Ukraine Conflict: Crimea-a-River

[Rippounet]

If history is any guide, she will end up being Trump's co-runner*.

 

 

*(this is meant as a joke - mostly)

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Even the next-most unhinged members of the MAGA-Repubs seem to think she's completely lost the plot, in a "do we need to call an ambulance here and keep sharp objects out of her hands?" kind of way. So maybe there is some hope that they can do something about her.

We’ll see.  She’s already got Massie and Gosar on board for her suicidal motion.  There are gradations of crazy within the House GOP, but she’s got at least about a dozen with her at its nadir.

[SeanF]

12 hours ago, Celestial said:

Peskov: "the decision will make the USA even richer"

 

Now can Marjorie Taylor-Green shut the fuck up about US wasting money in Ukraine? There you have it, from the Russian government itself.

That presupposes that Moscow Marjorie is on the side of the USA.

Edited April 21 by SeanF

[Werthead]

Sevastopol harbour has taken a big hit, one Russian vessel ablaze. Unconfirmed reports that it's the Kommuna, Russia's largest salvage ship which has been in constant service with the Russian Navy since 1912.

[Maithanet]

These Ukrainians have no respect for history.

[Werthead]

According to Mark Warner, chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, there are a fair number of ATACMS in the first delivery tranche for Ukraine, they'll be in-theatre in under a week.

A Slovakia citizen launched a crowdfunding campaign to contribute to buying shells for Ukraine. Otto Simko is a 99-year-old Holocaust survivor and veteran of the 1944 Slovak national uprising against the Nazis, was a key organiser. In 48 hours the campaign raised over €2 million.

Some pretty apocalyptic lines coming out in Russia on Telegram and in some milblogger circles, including those cowed by Girkov's arrest. They believe the new funding deal, the loss of $350 billion in assets to Europe (even if only temporarily until the war ends, but seem resigned to it going to Ukraine) and more have made the long-term strategic outcome of the war for them much more doubtful.

Edited April 21 by Werthead

[SeanF]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

According to Mark Warner, chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, there are a fair number of ATACMS in the first delivery tranche for Ukraine, they'll be in-theatre in under a week.

A Slovakia citizen launched a crowdfunding campaign to contribute to buying shells for Ukraine. Otto Simko is a 99-year-old Holocaust survivor and veteran of the 1944 Slovak national uprising against the Nazis, was a key organiser. In 48 hours the campaign raised over €2 million.

Some pretty apocalyptic lines coming out in Russia on Telegram and in some milblogger circles, including those cowed by Girkov's arrest. They believe the new funding deal, the loss of $350 billion in assets to Europe (even if only temporarily until the war ends, but seem resigned to it going to Ukraine) and more have made the long-term strategic outcome of the war for them much more doubtful.

With reason.  It’s hard to see any path to Russian victory, now.

[Zorral]

Do Tanks Have a Place in 21st-Century Warfare?
As explosive drones gain battlefield prominence, even the mighty U.S. Abrams tank is increasingly vulnerable.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/20/world/europe/tanks-ukraine-drones-abrams.html

Quote

 

.... Despite their power, tanks are not impenetrable, and they are most vulnerable where their heavy plated armor is the thinnest: on the top, the rear engine block and the space between the hull and the turret. For years they were mainly targeted with land mines, improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank guided missiles, like “shoot and scoot” shoulder-fired systems. These were widely used early in the Ukraine war because they could strike tanks from above and hit them up to 90 percent of the time.

The drones that are now being used against tanks in Ukraine are even more accurate. Known as first-person view drones, or FPVs, they are equipped with a camera that streams real-time images back to their controller, who can direct them to hit tanks in their most vulnerable spots. In several cases, the FPVs have been sent in to “finish off” tanks that had already been damaged by mines or anti-tank missiles so that they could not be retrieved from the battlefield and repaired, Colonel Reisner said.

Image
A drone sits on a table next to a water bottle and other sundries.
A Ukrainian drone at an army compound in the Kherson region last year. Heavy use of the drones is changing the nature of war in Ukraine, often to the detriment of tanks.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

Depending on their size and technological sophistication, the drones can cost as little as $500 — a paltry investment for taking out a $10 million Abrams tank. And some of them can carry munitions to boost the impact of their blast, said Colonel Reisner. These could be rocket-propelled grenades, he said, or self-forging warheads known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, that were widely used in roadside bombs during the war in Iraq. Colonel Reisner has collected videos of tanks in Ukraine being chased down by the drones or drones flying into their open turrets.

