the claim? Ukrainians have been notoriously tight-lipped about their own casualties/fatalities, any number that comes out for them is probably suspect. Kyiv Independent published some numbers last May (I think?) for Ukrainian losses but that’s the only one I recall having seen that was slightly less-suspect than any other. Having said that…it wouldn’t particularly surprise me if they were pretty high though, modern weapons are hideously lethal and Russia’s favorite weapon (artillery) is generally a “people survived mostly intact” or “they’re now fully vaporized and gone with the wind” kind of weapon. e: it was late April last year that Kyiv Independent published those numbers. https://www.instagram.com/p/Ccu9mWNsDZC/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= Icon Of Sin fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Mar 17, 2023 |
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Mar 17, 2023 14:47
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cinci zoo sniper posted:The weather, for instance, or that their attack ran into strong defensive fortifications (do you call a minefield a fortification?) and coordinated response under Kreminna. Minefields are a military obstacle. Generally, obstacles are anything that slows down incoming troops and they may or may not inflict casualties. Minefields and concertina wire are obstacles, but so are rivers and cliffs.
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Mar 19, 2023 13:24
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WarpedLichen posted:What kind of red tape did they cook up for themselves I wonder. There's no way I buy the training excuse, so it must be some top secret stuff that is too well integrated that they have to rip out for export. Yea, I’m guessing they’re downgrading some A2s to A1s rather than building A1s from scratch.
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Mar 21, 2023 16:40
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Nenonen posted:Alternative take is that the Russian attack on Bakhmut was even more untenable than the Ukrainian defense of it. The greatest bit of war wisdom I’ve seen in GiP was the following (probably paraphrased): quote:War is graded on a curve. You don’t have to be the best, just better than whatever dumbfuck you’re fighting.
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Mar 25, 2023 14:55
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WarpedLichen posted:I agree that if Zelensky could make a visit, the Ukrainians are pretty confident on that front. I think the Bakhmut situation was worse before Ukraine decided to commit more reinforcements to hold it. Some twitter commentators suggested that troops were rotated from the Avdiivka front for this so that area got a bit more dicey as a result. It seems like both areas are holding and they have weathered the Russian offensive though. There were a few US soldiers that did exactly that in Afghanistan/Iraq, but nobody is going to hold a candle to Douglas Bader. Dude lost both legs in a training accident before WWII started, but that didn’t stop him from becoming the stuff of nazi pilot nightmares. 22 aerial victories alone between 1940 and 1941, when he was shot down/captured and spent the rest of the war in a PoW camp. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Bader
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Mar 25, 2023 18:19
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