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Orthanc6 posted:Over the last 2 months Ukraine has conducted major offenses, taken large chunks of territory, then consolidated their gains for a week or so before launching the next major offensive. They've been able to keep pressing like this because Russia's already lost a substantial amount of men/equipment/ammo over the last 8 months and has apparently not been able to properly replace these losses. Probably due to a combination of corruption and sanctions. I would really only classify the Izyum operation as a (the only) major offensive that has gone well. Most of the work done on the Oskil front since then has been far more piecemeal and opportunistic in nature seemingly probing repeatedly as the Russians fall back rather than a planned event. Similarly, in Kherson, the territory liberated was more of a function where the Russians were defeated locally in one spot and didn't have sufficient reserves left to protect the territory they had so they pulled back to shorter lines closer to their few remaining crossings over the Dnipro rather than risk having their units cut off. Information remains scant in Kherson and we don't even really know where the front line is between Dudchany and Mylove. This is in stark contrast to Izyum where the Ukrainians clearly breached a large section of the front line in force, defeated whatever reserves the Russians had in the area and proceeded to evict the Russians forcefully from Izyum despite their best efforts to retain the territory.
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Oct 11, 2022 23:44
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Budzilla posted:For this war to end quickly there would have to be some sort seismic shift in the political landscape in Russia. Putin will be happy enough to throw bodies into the meat grinder as long as it keeps his position safe. He is probably throwing bodies into the meat grinder because his position is now getting unsafe.
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Oct 12, 2022 03:50
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Borrell also jumped the shark on jet delivery that didn’t happen, way back, so I think this mainly hot air from him, or some Brussels palace drama backblast, as you suggest. The most commonly suggested and hintrd response to a Russian WMD attack would be full scale participation of NATO forces on Ukrainian soil. This likely means a massive wave of conventional missile strikes on Russian logistical units and infrastructure in Ukraine and the full deployment of NATO aircraft to strike Russian troops and facilitate Ukrainian offensives to fully eject Russian troops from Ukraine. It is also suggested that what remains of the Black Sea Fleet will also be sent to the bottom in the event it tries to exit port. Whether NATO would risk or see the need for NATO ground forces to actually participate on front line combat is less clear. Everything see so far suggests the Russians would be incapable of resisting a "shock and awe" style campaign with the Ukrainians still the ones doing the work on the ground. Given how vulnerable Russia has been to the hodgepodge of donated weapons, it is clear that what is left of the Russian army would rapidly disintegrate in the face of a technologically superior NATO air campaign. Edit: phone typing is hard.
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Oct 13, 2022 19:23
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https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1582938879329722369?s=20&t=NQj69OSz1FbI6gpyomKvNg The amount of water that could be released in such an event would appear to be much worse than damaging the dam on the Inhulets.
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Oct 20, 2022 06:52
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Slashrat posted:Given the level of competence Russian forces have displayed elsewhere, I find it entirely believable that the russian pilot simply fat-fingered the missile trigger unintentionally. If the missile was actually locked onto the Rivet joint aircraft, and only missed due to evasive action on the part of the brits, I feel like the UK would have used language a lot stronger than 'released a missile in the vicinity of' Fat fingering is pretty unlikely. There are all sorts of safety features that even a decades old Soviet fighter would have. Things like a master arm switch is almost certainly present in the cockpit and would have to be switched on to fire. The Guardian article says the missile was beyond visual range. Technical malfunction is probably the right answer.
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Oct 20, 2022 14:55
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In general, in the military world, the term released generally involves the weapon being activated. The Guardian and the BBC both have articles in which the verbiage being used is that it was released beyond visual range and that the spy jet promptly retreated. This means that it is unlikely the weapon just fell off. If it just fell off, it would be unlikely that it was detected from beyond visual range or that the spy place would feel threatened just seeing an object on radar fall to the surface. It almost certainly meant the missile was launched. They likely refrained from using the term fired since it carries an aggressive connotation when they have already determined that the spy plane wasn't targeted and the missile never got close to the plane.
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Oct 20, 2022 18:07
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Owling Howl posted:If Russia blows the Kahrkova dam for whatever reason it'll flood the east bank of the Dnipro and some of Kherson city. Thats pretty hosed up.
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Oct 21, 2022 03:33
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https://twitter.com/mhmck/status/1583851866127208448?s=20&t=sVuvlftI6Q4nMyGz43zWhg The Ukrainians themselves are saying the Russians are pulling out. Russia finally doing the logical thing they should have done 6 months ago. Instead, they piss away some of the best units they have left over that time period when they could have been used in the east.
