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Russia Invades Ukraine

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Gregg
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1501

Post by Gregg »

When they're kicking you ass on a battlefield, maybe you might tone it down.

Boy o Boy what I wouldn't give to see Ukraine bomb something deep, deep in Russia, just for the shock effect. Like when Doolittle bombed Tokyo. He didn't actually do much damage but no one in Japan ever slept well again until the war was over.
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1502

Post by Chilidog »

Volkonski wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 3:26 pm
Be careful what you wish for.

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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1503

Post by Dr. Ken »

You know this was inevitable.

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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1504

Post by much ado »

Dr. Ken wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 7:36 pm You know this was inevitable.
Yeah, but I liked it.
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1505

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

Thank you, Dr. Ken. I am compelled to watch this parody clip in whatever form it takes!
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1506

Post by Sam the Centipede »

I imagine most here have seen Zelenskiy's forceful response to Russia's threats on Telegram, taken from a CNN report:
Do you still think that we are 'one nation?' Do you still think that you can scare us, break us, make us make concessions?

You really did not understand anything? Don’t understand who we are? What are we for? What are we talking about?

Read my lips:
Without gas or without you?
Without you.
Without light or without you?
Without you.
Without water or without you?
Without you.
Without food or without you?
Without you.

Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as scary and deadly for us as your 'friendship and brotherhood', but history will put everything in its place. And we will be with gas, light, water and food … and WITHOUT you!
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1507

Post by Volkonski »

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1508

Post by Phoenix520 »

I imagine most here have seen Zelenskiy's forceful response to Russia's threats on Telegram…
I.love.it.
I’m so glad Zelenskyy is an entertainer and not a politician.
(Never thought I’d say that and mean it)

ETA He has the soul of an artist.
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1509

Post by Volkonski »

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1510

Post by Volkonski »

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1511

Post by Uninformed »

It’s not what the description would lead you to think, and it’s interesting.

“In the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 the Russian Armed Forces were successful in two major operations that were missed by most people, namely the decapitation of the strategic communication system and the disruption of the air defense system. To learn more about this, I talked to the cyber security expert the grugq.”

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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1512

Post by Volkonski »



We need tougher sanctions that will hit Russia where it will really hurt.
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1513

Post by Volkonski »

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1514

Post by Volkonski »

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1515

Post by Gregg »

Time to fly some planes around the edges of Russian airspace the way they do a lot around Alaska.
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1516

Post by Volkonski »

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1517

Post by MN-Skeptic »

@MalcolmNance is one person I follow on Twitter. He's an American military expert and author who is fighting in Ukraine and very visibly tweeting. Now Russian media is blaming him (the negroes) and NATO for their defeats.

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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1518

Post by Volkonski »

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1519

Post by neeneko »

MN-Skeptic wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 1:59 pm @MalcolmNance is one person I follow on Twitter. He's an American military expert and author who is fighting in Ukraine and very visibly tweeting. Now Russian media is blaming him (the negroes) and NATO for their defeats.
Which really makes it sound like they are trying to lay the groundwork for justifying a preemptive strike on some NATO country, or are hoping the GoP sweeps the midterms and uses the message to pull back support.
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1520

Post by jez »

An interesting take on the invasion of Ukraine. It is from a comment on Reddit.
Answer: Yes, Russia is actually losing the war in Ukraine. The analysis from The Institute for the Study of War https://www.understandingwar.org/ is some of the best and leased biased coverage around. To oversimplify, Russia's initial invasion went disastrously badly for Russia due to a total lack of preparation and logistics, military capabilities that are essentially fictional, and poor training.

The invasion was kept secret from all but the highest levels of the Russian army and disguised as a training exercise, so the people in charge of supply didn't know they needed to stockpile fuel, ammunition, and food to supply an actual invasion. So basically the army rolled out with half-empty fuel tanks, only enough bullets for training, food for the next day, and no long-range military radios. There are some theories that units were surprised to receive a much larger fuel allocation than they thought they needed and sold the extra on the black market prior to learning of the invasion.

The West's assessment of Russia's military capabilities was based on an understanding that they were regularly upgrading their equipment to try keep relative pace with the US and NATO countries. For example, they made the T-72 tank in 1972, then every 10 years or so since they've rolled out an upgraded armor package and new round for the gun that improved protection and effectiveness to current standards. It turns out that this never actually happened, and they're still using the original gun rounds from the cold war, and the "armor packages" they bolted on were just empty boxes. The fancy Active Protection System that was supposed to shoot down incoming missiles was just a carved piece of wood that was painted to look like an APS at a distance. And when the Russians started running out of tanks and opened the warehouses that supposedly held their reserves, they found them either empty or with vehicles that had been stripped for parts decades ago. They literally had to pull tanks out of museums to put in the fight.

The Russian soldiers in general were clearly not trained and prepared for an actual war with a country that had an organized military. The Russian army air defense units weren't trained to operate in an environment where they had enemy aircraft attacking at the same time friendly units flew close air support missions. This led to severe rates of friendly fire incidents and the Russian air force refusing to fly close air support missions for the ground forces. There are reports that when they were finally told they would be invading Ukraine, soldiers were told to pack dress uniforms for the victory parade rather than body armor, ammo, or extra food.

