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Russo-Ukrainian War #32 - Early Anniversary Edition - anon.cafe is kill Strelok 01/11/2024 (Thu) 22:16:29 No. 1473
The site's going down but the war is still hot! Recap for the mouth-breathers who can't read threads not on the first page: >Ukraine has been getting their ass pounded in Avdiivka >Russians are getting their ass spanked while doing the pounding and they don't like it >Ukraine tried screamed "FUCK YOU" at Belgorod to make Russia stop fucking their ass >Russia told Ukraine "GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE!" and started lobbing North Korean ballistic missiles (dubbed "Kimskanders") at Ukraine's military bases near civilian centers in retaliation, fucking up the civilian centers in the process >Ukraine screamed they were coming and forced conscription of women and children and started handing out papers to expats >People are expecting Avdiivka to fall >That turns on the Russians and they will either a massive push in Zaporizhia or re-invade Kharkiv while making Ukraine retreat back to their Kievan leather club two cities down >You are here Vid related. Thread theme.
>>1473 >forced conscription of women and children Not to defend them, but that bit does not check out. Currently their big plan is to mobilize another 500.000 people, but it looks like that is the target number for the whole of 2024, with more of them mobilized in the first few months than in latter months. In addition, they ordered some 50.000 uniforms for women specifically, but there are no news about forcing females to march to the front (yet). In addition, there was a case of a barely 18 boy from an orphanage who lost his life on the frontline, but he was a volunteer. Of course, it is quite likely that he was fed an unhealthy diet of propaganda, but that is quite a normal affair in a war. Bonus: an Abrams was spotted close to the frontline, maybe we will see them in actual combat soon.
>>1473 >The site's going down Qrd? Also, where will streloks migrate to if cafe goes tits up?
>>1475 It's in the header. >Where will anons go? Not sleepychan, that's for sure. I'll go suck it up and use cakekike's site before giving that admin a single (You).
>>1475 I'll probably check in on zzz/k/ but to be honest I'm tired of how petty and stupid this board has gotten. Weapons discussion is borderline non-existent here anymore anyway, I talk more about guns with the people I shoot with every month than I do here in 3 months.
>>1477 The bunker as far as I know was made by one of the previous volunteers that left this site after having disagreements with the admin so if you're fine with it then sure. >>1476 You are insane but you do you. Have fun there.
>>1474 >Bonus: an Abrams was spotted close to the frontline, maybe we will see them in actual combat soon. The salt of one of those blowing up will be pretty good.
>>1476 There are a bunch of bunkers aside from sleepychan and kikechan, anonkun, why not go to /sp/, smugloli or plw?
>>1480 >/sp/ I'm already there. >smugloli I'm already there and they have made it clear on numerous occasions that they will not accept a /k/ board unless all current event threads are removed. >PLW I don't mind the admins there but the userbase is insufferable and would be constantly raiding a /k/ board.
>>1481 >plw >raiding anything The fuck are you talking about?
>>1481 The thing with PLW is I don't know if Loleron is still there and if he's willing to create more boards there. I'm also starting to think this is more suited in the meta thread than here.
>>1474 Why haven't the Abrams been committed to battle yet? Is it possible the Americans are putting pressure on the Ukrainians to not lose them like with the Leopard 2 and Chally 2? >>1477 I really miss 8chan's /k/ and I especially miss the Hungarian rifle grenade autist. >>1480 The administration on endchan is pretty good if someone wants to make a board there.
>>1483 He's still there. You can catch him either in the meta thread or his seasonal anime CyTube streams.
>>1481 >userbase is insufferable and would be constantly raiding a /k/ board What? There's fewer people there than here and there has never been raid threads there. If anything they get raided because loleron has all but abandoned the site outside of his shitty streams. Otherwise the handful of regular users don't seem bad to me.
>>1473 I am going to have some hearty chuckles if after all the trash talk, 8moe/k/ ends up being the most trafficked one.
>>1484 >Why haven't the Abrams been committed to battle yet? According to HistoryLegends, the Ukrainians were bitching and moaning that the tanks were gutted from the inside-out so they're basically just artillery pieces on tank tracks. One of the tanks allegedly didn't even have its radio set any more and at least 5 from the first batch had to be scrapped for repair parts for the others because they were in such poor condition.
>>1488 Are the US being that jewish when they have a literal parking lot of tanks to send to Ukraine?
>>1489 The Biden admin has proven itself incompetent at every corner when it comes to anything other than bussing in illegals, so it wouldn't surprise me. It also wouldn't surprise me if it was some contractor inbetween or some Ukrainian general who scrapped them for cash. It honestly wouldn't even surprise me if Ukraine was just outright lying at this point. However, I've seen enough incompetence in the government in recent years that I don't doubt it was option 1.
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Russians are apparently droning buildings in Nikopol (the town across the river from the NPP).
>>1484 >I really miss 8chan's /k/ and I especially miss the Hungarian rifle grenade autist. Anon, I have been there since day one, and I post on a nearly daily basis.
>>1476 >>1477 Well, I'm gonna miss you guys, I'll probably stop going to image boards all together, maybe just occasionally browse trough /fit/,/sci/,/tv/ and /ic/ on cuckchan.
>>1493 It's ok bruh, you'll still have me
>>1474 >but there are no news about forcing females to march to the front No need, in post-Soviet Ukraine front march to them. >>1492 post rifle grenades or gtfo I don't make the rules >>1484 >I really miss 8chan's /k/ >>1493 >I'll probably stop going to image boards all together A recurring thought/observation: seems the age of image boards is coming to a close. I'm not writing a eulogy here as I'm sure chans will be around, much like "forums" off their peak in late 90s/00s, just regressing back to their humble obscure beginnings. Maybe it's for the better.
>>1493 >>1495 You can always shitpost with me: >>60490
>>1493 Please don't go Serb fren.
>>1494 :3 >>1495 >recurring thought/observation: seems the age of image boards is coming to a close So what's the next step? I doubt something like Telegram can fill such a niche that image boards can. 8chan might have had its flaws but goddam 8/k/ was comfy. >>1498 I'll probably hang around untill light is switched off at this place. After that...well... it's been honor shitposting with you anons.
It looks like there is some kind of deal going on between UK and Ukraine to put British soldiers in Ukraine.
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>>1499 >So what's the next step? Like I said, too early for a eulogy, chans will be around. I'll probably take up >>1496 on his offer and see how that goes. >8chan might have had its flaws but goddam 8/k/ was comfy. Chans were comfy while irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, then from c. 2016 (US election) and things like >>59438 becoming trendy it got a little too real to ignore for the powers that be also a lot of boomers have retired or died since. Centrally hosted websites will always buckle under that kind of pressure, free speech has to be decentralized/distributed by nature and frankly image boards were never designed for that in the first place.
Switzerland has agreed to host a peace summit at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. https://8chan.moe/news/res/191.html 'I confirmed that Switzerland is ready to organize the conference,' said Swiss President Viola Amherd >The leader of Ukraine arrived in Bern on Jan. 15 to meet with the country’s leaders and to attend the World Economic Forum’s gathering in Davos. His country has been at war with Russia since late February of 2022. >“I confirmed that Switzerland is ready to organize the conference,” said Swiss President Viola Amherd, per The Daily Mail. “We agreed that the details of the further approach will be looked into in depth in order to make this peace process a success.” >Amherd said Switzerland will “fight for long-lasting and just peace in Ukraine.” >“We would want the countries of the global south to be present, for sure, we would want China to be involved,” she said. >At the press conference, Zelensky said he wants “all countries that respect [Ukraine’s] sovereignty and territorial integrity” to be involved in the gathering when asked if Russian officials would be invited to the summit. >“We would like the Global South to be present,” he said, adding that he would like China to be involved, per Barron’s. “It is important for us to show that the whole world is against Russia's aggression, and the whole world is for a just peace.” >In a separate statement on X, Zelensky vowed to “discuss the return of Ukrainian children stolen by Russia, sanctions, ways to use frozen Russian assets, humanitarian mine clearing, financial assistance, and recovery.” >“I believe that Switzerland's participation in the Peace Formula, as well as its relevant experience, can help bring our vision of just peace closer,” he wrote. >As the second anniversary of the Ukraine-Russia conflict approaches, Zelensky is hoping to reignite support for his country. He promised that at least one million drones would be built and predicted the increased use of F-16 fighter jets during his New Year’s address. >“Next year, the enemy will feel the wrath of domestic production,” he said, per the BBC. >According to Foreign Affairs, “both Moscow and Kyiv are in a race to rebuild offensive combat power… While the first half of 2024 may bring few changes in control of Ukrainian territory, the materiel, personnel training, and casualties that each side accrues in the next few months will determine the long-term trajectory of the conflict.” >“The West in fact faces a crucial choice right now: support Ukraine so that its leaders can defend their territory and prepare for a 2025 offensive or cede an irrecoverable advantage to Russia,” the publication noted. >The United States Department of Defense announced on Dec. 27 it would supply Ukraine with a new security assistance package valued at approximately $250 million. >“The package includes air defense capabilities, artillery and antitank weapons and other equipment to help Ukraine in its continued fight to counter Russia's unprovoked invasion,” the D.O.D. stated in a press release. “The latest round of assistance marks the 54th drawdown of military equipment for Ukraine from DOD inventories since August 2021.”
>>1503 >2025 offensive lol
>>1503 >“We would want the countries of the global south to be present, for sure eh? Other than potential access to grain gibs, why would the browns care?
>>1505 An attempted onboarding by the third worldists of everyone, south of the equator, onto a coalition against the western hegemony.
>>1505 They want bantus to repopulate Ukraine and give them easier access to Poland.
>>1503 Is russia invited or is it just like last time? Like, I dont think negotiations are possible without both sides of the conflict. >>1507 Poles are already niggers .
>>1505 The global south is "upset" with Russia, but they're so angry at the Western overreaction that fucked up global trade that they've for all intents and purposes sided with Russia. Document leaks are suggesting Germany is preparing for WWIII right now haven't read the articles but that's what the headlines say so this is probably part of NATO consolidation to force countries to say "you're with us or against us." >>1508 Russia is explicitly not invited, so it's all meaningless. Ukraine is begging to suck Chinese dick because they need that motor industry back, but I doubt China will do much more than send an official delegation in order to humiliate Ukraine/Switzerland when they push the issue.
>>1509 >Russia is explicitly not invited lol wut? >The Swiss president underlined that the country will 'fight for long-lasting and just peace in Ukraine.' >Zelensky added: 'We are open to all countries that respect our sovereignty and territorial integrity at the peace summit.' >It is understood that Russia will not be invited to the conference. lmao, another circlejerk for gibs - business as usual. for a second I was worried about the global fuel supply for happening threads
>>1503 >>1508 >>1509 >peace summit to end a war >one of the two belligerents in said war is forbidden to come Why would anyone show up to this?
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>Russians very likely lost an A-50 AWACS over the Black Sea, either to friendly fire or Ukrainan SAM, IL-22 is confirmed to be damaged but limped back home. >Gonzalo Lira finally managed to taunt Ukrainians enough and got suicided by Ukrainan intelligence agents while in his cell. >Russians allegedly used around 2-3 million domestic artillery shells in 2023, another 1 million shells has been allegedly purchased from Norks >Positional battles continue around the front line, small gains on both sides, Russians seem to be fairing slightly better because UAF in still recovering from the failed Summer offensive. Either way,no side is able to wrestle clear advantage. >France is transferring another 40 SCALP long range cruise missiles to Ukraine >There has been increased talk about F16 batch being donated to Ukraine, some Ukrainan pilots already went trough F16 training. >Both sides are proping up their domestic military production in anticipation of a prolonged war.
>>1503 >We would like the Global South to be present "Global South" is an almost derogatory term. It's one step away from "the Poverty Belt". There's no way China would attend a summit except as a spoiler. >prepare for a 2025 offensive or cede an irrecoverable advantage to Russia He once again proves how he's assblasted that Israel is taking all the attention and funds away from his black hole of a nation as the world realigns to make it irrelevant. If the ruling party changes in America, peace talks will open almost immediately. If he bites the hand that feeds him and refuses to play along with whatever deal is made between the US and Russia, he'll be thrown in a shredder like a male chick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sB943eRENs Neat footage of a T-90 versus 2 Bradleys, long video and pretty intense to watch. T-90 fails to hit the IFVs, 25mm auto cannons fail to penetrate armor but manage to disable the tank, crew allegedly survived
>>1474 > barely 18 boy from an orphanage who lost his life on the frontline, but he was a volunteer. Of course, it is quite likely that he was fed an unhealthy diet of propaganda, but that is quite a normal affair in a war. Or fed an unhealthy diet of orphanage food and figured he may live longer on the frontline, or at least will die with full stomach? >>1489 >>1490 Either or both. Who knows? Goods were send from someone who had a golden opportunity to scrap old stuff at full price, to someone who has a habit of selling missiles on black market in war time. It would be surprising if shit like that did not happen.
>>1513 >Schumer will not act to secure US border until GOP funds Ukraine war Biden is starting to pay lip service to securing the border, but it's just election year bullshit- It would be funny if he fired that Sephardi "Cuban" guy to sell the lie. We've all seen how this shit typically plays out, I'd put money on Ukraine gibs going through and zero meaningful border security. The corporate class and the defense industry are going to get exactly what they want.
