(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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I don't mean to be a downer, but I think even a successful offensive doesn't end this war. I think this goes into 2024 at least. I hesitate to guess much beyond 12 months, but I don't see a clear path to destroying enough Russian combat power to liberate the Donbass this year. Maybe I'm wrong! I hope I am. For context, while it's easy to mock Russia for deploying T-52s--and believe me, I contribute to that mockery--there are very real things they could do--or be doing--to regenerate combat power. They're trying to run their industry on a war-time footing, but we don't (yet) see North Korea-levels of industrial mobilization. Could Russia do so? Maybe - as an authoritarian regime, Russia is quite effective, and they have not yet fully militarized.
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Mar 31, 2023 18:52
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Moon Slayer posted:The whole point of sanctions, though, is to make it difficult to impossible for them to replace a lot of stuff even if they do "fully militarize" their industry. You can convert all the Aeroflot factories to make kalibr missiles you want, it's not going to do any good when you can't get a single semiconductor. Oh, absolutely! Sanctions should help prevent that very thing. That said, over time Russia may be able to improve its own semiconductors enough for certain military equipment, or they may be able to procure just enough from gray market or sanctions-dodging entities, or any number of things. Sanctions enforcement is a non-trivial problem, especially when countries such as China--who doesn't want a weak Russia, but does want a distracted West--share a massive land border with Russia.
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Mar 31, 2023 20:54
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saratoga posted:Realistically just keeping what semiconductor equipment is already working supplied and maintained is going to be tricky once cut off from international suppliers (which are mostly in the US, EU and Japan). Combined with the timescale for developing and then ramping new capacity (years in ideal scenarios), essentially all semiconductors they can't already make are going to have been smuggled in from other countries. Something tells me that smuggling into the country with the world's largest land border and one of the largest (the largest?) coasts is probably solvable.
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Mar 31, 2023 21:31
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Apr 1, 2023 17:30
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cinci zoo sniper posted:This looks like a pro click in general, for people who would like to have a better feeling on what makes tweets click. I think it highlights just how obscure information shaping operations can be. For example, it's been suspected for some time that Elon Musk's account was given special amplification. The code released shows that to be a fact.
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Apr 1, 2023 21:48
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Slo-Tek posted:Is there any way to know that? Musk saying things are being done is a whole other thing than them actually being done. Removing "Elon is the Most Special Boy" and not replacing it with "Elon is the Very Most Special Boy" seems unlikely. They literally 0osted the code to Github. Code repositories store old versions forever. The only thing they could do would be to remove access, but I'm sure lots of people created forks (copies) of the original. Elon owned himself pretty hard.
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Apr 1, 2023 22:00
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The Artificial Kid posted:They were mostly doing that out of laziness rather than an ardent desire to ensure that America dominated and killed more people. "Look what the marines are doing" is a story the US military would hand them, with a built-in audience who won't Dixie-Chick you as long as you say nothing bad about America. But they could and did do stories that mattered when it got important and juicy enough. I agree. I think conflating Western media in that time period with e.g. Russian media today is just nonsense. For example, Abu Ghraib was a horror, and Western media rightly portrayed it as such. You don't see Russian milbloggers asking for accountability for Russian military units committing war crimes. (For the record, I'm still mad that not a single loving officer went to jail for Abu Ghraib. They pinned it all on a bunch of low-level NCOs. It was bullshit. That type of thing only happens when your command climate is broken. Guess who sets the command climate in US Army units? (hint: it's not the sergeants.)). Paracausal posted:Looks like Russia has continued grinding out progress in Bakhmut. Contested sure, but slowly taking ground, wonder if the 5:1 ratio the Ukranians have been claiming in that area has any solid backing I personally find it unlikely. Once you're into a city proper, an attacker should be able to secure roughly 1:1 odds in urban fighting. Then again, an attacker should be able to advance about 100m/day, and Russia has failed to do so, until perhaps the last few days. So maybe the odds do remain closer to 5:1 in Ukraine's favor than I would expect. Ynglaur fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Apr 3, 2023 |
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Apr 3, 2023 14:51
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Warbadger posted:Seems extremely unlikely to be near 1:1 from a historical point of view. Assaulting prepared, entrenched positions is usually very costly for the attacker compared to the defender. Actually...not necessarily. Getting into an urban environment is often unfavorable to an attacker, but once inside, the attacker can often obtain rough parity in terms of casualties. Fights are often at very close ranges, so casualty rates for both attacker and defender can be quite high, and generally higher than fighting in more open terrain. One thing the attacker does (again, usually) give up in exchange for a more equal attrition ratio is speed. In a clearing operation in urban terrain you can expect to average about 100m of progress per 24 hours. Even that pace is exhausting work: soldiers will easily consume 10,000 calories a day in such environments. Getting favorable attrition ratios is far from guaranteed, of course, and I don't mean to imply that it's common or can be assumed. But the conventional wisdom that the attacker will always suffer large multiples compared to the defender is not borne out by history.