“Welcome to the 21st century — it’s unbelievable, actually,” said Colonel Reisner, a historian and former armor reconnaissance officer who oversees Austrian forces’ training at the Theresian Military Academy. ....

 

 

[Gorn]

What the NY Times article fails to mention is that literally everything else on the battlefield is more vulnerable to drones than a tank, including cars, APCs, IFVs, and unprotected infantry. I would rather have 800mm of armor between me and the drone than not have it.

Tanks will evolve into a different form and everything older than 2020s will become obsolete, but they will continue to have a place in warfare.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Gorn said:

What the NY Times article fails to mention is that literally everything else on the battlefield is more vulnerable to drones than a tank, including cars, APCs, IFVs, and unprotected infantry. I would rather have 800mm of armor between me and the drone than not have it.

Tanks will evolve into a different form and everything older than 2020s will become obsolete, but they will continue to have a place in warfare.

Time for magnetic shields.  

[Makk]

I do wonder if infantry squads should be equipped with a few shotguns.

[Maithanet]

2 minutes ago, Makk said:

I do wonder if infantry squads should be equipped with a few shotguns.

The problem is that scouting drones have better and better cameras.  These units can often spot infantry and call in artillery upon them from distances that a shotgun will be totally useless. 
For attack drones, a shotgun might be more useful, but if you're talking about smaller models that just drop small explosives like grenades on infantry, they are again often high enough that they are difficult to spot or shoot down.  If you're talking about kamikaze attack drones, they often go fast enough that an infantryman isn't going to have time to aim a shotgun and bring down the drone before it is on you.  For example, the Russian staple loitering drone is the Lancet, and it weighs ~25 pounds and can reach speeds of up to 190 mph.  If you imagine a bicycle flying at you at 300 km/hr, you can see why a shotgun probably isn't going to be much defense. 

Throughout this war, both sides continue getting better and better at bringing down drones, whether it is via electronic jamming, anti-drone weapons like the Flakpanzer Gepard, or anti-air missiles.  The problem is that the drones are getting much better at evasion as well.  Drones are getting faster to avoid anti-drone weapons.  They are getting more advanced programs (some AI, some not) to continue on to the attack target even if they get jammed and lose contact with their operator.  They are getting more numerous so as to overwhelm anti-air defenses.  

Russia is struggling to replace its losses of basically everything - tanks, IFVs, missiles, AA defenses.  The big exception is drones - they are scaling up production in a massive way.  Both sides are using drones at a pace that would have seemed impossible in summer 2022, and there is every reason to think that 2024-25 will only continue the trend. 

[Kalbear]

As @Maithanet alluded to above the problem is that warfare has changed. Tanks can be useful in a few spots, but right now what defines warfare is the massive accurate lethality of long range or drone operated weaponry. Basically if you know where something is chances are good you can kill or disable it, and do so within minutes of seeing it. 

As another article I read put it, massed fires beat mass forces. And it is so much easier to coordinate mass fires now.

A number of military theorists seeing Ukraine believe the future of warfare is slow advances or broad advances. A slow advance allows a force to not overreach their increasingly complicated umbrella of defenses and countermeasures that is needed. A broad advance means masses of fires can be overwhelmed with targets (at obviously high losses). Doing a mass of force to try and exploit one weak spot is. going to be increasingly difficult. 

The other weak spot in warfare is logistics - as exploited by Ukraine in 2022. I would expect a lot more focus on destruction of supply lines and using that + attrition to make some advances. But that isn't something you can consistently rely on.

[DireWolfSpirit]

21 hours ago, Werthead said:

the loss of $350 billion in assets to Europe (even if only temporarily until the war ends, but seem resigned to it going to Ukraine)

Damn straight it needs to eventually be handed over to the Ukranians, in the form of reparations for Putins war crimes.

[Werthead]

Flooding in Kurgan has resulted in the inundation of the Dobrovnolnoye uranium mine, flooding the nearby Tobol river with uranium. Depending on the quantities this could have a significant impact on local health (note that any quantity is bad, but small is obviously better than "lots").

British intelligence (and, well, common sense) has identified the next main Russian target as Chasiv Yar, west of Bakhmut. The goal here is to retake the ground retaken by Ukraine last year between Chasiv and Bakhmut (it already has to the north, not quite to the south) and then attack the town itself. The town is already in Russian artillery range. Ukraine has had some time to build up defences there and the town has a formidable defence of occupying high ground which is very hard to assault.  But not impossible, and Russia has reportedly assigned 20,000 troops to the mission. That's actually less then they've used in assaults on Avdiivka and substantially less than the original battle for Bakhmut. If that's all they have and their start mounting their 800-1,000 casualties a day meat assaults, then clearly the maths do not work in Russia's favour.