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Oct 22, 2022 18:48
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I don't see what is wrong with the letter other than that it assumes Biden hasn't already tried from time to time to find some sort of negotiated solution. All it is really saying is that it would be better if the war ended sooner rather than later while reaffirming the stance that the US should never impose or pressure Ukraine into a settlement that they are not happy with. Is it redundant that what they are asking for is already being tried? Yes. But I don't see anything in the contents of the letter which would make it "stupid".
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Oct 24, 2022 22:55
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Kraftwerk posted:Do we have any updates on the strategic situation in the war? It seems we've been under blackout for a few days? Not a blackout, just not a lot happening. Still not sure 100% what is going on in Kherson (whether the Russians are really leaving and at what speed) but the front lines seem to have gone back into a relatively static phase.
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Oct 25, 2022 00:57
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Slight OT, I noticed that the quoted tweet has Prigozhin's name as Yevgeny Viktorovich. I understand that Viktorovich is the guy's father's name and is an informal version of Prigozhin's name? Why would a news agency use that instead of his formal last name?
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Oct 27, 2022 03:09
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 When I first heard about the Russians shutting down the shipping lane again, I thought it was no big deal since the wheat harvest was probably over and shipped out but apparently, the Ukrainians ship an asston of maize in the late fall and early winter? Where are they growing this stuff or does maize take a long time to process?
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Nov 1, 2022 00:33
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Ynglaur posted:I've seen articles about this tech in the past. I don't know if it actually works in practice, but it's been in development and testing for some time. I read that report a few days ago and it seems to be written from a perspective of an American BCT going 1 on 1 with a Russian BTG over some piece of terrain but isn't an American BCT a much larger organization than a Russian BTG and would they necessarily line up one-to-one? Wouldn't a hypothetical scenario where the two sides have force parity in numbers see an American BCT face off against multiple Russian BTGs?
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Nov 2, 2022 03:23
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PederP posted:That's a massively long line of defense. They will need a lot of units (and supplies) to garrison it properly - all the while Ukraine can pummel it with artillery. If Russia end up evicted or withdrawing from Kherson, then falling back to those lines will just give them a massive stretch of frontline to suck up supplies and manpower - and Ukraine can shift their offensive capabilities to Zaporizhzhia and/or Donbas after securing Kherson. Putin really does seem intent on bleeding away every ounce of Russian military and economic power to postpone the inevitable defeat. Yeah, I get rivers are natural barriers and the Dniepr is a pretty massive example of such, but still, this war is getting increasingly modern, and Russian tactics keep regressing in the opposite direction. The strikes against infrastructure is the only real bite (disgusting as it may be) the Russian forces have shown recently - I do think that while in a military sense they aren't that effective - at a strategic level they are very cost-effective and deal a lot of economic and civic morale damage without evoking the same international ire as strikes against residential, educational and commercial buildings. The river line itself will provide the majority of the protection with the supposed threat of blowing the dam at Nova Kharkova being the main deterrent to the Ukrainians trying to instigate offensive operations on the river below where that dam sits. My understanding is that the Dnipro does freeze in that area between early January and March but that the ice is not stable and will not support heavy vehicular traffic like tanks or infantry vehicles. The river north of Nova Kharkova is also progressively wider until Zaporizhzhya. This will be nothing like forcing across a small river like the Inhulets which saw the Ukrainians having marginal success and even to this day the Ukrainians have still been unable to sustain pressure against a supposedly demoralized, undersupplied, and undermanned defense in Kherson. The Ukrainians are not exactly having their way with the Russians whenever they want. It is unlikely this line gets breached in the winter should the Russians actually withdraw behind the Dnipro and it probably isn't the best place to use Ukraine's troops.
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Nov 2, 2022 23:41
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Oracle posted:This is ominous to me. Quite possible they’re leaving in order to lure in Ukrainian forces to retake the city then bomb the utter poo poo out of it. Sometimes, the simple surface level appeance of things is the real deal. This move behind the Dnipro was the logical military move for months, doubly so once the Ukrainians got their hands on fancy US artillery to smash their crossings. The Ukrainians are of course going to be cautious, what is there to gain by running headlong in pursuit? It might not happen all at once and they might pull back to prepared positions as stepping stones but the indications they are leaving have been going on for some time now.
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Nov 3, 2022 14:56
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Pook Good Mook posted:This I 100% understand and agree with. It's the posts about "following" from Kherson that I don't understand in the slightest. Goon generals going be drawing silly arrows. Let it be I guess.