>>1517 Actually it gets even better. Mexico's president is demanding American citizenship for 10 million illegals, an end to the Cuban blockade, an end to Venezuelan sanctions, and a $20 billion dollar bribe in exchange for dealing with the illegal immigrant problem on their side of the border. The Biden admin's response was "sounds good!"
The OP is lowkey retarded, I see
So for the /k/ommandos who are interested in the war in Ukraine but who have been unable to find out much because of the shills that took over /k/ in 2022, what are some good sources of information to get caught up on the last 3 years of war?
>>12282 Unironically the kiwifarms threads for both the Ukrainian and Russian side are decent for getting both perspectives
>>12288 That's a good start, although I was hoping for a neutral third party source rather than just getting both biased perspectives.
>>12289 >Neutral third party perspectives Man I fucking wish. Like 90% of the news that comes out is from either state media or social media; the closest thing to a neutral third party perspective is mutual skepticism of (potentially) biased sources.
>>12744 >the closest thing to a neutral third party perspective is mutual skepticism of (potentially) biased source Is there something like that? Like some site that aggregates claims from both sides and tries to verify them using open source information?
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>>12289 >>12755 >Is there something like that? Like some site that aggregates claims from both sides and tries to verify them using open source information? Not that I know of. There's a glut of resources for reports from the Ukrainian side but not nearly as many for the Russian side and while both of them tend to be biased there are many more reputable sources for information (especially in English) from the Ukranian side. For example, obviously the Bongistan MoD has its own biases but they also have a good reputation for putting out the facts as they stand with minimal drama while third-party sources from the Russian side are generally "trust me bro" randoms on social media and/or Kremlin cocksleeves like RT and Sputnik.
>>12755 >Is there something like that https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates This mostly fits the bill
>>12790 lol >>12791 double lol Both of these have proven to be either grossly incompetent, or just trying to push an agenda. Not any sort od valid source of info.
>>12790 >while both of them tend to be biased there are many more reputable sources for information (especially in English) from the Ukranian side. The frustrating thing is that seeing past those biases would be much easier if I had was already up to date on what is going on. As it stands figuring out what is going on purely from the biased sources is really difficult. >>12791 I read some of their stuff a few days ago while trying to catch up when I realized 4chan probably isn't coming back for a long time, and I got the distinct impression that the ISW isn't a very neutral source at all, and some of the things they said didn't gel with what little I think I've pieced together so far. Like I saw them claim that if Ukraine keeps being provided with aid that they can keep launching offensives, and that eventually one will manage to make a breakthrough, restore maneuver, and win the war for them. That doesn't really line up with what I've been able to gather elsewhere for a number of reasons.
>>12806 One English source who is nominally pro-Ukraine, but otherwise not afraid to rail against other pro-Ukrainians for their bullshit is a Youtuber called WillyOAM. It's actually pretty sad to consider that a random nobody on Youtube has better analytical capabilities than a supposed think-tank and a literal intel agency.
>>12809 >WillyOAM I'll check him out, I also noticed there are some things linked in the previous russo-ukraine war thread and earlier in this one that I am going to investigate as possible sources of information.
>>12744 Pretty much this. The mark of good intelligence is being able to read between the lines and correlate information from a wide verity of sources. There are some good OSINT communities that provide a wealth of information but one must remember to separate your personal biases and desires in the pursuit of raw information.
>>12896 It's also a sign of intelligence to check and make sure that hard work is actually necessary before starting in on a difficult task. >There are some good OSINT communities that provide a wealth of information Mind pointing me towards some?
Not that guy, but you'll have to sift through stuff and decide for yourself what level of bias you can handle. Personally, I can't fucking stand fake analysts like ISW and prefer to just judge what's happening by the news from the front, so I like to check some of the daily map aggregators on Youtube to see changes and compare them with the footage to see the magnitude of what's going on.
>>13203 Can you suggest some map aggregators and good sources of footage from the front? I can work with that level of information too. Also describing ISW as being fake analysts feels pretty apt from the few articles of theirs I read.
>>12805 >UK based update lmao worthless trash, discarded. >sars no very good sars nope :)
>>13205 For good fresh sources of footage, you have to go to Telegram. Though it's enough to have one or two good channels per side because a lot of them repost footage. For map updates, Suriyak is the de-facto most accurate mapper, followed by Deep State. Deep State is more convenient because the interface allows for straight comparison between days, while Suriyak just colors the map each day. If you want a Youtuber to walk you through the situation, Military Summary for instance is a Russian tinted one while Denys Davydov is a Ukrainian tinted one. There's others of course, you can probably find them yourself.
So do what do you guys think about the strategic situation in the war currently for both sides? Also what do you think victory would look like for each of them, and how are they going about trying to achieve it?
>>13335 >ukraine Seems like they are just trying to delay and do small counterattacks wherever they can mostly sticking to the drone from what I can tell. They want everything back or if I were them just give the two separatist regions up and immediately start recovering. Mostly trying to a diplomatic angle but with the current US administration it’s an extremely hard sell >Russia Seems to want everyone to think they’re trying to negotiate while simultaneously ignoring everything. If Russia wants to win in some capacity I would just stop now and take what you have and quit trying to take everything. They’re tactics are not what I would call smart manpower wise and I’ve seen some dissent but most come ukie sources so grain of salt with that. Keep in my mind that this is all I’ve been able to really see so I could be entirely wrong
>>13342 >their Fuck I can’t into grammar anymore
>>13335 I wont speak to victory conditions much because I think alot can change, but generally it seems like Russia will probably end up eating a chunk out of Ukraine and Ukraine will be reduced to a buffer state no matter what they want >Russia has been memed pretty hard by the US using Ukrainians as effective speedbumps for them by supplying them with gear. The results have been defanging the Russian military from realistically being able to touch Europe, not that I think they had plans for that any time soon anyways. Regardless of how their material has been depleted, Russia has shifted into the infinite manpower glitch strategy and are just employing random brown people to run into machinegun fire. This isnt the own you may think it is, as this basically means Russia can stay in the fight for however long they like without really feeling the negatives of it anymore, although aggressive breakthroughs probably wont happen as much with these infinite 3rd worlders they are employing. The war is really theirs to win, as long as they want to be there. Ukraine cant really push them out, and them simply being there gives them alot of negotiating power with the puppetmasters of Ukraine. In the end they will probably get the W, pyrrhic or not >Ukraine not much to say other than they are fucked no matter what. They dont have a realistic win-state outside of a peace deal being struck and Russia simply stopping their slow advance. Their Kursk offensive is a meme performed by pseudo-rogue elements of their military that are running parts of it like private warbands, and strategically is a waste of time. The real major problem for them is manpower. As stated above, Russia has activated the infinite manpower glitch meanwhile Ukraine cant afford any of its losses, mercenaries or not. Furthermore, even if Ukraine somehow "won" they are demographically fucked for the next couple hundred years. They will need to avoid conflict for several hundred years and play everything smart if they every want Ukraine to be filled with ethnic(Russians with a different name lmao) Ukrainians of a healthy number again. Best thing for them now, despite them not wanting this, would be to strike up a peace deal and cool off for a bit and make some smart decisions. They also probably should sack Zelensky, but I think foreign entities will take care of him sooner than later, the outlook is grim for him I think Note that I say all of this couched in the firm opinion that I wish this entire conflict didnt happen. Not to say that I dont think some aspects of it were justified, there are wider geopolitical games at play here that forced Russia's hand, but I wish that the conflict ended only a couple weeks in vs what we have now which is a slow grinding war that is taking the lives of to many brothers. We are WELL past the point that we should be sueing for peace. Alas, the US wants to deplete Russia's military supplies
>>13352 Not trying to argue about ethnicity a lot but I can see a difference in the two since this war started. I use the US and UK as an example because both speak English but their own forms of it. Both can understand each other but have different dialects were certain stuff just doesn’t translate. It’s helped me understand why they don’t see each other as, in lack of better words, brothers. Sorry for the tangent but I thought I’d just mention it. Some YouTubers from Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine showed me this difference and if you want look at them I’ll gladly give some links
>>13358 Nah I know what you mean anon, I just find it ridiculous on the basis of history. Ukraine hasnt been its own country for long and I think the sentiment is largely astroturfed even over there. The Ukraine has historically been just another region with Russia for virtually all of history. The difference between the two I'm sure is as significant as southerners vs yankees in the US where there is certainly a difference, but imo it's still largely a meme difference. Although I reckon we could probably go back and forth on this and never truly see each other point so we could just agree to disagree on it, especially when I know plenty of actual Ukrainians would disagree with me till they are blue in the face. Historically I just don't see it lol. It doesn't really matter much now though
>>13360 Ehh history wise it’s kinda of he said she said thing with the Rus and Slavs. While I’m in the camp of the Kievan Rus being the main one which btw isn’t exactly Ukraine and isn’t exactly not like I said bunch of conjecture on it. I just feel like a kinda patriotic version of Russia took the Muscovite view of the Rus and mostly ignore the complicated history of the Rus in general. Like they barely mention Novgorod except when Nevsky is involved. As for the country thing while true it’s more of that he said she said argument. Anyway glad for the calm discussion more than I’ve gotten when I usually have a history talk
>>13360 Regardless of the historicity of the claims I do think most Ukies view themselves as different from Ruskies, but if you ask me they should have been asserting they have a separate cultural identity decades ago. Though I'm sure that was the least of the concern given that the 90's in Eastern Europe can be described charitably as a dumpster fire, that and the fact that up until their color revolution they had governments that were buttbuddies with Russia. But then again there's a reason Russia has been able to claim Luhansk, Donetsk, etc. It's because the people there had legitimate grievances with the Ukrainian government. I don't believe a single goddamn thing that comes out of Russia's mouths about how much everyone there really really really wants to trade one shithole for another shithole, but there is a sentiment there that Kyiv basically abandoned them. Ideally either those parts of Ukraine would have stayed part of Russia to begin with, or the Ukrainian administration could have done more to make Ukraine less of a shithole, but here we are. I am on Ukraine's side in this, as if my opinion matters lmao, and I hope they come out of this shit better than were. I know my history too well to expect that, but I'm gonna hope and pray. War fucking sucks, you know? Politics by other means.
>>13379 I’m mostly just glad the eternal drone of screaming demonbabies is gone and we can just talk normally about the subject at all.
>>13342 >>13352 I broadly agree with both of your assessments, sorry for not going first even though I asked, I just didn't want to poison the possibility of getting a serious answer in case my assessment was stupid, plus talking about the war feels so taboo now. Here's mine. >Ukraine Their manpower issues seem to be reaching critical levels, with many units operating at half strength or less. The offensives they are launching are desperation attacks which they are hoping will make a breakthrough and then somehow be able to maneuver deep into Russian territory and cut their supply lines or capture some objective that will allow them to force Russia to the negotiating table on at least somewhat favorable terms. In reality though barring boots on the ground either from US forces or a coalition of European countries, Ukraine's only hopes for victory are either fantasies about Russia collapsing on its own or a diplomatic solution. None of those are likely, since none of the countries that could help them with boots on the ground actually would, and Ukraine isn't going to agree to any deal that Russia would accept. Ukraine's leadership may simply be complicit in the US and Europe's attempt to use Ukraine as a meat grinder to try to cripple Russia's military, and the win state for Ukraine's leadership is to flee the country after the front collapses and form an impotent government in exile somewhere else, then spend the rest of their lives raking in the cash from speaking engagements at think tanks and conferences. Zelensky might end up being a less charismatic Dalai Lama. >Russia Russia doesn't seem to be having any manpower issues. While they are using manpower rather profligately, it doesn't seem to be nearly to the extent that most western outlets pretend, and their troops aren't conscripts and I still can't find any reliable evidence North Koreans have been deployed to the front. I think at the very most they are losing 2 men for every man Ukraine loses, and that's on the high end, and I think there is a low but non zero chance that Russia is actually losing less men than the Ukrainians. They seem to have stopped launching major mechanized assaults, but I doubt they are anywhere near out of armor. The more likely reason seems to be that the current state of the war is not conducive to large armored offensives. Their strategy seems to be to just keep attacking until they make a breakthrough that Ukraine can't contain one of their breakthroughs, and then send in combined arms units to exploit it. At that point we'll see Russia make massive advances and Ukraine will probably fall completely within a few months. That being said I don't think they are totally opposed to a negotiated peace deal, since the war is ludicrously expensive for them, but Ukraine would need to make a hell of an offer for them to stop when they are probably just a year or two away from annexing all of Ukraine. I don't think Russia's ability to engage on the world stage will actually be in any way damaged by this war, since while they have lost a lot of materiel and men, they can replace those losses, and being literally the only country in the world currently with lots of hands on experience in high intensity conventional peer (let's be real, Ukraine have proven themselves to be a military peer of Russia at this point) war will probably more than outweigh whatever negative effects the war would have on their military for at least a decade or so after the war ends. >>13379 >War fucking sucks, you know? Politics by other means. war rules man, it's politics that suck. African tribal conflicts are the correct way to fight, just you and the boys cruisin in your technical, the wind in your hair, the khat in your teeth. No "operational constructs" just both sides bumping into each other occasionally, mag dumping from the hip, and then running away without hurting anything but trees. The only policy goal you're trying to further is just looking cool and picking up chicks. >>13380 Yeah, sorry for sperging out in the other thread yesterday.
