The Invasion of Ukraine

[jimbob]

Slightly long youtube video from a chap in Australia with a Military History background and works in capability planning, but whose youtube channel is usually devoted to video games.

His premise is that the Russians have not planned at all for this war in any way, even though its been on the cards for ages. They blow their budget on 'bling' (way too many nukes, a blue water navy, very high tech but low production run things like the SU-57), they blow money on (badly) maintaining masses of crap old kit, they blow it on corruption and they blow it on troops used for internal repression (eg: 300,000 Rosgvadiya). The resources actually allocated to the forces needed to to invade the Ukraine are a tiny fraction of the overall defence budget and they massively under invested in the capabilities need to do such a thing, such as decent training and pay to create motivated and skilled professional services, PGMs for close air support, decent supply and support capabilities and so on.

Thank f.ck for that.

Yes I think I linked to that earlier.

The idea that preventative maintenance is nobody's job is an interesting one. And they keep a lot of equipment on their books which must cause logistical headaches.

[bjn]

Egads. Sorry if I stole your thunder. I haven’t clicked on every link in this thread.

[jimbob]

Egads. Sorry if I stole your thunder. I haven’t clicked on every link in this thread.

No you didn't. I must have posted it on the similar thread in ISF.

[Trinucleus]

In this modern age I wonder how many missile/artillery strikes might be being called in with a smartphone and the whatthreewords app...

It's quicker, easier and less error prone to just use a smart phone to send actual GPS coordinates.

Whatthreewords was made obsolete by SMS messaging.

Ever done that thing where you meant to send someone a location but you accidentally shared your own live location?

Or you accidentally add a plural and register somewhere 500 miles away....

[bob sterman]

Or you accidentally add a plural and register somewhere 500 miles away....

Easy to do when the pronunciation is almost identical..

goat.sheep.crow (Nicaragua)
goats.sheep.crow (Mongolia)

[TimW]

Egads. Sorry if I stole your thunder. I haven’t clicked on every link in this thread.

No you didn't. I must have posted it on the similar thread in ISF.

jimbob you are not going crackers

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3080&p=117319&hili ... bg#p117319

Maybe.

[jimbob]

Egads. Sorry if I stole your thunder. I haven’t clicked on every link in this thread.

No you didn't. I must have posted it on the similar thread in ISF.

jimbob you are not going crackers

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3080&p=117319&hili ... bg#p117319

Maybe.

Yup that's the one I was thinking about, thanks.

the seeming lack of an NCO cadre and indeed the whole spending model reminds me of the maxim, "amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics"

[bjn]

No you didn't. I must have posted it on the similar thread in ISF.

jimbob you are not going crackers

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3080&p=117319&hili ... bg#p117319

Maybe.

Yup that's the one I was thinking about, thanks.

the seeming lack of an NCO cadre and indeed the whole spending model reminds me of the maxim, "amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics"

And the true experts study capability planning so you have the logistics in place to support your strategies?

[jimbob]

jimbob you are not going crackers

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3080&p=117319&hili ... bg#p117319

Maybe.

Yup that's the one I was thinking about, thanks.

the seeming lack of an NCO cadre and indeed the whole spending model reminds me of the maxim, "amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics"

And the true experts study capability planning so you have the logistics in place to support your strategies?

Quite possibly - which is one area where Nazi Germany fell over. I've seen it claimed that they had 1500 different types of trucks for Operation Barbarossa - which is stupid, but due to their lack of capacity in that area, so had to requisition civilian vehicles.

[jimbob]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... n-1325817/

In the months before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, an oligarch with Russian ties allegedly paid for locals to paint swastikas around Kharkiv, sources say. The effort, according to the sources, was part of a false flag operation to exaggerate Ukraine’s Nazi presence at a time when Putin was using it as a pretext for war.

The alleged plot, according to multiple sources, involved Pavel Fuks, a real estate, banking, and oil magnate who, the sources claim, was co-opted by Russian security forces to participate. Through intermediaries, Fuks allegedly offered between $500 and $1,500 for street level criminals to vandalize city streets with pro-Nazi graffiti in December, January, and February.

Oleg Plyush, a former top Ukrainian kickboxer who says he’s a friend of Fuks and spoke to him about the swastika plot, tells Rolling Stone he learned about the scheme from an intermediary involved with finding people to carry out the vandalism. According to Plyush’s account, when confronted about the scheme, Fuks claimed that “he had no choice” and that it was his “assignment” — mandatory if he wanted to stay in business in the region.

[philbo]

Or you accidentally add a plural and register somewhere 500 miles away....

Easy to do when the pronunciation is almost identical..

goat.sheep.crow (Nicaragua)
goats.sheep.crow (Mongolia)

Use their autosuggest API, and you can get it to limit results based on proximity or a bounding box. Near homophones are intentionally miles apart so they're not likely to be mistaken for each other.

So reads their documentation, anyway.

Would work if you're calling in a strike on something nearby, less reliable if you're wanting to send a ballistic missile to a neighbouring continent

[dyqik]

Or you accidentally add a plural and register somewhere 500 miles away....

