Russian invasion of Ukraine

[LongTimeLurker]

30 minutes ago, Detournement said:

...However Russia's far superior artillery since the beginning of the war has had no positive impact...

They control most of the Donbas and are still advancing there albeit very slowly. As things stood they weren't getting to Lviv but a more limited set of objectives in the east and south of Ukraine was still doable. The reason people are expecting the boot to soon be on the other foot is that Ukraine is now expected to be the side with the more accurate longer range artillery and Russia's supply of tanks and other armoured vehicles is degrading away while Ukraine's is growing because they have all of NATO (OK maybe not Hungary) behind them.

[Sergeant Wilson]

3 hours ago, Fullerene said:

It is the same with aircraft carriers - can't go anywhere unless there are lots of little ships to watch your back.

The latest British one didn't even have planes. You'd have been as well pushing Prestwick airport into the sea.

[ICTChris]

29 minutes ago, Detournement said:

So for Ukraine newly delivered artillery is going to turn the war. However Russia's far superior artillery since the beginning of the war has had no positive impact. 

Being a mad right wing academic is the easiest life anyone can aspire to. 

Russian might have more and heavier artillery but so far in the war they have struggled to use it effectively.  In the North of Ukraine they couldn't target or counter attack Ukrainian artillery properly because they didn't have accurate targeting and intelligence and the logisitical issues meant they couldn't use their weapons effectively.  The improved equipment will help Ukraine as Russian forces in the Donbas won't have the same issues with logisitics etc that they did in the North.

Regarding the foreign volunteers, I don't think they will be difference makers particularly, they are more for propaganda purposes.  Even if there are 20,000 foreign fighters then that's still a small number of their total forces.  From what footage there is of any of them in combat, it's the Georgian, Chechen and Belarussian groups who are fighting the most.  There also seem to be a few Americans and Canadians.  Much like the talk about Syrians and Libyans fighting on the Russian side I doubt it will make a huge difference.

[Detournement]

21 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

 The reason people are expecting the boot to soon be on the other foot is that Ukraine is now expected to be the side with the more accurate longer range artillery 

Russia was hitting targets in Transcarpathia and Lviv the other night. Range doesn't seem to be an issue. 

[Boo Khaki]

Russian artillery just tends to randomly stonk open fields for the hell of it. They're as badly trained and organised as every other branch of their army.

[DMCs]

47 minutes ago, Detournement said:

It's already happening according to St Andrews guy. 

"Private military contractors" 

Guess the Abraham Lincoln brigade were just foreign mercs too then...

[Detournement]

2 minutes ago, DMCs said:

"Private military contractors" 

Guess the Abraham Lincoln brigade were just foreign mercs too then...

No they were Communist militants. I don't think there's any of them in Ukraine at the moment. 

[DMCs]

5 minutes ago, Detournement said:

No they were Communist militants. I don't think there's any of them in Ukraine at the moment. 

They were volunteers just like the people in your article are volunteers. Many of them from neighbouring countries like Belarus and even Russia.

Nothing to do with "contractors".

[Vegetableman]

Saw a 4 engined jet pass over at quite a height last night going west to east which i immediately thought quite odd for commercial traffic

Turned out to be a USAF C17 Globemaster 

I tracked it on flightradar and it landed at Rzeszow in poland near the Ukraine Border 

I wonder what the cargo was  ?

[alta-pete]

32 minutes ago, Vegetableman said:

Saw a 4 engined jet pass over at quite a height last night going west to east which i immediately thought quite odd for commercial traffic

Turned out to be a USAF C17 Globemaster 

I tracked it on flightradar and it landed at Rzeszow in poland near the Ukraine Border 

I wonder what the cargo was  ?

Flies over the top of me fairly regularly; think I've seen it maybe a dozen or so times now, usually middle of the afternoon. Odd flight path to take which is what made me, like you, look it up initially. Most transatlantic stuff goes up towards Iceland and back down. This one just leaves Maine (I think) and basically heads due east with no fucks given. Straight over the Forth Valley, next stop either Rzezow or Ramstein.

[welshbairn]

10 minutes ago, alta-pete said:

Flies over the top of me fairly regularly; think I've seen it maybe a dozen or so times now, usually middle of the afternoon. Odd flight path to take which is what made me, like you, look it up initially. Most transatlantic stuff goes up towards Iceland and back down. This one just leaves Maine (I think) and basically heads due east with no fucks given. Straight over the Forth Valley, next stop either Rzezow or Ramstein.

Could be to reduce the chances getting buzzed by the Russkies?

P.S. Someone's having fun..

Edited May 5, 2022 by welshbairn

[alta-pete]

Aye; not that I paid much (any) attention before but there does seem to be an awful lot of pilot training going on in Eastern Europe right now...

[renton]

3 hours ago, Detournement said:

So for Ukraine newly delivered artillery is going to turn the war. However Russia's far superior artillery since the beginning of the war has had no positive impact. 

Being a mad right wing academic is the easiest life anyone can aspire to. 

Well, no - Russia's artillery has been used ineffectively. Part of the issue of pushing a brigades worth of artillery down to the battalion level in the so called battalion Tactical Group. Its meant their command and control of artillery has been fairly inflexible and unresponsive. 