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Nov 3, 2022 20:31
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Somaen posted:During a live stream with one or another Russian opposition person, Arestovych (advisor to the president doing PR and a beefcake) said that Ukraine exhausted its attack potential weapons wise and there won't be any Kharkov-like offensives until that is replenished by Western military aid. At this point even Kherson is looking unlikely this year, nevermind the other bank It is important to remember that the 2 biggest instances of Ukranian troops recapturing territory was either the voluntary withdrawal by Russian troops out of the Kyiv area in late March during their strategic refocus as and their fuckup falling for Kherson feint which allowed the Ukrainians to overload in Kharkov. Outside of those two instances, it has been a war of grinding inches. There isn't any evidence that the Russians have damaged Ukranian regular forces to the extent that they couldn't pull off another Kharkov if they found an area as weakly held as it was in September but at the same time, there is no evidence the Ukrainians can launch an attack with similar results unless they found the conditions similar to before. This is exactly what the mobilization and the construction of fortifications is aimed to deal with. Have enough bodies to avoid another shitshow and wait out the winter. But if the Ukrainians do find another opportunity, I don't see any reason why they couldn't so something similar, allowing for weather and logistics. As before, Ukranian success will largely be dependent on how bad Russia's generals perform. For all the talk of demoralised troops that will just surrender or flee in a moment's notice, when placed in a good position, the Russian forces have proven that they can and will defend competently and keep the Ukrainians at bay, even if at great cost. Their resilience in spite of constant pressure in Kherson despite multiple local disasters over the past two months despite shaky logistics is proof of that as is their ability to limit further Ukrainian gains to a slow pace after recovering from the Kharkov disaster.
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Nov 4, 2022 18:31
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Nenonen posted:Shoigu is playing some nth dimension chess now. Lol if you think the Ukrainians wouldn't know if he didn't announce it on TV or that they weren't ready for this eventuality. No nth degree chess analysis needed. Preparations for a pull back have been happening for weeks. Given the nature of the restricted throughput of men and material across the damaged bridges, they spent weeks constructing fortifications that we have pictures of on both sides of the river to ensure that the possibility of the Ukranians bumrushing the them as they pulled back to be minimal. Preparations are probably now complete or close to it and it's time to publicly control the narrative the best they can. It is unlikely the Ukrainians will or are able try to take advantage. Given that they saw the construction of defensive positions themselves and publicly stated they were wary of a trap also indicates that they view the Russian positions as legitimately difficult to assault. A few days ago, there was reports of Russian reconnaissance units clashing in places like Dudchany probably to ensure there wasn't a Ukrainian force ready to pounce for exactly this moment.
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Nov 9, 2022 17:13
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Nenonen posted:You totally dismiss how difficult it is to pull out from a bridgehead with all your heavy equipment when the enemy has eyes in the sky and can reach all your road junctions, bridges and barge loading bays. Thousands of troops withdrawing is a big column, a nice target for HIMARS. Who says they are going to do it all in one day? They have been moving support units across for weeks. The Ukrainians knew about it for weeks. I linked a public acknowledgement of that sometime ago. They couldn't act then and they unlikely to be able to severely punish them now. They have been hammering those crossing points for months now and they will continue to do so. Then entire point of building fortifications is that you can fallback progressively to prepared positions so you don't have to do it all at once.
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Nov 9, 2022 17:26
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OddObserver posted:They basically need to hold the barge landing spots out of tube artillery range long enough to withdraw, and that puts people holding the line in a tough spot. Yea the last ones out are probably going to have a lovely time of it, no denying that. Some numbers of stragglers being captured is almost an inevitability. The point is that there is no crazy chess happening and people should view the situation at face value instead of concocting stupid scenarios like 'TV announcements mean Russians either super smart or super DURRRRR'. They are going to lose guys on the pullback. But given the meticulous planning, the odds of the shitshow back in Kyiv where it felt like it was everyman for themselves at midnight seems a less likely possibility.
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Nov 9, 2022 17:35
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/09/russians-destroy-dnieper-bridges-to-slow-ukraine-advance-on-kherson I hadn't been paying close attention to the Inhulets area thinking activities had largely been shut down but the Guardian says bridges across the Russian held portions of the river were dropped on Wednesday. quote:The destruction of the bridges, however, suggested that Russian forces were preparing to abandon the positions that they occupied on western side of the Dnipro River. More signs that the Russians don't intend to stay as those bridges serve Russian units still defending parts of Kherson on the far side of the Inhulets.