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Apr 4, 2023 13:12
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To any Goon Finns, congratulations on joining NATO. I unironically hope this means your country remains at peace for many years to come. gently caress Putin.
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Apr 4, 2023 19:44
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Orthanc6 posted:The amount of ammo an entire nation needs for a few months to conduct a massive counter attack must be a fun job to figure out I don't know if "ironic" is the best term, but ironically, this stuff is pretty well known. I was not a professional logistician, but my understanding is that they're able to model quite accurately the various categories of supplies used by units of various types conducting various types of operations. Kraftwerk posted:Is there any news about Ukraine switching their service rifles to NATO 5.56.mm variants or are they still using Soviet/Russian 5.45mm and these "millions of rounds" are being procured through some other means? They're mostly using 5.45mm still, but there's so much of that ammunition around the world I don't doubt the West can just buy it from other countries and give it to Ukraine. As much as we Americans love our guns, we probably have manufacturers here in the US, even.
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Apr 4, 2023 22:01
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Still on 5.45 and 7.62 I believe. They tried switching away from the AK like 5 years ago, and made an M4-style 7.62 gun too. Now, of course, the calculus could very well be different, but AK is not artillery, and that stuff should be a dime a dozen. The US is changing to 6.8mm for infantry, scouts, combat engineers, and special forces, too. I have a bunch of thoughts on that new platform in the context of what we're learning in the War in Ukraine. I just need to find time to write it (and, honestly, I'm unsure if regulars itt would even be interested.)
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Apr 4, 2023 22:27
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Kraftwerk posted:Is there much difference at this point between using an M4 and using a submachine gun? Yes. About 200m of difference in range, and much better penetration against light body armor. Submachineguns tend to use pistol-calibre ammunition, which means even if the bullet is larger (such as the .45 fired by many American submachineguns in the middle of the 20th century), they have far lower velocity. Charlz Guybon posted:Is it actually going to happen? They've been talking about it for so long. Yes. Sig Sauer was granted the award, it's not being contested, and they're in production. The public news has the first units getting equipped in calendar Q3 this year, iirc. The initial volumes are low enough my guess is the special forces units get them first, and even then not all of them.
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Apr 5, 2023 02:17
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Warbadger posted:Historically Crimea fell to both the German and Soviet armies without much fanfare. A small peninsula is a lovely place to defend if the other guy controls access to the mainland. The Siege of Sevastopol held up German units for 8 months. It was quite a bit of fanfare at the time.
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Apr 6, 2023 02:57
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https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cisco-destroys-tens-of-millions-worth-of-equipment-in-russia Interesting short blurb about Cisco destroying a bunch of unsold electronics before exiting the Russian market. I wonder who they found to do that work?
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Apr 7, 2023 01:23
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TruthSocial, perhaps?
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Apr 7, 2023 15:27
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Twitter shows one slide with NATO SOF numbers and US pax (personnel) numbers in Ukraine. I'm not particularly surprised, though I would expect those people to mostly doing training and maybe logistics just across the Polish or Romanian borders. I truly pity intelligence analysts in today's world where a highschooler with an image editor could make plausible edits to actual intelligence. Getting to the source--the actual provenance of an intel leak--is probably causing people to age early.
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Apr 7, 2023 16:35
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > War in Ukraine: thank goodness Trump doesn't use Discord
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Apr 7, 2023 18:22
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Haystack posted:Thank you for the suggestion This should be the thread title. In news-chat, this leak could actually be quite bad for Ukraine. It's less about the maps--Russia knows plenty drat well where the front is--because ISR is pretty good. But the logistics information--anti-aircraft missile expenditures, timelines for logistics, etc.--could be gold for Russian operational planners if it's accurate.