>>13439 I think what annoys me the most with this whole thing is people on Ukraine or Russia’s side are ignoring a lot or just saying outright stupid nonsense about the situation. Like for instance when I hear the Russian aligned view they always talk about Ukraine’s conscription issues claiming Zelenskyy is a dictator by forcing men to fight or how he personally is siphoning funds which I’ve yet to really any solid evidence of.. This a war so conscription is a vital part of their war effort I just feel since most countries moved away from it they see it as bad thing. As for the Ukraine view a lot of the media tends over exaggerate what Ukraine is actually doing or giving the minor victories a lot of coverage and way to much credit as some grand slam thing. IMO Europe needs to fucking do something instead of the usual paperwork and finger wagging it’s clear Russia doesn’t respect them and their only huge armies of Finland and Poland can’t divert troops away from their borders just in case. Central Europe has to get over the scars of ww2 and Western Europe has to quit pussyfooting around at least France can see this more than the others. Just my observation though
>>13442 > claiming Zelenskyy is a dictator by forcing men to fight or how he personally is siphoning funds which I’ve yet to really any solid evidence of I mean I personally think conscription is a form of slavery, and I hadn't even heard the claim that Zelensky is siphoning funds, but I assume all politiicans are corrupt to some degree, so it really wouldn't surprise me. That being said I don't think Zelensky is a worse person than Putin by any means, or even really all that bad by politican standards. I'm a lolbert though, so I take a dim view of all governments and don't really think of any government as being actually good, just different flavors of bad. >This a war so conscription is a vital part of their war effort One government enslaving the peope it's already disarmed people and forcing them to fight to protect it from another government just seems like using one sin to cover for another, and the ethical solution would have been spending the last 8 years assisting all citizens with arming themselves and promulgating building codes that make most structures hardened against attack. >IMO Europe needs to fucking do something I really don't think Europe has much to worry about. Invading Europe would almost certainly drag in the US, and even if it didn't or Russia somehow won that fight and conquered Europe, they'd just end up wrecking the economies of the countries they invaded, which would defeat the purpose even before we get into the costs involved in the occupation. With Ukraine annexed or turned into a puppet state Russia really has nothing to worry about from Europe militarily, so the only countries that have anything to be concerned about would be places like Kazakhstan. I think in the long term a European military buildup is more likely to lead to them fighting each other a few decades down the line than anything else. Let's get back to talking about war though, this is a bit too much politics for my comfort.
>>13452 I just meant when looking up stuff for the war I have to diff through a bunch of shit to find anything solid didn’t mean to make it political
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>>13454 oh, sorry for getting political then. Yeah, finding anything worth reading about the war is fucking awful. We need a /k/ommando news agency, which sends /k/ommando reporters to war zones to just walk up to units on the front lines and say "hey, can you tell me about all the cool weapons you've got, and neat things you're doing with them?"
>>13335 The war is over, Ukraine lost, it only has to be determined to what degree. That's the strategic situation. Are they going to stop? No, it can keep going for much longer.
>>13525 Oh great, one of you morons followed us here.
>>13529 Just ignore them
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>>13529 >>13536 >>13537 >>13539 Dude they're just going to get foreign aid until russia collapses. That's the storyline and that's what's going to happen.
Since the consensus seems to be that Ukraine has no reasonable way of winning, how long do we expect the war to continue? Personally I think it will be less than 2 years, but other than that I really can't say.
>>13559 They still have a whole generation of men to tap, 18-25, then the women, then Zelenskiyjungend. They can hold off for a pretty long time still.
>>13588 I don't think any of those would buy them all that much time. Aside from how even lower quality troops would suffer higher casualties than they are already experiencing, they also could lead to morale and discipline problems. Conscripting women and children also isn't going to do anything to help replace the losses in the more experienced and better trained units that they use to contain breakthroughs, and without those they'll be forced to try to counter breakthroughs with conscripts.
>>13592 I was joking (though you can never underestimate the hohol affinity for stubborn suicide), obviously sooner or later the conflict is going to reach a critical point where the people unwilling to die to deny their Russian heritage will overcome the number of those willing to, at which point the country will capitulate and be carved up. Hard to say how long it'd take though, but let's play a bit with the numbers. Ukraine was about 40 million people, so let's say 20 million men. Of those, 2/3 would be either too young or too old to be forced into conscription, so that leaves around 6.5 available. Last summer I think the official Russian estimate was around 450k dead Ukrainian military, so if they killed half a million in two years of war, the war could go on for 10+ years still. Of course it's not that simple, for instance Ukraine is now estimated to have 10 million less people than in 22, foreign support is questionable, not all the wounded could return to combat, etc.
>good convo immediately ruined by both ukie and rus tards Fun while it lasted I suppose
>>13621 The rustard is at least engaging with the conversation, and the ukietard seems to have left (he went to a thread about Taiwan that was imported from anon.cafe and replied to some posts from more than a year ago to just rant about Russians). I think we can salvage this if we stay on topic. So what's your estimate for how much longer the war will last?
>>13628 Already gave it
>>13631 oh, sorry. uh, shit, gotta come up with a new thing that's on topic. How about sources. What do you think of New World Geopolitics? That channel was linked in the OP of the last thread and I watched a few of his videos and he seemed relatively objective. I haven't watched anything from weeb union yet or whatever the channel was called, but I was going to check that out next.
>>13633 I mostly use Slav channels to help understand Ukrainian and Russian mindsets. I don’t know if you are into video games but a guy called warlockarcy does great videos based on slavjank and Slav mods that delve deep into how Russia’s culture since the Soviet Union has changed. He’s a Belarusian if I remember correctly. As for Geopolitics I mostly bounce between stuff
>>13634 >warlockarcy never heard of him, but I do like vidya and slavjank, so I'll check him out. New World Geopolitics is the name of the channel, he seems to mostly do breakdowns of mapping stuff for the Russo-Ukrainian war.
>>13636 Oh thought you meant like a new world order of geopolitics. I’ll check him out also here’s a video by warlockarcy that explains some things now as for what side he’s on you can kinda guess with his opening line but he really doesn’t go that far with it https://youtu.be/PfLEVnTqIxw?si=6S-PBHs2fq7N4oXg
>>13639 >as for what side he’s on you can kinda guess with his opening line Nope, I never know for sure what level of irony someone is operating on.
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are there any recent clips of Russian or Ukrainian soldiers just goofin off and chilling? I miss the old low intensity period of the war before 2022 for all the chill clips it gave us. The whole war just had a different vibe back then. It wasn't so full of hate.
This isn't a weapons thread. This is a /chug/ refugee thread packed with walls of kremlinbot propaganda thread. Fuck off back to /pol/.
>>13663 Does this count?
>>13698 >everyone having a good time now that we're finally free of the bots and shills <WHAT? WHY AREN'T YOU ACTING LIKE THE BOTS AND SHILLS? THIS ISN'T THE /K/ I REMEMBER lmao >>13712 It's alright, not quite the mood I remember but it's still fun.
>>13559 I wouldn’t say that’s the consensus at all, i think if there’s anything that’s become pretty obvious from this new period of quiet without all the shills screaming in everyone’s ears, it’s that there is no consensus because even the “experts” only have a vaguely reasonable idea of what the fuck is actually going on. personally i find that pro-russians underestimate the k/d ratio that the russian army is suffering, gore as it may be, ukraine produces a fuckload more visual confirmations of destroyed enemy formations/equipment. Either ukraine just has a lot more people choosing to upload them, or russia simply has far less victories to show off, who knows.
>>13559 I wouldn’t say that’s the consensus at all, i think if there’s anything that’s become pretty obvious from this new period of quiet without all the shills screaming in everyone’s ears, it’s that there is no consensus because even the “experts” only have a vaguely reasonable idea of what the fuck is actually going on. personally i find that pro-russians underestimate the k/d ratio that the russian army is suffering, gore as it may be, ukraine produces a fuckload more visual confirmations of destroyed enemy formations/equipment. Either ukraine just has a lot more people choosing to upload them, or russia simply has far less victories to show off, who knows.
>>13758 >I wouldn’t say that’s the consensus at all It seemed to be the consensus in this thread, since when I asked what people thought the situation was nobody said they thought Ukraine could win. If I misinterpreted what someone said then I apologize. >even the “experts” only have a vaguely reasonable idea of what the fuck is actually going on. The public doesn't really get much access to expert analysis, people like the ISW for instance seem to be pretty extremely biased. Whenever we do get access to leaked expert analysis, it radically differs from what is presented publicly and paints a grim picture for the Ukrainians, like that French news article or the leaked stuff from that national guard idiot on the Thugshakers discord. >personally i find that pro-russians underestimate the k/d ratio that the russian army is suffering I've found that pro-Russian and seemingly neutral sources seem to agree that Russia is taking heavy losses, but not so heavy as to be causing them many problems. Whether they are taking more or less losses than the Ukrainians seems to be up for debate, although most seem to think they are losing more men than the Ukrainians, but nobody seriously believes Ukraine's official claims about Russian losses or their own. Even if they were losing twice as many men as the Ukrainians it wouldn't be enough for Ukraine to win the war, and if Russia actually becomes worried about losing they can still actually declare war and fully mobilize. >ukraine produces a fuckload more visual confirmations of destroyed enemy formations/equipment. I don't speak Russian and still haven't found a good alternative frontend for telegram, so I can't actually verify that. Pretty much all of the footage I saw from the war was from 4/k/. If it does turn out to be true, there are plenty of reasons why that would be the case. Russia doesn't really benefit much from proving that they are killing Ukrainians and destroying equipment, since Russians will mostly believe their claims anyway, and western audiences mostly won't even hear about it except when it's used to agitate against Russia, plus releasing footage is generally bad for opsec. On top of that Russia has a huge artillery advantage, so when they shell something 20+ kilometers away or hit something when they engage in recon by fire, they aren't going to be able to get good footage to release even if it was drone corrected. Meanwhile most Ukrainian equipment is the same stuff the Russians use, so when something Ukrainian gets blown up behind the lines, Ukrainians have an incentive to photograph it and claim it was Russian for the same reasons they release actual confirmations of destroyed Russian materiel. Consequently a decent amount of the pictures and videos claimed to be Russian losses may be Ukrainian. >Either ukraine just has a lot more people choosing to upload them, or russia simply has far less victories to show off, who knows. On top of the things I mentioned above, Ukraine also just uses a lot more FPV drones I think, so when they hit something they almost always have footage to show off. Not everything is recorded all the time, so we have a bias in what gets recorded on top of what happens and what gets released.
>>13758 Just because shitholes like 4chan censored the Russian side, doesn't mean there are more vids from Ukraine.
>>13766 >If it does turn out to be true It's not.
>>13821 >shitty music every time Can Slavs actually put music that isn’t from a cod game or dubstep?
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>>13821 I feel like we should be hesitant about deciding whether or not it's true unless someone has a fairly complete archive of all the war footage that's been published that we could actually analyze objectively and actually do the math. I'd say that my hunch is that Russia publishes at least a bit less of what they get, for the reasons I outlined in that post. >>13831 yeah, fucking hell. Why can't they at least put hardbass over their clips. Gopniks putting speakers on their T-72s and blasting hardbass would make this war way more enjoyable.
>>13854 Well, I've been following the whole thing since the start and there was never a lack of matching footage. Except maybe the first weeks when I guess the Russians thought it was not a good look to brag about killing people.
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>>13360 >Nah I know what you mean anon, I just find it ridiculous on the basis of history. Ukraine hasnt been its own country for long and I think the sentiment is largely astroturfed even over there. The Ukraine has historically been just another region with Russia for virtually all of history. The difference between the two I'm sure is as significant as southerners vs yankees in the US where there is certainly a difference, but imo it's still largely a meme difference. Although I reckon we could probably go back and forth on this and never truly see each other point so we could just agree to disagree on it, especially when I know plenty of actual Ukrainians would disagree with me till they are blue in the face. Historically I just don't see it lol. It doesn't really matter much now though NTA but borders =/= nations. Ukraine has consisted a distinct people and polity for a very long time and the main reason why there were/are so many Russians and Russian-speakers there in the last century and currently is because of genocide, plain and simple. Ukraine (along with Poland, the Baltics, Finland, etc.) was clamoring for independence following the February Revolution with Bolshevik assurances that they would be allowed self-determination in exchange for support but when it became apparent that the Bolsheviks were lying through their teeth it became a full-blown war of independence between a more nationalist government in the west and Bolsheviks in the east, which the Bolsheviks won in '22. Ukrainians maintained their identity, however, and later in the 20s Stalin (who was an officer in the first Soviet-Russian war) decided that they still had a wee bit too bourgeoisie-nationalist sentiment and came down on them - hard. Many Ukrainian writers, musicians, artists, etc. were purged or suppressed, the Ukrainian language was suppressed alongside anything with even a tentative connection to the idea of Ukraine as a nation, the most troublesome regions were subject to mass exile and the confiscation of lands, etc. And then you eventually come to the Holodomor, which was essentially Stalin using famine as a pretext for deliberate genocide complete with resettlement of ethnic Russians in newly depopulated areas. After WWII the Russification process increased dramatically, though later leaders took a softer "we're all one big happy Russian family" tactic and the process didn't stop until the USSR finally ate shit and died in '91. Worth noting is that upon that happy event occurring, one of the first things that the government of Ukraine did was to make Ukrainian the official state language. Lest I be accused of favoritism or glossing over things, though, I want to state clearly that Ukrainians were never a monolith. During the first war with the Bolsheviks, many peasants (especially in the bread-basket of the east) initially remained sympathetic to or even sided with the Bolsheviks just like many other peasants in eastern Europe. During WWII there were Ukrainians who fought beside the Germans because they preferred them to the Soviets, Ukrainians who resisted the Germans because they preferred the Soviets and Ukrainians who resisted the Germans and the Soviets in the name of an independent Ukraine - and of course the millions of Ukrainians in the Red Army, willing and otherwise. Many Ukrainians were happy to be part of the USSR in mind, body and soul. They aren't western Europeans and they aren't le ebin freedom fighters who always resisted le evil Russia but the fact remains that they're not just "another flavor of Russian" any more than Armenians or Poles or Czechs are. >especially when I know plenty of actual Ukrainians would disagree with me till they are blue in the face. Yeah, most of them are pretty particular about not being Russian. Go figure. >Historically I just don't see it lol. It doesn't really matter much now though It's pretty significant if you want an understanding of the historical context of the current conflict. >>13866 >Well, I've been following the whole thing since the start and there was never a lack of matching footage. Except maybe the first weeks when I guess the Russians thought it was not a good look to brag about killing people. I've been following it from the beginning as well but it kinda depends on where you draw the line for "matching"; the Russians have plenty of 'nade drop and aerial FPV footage (frankly like 95%+ of that stuff just bores me no matter the origin; I've never been a fan of gore spam even if some of the vids are pretty amusing) but as far as I've seen there's been a distinct pro-Ukrainian disparity in footage that's unique and interesting and which they either took or were responsible for, like the USV footage and targets way behind the front lines getting droned. On the other hand, the Russians have also put out some pretty hilarious footage and in non-combat shenanigans they have the lead by a country mile. I don't have it handy but that video of the Russian ships accidentally shelling a city with light AA while trying to kill a drone is pure gold and the same goes for the vid that spawned pic rel and everything related to Prig Boss (vid rel, sorry for no sound). RIP hot dog man, you were too pure for this earth.