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Nov 9, 2022 19:46
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Chalks posted:It seems that there are still defenders and equipment in some locations. Why doesn't it seem believable? The most valuable Russian units are being withdrawn to safety first while the mobilized formations are left to guard a line so the Ukrainians can't collapse the pocket until the most valuable units are safely across. Once your best units are safe, pull out your more expendable formations next. Kraftwerk posted:So then the Russian strategy appears to be to hold defensive positions that are too costly to attack but less costly from an attrition perspective to defend and hope that western impatience will push for a peace deal where Ukraine cedes the Russian gained territories in exchange for Kherson going back to UA. The Russian strategy is just to hold on to as much as possible and hopefully turn it back into something like 2014 onwards and hope the West loses interest. The Kherson retreat wasn't becuase the Ukrainans booted them out. After Kharkiv, it seems like a legitimate effort was made to forcefully eject the Russians from the area but they got stonewalled and took some heavy casualties, and appear to have let up. I wouldn't count on the prospects of a UA offensive for the foreseeable future. The manpower math is still on Russia's side for now. MikeC fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Nov 10, 2022 |
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Nov 10, 2022 21:28
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Kraftwerk posted:So what’s the roadblock to giving Ukraine more force multipliers? Should we not be giving them the kind of weapons specifically geared towards NATO fighting Russia’s manpower advantage? There are no roadblocks, just the time and cost needed to convert the Ukrainian army into this highly trained NATO force but this is a formidable cost. This isn't like the US military which has decades of institutional knowledge with professional career soldiers at every level. While it may take only 6 months to get a healthy American citizen into uniform and plugged into a combat unit and expect them to perform well, they are doing so with mountains of infrastructure already in place with established leaders guiding them through the entire process. The Ukrainian regular army which numbered around 250k before the war has, from outside observation, performed well compared to its Russian counterparts but the unknown number of reservists and territorial soldiers have largely shown that they are not capable of the same kind of action as the regulars are especially in offensive action. I keep going back to the Kharkiv/Kherson comparison but it is very clear that while the Ukrainians seem to have a hard core of very competent (vis a vis the Russians) units found in the regular army, the units made up of reservists and the territorial soldiers are probably not a lot better in terms of capability than your average Russian mobilized unit even today. Certainly, they cannot be expected to defeat Russian regulars as Kherson has shown. Even at Kharkiv, it was the best Ukrainian formations going up against largely conscripts or low-quality soldiers from Russian-occupied territories during the initial breakthrough. In Kherson, most of the stories coming out of there were of Reservists or Territorial units being sent as the diversionary assault and they took huge losses and obtained very little territory despite months of action. Some of the most successful stories like the near collapse of the Russians near Osokorivka which caused them to fall back to the Dudchanny - Bruskynske line several weeks ago appear to have been orchestrated by Regulars with significant numbers of IFVs and tanks. So if you are hopeful of a renewed Spring/Summer '23 offensive from the UA, between now and then (6 months) there needs to be significant growth in the number of units within the UA to match the capabilities of current UA regular troops and you have to hope the careful use of the Regulars by the UA high command has preserved most of their manpower. I kinda find that unlikely given the helter-skelter nature of the UA right now where we still get stories of UA regulars using a hodgepodge of equipment and having to trade for weapons amongst themselves. It also feels like the UA high command is very risk-averse in terms of using their few high-quality units unless it's a sure thing which is also evidence that they view these units as difficult to replace/rebuild if something goes wrong. On the flip side, I don't see the Russian manpower advantage somehow overwhelming the Ukrainians. Reporting on the mobilized units shows almost universally poor performance. Troops like these are fine for static defense (sitting in a trench) but awful for an offense. When you read stories of Russian troops being told to move forward X hundred meters and dig trenches only to get wiped out by artillery, I don't think they are going to do very much attacking with good results. Basically, attacking is very hard with low-quality troops while defending with those same troops is much easier. Once this Kherson retreat business is over, this war is likely headed back to a stalemate along current lines for a while. The best-case scenario for the Russians is tons of shelling and minor gains like what we got for most of this summer. But without well-trained troops which both sides lack, big-time offensives that end up taking big swathes of land are probably off the table. Chalks posted:I'm sure delaying operations are happening as part of the withdrawal, but the tweets says they're planning on a major urban defensive "like Grozny". It sounds like more than just trying to slow them down while everyone escapes, it talks about RU expecting UA to have to siege the city as a result. Probably just an exaggeration. Like if you intended to hold Kherson city, you don't retreat and bring the Ukrainians closer to your supply crossings. Every km closer to those crossing sites increases the danger of the Ukrainians being able to storm those positions. There is, I guess, the remote possibility that they intend to just toss away whatever units they don't pull back and tell them to fight to the last man with whatever supplies they have left?