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Apr 8, 2023 00:07
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I don't think age is a great indicator of Discord use. Source: I'm in my 40s.
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Apr 8, 2023 13:39
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I seriously wonder if this leak is someone bringing stuff home they shouldn't have, and a kid getting ahold of it and trying to score cool points online.
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Apr 10, 2023 19:08
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Comedy option: it turns out to be Junior.
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Apr 13, 2023 15:08
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Warbadger posted:The vigorous sudden flames or pillars of fire aren't fuel, they're caused by propellant...Basically it's much easier to light up propellant than high explosives (this is after all what it's meant for) and unlike fuel (but more like gunpowder) once it burns, it burns quick and very hot. You can even light it on fire and use it for cooking! (don't try this at home)
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Apr 17, 2023 14:52
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Blut posted:36 turning 37 seems extremely young for a military intelligence chief. Thats what, about a captain or major level in most armies? Major or Lieutenant Colonel in the US military (NATO O-5 or O-6).
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Apr 17, 2023 23:03
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mllaneza posted:And Nimitz was promoted over, by seniority, I think 12 other admirals to be C-in-C Pacific. Nobody who studies that campaign prior to the Essex Swarm turning it into easy mode can say that he wasn't one of the most effective military commanders of all time. See also: Eisenhower, who was a Colonel (O-6) in March of 1941, and by February 1943 was a 4-star General.
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Apr 18, 2023 14:45
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The West really needs to increase production rate of ammunition. The platform production rate is probably okay, even if China does something foolish while the War in Ukraine is still going, but ammunition is a real concern. It reminds me of the late 2000s when rifle-owners in the US couldn't get 5.56mm because we were using so much in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the industrial base for even basic rifle ammunition had just withered away after the 1980s.
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Apr 19, 2023 13:33
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Paladinus posted:Can't arrows like that mean something generic on military vehicles? Like American tanks have these things Those specific markings typically indicate which part of a company the vehicle belongs to. Different units probably have different conventions over time, but a wedge facing up meant "command section", so the Company/Troop Commander and Company/Troop Executive Officer's tanks would have that. A wedge facing right was 1st Platoon; facing down was 2nd Platoon; and facing left was 3rd Platoon. You do this in part because you can only maintain so many radio nets, but you want to know who is where. In a tank platoon of four tanks, the Platoon Leader and Platoon Sergeant have two radios: one for the platoon net, and one for the company net. Their wingmen tanks typically only have one radio each, and use the platoon net. (This may have changed in the past 20 years.) It's also just faster. Rather than ask on the company net, "Hey, tank over by that weird-looking tree, are you in 3rd platoon or 2nd platoon?", you can just look and see the marking.
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Apr 20, 2023 00:58
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There's footage on Twitter and Reddit which includes about 12 minutes of a firefight in a trench from the perspective of a Urkainian squad (platoon?) leader. It is very  , but a few things stood out to me:
For those who do choose to watch such footage, something to keep in mind: cameras make objects smaller--and thus seem more distant--than they actually are. A lot of this fighting is at 10-30 meters. I still owe the thread a write-up on the US transition to a 6.8mm cartridge for its rifle and automatic rifle (I haven't forgotten!). A very real consideration: the soldiers in the fight I describe above go through a lot of ammunition. Finally, gently caress Putin. This whole drat war is just a horrible, needless loss of life.