>>13888 Fugg, video won't upload. Tried it three times, still ate shit. Anyway it's the video of one of the Wagner guys talking about how a Wagner cemetery is getting bulldozed if you know that one.
>>13888 As always, historical revisionists never touch on several things. Number 1 is the language, where it came from, why it's so retarded, and always pretend it happened ass-backwards. It wasn't Ukrainians being Russified, it was always Russians being Ukrainified. Especially during the Soviet Union days where today's Ukraine actually took shape (not that Ukrainians would ever acknowledge they owe most of the country to the Soviets). What would be considered the start of today's ethnic Ukrainians were from Galitsia under Polish rule, while the rest of the land sided with Russia since ethnicity was closest to them. Now here of course it must be said back then ethnic belonging wasn't as clear-cut as later on, but there was one thing that tied people there together. Language. Ukrainians like to spout some shit about their language being descended from Ruthenian as a separate thing from Russian, but then you go and see Ruthenian was literally called Russian word or Russian language. Poland-Lithuania and later on Austro-Hungary of course fostered this Ukrainian ethnicity and "language" for obvious reasons and we see it worked well enough into the modern age where the Soviets used it as a political bargaining chip that eventually created the shitshow we have today. So no, it is incomparable to Armenians, Poles, Czechs, as in effect they literally are another flavor of Russian. Case in point would be one interview where a Ukrainian nationalist said that they all had to speak Russian on the frontline to be understood. Guess war simplifies matters to what matters. >>13890 Yes, I know the one. Another cheap piece of propaganda, since it was the demolishing of the temporary monuments the pro-Ukraine crowd had so much fun shitting on anyway, in order to build an actual memorial gravesite.
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>>13866 I really think it's pointless to talk about which side puts out more footage unless we can actually get hard numbers. >>13888 >I want to state clearly that Ukrainians were never a monolith. За Монолит! >>13888 >there's been a distinct pro-Ukrainian disparity in footage that's unique and interesting >On the other hand, the Russians have also put out some pretty hilarious footage and in non-combat shenanigans they have the lead by a country mile. I strongly suspect that your sympathy for the Ukrainians has made it harder for you to appreciate Russian combat footage. Back during the first few weeks of the war when I supported Ukraine I had trouble appreciating it too, and it was only after I soured on Ukraine that I came to appreciate it. Honestly I think Russia has released more funny clips than Ukraine, at least that I've seen. The helmet cam where the guy shoots two guys in a foxhole then does a barrel roll out of it was pretty damn funny for instance.
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>>13905 Can you spoiler gore if you're going to post it. I don't really see why you included a clip of a person who was clearly hors de combat being executed, that shit really doesn't further any point you were making.
>>13934 From my experience it’s to make the more pro Ukrainian side react to the footage and insult faster and this thread has really deviated into an ethnic argument than the war itself. Russians and Ukrainians will always argue about their origins though no doubt about that
>>13938 Why are you trying to derail the thread further? Let's try to actually talk about the war. We haven't been able to for so long, and I really want to be able to enjoy the first large conventional peer war in like 50 years. I've already missed out on the first 3 years of it because of this shit. Post cool footage, not butthurt crap like that. Got any cool clips of tanks doing tank things? Maybe some helmet cam footage?
>>13944 I was trying to get on track again. Talking the genetics and language is only going to bring a lot of shit in here. I don’t why you think I’m trying to derail it
>>13945 Because you can't get a thread back onto the rails by antagonizing people, you have to refocus on the topic and get the discussion moving again. So let's discuss the war. What do you guys think was the idea behind the Belgorod offensive? Personally I think the Belgorod offensive was the Ukrainians sending the forces that were allocated to help exploit a breakthrough in Kursk to go attack somewhere else in the hopes that the Russian lines would be weakened due to units being moved to contain the Kursk offensive. But I really don't have any evidence for that, it's just the only explanation I can think of for why they'd launch another offensive at a stronger part of the line after a bigger one just failed against a weaker part of the line.
>>13950 I thought it was to relieve pressure of Kursk and Sumy by diverting Russians away I’m not entirely sure either
>>13335 Ukraine is short on SAMs, cruise missiles and men. Russia is short on cars / trucks, armour and PGMs. Long term Russia will out produce Ukraine if the west doesn't step up aid but the longer this lasts the greater the odds of a Russian coup. It could still go either way and I'm as pissed as ever we decided to look like a bunch of pussies instead of helping Ukraine end this quickly and scare China out of getting any ideas.
>>13905 I'm not getting back into the weeds over whose grandparents were from where in the 17th century because sooner or later we'll end up in the neolithic; my point was that (a) a Ukrainian cultural, national and ethnic identity exists and (b) said identity was repressed by the Soviets for 70+ years. This was not a unique set of circumstances by any means and I am not according it any exceptional status. I will also freely admit that the ethnic identity is the weakest aspect of that but also by far the least important for what I was talking about. >Yes, I know the one. Another cheap piece of propaganda, since it was the demolishing of the temporary monuments the pro-Ukraine crowd had so much fun shitting on anyway, in order to build an actual memorial gravesite. What exactly was the propaganda intent behind making a video intended for domestic consumption complaining about how your own government is bulldozing the graves of your brothers-in-arms? >>13927 >I strongly suspect that your sympathy for the Ukrainians has made it harder for you to appreciate Russian combat footage. Maybe, but I still wouldn't say I'm all that sympathetic; I think it might be more that I tend to not really care too much about infantry-centric footage. Not that it can't be amusing or informative but in a vacuum (IIRC the existence of the GAZ-69 obr. 2025 was revealed in an FPV video, for instance) the grenade drop/FPV/gopro footage that makes up most of the bulk of either side leaves me uninspired and I am also much less interested in the performance of Soviet arms and materiel than the performance of western arms and materiel, especially given that this is as close to "what if the cold war turned hot" that any of us will ever see given the equipment in use. The incredible amount of schadenfreude that I get when comparing Russian propaganda from the Obama years with footage of "we have VW bus at home" being on the battlefield three years into a three-day war against the poorest shithole in Europe (except maybe Moldova, I guess) also probably has something to do with it. >Back during the first few weeks of the war when I supported Ukraine I had trouble appreciating it too, and it was only after I soured on Ukraine that I came to appreciate it. Honestly I think Russia has released more funny clips than Ukraine, at least that I've seen. The helmet cam where the guy shoots two guys in a foxhole then does a barrel roll out of it was pretty damn funny for instance. I lurked /chug/ (god I hate generals so fucking much) pretty regular as well as /k/ just to keep an eye out for anything and I generally remained unimpressed by the Russian footage. They have some stuff going for them for sure (like footage from KA-52s) but overall it just didn't impress me - aside from the unintentionally amusing, like how the BMPT's barrels do the harlem shake in every video. >>13950 >What do you guys think was the idea behind the Belgorod offensive? Personally I think the Belgorod offensive was the Ukrainians sending the forces that were allocated to help exploit a breakthrough in Kursk to go attack somewhere else in the hopes that the Russian lines would be weakened due to units being moved to contain the Kursk offensive. But I really don't have any evidence for that, it's just the only explanation I can think of for why they'd launch another offensive at a stronger part of the line after a bigger one just failed against a weaker part of the line. Makes sense to me. I think that the Ukrainians expected the Russians to absolutely flip its shit over Kursk and pull as much manpower as needed to reclaim it as fast as possible but the Russians didn't take the bait. I'm looking forward to the books that are going to come out about this war after the dust settles, especially from the perspective of the Russian brass - assuming that any ever get written, of course. >>13959 >It could still go either way and I'm as pissed as ever we decided to look like a bunch of pussies instead of helping Ukraine end this quickly and scare China out of getting any ideas. Which ideas would you be referring to, exactly? I don't think that the war in Ukraine has much immediate significance to China re:Taiwan but Xi might seriously be considering discussing the ownership of Outer Manchuria with Putin.
>>13969 >Which ideas would you be referring to, exactly? The west has been shown to be lacking political will, for intervention in a war inside Europe, this would imply we also lack the political will to intervene in Asia.
>>13959 I haven't seen anything to indicate Russia isn't short on any of the things you said they were. I also don't think the war could go either way at this point. Russia isn't going to have a coup d'état, and even if they did, the new regime would likely be military hardliners who would be even less willing to negotiate. If your only hope for victory is "maybe the enemy will just get bored of beating me up and fight themself instead" it might be time to just surrender. Aside from a direct boots on the ground intervention that would probably escalate into a nuclear war, the US can't do shit to help Ukraine do more than delay the inevitable at the cost of more Ukrainian and Russian lives. >>13969 > I think it might be more that I tend to not really care too much about infantry-centric footage. I feel similarly. Small arms just don't excite me. >I am also much less interested in the performance of Soviet arms and materiel than the performance of western arms and materiel I don't care from whence a weapon comes. I tend to like Russian and Soviet stuff for being pretty effective for its price, and I like to envision a world where one day I can buy an attack helicopter. >The incredible amount of schadenfreude that I get when comparing Russian propaganda from the Obama years with footage of "we have VW bus at home" What on earth are you so mad about? Every country hypes up its military, and western equipment hasn't been proven to be all that much more survivable or capable. Do you feel betrayed that Abrams and Leopard 2s get blown up about as quickly when they are used on the offensives by Ukraine? You being butthurt about Russia saying their weapons were good before the war doesn't seem rational at all to me. Their weapons are good, but so are everyone elses. >the Russians didn't take the bait. yeah, they handled it pretty well. >>13973 >this would imply we also lack the political will to intervene in Asia. Depends on what conflicts crop up. The US would probably intervene in a new Korean war, or if someone attacked Japan or something, but allies without actual US military presences in their country will probably be given an apology fruit basket and our deepest condolences if China attacks them.
>>13981 >allies without actual US military presences The US currently has ~80 men in Taiwan, I think the current US admin would sit it out.
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>>13981 >I don't care from whence a weapon comes. I tend to like Russian and Soviet stuff for being pretty effective for its price, and I like to envision a world where one day I can buy an attack helicopter. Hey, you do you. I can certainly respect that attitude and I'm certainly not hostile to slavshit, it's just that I'm more interested in seeing how western gear performs because for a lot of this stuff it's the first time it has done anything besides curb-stomp sandniggers, at least for a couple decades now. >What on earth are you so mad about? I'm not mad about anything. If I sounded mad that was not my intent whatsoever. >Every country hypes up its military, Sure, of course. As it should be. What always rubbed me the wrong way about Russia, however, was their constant posturing of "if we wanted to, we could invade and destroy you in a week so maybe it is a good idea to stay in our good graces, yes? ;^)" bookended with with "btw did you know that Russia has N U K E S?" and compounded by endless bullshit and a total lack of introspection. Seeing all of that smugness finally wither and die in a thousand ways has been balm to my soul. If I was a praying man I'd be praying for their future, but as I am not a praying man I'll just go with this: I wish Russia and Russians all of the best, but I don't know if I can really respect them until they pull their head out of their ass and finally make a clean break with their Soviet inheritance. This isn't easy, as inheriting a Soviet hangover bears a close resemblance to inheriting AIDS, but Poland has done it and the Baltics have done it and the Czechs and Germans have done it so I believe that the Russians can as well. >and western equipment hasn't been proven to be all that much more survivable or capable. While that very much depends on the equipment and how it's being used I would generally disagree depending on the standards for "much", and in a few cases I would specifically disagree. Links related are interesting; someone on 4/k/ made a thread a week before the site ate shit about a Russian evaluation of the Bradley vs. the BTR-3 and I grabbed an archive of the thread and the source if you're interested. Pic rel. If you know of any other Russian evaluations of western materiel being used in this war I'd love to see them. https://archive.ph/l95fE https://archive.ph/NwtFQ >Do you feel betrayed that Abrams and Leopard 2s get blown up about as quickly when they are used on the offensives by Ukraine? No? Why would I? I'm old enough to remember coalition tanks aplenty getting smoked in the GWOT and I don't have brain damage so I just rolled my eyes at retarded nut-hugging over deliveries of Leopards or Abrams or even F-16s or whatever. Some of it worked out great and some of it has been a nothingburger but you can't know until it's actually there. >yeah, they handled it pretty well. I for one wasn't expecting it, though in fairness I don't know how much coverage the event got in Russian media and I feel like the response of the public had to be an important part of the plan to provoke a reaction.