Initially, this all combined to mean that what everyone expected to be a Russian steamroll within 48 hours turned into a slaughter as the entire Russian army walked into an ambush.* The sheer size of the Russian military meant that they were able to make gains with time, but the war quickly stalled into battle of attrition that was not in Russia's favor. This means that every day Ukraine was doing more damage to Russia's military than they were taking, and Ukraine was receiving aid from NATO countries that meant they could replenish their stockpiles faster than Russia. The only way Russia could respond was to bombard civilian areas to try to break Ukraine's resolve. This didn't work, and eventually Russia's military was so weakened that they could no longer hold the areas they captured earlier in the war and they're now being pushed back towards the border.

*Bonus detail: As I mentioned, the Russian army didn't have military-grade long-range radios. So they told their fighting units to just rush ahead as fast as they could until they ran out of fuel and then stop, the resupply units would eventually catch up to them. So the Ukraine army waited until they did this, then ambushed the support units as they tried to catch up but while they were still out of radio range. So the fighting units just sat there getting increasingly worried wondering where their resupply was until the Ukraine army had time to destroy them. It's hard to put up a credible defense when you're surrounded, out of fuel and food, and didn't have many bullets to start with. So many of these units which were in theory Russia's best trained and equipped had to surrender immediately, without even being able to put up more than a token resistance. These desperate Russian units also started calling their headquarters and support units on civilian cellphones, which got us a lot of amusing recorded phone calls at the beginning of the war.

Bonus bonus edit: I feel like I didn't give enough credit to the armed forces of Ukraine for their heroic efforts in the above comment. As much as Russia shocked everyone by how much they underperformed, Ukraine did an absolutely amazing job in terms of the individual fighting grit and skill of their soldiers. They made the most with what they had, and worked in the information space both in terms of propaganda and using all possible intelligence sources to defeat their opponents. It's almost a total reversal from 2014 when Ukraine artillery units were destroyed because they installed ballistic calculation apps from the app store published by the Russian military, these days it's Russian units doing the dumb opsec mistakes and Ukraine capitalizing on them. Not to sound like Ukraine embarrassed themselves in 2014, honestly I never expected this invasion to happen because I thought Russia would have learned from how poorly they did, but I guess not.
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1521

Post by Foggy »

That all fits what we've seen since February.
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1522

Post by Mr brolin »

General ex military bumble and burble about bang stuff.....

One area that I haven't seen really explored is the failure gap between doctrine, the intellectual design and planning, concepts and theoretical underpinning, which in general is actually pretty damn good on the Russian staff side and execution .

Strategic doctrine is usually well laid out, in depth, internally consistent and material based.

IMHO, this was what led to Putin and his political military appointments truly believing that this would be a simple steam roller over inadequate Ukrainian forces, too fast and effective to be countered, over sufficient axes of attack with well-defined goals and targets with expectations of such a swift result that any Western response would be far too little, far too late.

The reality on the ground however seems to be that endemic corruption, fear of appearance as well as fear of actual failure along with a paucity of effective command and control, inability to demonstrate tactical flexibility to support strategic requirements, a rigid adherence to strategic goals with no back linkage to reality in results on the ground and a soldier structure based on bullying, short termism and a lack of instructional senior NCO knowledge was the main derailer.

It doesn't help that the gun porn and propaganda spouted over the decades has become seen as more relevant than reality.

The T-14 Armata tank is a prime example.
The propaganda and gun porn seems to show this all singing, all dancing, lethal killing machine more akin to a Bolo (gratuitous Sci-Fi reference to AI driven armoured vehicles with morals and BIG guns https://infogalactic.com/info/Bolo_(tank) )

It is supposed to have all these amazing innovations, enhanced kill capability, sensor systems and integrated data and communication systems, long range, high speed and probably powered by anti-matter and unicorn farts.

NATO members had kittens aplenty, upgrades to the current main battle tanks are in train to defend against this monster, new weapons and ammunition, the whole nine yards.......

Turns out, "where's the beef?"

At this time it is believed there are between 14 and 20 of these, all test beds, the much-vaunted range and speed ..... isn't, the power trains in development simply can't sustain the expectations, the sensors, comms and C3I are heavily dependent on Western components, most from the civilian line and not anywhere near military rated.

The Active Protection systems which is supposed to be capable of defeating all anti tank missiles and many tank rounds is....well ..... neither particularly active nor protective and in fact has two inherent flaws, .

First it doesn't protect against top-down attacks such as..... well most US, UK and NATO weapons and

Second, the "active" millimeter radar detection piece makes the tank stand out like a beacon in today's electronic battlefield and actually makes them easier to see, hit and kill. It turns out that old and I mean 1980's old, HARM (Homing AntI Radiation Missiles used to take out radar sites) can be repurposed and provide up to 40 km plus stand off air launched attacks......