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Nov 10, 2022 22:24
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What a very Russian thing to do. Though maybe it's another exaggeration and the guys left behind are supposed to withdraw sometime later and hence no orders were given as of yet. Personally, if I was a mobilized soldier that didn't want to fight, being left behind is probably not a bad outcome. Throw away your weapon, find some white cloth, wave vigorously, and let the UA capture you. You might have to do a little humiliating TV time but you spend the rest of the war in a camp and get fed. If you get withdrawn, your next assignment might involve you being target practice for drones/artillery/planes in some other part of Ukraine. WarpedLichen posted:I thought the retreat from Kharkiv involved a lot of heavy equipment left behind? It was Kyiv that they got away relatively scot-free after ditching all the heavy gear that they couldn't flee with. ISW reported that significant casualties occurred at Kharkiv when the Russians sent reserves in to try to stem the flow. When the Ukrainians mopped the floor with them, those who were left fled for the border. With the Dnipro in the way this time, if something similar happens in Kherson, expect a lot of surrendering to be done.
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Nov 10, 2022 23:26
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Paladinus posted:But Ukrainians were in no rush to storm Kherson. I know I may be severely underestimating the level of incompetence at play, but Russia could have spent more time evacuating soldiers by air, for example, they didn't have to announce they were leaving for sure, while there are still thousands of troops there. Makes no sense whatsoever. So Russia was caught between a rock and a hard place here. Clearly preparations were made for a more orderly pullback (let us take the news coming out so far at face value). There are two ways to do it. Ensure the survival of your best and most capable units by withdrawing them first and hope the lower quality troops left behind will be up to the task of playing rear guard or have your most capable units screen the defense to mitigate the chance of an uncontrolled collapse of the crossing sites. Someone mentioned Dunkirk and it is important to remember the French actually did the British a huge solid defending the evacuation beaches. We know which option the Russians took and indications are that the units filled with mobilized troops with minimal training are now panicking. The Ukrainians don't even appear to be exerting a real amount of pressure right now either. But I guess from the Russian viewpoint, as long as your contract regulars got out, the rest are relatively expendable and you just take another black eye. Will be interested in the total capture count in a few days.
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Nov 11, 2022 02:51
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TulliusCicero posted:So how much fight can Russia possibly have it with Kherson liberated? Are they just going to retreat to the breakaway regions and Crimea now? Isn't the Ukrainian military pushing on Donestk and Luhansk even harder now with the south liberated? The decision to leave was one from high command, not as a result of Russian soldiers refusing or being incapable of holding the Ukrainians back. There are no stories of masses of Russian PoWs or bodies being discovered on the ferry or pontoon sites. It appears the best units in Kherson were withdrawn intact, maybe minus some heavy equipment. Elsewhere on the front, both sides are continuing attacks with minor degrees of success. In the Donetsk region, Russian attacks continue to make very minor, but measurable progress in places like Bilohirvka and Donetsk city (the airport appears to have changed hands again). Undoubtedly, the Russians lost men and vehicles in Kherson, but it increasingly looks like they were either unable or unwilling to risk troops in order to really put the screws to the Russians and bag a whole ton of them. The 20k Russians trapped is obviously not a thing anymore. Maybe when all is said and done you will get 1k surrendered or captured in civilian clothing or something. This war isn't going anywhere anytime soon on the account of battlefield results.
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Nov 11, 2022 21:28
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I expected more from Defmon......... So you are telling me that your proposal intends to try and build up forces across the waterway which has to be supplied by watercraft and purposely leave yourself trapped in a peninsula and *this* is the springboard for the next attack? Please. Maybe there are some UA guys there. Sure. But to suggest that this could end up being one of two prongs of a major movement to clear the rest of the Kherson district on the Russian side of the Dnipro as depicted seems exceedingly unlikely. How do you get your food, ammunition, and vehicles over there in the quantities needed for something like this?
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Nov 14, 2022 01:44
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cinci zoo sniper posted:This is… suboptimal. I hope the Poles keep an level headed approach in the next few days. The on ramp has now just appeared out of nowhere. If the Poles make a lot of noise, there is going to be a lot of tension wrt to maintaining NATO credibility vs staying off the highway.