That's not to say it hasn't inflicted masses of casualties. It has, but it's impact has not been up to the standard expected of its superiority.

Then you have attrition. Both Russia and Ukraine have lost a lot of equipment in this "special operation" and Russia has lost a lot of its better artillery kit. However, they have to raid warehouses for ancient, un-maintained and primitive kit to replace their losses.

The Ukranians on the other hand, have shown better operational use of their guns (particularly in the art of using drones to aid targetting) and are replacing the losses they incurred on their own Soviet era kit with modern or modernised Western kit, including counter battery radar, more self propelled guns and even the towed guns coming from the States handily out ranges similar Russian systems.

The Russians should have had a decisive advantage in terms of long range fire, but they wasted it with poor doctrine and worse logistics and now Ukraine is a far stronger position relative to them than at the start.

Hardly a far fetched theory.

[renton]

15 hours ago, LongTimeLurker said:

Is it not still useful combined with an infantry advance for the shells it can fire to take out enemy strong points and armour that would make things difficult for infantry alone? Never been in one so don't claim to be an expert.

Argument seems to be that Russia units have been relying too much on trundling in a column of tanks and don't have enough infantry to prevent them from being sitting ducks by controlling the ground around the tank.

Pretty much this. Infantry without close fire support will get pinned and killed by automatic fire. Tanks without infantry are prey to anti tank weapons in the field. Neither gets very far without a lot of indirect fire from artillery.

Combined arms training is apparently extremely hard but it's the only way it works is if you have a balanced force in any given environment. 

In the UK you have seperate Armoured and mechanised Infantry regiments for logistical purposes but for real training and combat against "peer" forces they typically combine an armour squadron with a couple of infantry companies under one HQ which then fights the battle.

[Vegetableman]

59 minutes ago, alta-pete said:

This one just leaves Maine

Yep that's right , A couple of weeks ago 5 single engine aircraft flew west to east same way almost , not a trace on Flightradar .

[Detournement]

49 minutes ago, renton said:

 

Hardly a far fetched theory.

It seems to rely on an imaginary standard of what Russia should have achieved that has no connection to reality. That the assessment largely seems to be coming from a country who's most recent military achievements are getting routed in Helmand and Basra just makes it comical. 

 

 

 

[Jacksgranda]

1 hour ago, renton said:

Well, no - Russia's artillery has been used ineffectively. Part of the issue of pushing a brigades worth of artillery down to the battalion level in the so called battalion Tactical Group. Its meant their command and control of artillery has been fairly inflexible and unresponsive. 

That's not to say it hasn't inflicted masses of casualties. It has, but it's impact has not been up to the standard expected of its superiority.

Then you have attrition. Both Russia and Ukraine have lost a lot of equipment in this "special operation" and Russia has lost a lot of its better artillery kit. However, they have to raid warehouses for ancient, un-maintained and primitive kit to replace their losses.

The Ukranians on the other hand, have shown better operational use of their guns (particularly in the art of using drones to aid targetting) and are replacing the losses they incurred on their own Soviet era kit with modern or modernised Western kit, including counter battery radar, more self propelled guns and even the towed guns coming from the States handily out ranges similar Russian systems.

The Russians should have had a decisive advantage in terms of long range fire, but they wasted it with poor doctrine and worse logistics and now Ukraine is a far stronger position relative to them than at the start.

Hardly a far fetched theory.

No doubt someone will pooh pooh it in a minute.*

* 44 minutes.

Edited May 5, 2022 by Jacksgranda

[renton]

31 minutes ago, Detournement said:

It seems to rely on an imaginary standard of what Russia should have achieved that has no connection to reality. That the assessment largely seems to be coming from a country who's most recent military achievements are getting routed in Helmand and Basra just makes it comical. 

 

 

 

If there is a standard it's based on Western doctrine on how artillery should be organised and deployed and what they would do if they had that many artillery pieces - it's something that has kept NATO planners up for decades is dealing with what they expected the Russians would do. That expectation largely being built on how they - NATO - use their kit and assuming the Russians would or could do the same but in greater volume. It turns out, they can't turn that volume into proportional fire power.

If this "special military operation" has proven anything it is that situational awareness, command and control and logisitics are the absolute cornerstone of military operations.

Ukraine started with a good foundation of those, with a vast amount of Western input (all those SIGINT flights for example) but not a lot of guns.

Russia started with a lot of guns and piss poor command and control doctrine and lousy logistics.

Russia now has a lot less guns and those they have aren't as good as the ones they lost and still has piss poor logistics and command and control.

Ukraine still has decent C2, and now has more guns in absolute terms than when they started, all of a considerably higher technological standard than what the Russians have now.

So it's not unfairly marking the Russians down or any such shit. The amount of fire power they rolled in there with is ridiculous - but its all for nothing if you can't deploy it and use it correctly. They haven't, the liklihood is the Ukrainians will and that will be a comparative advantage for them vs. The Russians from now on.

Edited May 5, 2022 by renton

[Detournement]

Every war NATO has fought since 1945 has been a disaster bar the carpet bombing. I don't think their doctorine counts for much. 

[The DA]

19 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Every war NATO has fought since 1945 has been a disaster bar the carpet bombing. I don't think their doctorine counts for much. 

NATO's doctrine was developed for this kind of armour-heavy warfare.