Still, there's some uneasiness over Ukraine's strength in the region and how hard they'll fight for the city, and how fast supplies can arrive to reinforce. Russia is apparently seeking victory by 7 May, Putin's inauguration, which seems ambitious.

There is a diplomatic effort unfolding. Zelenskyy's peace plan will be presented to a conference of ~80 countries in Switzerland in mid-June, including Russian-friendly (ish) nations like South Africa and India (and probably Brazil). He has invited the Chinese to participate and they have made encouraging noises. Xi seems to be playing both ends against the middle, having recently met Lavrov and Scholz, will meet Blinken this week in China and Macron in Paris in early May. Putin will visit China in mid-May as the first major visit of his new term (which Russia is selling as a big honour to China, China probably sees it more as desperation). Xi I think is keeping his options open, but might be willing to consider a scenario in which China brokers a diplomatic end to the war (akin to its recent Iran-Saudi initiative, superficial as that was). I would not expend vast amounts of optimism over this scenario.

Speculation over Kadyrov's health mounting after his hospitalisation last year. He's filmed himself lifting stones - with difficulty - and jogging - resulting in a red face and trying not to keel over. Kadyrov was allegedly diagnosed with pancreas necrosis in 2019, which has a reasonable 70% survival rate with surgery and medical intervention. It's unclear to what extend Kadyrov complied with those instructions, but he's not looking to happy at the moment.

Ukraine has reached an agreement in principle to acquire four additional Patriot batteries from other countries, in addition to the one from Germany secured last week.

Edited April 22 by Werthead

[Bironic]

16 hours ago, Kalbear said:

As @Maithanet alluded to above the problem is that warfare has changed. Tanks can be useful in a few spots, but right now what defines warfare is the massive accurate lethality of long range or drone operated weaponry. Basically if you know where something is chances are good you can kill or disable it, and do so within minutes of seeing it. 

As another article I read put it, massed fires beat mass forces. And it is so much easier to coordinate mass fires now.

A number of military theorists seeing Ukraine believe the future of warfare is slow advances or broad advances. A slow advance allows a force to not overreach their increasingly complicated umbrella of defenses and countermeasures that is needed. A broad advance means masses of fires can be overwhelmed with targets (at obviously high losses). Doing a mass of force to try and exploit one weak spot is. going to be increasingly difficult. 

The other weak spot in warfare is logistics - as exploited by Ukraine in 2022. I would expect a lot more focus on destruction of supply lines and using that + attrition to make some advances. But that isn't something you can consistently rely on.

I agree warfare has definitely changed, and drones are a massive part of it, but how goes the meme: improvise, adapt overcome? The reason why tanks and every other ground/surface vehicle (armored or not) is so vulnerable to them is because none of them were designed to withstand them or to kill them. They were all designed and produced between ca. 1945 and 2005 and they were designed to win a fight in every war prior to 2005, in none of those wars cheap ass drones were a thing.

What we already see is improvisation with things such as reactive armor, cope cages, turtle tanks, (multiple) machine guns (sometimes WWI water cooled ones, that allow longer bursts) against air, Jammers, DEW (such as lasers), various manpads, decoy vehicles (inflatable or just painted), and the "resurgence" of Flak (tanks such as Gepard). We also see a certain change in the way that tanks are used (tactics and operations) more as infantry support vehicles and indirect fire vehicles rather than in the "classic" tank role. All with various degrees of success, trial and error, military evolution unfolding right in front of our eyes. The tragedy is that those errors cost lives.

Whoever designs the next generation of military vehicles will design them according to the threat of drones, swarms of them, of various kinds (even ones that are not yet operational). They will be operated in combined arms to protect each other from both "classical threats" artillery, tanks etc as well as drones...

I expect that future tanks and military vehicles (including ships, submarines, boats, etc.) will have major changes.