Easy to do when the pronunciation is almost identical..

goat.sheep.crow (Nicaragua)
goats.sheep.crow (Mongolia)

Use their autosuggest API, and you can get it to limit results based on proximity or a bounding box. Near homophones are intentionally miles apart so they're not likely to be mistaken for each other.

So reads their documentation, anyway.

Would work if you're calling in a strike on something nearby, less reliable if you're wanting to send a ballistic missile to a neighbouring continent

Still seems a whole lot harder than cutting and pasting a Lat and Long from Google Maps, etc.

[Gfamily]

Easy to do when the pronunciation is almost identical..

goat.sheep.crow (Nicaragua)
goats.sheep.crow (Mongolia)

Use their autosuggest API, and you can get it to limit results based on proximity or a bounding box. Near homophones are intentionally miles apart so they're not likely to be mistaken for each other.

So reads their documentation, anyway.

Would work if you're calling in a strike on something nearby, less reliable if you're wanting to send a ballistic missile to a neighbouring continent

Still seems a whole lot harder than cutting and pasting a Lat and Long from Google Maps, etc.

But it's nice to scout around for an appropriate one if you can.
For example, the car park for where our astronomy club meets has the w3w of dark.extremely.upstairs
or screaming.cosmic.geese, depending on your choice

Easier to remember than 53.25⁰ N 2.66⁰ W

[EACLucifer]

An important thing to note regarding Russia's constant accusation that everyone they dislike is a Nazi.

Firstly, the Soviet Union was deeply antisemitic, especially under Stalin immediately after the war - Soviet antisemitism is a huge influence on modern left/"anti-imperialist" antisemitism, incidentally. The Soviet Union could not acknowledge the specific targetting of Jews by the Nazis, and censored those that did. Babyn Yar became a waste disposal site, while works that acknowledged what had happened - like Schostakovitch's 13th symphony.

Secondly, the Soviet Union was itself totalitarian. It could not allow meaningful antifascist discourse, as discussing the horrors of Nazi totalitarianism would inevitably lead to criticism of Soviet totalitarianism, just as anti-Tsarist works of art were used for veiled criticism of Soviet policy (eg. Shostakovitch again, this time the 11th symphony)

As a result, Nazi ended up just referring to people who attacked/were opposed to Russia, the specific fascism and antisemitism were ignored.

[Martin Y]

Victory! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-60856533

Russia says the "first stage" of what it calls its "special military operation" has been mostly accomplished and that it will now concentrate on "the liberation of the Donbas".

Western analysts are of course suggesting this splendid triumph means Russia recognises its strategy has failed and they need to pull back and just concentrate on trying to secure Donbass. Meanies.

They could have had a super photo op with Putin standing on a Russian warship under a giant banner saying "Mission Mostly Accomplished" but alas the Ukrainians blew it up.

[Woodchopper]

Victory! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-60856533

Russia says the "first stage" of what it calls its "special military operation" has been mostly accomplished and that it will now concentrate on "the liberation of the Donbas".

Western analysts are of course suggesting this splendid triumph means Russia recognises its strategy has failed and they need to pull back and just concentrate on trying to secure Donbass. Meanies.

Here’s a thread from someone who was at the briefing: https://twitter.com/polinaivanovva/stat ... 4mr0-Uxmpg

[Woodchopper]

I assume then that the Russian strategy now is a) get more territory in the Donbas; then b) get Ukraine to sign a peace treaty that recognises the new borders.

a) might be possible if Russia can send more forces into the Donbas while Ukraine has to defend its cities. But success would depend upon Russia not f.cking it up.

b) probably isn’t possible. If so the war will resemble the Donbas since 2014, but in a much wider scale.

[bjn]

I assume then that the Russian strategy now is a) get more territory in the Donbas; then b) get Ukraine to sign a peace treaty that recognises the new borders.

a) might be possible if Russia can send more forces into the Donbas while Ukraine has to defend its cities. But success would depend upon Russia not f.cking it up.

b) probably isn’t possible. If so the war will resemble the Donbas since 2014, but in a much wider scale.

Except (b) has a bankrupted Russian that won’t be able to properly support its troops and a Ukrainian that is getting first rate intelligence and unlimited ordinance from NATO.

[Woodchopper]

I assume then that the Russian strategy now is a) get more territory in the Donbas; then b) get Ukraine to sign a peace treaty that recognises the new borders.

a) might be possible if Russia can send more forces into the Donbas while Ukraine has to defend its cities. But success would depend upon Russia not f.cking it up.

b) probably isn’t possible. If so the war will resemble the Donbas since 2014, but in a much wider scale.

Except (b) has a bankrupted Russian that won’t be able to properly support its troops and a Ukrainian that is getting first rate intelligence and unlimited ordinance from NATO.

Certainly.

[EACLucifer]

I assume then that the Russian strategy now is a) get more territory in the Donbas; then b) get Ukraine to sign a peace treaty that recognises the new borders.

a) might be possible if Russia can send more forces into the Donbas while Ukraine has to defend its cities. But success would depend upon Russia not f.cking it up.

b) probably isn’t possible. If so the war will resemble the Donbas since 2014, but in a much wider scale.