Same with the much vaunted Robust and Reliable Russian myth "It may not be shiny but it will always work"..... turns out Reliable needs Maintenance and Robust needs to be Unsold. If Tyres aren't rotated, engines turned over, fuel regenerated and recycled, electricals powered up and run then Robust and Reliable becomes Rusted and Rotten.

On the assumption of course that it hasn't been sold, black marketed, replacement and running costs pocketed and reports manufactured......

It will take at least 10-15 years to replace the rotted and hollowed out Russian Army, men and material and "The beatings will continue until morale improves" is not a viable option....
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1523

Post by johnpcapitalist »

Mr Brolin wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 12:56 pm One area that I haven't seen really explored is the failure gap between doctrine, the intellectual design and planning, concepts and theoretical underpinning, which in general is actually pretty damn good on the Russian staff side and execution .

Strategic doctrine is usually well laid out, in depth, internally consistent and material based.
In general, it's true that most countries' doctrine is evidence based and not fantasy. However, I think the Russian doctrine and strategy for Ukraine was as delusional as their hubris in thinking they could execute whatever plan they devised.

A key example is the use of VDV paratroops to take the Antonov airport, intended to be the major forward base to supply the blitzkrieg to take Kyiv. The VDV is a heavily hyped special forces group venerated in Russia because they were sent in to suppress dissent in central European Soviet satellite countries in the 1950s and 1960s. There's even a national holiday to honor them. VDV have their own special armored vehicles, aircraft and abundant other toys.

Unfortunately, paratroops are a) mostly intended for insertion behind enemy lines in the face of minimal enemy fire, and b) obsolete. The Ukrainians knew that the VDV would attack the airport by helicoptering in the VDV and having them rope down to the runway or dropping them from fixed-wing transports. Ukrainian snipers picked off the high-altitude jumpers with night vision goggles when they were landing; the Russians don't have decent, if any, night vision equipment and assumed the Ukrainians didn't either. And because the helicopters have to hover while troops rope down to the surface, they're sitting ducks for guys a mile away with Manpads. Result: the mighty VDV was turned into hamburger the first night of the war. The doctrinal failure was no attempt to soften up the area around the LZ, even if the assessment was that this would be a cakewalk.

Yeah, the operational screwup was to assume that there would be enough VDV guys still alive to use the vehicles and supplies that were finally delivered, but the strategic mistake was much bigger: assuming that the Ukrainians would be as intimidated by the VDV as the hapless Czechs and Hungarians were 50-60 years ago.

The lack of combined arms operations, despite the fact that their BTGs are all about doing exactly that, is as much a doctrinal failure as it is an operational failure. Their performance in that has been so pathetic that it sure seems like they didn't drill combined arms before the invasion. If you don't teach it, it probably isn't a very important part of your doctrine...

Another problem is with command and control: there are very distinct organizations operating in the Ukrainian theater. The regular army is only one. There's also the Rosguardia, Putin's private national police, who were supposed to control the local population after the Army marched through, just to make sure the Russians continued to be welcomed with flowers and hugs. Those guys are more like SWAT police; they don't have actual army combat training.

Don't forget the Wagner mercenary thugs. And the Kadyrovite goon squad from Chechnya, who were tasked with killing Zelinsky but failed and who now sit around taking selfies but not doing any actual fighting. There are local armies for the DNR and LNR, the two puppet states that Russia created out of Ukrainian oblasts. Those guys are refusing to fight outside their own territories. There are more that I can't remember now.

Then there's the lack of coordination between the Air Force and ground troops, which was never part of the equation. They didn't fall down on execution there; somebody just didn't think it was important to have a long-term SEAD or air superiority strategy -- Russian doctrine is that they would never be able to achieve that against the USAF, so they didn't even try to achieve it against the much smaller and less capable Ukrainian air force, where it would have been achievable and would have greatly helped them.

Nobody is actually in charge of the whole war with the ability to get all the different groups on the same page. That's the biggest doctrinal failure of all.
Mr Brolin wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 12:56 pm It will take at least 10-15 years to replace the rotted and hollowed out Russian Army, men and material and "The beatings will continue until morale improves" is not a viable option....
And that is only if the entire country is transformed from a kleptocratic organized crime family with nukes into a country with a functioning oversight infrastructure. As long as everyone is focused first on lining their own pockets, nothing will change, not even in 10-15 years. We were able to transform the US military in 15 years -- between Vietnam and Gulf War 1 -- because they really, really hated the humiliation of Vietnam and because there's a compliance infrastructure that keeps people focused on the mission instead of looting the treasury.
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1524

Post by W. Kevin Vicklund »

In my :duel: circles, we have a saying: You fight what you practice, you practice what you drill. John's excellent post illustrates the various failure modes when you fail to follow that doctrine.
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Re: Russia Invades Ukraine

#1525

Post by Frater I*I »

W. Kevin Vicklund wrote: Tue Sep 20, 2022 6:31 pm In my :duel: circles, we have a saying: You fight what you practice, you practice what you drill. John's excellent post illustrates the various failure modes when you fail to follow that doctrine.
Drills are bloodless battles, so that battles become bloody drills....

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