For the next gen tanks I could see the following ones:

• Autoloaders with separated ammo compartments (reducing crew from 4 to 3 and reducing turret size, while increasing firing rate)
• Remote operated turret and turret machine guns
• 360° (optical) sensors allowing to operate the tank at all times with hatch closed
• Increased capacity of software/AI that will further reduce the crew from 3 to 2
• New motor/engine: currently it's either a diesel engine or a gas turbine: in the future it will be a hybrid engine: gas turbine electric, diesel-electric, gas turbine-diesel-electric combined with a modern (solid state) natrium or lithium battery and hydrogen fuel cells. This will reduce wear and tear, repairs, fuel consumption, engine size and placement, heat and noise (thus making IR less useful)
• Probably a combination of Anti drone measures: (more flexible) machine guns, shotguns, jammers, dews, cage armour, reactive armour on top of the tank, flares, smoke grenades, more layered armour on top etc.

 

[Gorn]

People tend to forget that the main tanks of this war are T-64s (Ukraine) and T-72s (Russia) that were manufactured 40-60 years ago and which may or may not have received minor upgrades since then. Of course they are obsolete on today's battlefield.

Edited April 23 by Gorn

[Kalbear]

@Bironic, the problem is not just drones, and the most dangerous drones to modern armies are the spotters. And you're right that there is adapting - and those adaptations are exactly what I was describing. Where you can't have very large masses of units doing breaches because they lose the cover from things you were talking about.

Because drones are dangerous (especially against troops) but when you can do a fire mission 50km away and hit something within 25m a bit of extra top plating doesn't matter.

The other issue is that tanks - even Abrams - were made extra armored and tough to deal with the cannon of other tanks, while being able to deliver kill shots of armored vehicles accurately to places that support weapons could not hit. That mission is not as useful now. Weaponry is small enough and potent enough to kill tanks without needing an armored platform- drones, manpads, all sorts of stuff. You simply can't armor enough. The cannon power isn't needed either - you can deliver hits to tanks accurately from miles away from non tank weapons. The speed is becoming a detriment because again you can't outdisfance your defensive cover without dying.

I guess I really don't get why your argument is that people will adapt and overcome and then you dismiss the idea that tanks going away are part of that adaptation. Another casualty in this vein are attack helicopters - they are also not being used nearly as much because they simply are too slow and too vulnerable.

[Zorral]

In Ukraine, New American Technology Won the Day. Until It Was Overwhelmed.
Project Maven was meant to revolutionize modern warfare. But the conflict in Ukraine has underscored how difficult it is to get 21st-century data into 19th-century trenches.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/us/politics/ukraine-new-american-technology.html

Quote

 

.... But if Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine has been a testing ground for the Pentagon’s drive to embrace advanced technology, it has also been a bracing reminder of the limits of technology to turn the war.

Ukraine’s ability to repel the invasion arguably hinges more on renewed deliveries of basic weapons and ammunition, especially artillery shells.

The first two years of the conflict have also shown that Russia is adapting, much more quickly than anticipated, to the technology that gave Ukraine an initial edge. ....

.... Not surprisingly, all these discoveries are pouring into a series of “lessons learned” studies, conducted at the Pentagon and NATO headquarters in Brussels, in case NATO troops ever find themselves in direct combat with President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces. Among them is the discovery that when new technology meets the brutality of old-fashioned trench warfare, the results are rarely what Pentagon planners expected.

“For a while we thought this would be a cyberwar,’’ Gen. Mark A. Milley, who retired last year as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, said last summer. “Then we thought it was looking like an old-fashioned World War II tank war.”

Then, he said, there were days when it seemed as though they were fighting World War I. .....

.... This flow of information helped Ukraine target Russia’s artillery. But the initial hope that the picture of the battlefield would flow to soldiers in the trenches, connected to phones or tablets, has never been realized, field commanders say.

One key to the system was Starlink, the Elon Musk-provided mesh of satellites, which was often the only thing connecting soldiers to headquarters, or to one another. That reinforced what was already becoming blindingly obvious: Starlink’s network of 4,700 satellites proved nearly as good as — and sometimes better than — the United States’ billion-dollar systems, one White House official said. ....

.... It is far from clear that the United States, accustomed to building exquisite, $10 million drones, can make the shift to disposable models. Or that it is ready to bring on the targeting questions that come with fleets driven by A.I.

“There’s an awful lot of moral issues here,” Mr. Schmidt acknowledged, noting that these systems would create another round of the long-running debates about targeting based on artificial intelligence, even as the Pentagon insists that it will maintain “appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.”

He also came to a harsh conclusion: This new version of warfare would likely be awful.

“Ground troops, with drones circling overhead, know they’re constantly under the watchful eyes of unseen pilots a few kilometers away,” Mr. Schmidt wrote last year. “And those pilots know they are potentially in opposing cross hairs watching back. … This feeling of exposure and lethal voyeurism is everywhere in Ukraine.” ....