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Nov 15, 2022 19:40
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Guildencrantz posted:Not really, no. Yes, we and the Russians have traditionally loving hated each other's guts and this is more intense now than it has been in a long while, but people here are primarily scared of Russia. Even though it's a paper tiger, we can see the devastation wrought on Ukraine. Nobody but ultranationalist morons thinks of Poland as some kind of military power. Very, very few people want a shooting war and hopefully that includes our lovely government. Terrified is not something you should be right now. The road from the onramp to the highway and the final destination being armageddon is quite long with many exit points along the way. It is just unfortunate that for the first time since the outbreak of hostilities, the onramp has occurred. Poland's response will dictate how scary this is. If they throw a tantrum and make outsized demands publicly using inflammatory language, that puts pressure on all sides. If they grit their teeth and keep it low key like the Israelis did in '91 this goes away quietly.
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Nov 15, 2022 23:53
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mlmp08 posted:https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1592745092112347136?s=46&t=ARysUQm7zmqgkw8ShtUJEg This is the best possible news.
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Nov 16, 2022 06:25
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Mooseontheloose posted:Play to your outs, even if it costs you the game. Technically, when you have to play to your outs, you are already on the path to defeat but it's the point that gets made every few weeks or so when people are 'wondering' why Putin is still at it or doing the things he is doing. This is the only path to victory he has left and he is playing it out.
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Nov 25, 2022 18:23
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Even then, that's a freaking awful victory. I would think that if he keeps pushing too much there's real risk his whole plan could backfire. You think he could survive a total defeat and remain in power? I suspect he is all in on this because the moment the war ends, if he doesn't have anything to show for it, it might literally be curtains for him.
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Nov 25, 2022 18:38
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Charlotte Hornets posted:It's obvious that Russia has scaled back its ambitions e.g trying to encircle Slovyansk and Kramatorsk already failed in May. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I honestly think you really need to back up some of your claims here. In recent months, Ukraine has on balance been on the offensive. Your claim that they don't have the manpower to defend. How are both of these things possible? Without access to classified materials, no one (including Twitter OSINT) can make a useful assessment of who is winning or who is more likely to retain an edge in the coming months. All outsiders can do is observe what has happened before and come up with a plausible scenario that fits the facts and behavior we have seen so far. Over the past 10 months with what we have witnessed the most likely assessment that can be made is that both the Ukrainians and the Russians are no longer capable of major offensive activities on the level that would either see the sudden liberation of Ukrainian territory or their sudden collapse. The logical reasoning for this is simple. If the Ukrainians were legitimately on the ropes manpower-wise, would they have risked significant portions of their regular troops in a major counterattack to clear Kharkiv up to the Russian border? This move actually increased the frontage they needed to hold. Would a Ukrainian army that was facing a legitimate manpower crunch also launch sustained offensive pressure in Kherson when they had the option of continuing the status quo of pinning down Russia's best troops in Kherson in a state where they were under-supplied and were not a major offensive threat? Similarly, there are zero reasons to be alarmed about minor gains by the Russians here and there on the Donbas. If the Russians did have the forces in the numbers needed seriously reverse Ukranian fortunes, then we would have seen it deployed already and Kharkiv never would have happened. Local successes happen all the time. Just in October, everyone in the thread was breathlessly waiting for the total collapse of the Russian army after Kharkiv and were licking their chops at every minor village being liberated on the far bank of the Siverskyi river when in reality, it was the last gasp of the Ukrainian attack as the Russians firmed up their positions. The setbacks listed could easily have been a local overmatch forcing the defenders to move out. I think short of Putin getting removed from power and the war ending, the current situation is as good as the Ukrainians could have hoped for. Significant portions of the country have been liberated. Kyiv and Ukrainian sovereignty is safe, and the Russians are actively on a defensive posture or taking defensive measures on significant portions of the front with no prospect of any major offensive action. If you offered them on the 1st of March that at the end of November these would be the front lines, I think they would have taken that without thinking twice. By the same token, there is no reason for over-exuberance on behalf of the Ukrainians. Every day this war drags on they lose more citizens that are in their economic and reproductive prime and the Ukrainian demographics weren't exactly healthy, to begin with. Their continued ability to wage war is almost entirely contingent on continued Western support and while that support still appears to be still quite solid, there is no way you prolong this war or slow roll your ability to liberate as much of your country as possible before your backers potentially get sick of the bill that you are wracking up on their credit cards. And it is clear they aren't exactly blitzing to clear back to the 2022 borders. Indeed we know they tried as they sustained attacks on Russian forces in the Izyum sector well past the days when the easy gains were being won and they couldn't crack the Russians. Same thing in Kherson when twice, they appeared to make hard pushes to force a breakthrough only to fail and have to resort back to the slow squeeze before the Russians decided to get smart and abandon the right bank. So while the Ukrainians aren't exactly in danger of collapsing, it appears they have spent the majority of their bullets for now. This is all that one can reasonably say given public information. Maybe the Ukrainians or Russians are secretly building a new reserve for a big attack come the spring or even in winter if the weather allows for it. But I sincerely doubt any of us ITT have information on the existence of such an effort or would have access to such info even if it was true. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 29, 2022 02:28
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golden bubble posted:https://rusi.org/explore-our-resear...uary-july-2022/ Excellent link. While it is written by a defence think tank, it is written in a way that is easily approachable even by civilians without formal military training. Anyone with a legitimate interest in military operations at a higher level than just Twitter cheerleading will find this an invaluable resource to understanding what truly happened during the first few months of the war. While most of what in this report will retread old ground for those who keep up with the more serious reporting, like ISW dailies and the more credible twitter analysts, it offers a great summary that helps dispel a lot of myths (especially about the Russians). One question for people who have served in NATO militaries. quote:A further problem with the BTG is its ability to absorb losses. An enabled company group – I am unable to parse what the author means. I thought 30% casualties for a unit was fairly significant and even a NATO military unit's ability to perform would be significantly degraded? I guess it could mean that the BTG was simply unable to function at all rather than merely function at a less than 100% capacity.