>>13854 I think Russia publishes as many videos of destroyed equipment as they possibly can (they may only hesitate at showing bloody stuff since they know they are the aggressors and the bad guys and they don't want to appear as such). The reason is, we've seen a video of a missile destroying an office building claiming it was a HIMARS, and many instances of low quality footage; if they have to resort to this it is because they scramble to to publish videos of every victory they achieve, real or fictional (nevermind that they have been able to destroy a few HIMARS for real since then). On the other hand I agree that they probably cause many deaths they can't visually confirm themselves, just by firing in Ukrainians' direction.
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>>13998 nta and unrelated but, closest thing we have to this so far?
>>13934 Because I spent three years of the pro-Ukraine crowd doing the same. Besides, it's war, that is the reality of it, generally I think it should be encouraged to understand it's not sunshine and rainbows. Guns are fun, getting shot is not. And it's not like it's that gory anyhow, but if you're squeamish about death, I can censor harsher stuff.
>>13927 >I really think it's pointless to talk about which side puts out more footage unless we can actually get hard numbers. True, nobody is really going to go back and count all the videos of who did what, there are thousands of them. I'm just going by feel, so just an opinion from my end.
>>13969 And my point was the Soviets were the best thing to ever happen to them. The Soviet oppressors not only gave them a shitload of ethnic Russian land, but also protected the status of the language and let them Ukrainianize the populace. You can't invoke history and then pick and choose which part you like. >What exactly was the propaganda intent behind making a video intended for domestic consumption complaining about how your own government is bulldozing the graves of your brothers-in-arms? The graves weren't being bulldozed, the graves became memorials. Apparently Prigozhin himself wanted to make all the Wagner cemeteries have the unified look of the dragon's teeth. Cheap. Propaganda.
>>13990 Well, if Taiwan is able to hold out and buy time, then I feel like the US would at least send in the navy. Though, I don't think anyone would really make a serious move in the first place.
>>13950 The Belgorod offensive makes sense as much as the Kursk offensive did. Probing for a weak spot and then pouring forces into it with the general goal of forcing the Russians to divert forces and scoring a propaganda piece for retards. The issue for them now is, the Russians are tired of this shit and the forces allocated to the Northern Ukrainian border are much larger due to the Kursk fiasco. Now with all the forces there, the Russians are in Sumi and there's renewed activity around Volchansk.
>>14016 >And my point was the Soviets were the best thing to ever happen to them. Observe; this is what "the big lie" looks like. >You can't invoke history and then pick and choose which part you like. Oh yes I can! That's like saying you can't like the EPA because Nixon.
>>13992 >Hey, you do you. I do do me, (quite often actually hurr hurr), I was just explaining where my feelings come from since you put your cards on the table. Sorry if I came across like I was trying to make you align your interests with mine. I just wanted you to be aware that I don't view weapons in an absolute sense and try to appreciate them in their own logistical context, along with their export price because I fantasize about someday going to an IFV dealership and seriously having to decide if I want to fork over the extra money to get a Bradley instead of a BMP-3. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted. >I'm not mad about anything. If I sounded mad that was not my intent whatsoever. oh, schadenfreude tends to involve sated anger, so I misinterpreted your use of the word. Sorry about that. >if we wanted to, we could invade and destroy you in a week so maybe it is a good idea to stay in our good graces, yes? ;^) I mean the "NAFO" crowd back on 4/k/ did a shitload of that too. Don't you remember all those retarded fantasies they'd spew about how the US could do a Gulf War on any country in the world? If you're going to hold the words of propagandists and flag waving morons against the entire country they support, you've got a lot to hold against the US. >Links related are interesting; someone on 4/k/ made a thread a week before the site ate shit about a Russian evaluation of the Bradley vs. the BTR-3 Yeah, the Bradley is one of the few western weapons that has proven to be hugely superior to its Russian counterpart (I'm pretty sure they compared it to a BMP-3, a BTR-3 would have been a pretty bad point of comparison) during this war. It also is more expensive and is a bigger logistical burden, but for most customers I think that price difference will be considered worthwhile. So whether the improvement is worth the price really should be left to the customer. I said "all that much more survivable" for a reason, it's because I'm well aware that they are better, I just think that, as Paul Harrel used to say "is the difference enough of a difference to make the difference? Well you be the judge". >No? Why would I? Because you seem to be holding Russia to that sort of standard. You're acting like they've been completely discredited and that their previous bluster about having a powerful military was proven to be false. That really doesn't seem to be the case. >>13998 > they know they are the aggressors and the bad guys I don't really agree with that. Since I've been looking more into the war recently, I've come to understand that the west successfully flipped Ukraine to their side back in 2014, the possibility of a western aligned Ukrainian government putting anti-ship missiles in Crimea to cut off their only convenient warm water port was deemed to be an existential threat. I don't know why they decided to launch the 2022 invasion, but I suspect there were rational reasons for it that were seen as existential for Russia. I'm still catching up on the whole war though, and there is a lot of stuff to cover. >The reason is, we've seen a video of a missile destroying an office building claiming it was a HIMARS, and many instances of low quality footage The first few times I read your post I thought you were saying they were claiming an office building was destroyed by a HIMARS, I think I might be retarded for not connecting it with the parenthetical at the end until after I wrote a whole paragraph about how claiming Ukraine is committing atrocities against Russian civilians obviously was in Russia's interest. Low quality footage and inaccurate claims could actually fall in line with Russia's overall information strategy. They get no real benefit from trying to convince western audiences that they are winning, in fact they benefit from seeming weak, since western voters might go "why the hell are we giving Ukraine a bazillion dollars to fight people who fight those chumps". More importantly though it is useful from an information theoretic sense. Low quality footage reduces the chances of opsec being compromised by something in the footage, and posting deliberate bullshit in every direction muddies the waters and reduces the chances that accurate information will be identified and taken seriously in time to be exploited. Russia has long employed a propaganda strategy that I've heard called the "firehose of falsehood" where they broadcast what is effectively noise to drown out useful discussion. >I agree that they probably cause many deaths they can't visually confirm themselves Good to hear you agree with that, what do you think about the possibility that Ukrainians are claiming their own lost vehicles behind the lines as being Russian? I think the Russians might do that too, but to a lesser extent, for the same reasons I think Russia is less inclined to publish kill claims overall. Except for stuff that one side uses but the other doesn't, I think it's a bad idea to be too confident that figures of visually confirmed equipment losses are accurately attributed. Also Oryx obviously works hard and all, but I really doubt that it's possible to tell with any degree of certainty which model of T-72 a wreck is from just a picture of the turretless hull in the bottom of a muddy crater. >>14006 I'm not squeamish, it doesn't bother me because I'm grossed out or something, it bothers me because it's off topic and didn't have anything to do with the point you were making, so it just seemed butthurt. I don't want the thread to derail into a flood of unrelated gore as if anyone here would be shocked by it. Just because the Ukraine crowd were doing it back on 4/k/ doesn't mean it's any less annoying here, in fact it's even more annoying because you should know better.
>>14022 What is the lie? >Oh yes I can! You must be part Ukrainian.
>>14068 > I fantasize about someday going to an IFV dealership and seriously having to decide if I want to fork over the extra money to get a Bradley instead of a BMP-3. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted. Man, that's the dream. I want an AMX-10 RC just because it looks like something that a kid would draw and call a "tank car". >I mean the "NAFO" crowd back on 4/k/ did a shitload of that too. Don't you remember all those retarded fantasies they'd spew about how the US could do a Gulf War on any country in the world? If you're going to hold the words of propagandists and flag waving morons against the entire country they support, you've got a lot to hold against the US. What makes the difference about what Russia put out is that it came from official sources (often Putin himself) and it has been consistent for decades. That's not a government official doing a funny for a soundbyte or someone getting caught joking on a hot mic or something, that's the official line that the state has taken. Flag-wavers on the internet don't count for much in this regard. >Yeah, the Bradley is one of the few western weapons that has proven to be hugely superior to its Russian counterpart (I'm pretty sure they compared it to a BMP-3, a BTR-3 would have been a pretty bad point of comparison) during this war. Correct; that was a typo I made. It was late. >It also is more expensive and is a bigger logistical burden, but for most customers I think that price difference will be considered worthwhile. So whether the improvement is worth the price really should be left to the customer. I said "all that much more survivable" for a reason, it's because I'm well aware that they are better, I just think that, as Paul Harrel used to say "is the difference enough of a difference to make the difference? Well you be the judge". I would say that everything so far has shown that they're unequivocally worth it. RIP Paul, too pure for this world. >Because you seem to be holding Russia to that sort of standard. Because as I said, Russia was constantly talking themselves up to that standard. I mean FFS state-affiliated media even celebrated early. >You're acting like they've been completely discredited and that their previous bluster about having a powerful military was proven to be false. That really doesn't seem to be the case. Completely discredited? No, of course not. If you're Georgia you still have plenty to worry about. However, to play on the idea of credit, it's like they were bragging for years that they had a credit score of 850 and one of these days they were gonna start a Ferrari collection and then when someone ran a credit check it turned out to be 312 and they're currently having a hard time getting a loan for a used Lada. They might still get that Lada and that still puts them above someone who can only afford a bicycle but it's still a far cry from what they claimed.
>>14068 >it bothers me because it's off topic In a Ukraine-Russia war thread? Methinks thou doth too much political correctness. You don't have to watch it if you're not interested and as for the butthurt crowd, fuck'em. >I don't know why they decided to launch the 2022 invasion To put it simply, the weight of the arguments for the war outweighed the ones against. Putin has a unique position as a powerful political entity that can get the support of the populace behind him and a good economy, who knows what happens later on in the vacuum he leaves in his wake. Ukraine had no intention of holding up to the Minsk agreements and made it pretty clear when they started buying Bayraktars and using them on the coattails of the Azerbaijani stomp on Armenia. Even if they didn't manage to succeed against the separatists militarily through time, they still decided to hinder Russia where they could via economic blockades and cutting off the water supply to Crimea and the well known transit issues to Europe. There was always a risk of a NATO or other sepaeate third party setting up in the country eventually, which could cockblock Russian intervention in the future. And they expected a limited scope operation that will secure Ukrainian compliance (the SMO literally was meant to be an SMO, not a war to delete Ukraine). But these are all conditional reasons, the one big reason I never hear anyone talk about is the people. That is the main prize here. If you're Russia, you gave Ukraine millions of people and huge swaths of land, all for Ukraine to now turn around and go to the enemy? That's a big hit to a nation facing demographic crisis, not to mention the whole strategic aspect of the territory of Ukraine. There's a reasoning behind it all, but pro-Ukrainians just say Putin is crazy and he shit himself walking up the stairs.
>>14021 >If the U.S deployed troops tomorrow in Ukraine, there is no guarantee that they would suddenly break through Russian defenses and suddenly launch a successful counter offensive. I think there is basically zero chance that they could. The US sending forces would lead to a declaration of war by Russia and a full mobilization, while the US forces would have a difficult time massing to launch the offensive without Russia using ballistic missiles to strike them and their logistics, possibly even with nuclear warheads. The US would be unlikely to get air superiority over the front in any capacity that would actually allow them to meaningfully support ground operations due to missile strikes on any air bases that could be used along with Russia's air defenses and air force being much more capable than any country the US has faced. >MAYBE the U.S could make a difference after many months or years of building up forces in the area and sending literally everyone I don't know if the US is really geared to fight a protracted conflict like this. Not just in terms of being unlikely to be willing to stomach the casualties it'd involve, but also because sustaining the effort would rely on supplies the US has stockpiled all over, and bringing them to the front would expose them to Russian strikes. This is to say nothing about how a commitment like that would leave US allies in other countries unprotected and that Iran, North Korea, and China would all probably attack US allies, and they would probably attack US logistics to ensure that the US doesn't defeat Russia then turn around and focus on them. >We also like to throw this term around "losing" okay but Russia has held its positions? How can you be losing and holding your defensive positions? I'd say a military is losing if they are not coming closer to accomplishing their goals. Whether you're gaining, holding, or losing ground really isn't indicative of which side is winning a war. That being said I don't think Russia is losing. > fighting to a stalemate. I think the stalemate actually works in Russia's favor. Russia can keep the war up pretty much indefinitely at this pace, while Ukraine will eventually not be able to field enough men to cover the whole line adequately. At that point Russia will be able to punch through Ukraine's lines somewhere and maneuver around to cut off huge swathes of the Ukrainian lines, which will allow them to end the war rather quickly. >>14039 >Ukraine is fighting a defensive war. They are leveraging 3 to 1 defenders advantage. Be careful when applying that. It's not a rule or anything, just a rule of thumb. The attacker has a lot of advantages too, like being able to choose where on the line to strike. > Russia just sucks at logistics and manufacturing not really. They are producing plenty of weapons, and their forces seem to be adequately supplied. They seem to be husbanding their resources quite well, and aren't throwing IFVs around in situations where a dude on a dirtbike could get the job done with similar efficiency. I don't think they are using less armor and stuff because they don't have any left, I think they are just avoiding losing it. >too much to overcome western force multipliers. I think Russia is overcoming them to a certain extent by engaging in a positional war of attrition where their advantages aren't as pronounced. Western gear really isn't great for wars of attrition. >The technological advances with drone technology are allowing things to happen that otherwise wouldn't. I think the exact degree to which drones have changed warfare is only fully understood by Russia and Ukraine right now, but I think they understand that change differently. It will be interesting to see how both sides reform their militaries in light of the lessons learned after the war, if Ukraine still exists after the war of course. >It may not even be 3 to 1 anymore, it might be closer to 4 to 1 or 5 to 1 it's never really been 3 to 1, the origin of the 3 to 1 thing is actually pretty interesting, and it was supposed to be part of a much larger mathematical algorithm for comparing the effectiveness of forces. IIRC Clausewitz actually wrote On War in part to rebut the idea that warfare can be reduced to mathematics. >Many of these things are also true of Ukrainian offensives and that's why Ukrainian offensives have failed. Those offensives were doomed from the start, and while it's easy to say this with the benefit of hindsight, I don't think it really was that hard to see that they weren't going to work ahead of time. > The frontline is the same as it was in 2023. Not really. I'm not just saying that because of the tiny territorial changes, but because Russia has done an excellent job of changing the nature of the front line by constructing the defensive lines and massive minefields that stopped the counteroffensives. The frontline, although it hasn't changed location by much, has changed its character. >The primary question is who can last longer than the other Russia, very much Russia. They aren't going to collapse on their own, and even if Putin dies nobody who is poised to replace him would end the war, but some of them might actually declare war and mobilize, which would cause them to win even faster.