Except (b) has a bankrupted Russian that won’t be able to properly support its troops and a Ukrainian that is getting first rate intelligence and unlimited ordinance from NATO.

Should be getting, but not actually getting yet. This is largely a conventional war. Zelenskyy's asked for more capable SAMs, anti-shipping missiles, jets and tanks. None have been supplied, and it isn't clear if any will be.

They should be supplied - the "bUT iT MIgHT ProvOKe puTIn" faction had their way for decades, and look where it's ended up! Russian media already insists that they are fighting a proxy war against NATO, so provision of the arms Ukraine needs isn't going to change that. We've already supplied enough arms to burn our bridges with Putin, so there's no reason not to go all the way and send everything short of nukes - we can still insist they aren't used to bomb Moscow, obviously.

[bjn]

A limiting factor on that is that we can only supply weapons that Ukrainians either already know how to use or can be trained up on quickly. A Ukrainian squaddie can learn to use a man portable ATGW or MANPAD in a day or two. You aren’t going to get Ukrainians flying Typhoons, even if we were happy to supply them. Which is why I specified ordinance rather than weapons systems.

Surplus Warsaw Pact kit in Eastern Europe is another issue, as are shipments of replacement Turkish drones. I believe that there are spare BUK systems and so on that could do with a good home for example.

[EACLucifer]

A limiting factor on that is that we can only supply weapons that Ukrainians either already know how to use or can be trained up on quickly. A Ukrainian squaddie can learn to use a man portable ATGW or MANPAD in a day or two. You aren’t going to get Ukrainians flying Typhoons, even if we were happy to supply them. Which is why I specified ordinance rather than weapons systems.

Surplus Warsaw Pact kit in Eastern Europe is another issue, as are shipments of replacement Turkish drones. I believe that there are spare BUK systems and so on that could do with a good home for example.

We should absolutely ship that which can be quickly put into use as quickly as possible. There's still extensive dithering around BUKs and MIGs, and a lot of the fuss seems to be concerns re:backfilling equipment.

That said, we cannot assume this will be over as quickly as we want it to be. We should begin training as quickly as we can for more difficult/complex equipment, as Ukraine has no shortage of volunteers, and at a pinch training can be streamlined. I've seen people talking about going from a month to a week for training on the Starstreak system. I don't know how long it would take to convert someone who's operated a Warsaw Pact tank to a Challenger or a Leopard or an Abrams, but it's obvious it will be finished sooner if it is started sooner.

But there's another aspect to it, and that's that the Ukrainians will be able to commit more of what they already have if they can rely on replenishment - an example from history would be the American resupply of Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

And the other way to look at it is this; if Ukraine loses, Russia remains a threat, with eastern Europe in the firing line. The more the Russian war machine is damaged in the interim, the better, and if Ukraine wins, destruction of Russia's ability to fight makes it less likely they'll try again and more likely peace will follow. Though the principal reason to supply anti-shipping missiles to Ukraine is to defend Ukrainian people who are coming under attack from ship-launched cruise missiles and are still faced with the threat of a naval landing, the destruction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet is also in the interests of the west, and anyone who wants a lasting peace in Europe. The same goes for tanks and aircraft and so on.

[bob sterman]

They should be supplied - the "bUT iT MIgHT ProvOKe puTIn" faction had their way for decades, and look where it's ended up! Russian media already insists that they are fighting a proxy war against NATO, so provision of the arms Ukraine needs isn't going to change that. We've already supplied enough arms to burn our bridges with Putin, so there's no reason not to go all the way and send everything short of nukes - we can still insist they aren't used to bomb Moscow, obviously.

It is arguably less risky for the West to help Ukraine seriously degrade Russia's forces, and to grind the Russian economy down through sanctions, but stop short of doing anything that would lead to the collapse of Putin regime - i.e. leave it limping on, unable to rebuild.

Turning this into an existential crisis for Putin himself - is fraught with danger.

Well worth watching this full interview...

Putin's Road to War: Julia Ioffe (interview) | FRONTLINE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSNo2FPQDQw

46:21 "...because he is losing and because the sanctions and the Ukrainians are humiliating him, because he is backed into a corner, he is the most dangerous he has ever been, because it is now existential for him. And if you think he doesn't know that everybody in the world understands that the only way to end this is to put a bullet between his eyes, he knows. And that makes him also much more dangerous."

[lpm]

NATO does not have infinite armaments.

We will run out of anti tank, Stingers etc, same as Russia will. No idea when.

[EACLucifer]

NATO does not have infinite armaments.

We will run out of anti tank, Stingers etc, same as Russia will. No idea when.

The west has some pretty deep stockpiles of weapons - for example Britain is planning to mothball seventy or so Challenger 2s, while the remainder are to be upgraded. Other weapons are currently in production, eg NLAWs, but it is clear that production must be stepped up wherever possible, to ensure that weapons can be sent without depleting western resources too much, and if Russia collapses and we end up with more than we thought we needed, we can always stash them in Taiwan.