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Apr 20, 2023 01:29
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jaete posted:So I take it the Russian attackers lost? Why did they lose? Were there not enough Russians attacking - people always talk about "you should have 5 times more soldiers when attacking" or similar estimates? Yes, Russia lost that particular tactical engagement. The video is unclear how many Russians there were in total, but it seems like approximately a dozen. Their assault platoons are about that size, so it would line up. You're correct regarding the artillery tactic, though it's really more like 50-100m. A 155mm HE shell has a kill radius of 50m and a wounding radius of 100m. Such metrics are based on 50% occurrence at the given range (i.e. 50% of people within 50m would die; 50% of people within 100m would be wounded). Unless you're using a precision shell and know exactly which bunker to hit, artillery versus fortifications is mostly suppressing the people inside to allow your infantry to get close. Your infantry still has to close the last 100m or so, though, which is what Russia tried in that video. Russia is using drones to guide in assault teams, though my impression is not as effectively. They map out assaults in advance and put various checkpoints on the map. This lets Russian commanders directly poorly trained troops with more sophistication. "Move to checkpoing 123. Okay, now move to 456." That initiative is arguably why they won the engagement: the squad leader basically got out of the trench to see better, killed several hostiles, but (more importantly), directed his soldiers based on what he could see on the ground. Neither army has a strong NCO corps, but this footage anecdotally suggests that Ukraine's junior leaders are more effective than Russia's. (Yes, it's a single data point.)
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Apr 20, 2023 18:34
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Kraftwerk posted:Are you sure? Ukraine has a strong junior officer corps, but its not an NCO corps in the way Western armies work. Michael Koffman, Mark Hertling, Ryan Evans, and others have commented on this. Ukraine's implementation of mission command at the tactical level is different than Western militaries, but it still works well. One of the biggest challenges seems to be officers at brigade and higher levels, many of whom are older, veterans of the Soviet and pre-2014 Ukraine military, and who never received training from NATO. It's also interesting that Ukraine has only two headquarters levels above brigade: a regional headquarters, and a supreme headquarters. That may partly because they simply don't have the staffs for divisions, corps, etc. So they're managing ~180 maneuver brigades as ~180 maneuver brigades.
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Apr 20, 2023 22:33
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EasilyConfused posted:That seems wild to me, are the Russians using a more traditional system? No. Moving your squads from one waypoint to the next on an infantry assault because you can see them via drone is fairly novel for conventional forces. It's almost RTS like, if you'll allow me to be a bit gauche. Edit: RIP Cinci.  You were too good for goondom.
Ynglaur fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Apr 21, 2023 |
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Apr 20, 2023 23:59
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Tucker Carlson is out from Fox News, which hopefully reduces Russia's information operations in the US by some measurable amount.
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Apr 24, 2023 18:05
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Thomas C. Theiner posted posted:https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1650590089297141760/photo/1 Thomas Theiner posted a rough order-of-battle for Ukraine's new brigades with their primary platforms. His Twitter profile says that he's a former Italian artillery officer, and I've found his analysis of platforms and systems to consistently be good. His operational analysis is well-grounded, though it tends to be optimistic. Unsurprisingly the Ukrainians did a good job mixing mutually-supporting platforms. Every brigade has something that can kill tanks, and every brigade has enough infantry (assuming they're fully-manned, which seems a reasonable assumption at the moment). I expect Ukraine will be able to breach Russian lines within a relatively short time of initiating direct contact; the question is how much operational exploitation can they achieve?
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Apr 25, 2023 01:01
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I remember in 2003 every time we had a KIA in the regiment we'd shut the phones home down until the family was notified. That usually took about 24 hours. When I got home I found out that most families hadn't put together the correlation between nobody in the regiment calling home and a new KIA being reported. Lack of information is definitely information, though not much other than "big things are afoot", or even "Ukraine would like Russia to think big things are afoot." The thing is, if Ukraine has begun their counteroffensive, Russia knows. Their intelligence officers and senior commanders aren't (mostly) stupid: they can recognize reconnaissance operations, increased fires, etc. For those watching at home, what's happening right now are a series of shaping operations: it's not the grand maneuvers and assaults civilians tend to associate with counterattacks (thanks, Hollywood!). Instead, it's things like hitting large numbers of enabling targets at the same time, conducting reconnaissance-in-force to find specific enemy locations, moving things around to see if you can make the enemy move their forces around, getting special operators or partisans in position near key bridges, etc.
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Apr 26, 2023 02:38
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Nenonen posted:How well Ukrainians are able to provide air defenses for the mobile vs how well Russians are able to use their air superiority will play some role in how the offensive will roll. But it's still anyone's guess what their current abilities are. There was a discussion with Arty Green (a Ukrainian artillery officer who has done some interviews) that Russian fixed and rotary wing aircraft are concentrating. My thinking is that Russia intends to use them as a tactical reserve to blunt any Ukrainian forces which breakthrough. Rust Martialis posted:Stugna-P sniping hovering helicopters has been on video at least twice.