>>14092 To say it the enemy is kind of a misnomer. A lot and I mean a lot of former eastern bloc countries know exactly how Russia treats anyone defying their interests now I get why Russians feel this way when that one defensive alliance made silent because of you is still around but they haven’t really done anything to put that fear to bed. They could’ve done something like a charm offensive or integrate their economies so it would hurt more if they left but Chechnya and Georgia invasions clearly set how other former Soviet states view Russia. There’s so many factors to this whole conflict they tend to blend into one blob after awhile
>>13934 >Can you spoiler gore since /r9k/ is no more, you'll have to go back to plebbit
>>14082 >I want an AMX-10 RC You are a /k/ommando of exquisite taste. >What makes the difference about what Russia put out is that it came from official sources (often Putin himself) and it has been consistent for decades. That's not a government official doing a funny for a soundbyte or someone getting caught joking on a hot mic or something, that's the official line that the state has taken. Flag-wavers on the internet don't count for much in this regard. I don't want to spend a bunch of time time researching what Putin himself or other official Russian government sources have said and compare them to sources from other countries to get an accurate comparison and decide if I think you're right about that. You're not letting your feelings about this interfere with contributing usefully to the discussion, so it's not like it matters. I just thought it was interesting how you disliked Russians because of it and was curious about why you thought it was so important. >Correct; that was a typo I made. It was late. I figured, we all do it. >I would say that everything so far has shown that they're unequivocally worth it. I wouldn't say that myself. I think that the biggest differences between the western stuff Ukraine has been getting and most of Russia's stuff are things that aren't integral to the design, like thermals. I don't think there are many instances of the most modern Russian stuff going head to head with the NATO stuff Ukraine got, but if it happened enough times to get a clear comparison I don't think western stuff would show enough of an improvement to say the difference is unequivocally worth it. After the war it will be really interesting to see how Russia's designs adapt and what they emphasize. I bet thermals will be one, I suspect that either amphibious capabilities will be abandoned in favor of more armor, or they will make sure that an amphibious vehicle is more able to do amphibious things at a moments notice so they don't have another pontoon bridge fiasco. >If you're Georgia you still have plenty to worry about. That's a fascinating thought. I suspect that with all the experience Russia has gained during the war Georgia would go down pretty fast. Kazakhstan would be a very interesting fight to watch too. Russia has become a lot more competent over the course of the war, so it'd be fascinating to watch what that looks like when facing opponents that haven't been able to learn and improve along with them at the same time. > it's like they were bragging for years that they had a credit score of 850 and one of these days they were gonna start a Ferrari collection and then when someone ran a credit check it turned out to be 312 and they're currently having a hard time getting a loan for a used Lada. I think everyone thought they were pretty good, they weren't just high on their own supply. The real surprise was more about how much war had changed since the last major conventional war. Little things like infantry drones turned out to have a much bigger impact than anyone expected, and asymmetric threats to armor and air power have changed the balance of power in favor of the defender in ways that I think are still being explored. If the US had invaded Iran or North Korea in 2022 instead of Russia invading Ukraine, I suspect that people would be making fun of the US for writing checks it can't cash. >>14092 >In a Ukraine-Russia war thread? In your post. It wasn't related to your post. You even said you were just trying to provoke the Ukraine people into sperging out. I'm not bothered by gore, I'm bothered by derailing a good thread when we finally have the opportunity to discuss the war properly for the first time. >Methinks thou doth too much political correctness. Faggot nigger kike tranny retard cunt. >You don't have to watch it if you're not interested The one you posted was meh, I'm pretty sure I already had it saved somewhere anyway, but there are so many clips like it that I don't care enough to check, I hadn't seen the overcooked pic before though, so that was kinda interesting. Notice that I didn't say "don't post gore" or even "only post gore if it's related to your point" I just asked you to spoiler it since it was off topic and I don't want the thread to be derailed by the Ukraine tards doing a gore flood so we have to pick through a dozen posts filled with nearly identical drone drops and suicides to find the posts that are actually on topic. That'd be annoying and would slow down the discussion enough that a lot of people wouldn't participate anymore. So please spoiler your gore/rekt shit, also post better stuff. > the weight of the arguments for the war outweighed the ones against. My real question isn't why they invaded at all, I want to know why they picked February 2022. The time of year was wrong for an offensive, and a lot of the preparation seemed hasty. I feel like something pushed them to go for it right then rather than wait at least for summer. > they expected a limited scope operation that will secure Ukrainian compliance I think they pursued a lot of objectives simultaneously to confuse the response, and if they Kiev offensive had gone perfectly they would have been happy to take the win and either install a puppet government or annex Ukraine, and if it hadn't gone perfectly but it hadn't gotten bogged down like it did I think they would have continued to fight their way to Kiev to draw away defenders from the eastern front. I think the primary goal was to take control of the area east of the Dnieper. It was pretty standard deep operations planning where they had lots of operations going on simultaneously working towards separate goals, and some of those operations went better than others. >the SMO literally was meant to be an SMO, not a war to delete Ukraine I think at this point Ukraine has proven to be so intractable that Russia might just keep it up until they take Kiev. As I've said before, once Ukraine's manpower levels reach a critical point then the war will end in Russia's favor pretty quickly. >>14105 >they haven’t really done anything to put that fear to bed. dude, they literally tried to join NATO and were pretty obviously trying to play nice in the 90s and early 00s. I really think a lot of the blame for them giving up on that can be placed at the feet of boomers who couldn't accept that Russia wouldn't be the enemy anymore. >>14106 >since /r9k/ is no more, you'll have to go back to plebbit my gore folder is probably bigger than yours newfag.
>>14123 Russia does have the same demographic problems as Ukraine does so they’re going to need to make babies or convince somebody to be in a Wagner group. Not saying it’s a massive problem at the moment but this war has not helped with this
>>14124 >Russia does have the same demographic problems as Ukraine does so they’re going to need to make babies or convince somebody to be in a Wagner group. Not saying it’s a massive problem at the moment but this war has not helped with this That's a concern that's decades away from causing major problems for Russia, while Ukraine is almost to the point where they can't conscript enough people to defend their whole front line. It isn't like Ukraine can just keep the fight up until they run out of men, there is going to be a minimum number of men needed to hold the line, and if they drop below that Ukraine's front line will collapse, slowly at first, then extremely rapidly. Another thing is that conscripts really can't replace the elite units they use to counter breakthroughs, and the Kursk and Belgorod offensives have likely heavily drained those. If they run out of those then Russia break through somewhere and cut off the supply lines to huge parts of the front, which would also cause a collapse.
>>14136 I highly doubt Ukraine is going to collapse
>>14138 Why do you think so? Their front line units were already operating at 50% manpower back in December of 2024, so unless they can get a massive new source of manpower or they have another defensive line somewhere that they could retreat to and defend with far fewer troops then they are going to collapse eventually.
>>14144 They’ve most likely built up their defenses since then and are probably lying about their numbers same as Russians do. To say they will collapse I think is very rushed judgement. All in all it’s extremely difficult to see since a lot on both sides are being very cautious when talking about anything involving manpower in what areas
>>14105 It's most certainly not. It is a military alliance made to counter the state that doesn't exist anymore, but that you are the successor of. And it took over not only some of your satellites, but some of your former union states as well, despite assurances to the contrary. And they keep expanding in your direction. It is an enemy, whether you like it or not. Charm offenaive? What's that going to do? Russia has been subsidizing Ukraine since forever, look how much good that did in the end. The simple truth is the West can outspend Russia in shills, propaganda, NGOs, bribes, separatist movements, etc. We also saw this during the past 3 years. How is Chechnya at all similar? It'd be the same as if Maine decided to rebel, somehow won de-facto independence and then invaded New Hampshire prompting a second war. And Georgia had a status-quo until they decided they were going to force a resolution on their separatists and courted NATO. How about not doing everything you can to irritate that gigantic power to your North next time? For what it's worth, they seem to be doing fine now relations-wise. That's just how big power politics work, the smaller guy listens to the bigger one or gets smacked. Monroe Doctrine ring a bell?
>>14123 >You even said you were just trying to provoke the Ukraine people into sperging out I said no such thing. I don't however care if they do. And if they do, that's what moderation is for, no? > I think they would have continued to fight their way to Kiev to draw away defenders from the eastern front I don't think so, the Kiev prong was woefully inadequate to take a city the size of Kiev. It was estimated to be around 50k people. I think the main task was to endanger the city, maybe even surround it to force compliance. >I'm pretty sure I already had it saved somewhere anyway Doubtful, it's pretty fresh.
>>14182 There was no assurances whatsoever. Did Russia do anything at all to maybe put NATO members at ease? >charm offenaive? What's that going to do? Helps simmer any doubt or concerns that countries would have with you it’s basic diplomacy >How is Chechnya at all similar? I didn’t say it was similar I said it solidified views of the former Soviet states thoughts of Russia. Same person different haircut. Why do you think every country ran into NATO’s arms because it was not a western propaganda operation but clear affirmation of their fears >That's just how big power politics work, the smaller guy listens to the bigger one or gets smacked. Yeah not really working in Russia’s favor in the slightest if anything it’s done the opposite it’s pushed neutral Finland and Sweden straight into NATO and has led to them being isolated from any meaningful economic markets except China.
>>14123 >I think that the biggest differences between the western stuff Ukraine has been getting and most of Russia's stuff are things that aren't integral to the design, like thermals. Where do you draw the line for "integral to the design"? Thermals are extremely important to the combat effectiveness of basically every combat vehicle with its own gun and vehicles have been designed around the use of thermals for literally decades now. Any sort of new IFV or tank or assault helicopter or whatever without thermals would be laughed out of the room, and the same goes for stuff like datalinks and modern comms. Integral =/= structural. >I don't think there are many instances of the most modern Russian stuff going head to head with the NATO stuff Ukraine got, but if it happened enough times to get a clear comparison I don't think western stuff would show enough of an improvement to say the difference is unequivocally worth it. I'd still disagree with that, but you might be using different metrics that I would. >After the war it will be really interesting to see how Russia's designs adapt and what they emphasize. I bet thermals will be one, Yeah, no kidding. Assuming that they can somehow get their hands on them, however. Even if the war ends and trade becomes somewhat normalized, anyone within striking distance of Russia will lobby very loudly to slap the kind of arms export restrictions toward Russia that normally are reserved for third-world warzones. >I suspect that either amphibious capabilities will be abandoned in favor of more armor, or they will make sure that an amphibious vehicle is more able to do amphibious things at a moments notice so they don't have another pontoon bridge fiasco. The idea of an amphibious IFV should have died in the 70s when it became apparent that they were going to be filling the shoes of light tanks and tankettes as opposed to being APCs with a bigger gun. As for the great pontooning, I feel like that was a command failure plain and simple. It takes a special kind of retard to order an improvised river crossing within range of enemy artillery - or worse, to order a crossing fully ignorant of enemy artillery disposition - and the fact that the shelling was so thorough speaks to an embarrassing lack of aviation support. Even if the troops on the ground got mulched, those Ukrainian guns should have been free pussy for anything with ground-attack capabilities. >>14182 >It's most certainly not. It is a military alliance made to counter the state that doesn't exist anymore, but that you are the successor of. And it had been declining for thirty years before the events of 2022. >And it took over not only some of your satellites, but some of your former union states as well, Emphasis there, of course, being on "former"; you chose an odd way of spelling "sovereign nations". >despite assurances to the contrary. If we're going to talk assurances, how about we take a look at Abkhazia and South Ossetia, or Transnistria? As early as the mid-90s Russia was in flagrant violation of multiple agreements inked with former vassals; there is no good faith present. >And they keep expanding in your direction. It is an enemy, whether you like it or not. Former Soviet states came to NATO banging on the door and begging to be let in. If you disagree, please point to coercion on the part of NATO re: membership since 1991. >Charm offenaive? What's that going to do? Charm offensives are meant to build good will and good faith and they don't work very well when the entity attempting a charm offensive has wet blood on their hands. >Russia has been subsidizing Ukraine since forever, look how much good that did in the end. Subsidies don't mean much in the face of illegal annexations. >And Georgia had a status-quo until they decided they were going to force a resolution on their separatists and courted NATO. How about not doing everything you can to irritate that gigantic power to your North next time? For what it's worth, they seem to be doing fine now relations-wise. <If you didn't want me to stab you then why didn't you give me your wallet? This is your own fault, really. >That's just how big power politics work, the smaller guy listens to the bigger one or gets smacked. Yeah, but the issue here is that the bigger guy has promised not to smack the smaller guy - in writing - and then immediately smacks him anyway when the smaller guy does something the big guy doesn't like. At that point, exactly what reason does the smaller guy have to trust anything the big guy says or does and to not find friends who might help him not get smacked in the future? >Monroe Doctrine ring a bell? Oh man, I could write a book on that. I'll come back to it later tonight.