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Dec 1, 2022 00:30
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:i'm a bit doubtful that russia is able to easily support a prolonged artillery duel while the kerch bridge still has limited capacity. i don't have the numbers on current daily trains to back that up, but it seems like you wouldn't want to stress the major southern military and civilian supply corridor while it's still limited if you don't have to They sustained a 2-month long defense of Kherson City and adjacent areas using artillery to break up Ukrainian attacks and were supplied along those same lines of communications except they had in some cases up to 2 additional water crossings to make to supply some units. They will do just fine.
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Dec 4, 2022 01:57
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Herstory Begins Now posted:That defense ended because it was unsustainable. The bottleneck was clearly the Dnipro crossings......... Tuna-Fish posted:They had working railroad from Russia all the way to the front when that defense started, and built up stockpiles. After they started losing logistics and stockpiles, observers both inside their lines and outside noted that their volume of fire eventually fell to a fraction of what it used to be. Then they withdrew from the most important city they had captured without a fight. Source on the exact mechanics of this argument please. See above comment. The linkages involved are not the same.
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Dec 5, 2022 00:18
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OddObserver posted:Except it's foolish not to have a plan B, especially when it's likely to be way cheaper than plan A. It is actually the opposite. Almost all lessons learned since WW2 is that modern wars between high tech adversaries are decisive within a few weeks. You typically have to expect to fight with what you have given the lethality of modern systems. Assembly lines need to be kept running for contractors to be financially viae and you can't spin them up quickly as everyone know now so it would be cost prohibitive to run massive production lines for ammo and equipment for a war that might never come. The reason why this war is dragging on for months is because this isn't a peer conflict. Russia would have won without Western assistance to Ukraine and if it was NATO vs Russia, NATO (US) would have already crushed the RuAF.
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Dec 5, 2022 20:09
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ChubbyChecker posted:list those post ww2 wars between high tech adversaries that lasted a few weeks Arab Israeli wars are foundational for understanding how western militaries view conflicts. In all 3 wars since Israel's foundation, wars were decisive well before any kind of expectation for industry to meaningfully contribute to war stocks. Morrow posted:This is a big question mark. Yes, a flow of intelligence and javelins (and prewar support) did a lot to boost Ukraine, but mostly Russia was completely unprepared for the demands of the war once Ukraine decided to fight. They didn't have enough troops to secure their supply lines, occupy the countryside, etc against a hostile pppulation or an intact military. We might be talking about a different front line or more of a back and forth, but this is absolutely a peer war. The recent report posted here made it clear that by the 6 week mark, the Ukrainians had expended the vast majority of their ammunition, especially their artillery and that the introduction of NATO precision artillery and drones for target location were critical to blunting the RuAFs numerical superiority and the Donbas offensive.
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Dec 5, 2022 20:44
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ChubbyChecker posted:syria and egypt haven't been high tech countries since the middle ages Thanks to the Russians, they had gear that was on par with the Israelis.