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Apr 27, 2023 03:50
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Young Freud posted:Yeah, the U.S. has the M830A1 multi-purpose high-explosive anti-tank round in it's 120mm ammunition inventory, largely meant for fortifications, buildings, and light vehicles. But it has a proximity fuse for engaging helicopters. Yes, though I never had that back in the early 2000s. I'm sure it's even more effective at engaging rotary-wing aircraft, but even a 120mm HEAT round can engage helicopters a couple km away. I finally had a chance to read CNA's report on Russian air power and its excellent for those who are interested in the details of the strengths and limitations of the VKS.
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Apr 27, 2023 13:36
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Storkrasch posted:There's the DNR and LNR too, both of which probably have taken enormous numbers of casualties. Same goes for mobilised and prisoners. Those two oblasts (is that the correct term?) are probably outright de-populated of military-age men at this point. It's really awful.
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Apr 28, 2023 15:27
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Nitrox posted:It's not a report that could be checked or scrutinized, because they explain absolutely nothing, never have. They just publish weekly numbers and that's it. So let's not take it at face value Nobody is. The posters immediately above you pointed out that Ukraine's MoD estimates largely correlate with those of the US DoD and UK MoD, OSINT analysis, leaked intelligence assessments, etc. Is it possible that all of those entities are in some coordinated conspiracy to publish simliar numbers. Sure, I suppose. Is it plausible? Not really. It's more plausible that they are all coming to the same wrong conclusion for different reasons, but even that is a stretch. A preponderance of evidence indicates that Ukraine's MoD numbers are fairly accurate, and certainly accurate enough for reasonable policy decisions to be made. Cpt_Obvious posted:Had they actually managed to kill/wound 200k Russian troops Ukraine would have won the war. Well, they do seem to have caused Russia to lose the war. Also, I think you're incorrectly discounting the effectiveness of Russia's mobilization. It was not successful enough to launch a successful offensive, but remains to be seen if it was effective enough to wage a successful defense. Ynglaur fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Apr 28, 2023 |
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Apr 28, 2023 19:57
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WarpedLichen posted:I've always thought that the Ukraine interception rate was overinflated for propaganda purposes but I guess if even OSINT radio monitors can get advance notice of missile strikes there's no reason the military can't do the same and prepare. 6 hours is more than enough time to get air defenses ready. I think the US THAAD system needs something like 6 minutes notice. Modern air defenses are fast. NomChompsky posted:Russia doesn't have a logistics chain for that right now. There is no medevac coming for lots of these guys. The footage coming out of the entrenched areas of Ukraine show Russian troops living in trenches with the bodies of their fallen just littered inside the trenches with the living. Welcome to modern combat with no established air superiority. Ukraine's KIA:WIA ratio seems closer to 1:6 to 1:9, depending on the time and place. It's not as good as "US military with full air superiority, heliborne casevac to a full hospital 20km away", but it's still pretty good. Ukraine is helped, too, because their inidvidual first aid kits (IFAKs) are substantially better. They're actually better than the US had in 2003, even. Having things like proper bandages, coagulant powder, chest seals, and tourniquets go a long way to improving you chances of survival.
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May 3, 2023 02:47
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 07:54 |
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The issue with Russian first aid quality is not that they are getting bandages from the mid-20th century. The issue is that those bandages seem to be the full extent of individual first aid kits in many cases. Even the old US kits I used were wrapped in a strong plastic, which meant you could use that to treat a sucking chest wound (not ideal, but it worked in a pinch). The new IFAK kits are just  better.fatherboxx posted:Government press service officially Correction mine. The biggest problem with this video is the fireball. Military explosives don't do that: gasoline and petrol-based explosives do. Gasoline is great for engines because it releases energy relatively slowly compared to, say, high explosives, but it's less energy-dense. So, either an amateur operation, or the point of the operation was to make something visually dramatic (in addition to or in support of whatever underlying intent). It could be internal dissidents as much as it could be a false flag, but I think it highly unlikely it's an official Ukrainian operation. (I don't mean to imply that you were saying it was, though, fatherboxx).
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May 3, 2023 17:58
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