>>14190 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early >Helps simmer any doubt or concerns that countries would have with you it’s basic diplomacy It does nothing. When another big player decides to fuck with you, he's going to fuck with you. What did compliance do for Iraq in 03? >I didn’t say it was similar I said it solidified views of the former Soviet states thoughts of Russia. Same person different haircut. Why do you think every country ran into NATO’s arms because it was not a western propaganda operation but clear affirmation of their fears Fears of what? Putting down an islamist revolt? Oh no Russia! Don't kill all those poor headchoppers! We need those doctors and engineers in Europe! >Yeah not really working in Russia’s favor in the slightest if anything it’s done the opposite it’s pushed neutral Finland and Sweden straight into NATO One of the favourite Reddit lines is the Finland and Sweden shit. They weren't neutral. They were in the Partnership for Peace program since 97 and regularly held interoperability exercises with NATO armies. >and has led to them being isolated from any meaningful economic markets except China. One of the funniest things about Europeans in their tiny little hamlets and their fake sense of grandeur about being in the EU, NATO, OSCE, etc. is how little awareness they have about their own unimportance. 45 countries have adopted sanctions. And even in those 45, some are still trading happily with Russia. The EU has paid more for resources to Russia than it has given to Ukraine during the war.
>>14149 >They’ve most likely built up their defenses since then What do you mean? >are probably lying about their numbers same as Russians do. Yes, Ukraine is definitely lying about their numbers, that's why I'm not basing my assessment on Ukraine or Russia's claims. >To say they will collapse I think is very rushed judgement. No, it's weird to suggest that a country involved in a war of attrition isn't eventually going to run out of resources. Manpower is a finite resource, and all indications are they are reaching a critical level. >>14188 >I said no such thing. was this not you? >>13938 >if they do, that's what moderation is for, no? Let's not rely too heavily on moderation, heavy moderation didn't lead to good things back on 4/k/. >the Kiev prong was woefully inadequate to take a city the size of Kiev. I think that if they secured the route to Kiev further forces would have been assigned to assist in encircling and then taking the city. Even if their actual goal wasn't to take Kiev, making the Ukrainians think that would have drawn the vast bulk of their forces away from the east, so they would keep it up until it was no longer cost effective or until the eastern army group secured all their objectives. Hell, if they did capture Kiev that'd pretty much end the war, so on the off chance they actually were greeted as liberators I'm sure they'd be happy about it. >Doubtful, it's pretty fresh. Like I said, grenade drops on men who are hors de combat are a dime a dozen and all blur together. Hence why they're boring. >>14194 >Where do you draw the line for "integral to the design"? It's integral to the design if it requires building a whole new hull or turret or something to change it. If you can upgrade it easily it's not integral to the design. > Integral =/= structural. let's not argue about what words mean, let's just stick to trying to figure out what the other person means. >you might be using different metrics that I would. probably >Assuming that they can somehow get their hands on them, however I think they're going to focus heavily on promoting domestic high tech manufacture after the war. If nobody will sell them good thermals, then they'll probably steal the tooling to make thermals, kidnap experts, and hack companies that manufacture them. >anyone within striking distance of Russia will lobby very loudly to slap the kind of arms export restrictions toward Russia that normally are reserved for third-world warzones. Russia has one of the most capable military industrial complexes in the world, they might not be as great as the Soviets used to be, but after the war they're going to be taking a hard look at improving it.
>>14194 >And it had been declining for thirty years before the events of 2022. Declined so much it expanded by 14 states and moved the borders right up to Russia. >Emphasis there, of course, being on "former"; you chose an odd way of spelling "sovereign nations Yes, former. As in the former danger that NATO was meant to fight, but doesn't exist anymore. And if you want to argue sovereign nations, then we can argue about all the military interventions in sovereign nations by whichever country on the globe. Doesn't mean shit. But it sounds nice and tidy for propaganda purposes. >If we're going to talk assurances, how about we take a look at Abkhazia and South Ossetia, or Transnistria? As early as the mid-90s Russia was in flagrant violation of multiple agreements inked with former vassals; there is no good faith present. Not aware of the specific agreements. Care to point them out? >Former Soviet states came to NATO banging on the door and begging to be let in. If you disagree, please point to coercion on the part of NATO re: membership since 1991. Doesn't matter if it was voluntary or not. Your argument is it was completely ethical to do so, nobody cares. >Yeah, but the issue here is that the bigger guy has promised not to smack the smaller guy - in writing - and then immediately smacks him anyway when the smaller guy does something the big guy doesn't like. At that point, exactly what reason does the smaller guy have to trust anything the big guy says or does and to not find friends who might help him not get smacked in the future? And the bigger guy wouldn't have smacked the smaller guy, had the smaller guy known his place. The coup supported by the West was a violation of the infamous Budapest Memorandum, and even if it weren't, Ukraine just generally decided they were going to dedicate themselves to be a pain in the ass to Russia, now they're paying for it. >good faith and they don't work very well when the entity attempting a charm offensive has wet blood on their hands. Exactly, useless. >Subsidies don't mean much in the face of illegal annexations It's all relative.
>>14219 >was this not you? How would it be me? >Let's not rely too heavily on moderation, heavy moderation didn't lead to good things back on 4/k/. Ban the subnet, let god sort them out! It doesn't need to be heavy, just effective. /k/ wasn't shit because of heavy moderation, it was shit because moderation was inflitrated by faggots. >I think that if they secured the route to Kiev further forces would have been assigned to assist in encircling and then taking the city. Even if their actual goal wasn't to take Kiev, making the Ukrainians think that would have drawn the vast bulk of their forces away from the east, so they would keep it up until it was no longer cost effective or until the eastern army group secured all their objectives. Hell, if they did capture Kiev that'd pretty much end the war, so on the off chance they actually were greeted as liberators I'm sure they'd be happy about it. Well, I think they were considering what you're describing. Remember that fuckhuge convoy of trucks that was dicking around on the way to Kiev, just standing still for days? There was also a report the engineers started building a rail line to supply the Northern endeavour. And no, I don't think reinforcing this prong would have helped matters, since remember, at that point Russia was gimping itself with the low numbers they committed to this blyatzkrieg. The withdrawal was the correct response, as Ukrainian forces grew by the day and the flanks of the supply line were probably looking mighty tasty. >Like I said, grenade drops on men who are hors de combat are a dime a dozen and all blur together. Hence why they're boring. I'll diversify.
>>13733 >It's alright, not quite the mood I remember but it's still fun <Simba! This is all yours! <And there where the darkness is, that's where the Ukrops are <But today, after the Grads work, it will bring light and justice there!
>>14251 >How would it be me? Because you responded to the post I made in response to that post, and the reply chain has continued from there without any clarification, so I assumed that was just you responding to my request to spoiler gore by saying you wanted to antagonize Ukrainians and start a flame war. >Ban the subnet, let god sort them out! It doesn't need to be heavy, just effective. /k/ wasn't shit because of heavy moderation, it was shit because moderation was inflitrated by faggots. Maybe let's not piss off vamp by starting flamewars and making more work for him. He is also moderating /b/ so he's probably got his hands full. > I think they were considering what you're describing. I'm glad you agree. >I don't think reinforcing this prong would have helped matters I don't think so either, I just think that if it had gone well they would have done something like that. >The withdrawal was the correct response Yes, and I really should go back and look into the withdrawal more since at the time all we would hear was it was a total rout and Russia was finished and would lose the war blah blah blah. It'll be interesting to try and figure out what actually happened, I suspect it was a mostly orderly withdrawal once they unfucked that traffic jam. >I'll diversify. thanks, that clip is great. >>14254 I like that. Still a different mood, but it's pretty fun.
>>14264 >at the time all we would hear was it was a total rout and Russia was finished and would lose the war The only actual rout was the Lyman direction. That was Ukraine's biggest battlefield success and Russia's greatest disaster. It also sobered up Russian leadership to fully commit and sort out the manpower issue.
>>14219 >russia has one of the most capable military complexes in the world that’s beyond delusional man.
>>14226 >the coup wew >supported by the west WEW, by not involving themselves and seeing the near entirerety of ukraine’s population accepting the new govt, opening relations with them? >was a violation ukrainians deciding they didn’t want to be a literal puppet state after the leader fucked off to russia and took all the gold with him? basically all of this is bitchmade whining that russia gets to tantrum if it doesn’t get it’s way, that’s not the agreement. This is why the pro-russian argument just sounds so pathetic to me tbh, they had so many many many oppertunities to have good relations with ukraine, even right up until 2022 ukrainians genuinely did not see russia as the worst thing in the world and zelensky was the pro-russian presidential pick relatively speaking. oh yes, poor poor russia is such a victim because they might finally have some competition to their energy market. Might be more dumb offtopic politicking shit but idc at this point, ukroshill spam being obnoxious hasn’t actually sweetened this argument for me at all.
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>>14328 >The only actual rout was the Lyman direction. That was Ukraine's biggest battlefield success and Russia's greatest disaster. It also sobered up Russian leadership to fully commit and sort out the manpower issue. I'm really more interested in the details of the successful withdrawals. Breaking contact with the enemy and retreating in good order is actually really hard to do. Shit, that reminds me of another thing I need to look into. I want to find out more about the first Kerch bridge bombing. Was it a suicide bombing or what? >>14340 Holy shit are you seriously trying to debate this? Only a few countries in the world have domestic arms industries at all, and Russia's beats the pants off of most of them.
>>14360 >debate this i'm pointing out how ridiculous the statement is >only a few countries have domestic arms industries at all that's a different story entirely, if you actually add all the countries that have literally no arms industry to the list, they do look better, but compare the actual arms manufacturers with them and they're north korea or iran-tier.
>>14097 Just to spitball off of what you have said in your replies and what you have got me to think about: >I think there is basically zero chance that they could. Appreciate the definitive realism in your response, because nukes are definitely on the table if we are just going to get into WW3 and significant official American military intervention would certainly cause the geopolitical situation to transform. Also yes! No one seems to respect the fact that anti air systems have severely hampered air superiority. The only counter argument that I could think of for the sake of steelmaning- would be that if you did have a larger air force with more air frames that was properly supported via well organized naval and ground assets, those combined capabilities might allow certain avenues to open up when it comes to launching sorties. But that still doesn't really get around the fact that in order to do CAS you need to put the air frame in significant danger, and pretty much to do anything you need to put your planes in the cross hairs of a variety of counter measures. The value of these assets and the length of time it takes to replace them seems to cause military thinkers to prefer to use drones for a lot of these jobs, since drones are more disposable than a C-130 gunship, A-10 Warthog, Apache's or multi role aircraft... in a protracted conflict like this you can't afford to lose those assets so you'd much rather neuter the threat to them before you start to really leverage them. Even if you used precision guided munitions from high altitude, the aircraft is still not safe. Everything is disposable, of course, but the more advanced these things become, the longer and more costly they are to replace. It is a major issue that they can be taken out by something so cheap, or by a precision missile strike. It makes sense- anyway. If missile defense systems can swat down missiles- some missiles capable of traveling much faster than most any aircraft, it is logical to assume that no aircraft is really safe, whether its on the ground or in the air. At least not until you neuter those capabilities. >I'd say a military is losing if they are not coming closer to accomplishing their goals. Even by that definition, Russia's goal was to take over and pacify Ukraine. Ukraine's goal is to push Russians out of Ukrainian territory and stop the Russians from achieving their original mission. Even if we go by that win condition, the Russians are still holding Territory that they have managed to conquer, so they are a certain % done with the main goal- just inching closer to an endurance win. Ukraine successfully stopped Russian forces from completely taking over the territory- however has been unsuccessful in pushing Russians completely out and returning to pre-war territory control. As far as I can see neither side has achieved the overarching strategic goal. Russia has the edge because its inching towards Ukrainian exhaustion. >Not really. I'm not just saying that because of the tiny territorial changes, but because Russia has done an excellent job of changing the nature of the front line by constructing the defensive lines and massive minefields that stopped the counteroffensives. Very true, at the end of the day- however I was mostly talking about who controls what territory. I was speaking purely on the end result of effort accumulated from both sides. >it's never really been 3 to 1, the origin of the 3 to 1 thing is actually pretty interesting To me, it always seems to be common sense to assume that in order to dislodge entrenched defenders- you must create if not an overall numbers advantage, at least a positional numbers advantage. Defenders lose a lot of their advantage once they have been encircled and cornered, obviously- but we are dealing with some pretty big defensive lines where each side is trying to probe for weaknesses and of course not finding them, mostly small incremental success in finding weak spots, as is exemplified by the lines on the map.