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Dec 5, 2022 21:08
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WarpedLichen posted:I agree that this isn't really a war that anybody really expected to fight (though Russia really should've planned for this as the aggressor), but how exactly are you defining "peer conflict" in this case? Russia did plan, they just didn't tell the troops or commanders of the primary objective of the said plan until 9 hours beforehand. Back in v1 of this thread, I had speculated that the invasion was an off-the-cuff decision when negotiations broke down since no one would be that unprepared. Now we know for sure that the invasion was preplanned months in advance but the orders literally didn't go down to commanders until the night before. When people say peer conflict, it means opposing forces with modern technological capabilities matching each other in the anticipated zones of combat and the training to use it. IE, USA vs China within the first island chain or up to very recently, Russia, within the confines of Eastern Europe or say India vs Pakistan. In this case, the Ukrainians are not peer opponents. Though modernization updated its tank fleet to servicable standards, the Ukrainians were flying fighter jets a full "generation" behind Russia's best jets. It has no long-range strike capabilities to retaliate against Russian missile strikes on its infrastructure and is now wholly reliant on the west for arms and ammunition. Even though they have weathered the storm, it is clear much of their war effort leans on western arms and ammunition as well as the intelligence gathering apparatus that is in place to support Kyiv. Tomn posted:I'm not sure this statement can be supported as strongly as you put it here. Though it's true that many Cold War conflicts tended to be brief, this is arguably as much a result of diplomatic pressure from either or both superpowers to contain the conflict before it got out of hand as it was a necessary result of technology, as well as a reflection in many cases of the limited size and/or goals of the combatants involved. As well, in the time period you list the big standouts like the Korean War or the Iran-Iraq War (or indeed the Ukrainian War) may be more limited in number but they do demonstrate that the possibility of a long war between technologically advanced modern combatants is still possible given the right conditions - the question then is what those conditions are exactly, and are they likely enough to be worth preparing for? In particular I note that the examples of the wars that lasted longer include countries that tend to be, well, larger than the shorter examples, and tended to include more decisive aims on both sides - it may be that a potential WW3 scenario between superpowers may involve a brief period of shattering violence as existing stocks are used up, followed by a lower-intensity phase as the powers husband the resources they have available and spool up production of new equipment, if both sides consider the conflict important enough to keep fighting on for. In that respect, Ukraine may very well be a model for what a modern land war would look like between larger adversaries of similar technology and similar dedication to accomplishing their aims. I am not going to litigate beyond what is necessary to talk about Ukraine in this thread. If you want to PM me, do so. As for the sharpness of modern conflict, I will point to observables as well as the report posted earlier in the thread. Unless the Ukrainians were sure NATO would underwrite the war with equipment and ammunition, then Kyiv's defence plan would have failed and they would be at the peace table already. One of the key findings in the RUSI report is that Ukrainan war stocks were/are depleted and by June the advantage the RuAF had gained was 10:1 in their favour wrt to the volume of artillery fire due to lack of ammo. This inability to answer overwhelming Russian artillery fire when it used to saturate sections of the Ukrainian line was cited as one of the reasons why the withdrawal from Severdonetsk took place in June. This situation was only rectified with NATO precision-guided artillery and one of their preliminary conclusions is that PGMs are disproportionally more effective than unguided munitions, not only because of effectiveness in terms of hitting the target you want but also because massively shrinking your own logistics vulnerability since you have fewer assets, firing for shorter periods of time, with smaller logistics tails. However they use that as an argument like you do for more warstock and slack capacity which is, imo, is a flawed conclusion because it simply ignores the fact that it is economically unfeasible to maintain huge war stocks for a war that may or may not come. If anything, it advocates for what the US has been doing. Investing in high-tech systems that are disproportionately effective in a "pound for pound" sense so as to maximize your ability to defeat your opponent and obtain the political result you want in a short amount of time since modern military gear is exceptionally expensive but it is also exceptionally capable of punishing anyone who isn't on your level in a technological sense. Bigger war stocks and maintaining slack capacity for these systems is prohibitively expensive as anyone who can look at the US DoD budget line can tell you. As stated in the Politico piece, things are the way they are right now because Congress was/is looking to save money. So assuming you are unwilling to raise what is already an astronomical defence budget in the US, with NATO allies using every excuse to not meet its 2% GDP spending target, the only way to increase existing war stocks and slack capacity would be to build and rely on cheaper weapon systems that are less effective. You can clearly see the results of using cheaper, less cutting-edge technology in this war as well with Russian soldiers suffering massive casualties. Of course, if money was infinite and of no concern, everyone would have access to massive war stocks of the latest and greatest weapons and munitions with factories and trained workers ready to crank them out at a rate capable of instantaneously replacing battlefield attrition. We don't live in this world though.
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Dec 6, 2022 02:12
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