 

 

[Bironic]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

@Bironic, the problem is not just drones, and the most dangerous drones to modern armies are the spotters. And you're right that there is adapting - and those adaptations are exactly what I was describing. Where you can't have very large masses of units doing breaches because they lose the cover from things you were talking about.

Because drones are dangerous (especially against troops) but when you can do a fire mission 50km away and hit something within 25m a bit of extra top plating doesn't matter.

The other issue is that tanks - even Abrams - were made extra armored and tough to deal with the cannon of other tanks, while being able to deliver kill shots of armored vehicles accurately to places that support weapons could not hit. That mission is not as useful now. Weaponry is small enough and potent enough to kill tanks without needing an armored platform- drones, manpads, all sorts of stuff. You simply can't armor enough. The cannon power isn't needed either - you can deliver hits to tanks accurately from miles away from non tank weapons. The speed is becoming a detriment because again you can't outdisfance your defensive cover without dying.

I guess I really don't get why your argument is that people will adapt and overcome and then you dismiss the idea that tanks going away are part of that adaptation. Another casualty in this vein are attack helicopters - they are also not being used nearly as much because they simply are too slow and too vulnerable.

I don't think your assessment is entirely correct. It is partially though.

One of the main reasons why tanks don't work as good is not only drones (both spotters and suicide drones) but also the amount of defensive structures that block maneuver warfare: Mines (various types, deployed by air or artillery or conventionally, stacked and layered) anti tank structures such as dragons teeth or trenches.

Second your assessment that attack helicopters aren't used is wrong: Russia used(and still uses) them to great effect against Ukraine, exactly to stop tanks/armored vehicles, because they outrange infantry portable weapons such as man-pads or machine guns (thus operate with relative impunity) and are way faster and more mobile. Ukraine doesn't use them as much for mainly two reasons: they have no air cover whatsoever: if Ukrainian Mil Mi 24 goes close enough to kill a russian vehicle from outside of infantry/vehicle range they will be in range of long range Russian anti-air weaponry (mainly fighter jets with medium/long range air to air weapons, this is one of the reasons why ukraine desperately wants fighter jets with long range air to air capabilities) to a lesser degree long range SAM such as S-300 or S-400. Second the Ukrainian Mil Mi 24 are relatively old models that aren't even dedicated attack helicopters more attack/transport helicopter hybrids and they have neither many of them nor spare parts, so every loss is a definite one. The terrain plays also a certain role, helicopters are best used in terrain where other vehicles have a harder time to operate (Jungles, Mountains, Urban environments) none of which really apply to eastern/southern Ukraine... In Ukraine it's usually simpler to just drive around rather than go by helicopter (which in a jungle or mountainous environment would be much harder).

The tanks/vehicles that are used in Ukraine were not designed against drone warfare neither against spotters nor suicide drones or loitering munitions etc. They are from 1945-2005. So obviously they suck against them. When Machine guns were invented people also didn't just say: oh yes infantry doesn't work anymore because now one guy with a maxim gun can kill 1000 guys without one. They changed infantry as well both in terms of tactics as well as equipment. An infantryman in the German army of 1918 fought very different and was equipped very differently from one in 1914.

So why do you think tanks (I use this term in the broadest of senses meaning basically every self propelled ground vehicle) will not adapt? Let's say you have a fully/hybrid electric Tank/vehicle with only 0-2 crew members? It will be super silent, have no heat signature to speak of, making IR vision and homing largely useless (which most infantry manpads use). It will have no fuel that burns/explodes, its ammo will be safely stored away and it will fire very fast, it will be comparably small and lightweight, yet still have superior armor(especially on top!) and acceleration, endurance and velocity, its motor will not be located in one specific spot so you can't target it and immobilize it (unless you blow up the tracks/wheels), it will have a number of things in its arsenal to stop drones such as jammers, anti-air guns/cannons, smoke grenades, flares etc. and it will be escorted by other vehicles whose main purpose will be to stop drones. Those vehicles will probably be based on things like the Gepard tanks but be a completely new development desgined specifically against drones.

It's also good to keep in mind that drones especially in the case of Ukraine were/are used to compensate a lack of equipment and ammo. It started mainly as a make shift way to compensate for lack of armored vehicles, Manpads, artillery, aircraft, helicopters, long range weaponry, manpower, money, industrial capacity, satellites, etc.

 

 

Edited April 23 by Bironic