>>14366 >because it's inching towards ukrainian exhaustion there isn't anything indicating that, currently they're at a stalemate and will continue to be so, actual front movement is so slow it's irrelevant even looking at tamescales longer than 10 years, and neither side is going to run out of men, no matter how much groupies of either side would like to imagine. the part of attrition that's much more interesting to me is materiel, where russians are suffering much more heavily, as they have very few effective pathways to maintaining or replenishing it, north korea helping out in return for massive technology transfers bought them a bit of time, but their own production hasn't been keeping up with loss rates for years now and it's showing in what they're willing to put on the frontline. that's not going to get ukraine a win btw, but it's going to slow russian offensives to a crawl until those toilet territory map memes become reality. the whole thing feels like some live action Gone with the Blastwave. ultimately this topic has become so fucking boring because what is there even to say, there's just nothing happening, early war it might've been exciting but the topic when relating to /k/ has been kept alive pretty much just because of all the board invaders/paid shills on either side using /k/ as their battlefield.
>>14369 >the part of attrition that's much more interesting to me is materiel Which raw resources are the Russians short on, when it comes to that? They have some allies they can trade with. If not, what exactly is stopping the Russians from focusing more on manufacturing to remedy those issues? Russia is fucking big dude. I know its a meme, but its true. Russia big as fuck, lots of strategic resources for military purposes and enough allies to fill in the gaps. The simple fact of the matter is that there are more Russians than there are Ukrainians, so the capability of improving the manufacture of weapons, munitions, vehicles, etc is much higher for Russia as long as they are able to get their shit together and set up that manufacturing and set up those supply chains necessary for it and if they can't, they would need an ally to fill in the gaps. They have more people, more territory and their economy has been able to withstand whatever western powers throw at it in terms of trade war tactics.. they just need to focus more on domestic manufacturing and supply chains and leveraging allies for material support. Which is a lot easier than getting them to actually send manpower to the front. Much easier to convince allies to sell you tourniquets, gauze, ammunitions, mortar shells, maybe even vehicles as opposed to actual soldiers to help with combat. I would need to research further but isn't Shahed manufacturing based in Iran? The Russians are throwing ass tons of Shahed drones at the Ukrainians on the regular. The Russians are certainly doing some of these things necessary to endure. Do you imagine that there will just be a point where Russia just runs out of artillery shells, trucks, ammo, grenades, etc? If so which of those things? Which resources do you think go first, and what evidence suggests that to you? Not being gay, just genuinely curious.
>>14370 >which raw resources are the russians short on. none at all, russia, with it's size, fertile land, and resources had the potential to become a USA-tier superpower, even after the 90's, they just didn't. they don't have a lot of high-value add industry, hell, they just don't have much industry at all period for a country their size, and most of it is raw resource extraction related industry, not manufacturing. you can't fire a gallon of crude oil, a traincar of steel ore or a can of natural gas at an enemy position (i mean you can lel but that's only on friday nights). >what exactly is stopping the russians from focusing more on manufacturing to remedy those issues? mostly dutch disease and their fucked up educational system. they can't make the tooling to even set up new factories in the first place, there's only a few countries in the world that actually make those tools and russia is no longer one of them, it's hard to understate how hard the collapse of the soviet union and the corruption that followed eroded their industrial power. >the simple fact is there are more russians than there are ukrainians and that simple fact is not enough as russians aren't exactly trading evenly with ukrainians. >as long as they are able to get their shit together i mean that's a caveat if i've ever seen one. i'm sure the US too could unfuck the loss of our industry if we could get our shit together, but that's proven to be pretty difficult even for us. >They have more people, more territory and their economy has been able to withstand whatever western powers throw at it in terms of trade war tactics. now that's where i just completely disagree, man. russia and ukraine are both cannibalising their economies alive to buy time, inflation in russia is already at apocalyptic levels and russian banks are being forced by the state to give massive loans to the defense industry that they will never ever be able to give back as a less visible way of increasing their defense budget. switching to a wartime economy is like taking a lethal dose of morphine, it'll feel good all the way up until you're in a pine box. >Do you imagine that there will just be a point where Russia just runs out of artillery shells, trucks, ammo, grenades, etc? no way in hell, they're never going to fully run out of anything, consumption will just be lowered as needed to prevent that from happening, that's been the trend since the beginning of the war. i don't doubt that russia can keep up it's current level of production, i just don't personally see them expanding it, feel like i would've seen that reflected in the field if it was. the only things they might "effectively" run out of to the point where they have like 3 or 4 of them are all the vehicles coming from their old soviet stock they just can't produce anymore like T80's an MTLB's which are hardly seen anymore.
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>>14365 >they're north korea or iran-tier North Korea and Iran don't show up on that list because they don't engage in much exporting, and what they do export isn't officially tracked. North Korea and Iran both have highly capable domestic arms industries too, they are just geared towards their needs and capabilities. Russia's arms industry is very capable, and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't know much about the Russian arms industry, and likely very little about the global arms industry at large. Russia's arms industry is definitely in the top five globally, and where it places within that ranking depends on exactly how you measure it. >>14366 >No one seems to respect the fact that anti air systems have severely hampered air superiority. Back on 4/k/ I found it very frustrating to talk to people who would respond to any discussion of air defenses by just bringing up SEAD as if that was a Yugioh trap card that instantly removes air defenses from play at no cost to the attacker, and that any NATO military can play that card whenever they want but nobody outside of NATO has it. If you tried to explain the complexities of air and anti-air operations and how modern IADS networks are highly resistant to the sorts of SEAD operations that were successful in Yugoslavia and Iraq, they would just declare it doesn't matter, air defenses are thirdie cope, and if you can't gain complete air superiority Desert Storm style then you aren't doing war properly. I'm very glad that those people probably all went to the sharty. >The only counter argument that I could think of for the sake of steelmaning- would be that if you did have a larger air force with more air frames that was properly supported via well organized naval and ground assets, those combined capabilities might allow certain avenues to open up when it comes to launching sorties. Of course, airpower is an important component of combined arms operations. US airpower would have a major role in the conflict, but it would not be a one sided turkey shoot like Iraq or Yugoslavia, it would be a real fight. >Russia's goal was to take over and pacify Ukraine. There is little evidence to support this. There has been some discussion of it in this thread, and the most reasonable conclusions are that Russia's goal was primarily to prevent Ukraine from ever being in a position to retake Crimea. A western aligned Ukraine putting anti-ship missiles in Crimea would be an existential threat to Russia, since their only warm water port is in the Black Sea. Anything else they get out of the war is just icing on the cake. Right now it seems like Russia has mostly accomplished that goal, and is looking towards what else they can get out of the war while they are at it. The early war Kiev offensive was probably an attempt to force Ukrainian's most potent mobile units to come out and fight the Russians on their terms, along with diverting forces from the eastern route so they could secure more of it. If they actually had been greeted as liberators I'm sure they would have taken the win and paraded through Kiev, but they don't seem to have been counting on that happening. >however has been unsuccessful in pushing Russians completely out and returning to pre-war territory control. I think Ukraine is approaching a breaking point in terms of attrition. At some point Ukrainian units will be spread too thin to meaningfully defend the front and their line will collapse. Ukraine is losing the war because the longer the war goes on, the more the balance of forces will favor the Russians. >neither side has achieved the overarching strategic goal. Russia has the edge because its inching towards Ukrainian exhaustion. I agree with this completely. I say Russia is winning, not that they have won, and Ukraine is losing, not that they have lost. That being said I don't see any way Ukraine could win at this point. I don't know why they don't just sue for peace, since no matter what concessions they make, they'd be in a better position than if their lines collapse, since then there probably won't even be an independent Ukraine after the war. Personally though I hope there isn't a Ukraine after the war, but that's just to finally end the Kyiv/Kiev argument and spite the pro-Ukraine shills. >To me, it always seems to be common sense to assume that in order to dislodge entrenched defenders- you must create if not an overall numbers advantage, at least a positional numbers advantage. Defenders lose a lot of their advantage once they have been encircled and cornered, obviously- but we are dealing with some pretty big defensive lines where each side is trying to probe for weaknesses and of course not finding them, mostly small incremental success in finding weak spots, as is exemplified by the lines on the map. I'm not saying that defenders don't have a major advantage, but like I said, the 3 to 1 figure was supposed to be part of a mathematical system for comparing forces. They're called Lanchester's laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester's_laws >>14369 >there isn't anything indicating that Yes there is. Every indication is that Ukrainian units are heavily undermanned and that the problem has been steadily growing worse. We really should spend some time and actually find out everything we can about the state of Ukrainian manpower over time, rather than going in circles about this like we all have been doing. While I am sure we can't get an exact figure, we should be able to get a ballpark estimate. >materiel, where russians are suffering much more heavily I don't think that's the case at all. What would make you think that? There has been much discussion in the thread about the balance of losses, and I pointed out why visual confirmations of destroyed equipment (like from Oryx) which are typically used to support the claim that Russia is losing more materiel than Ukraine do not provide an accurate or complete picture. >their own production hasn't been keeping up with loss rates for years now I heard that claim back on 4/k/, but I remember that it seemed to be based on official Ukrainian kill claims combined with rather sketchy reporting on Russian production. I suspect that Russia's materiel attrition is not nearly as dire as it was portrayed back on 4/k/. >the whole thing feels like some live action Gone with the Blastwave. I didn't like the live action GWTB movie. It really didn't have the spirit of the webcomic and was just depressing. There is a fun mod for Cortex Command that adds the GWTB armies. > this topic has become so fucking boring because what is there even to say Because neither side is making major advances we can analyze the minutia of how a battle for a tiny one horse town goes with house by house breakdowns, without it getting drowned out in the confusion of the larger conflict. I personally have always preferred discussing smaller scale conflicts on /k/ anyway, and the Russo-Ukrainian war has the potential to be discussed like a thousand tiny conflicts going on at once. If we don't take sides then we can all just enjoy the ride and watch cool shit where stuff gets blown up and lots of weapons get used. I was trying to start a high level discussion of the war at the start to see if we could get a rough idea of the general situation before we start getting into trying to find lower level sources. I think we've all got a fairly similar idea of what was going on at this point though, so I'm going to try and find out more about the operational level the war so I can try and spur some discussions about it. Once we've got an idea about that we can look into the nitty gritty tactical level where all the exciting stuff is happening. >>14373 >mostly dutch disease and their fucked up educational system. Their lack of warm water ports is another major Achilles heel economically. >no way in hell, they're never going to fully run out of anything, consumption will just be lowered as needed to prevent that from happening, that's been the trend since the beginning of the war. I don't think that what we are seeing is the result of shortages, I think that the war has changed dramatically over time. Ukraine frankly doesn't have much major infrastructure left that warrants a long ranged missile, and artillery usage on the front lines is bottlenecked by the rate at which they can scout Ukrainian positions, move an artillery unit into position to fire upon it, fire, and reposition to avoid counter battery fire. Similarly they have stopped sending big mechanized columns on attacks in favor of using scout motorcycle companies like in WW2 to probe and only sending in tanks where they can make a real difference. So while Russia is using less materiel, it doesn't seem to be due to them running low. > they just can't produce anymore like T80's an MTLB's which are hardly seen anymore. I think T-80s aren't used much anymore because they are fuel and maintenance hogs and they aren't enough better to justify using them for the daily grind at the frontlines. T-80s will probably be used again when they decide that Ukrainian attrition has reached a level where they can make a breakthrough. I doubt they are running out of MT-LBs either, I think they are just used less because they're big drone and artillery magnets with armor that makes a BMP or M113 look like a tank. I wonder if Russia completely takes of Ukraine if they'll restart T-80 production. Probably not since I suspect they'll focus on getting the T-14 into service or develop something totally new based on the lessons of the war, but it's interesting to think about potential developments after the war.
>>14345 >wew You don't like the word that aptly describes what happened I see. >WEW, by not involving themselves and seeing the near entirerety of ukraine’s population accepting the new govt, opening relations with them? When the US Assistant Secretary of State is the one picking and choosing who is going to be in the new government, not only is that support, but outright 100% level of control. I was putting it mildly before. >basically all of this is bitchmade whining that russia gets to tantrum if it doesn’t get it’s way, that’s not the agreement. No, the agreement was broken, Russia had no more obligation to follow it. Not that agreements are some magical protection, a state will break one when they see it as beneficial, but you are just being dishonest and arguing in bad faith, as is typical from the pro-Ukraine crowd.
>>14414 >but you are just being dishonest and arguing in bad faith, as is typical from the pro-Ukraine crowd. Pot meet kettle
>>14360 You know, thinking back to it, there were no details at all that I recall of the withdrawals. They were there one day, gone the next. Like in how the Ukrainians were bragging they were going to take thousands prisoner in Herson after they wrecked the bridge. The Russians just disappeared. Of course you don't want to advertise when you'll be withdrawing so the enemy doesn't attack right then and it's sort of an embarrasment to openly discuss it, so I think that's why there weren't many details about it. >I want to find out more about the first Kerch bridge bombing. Was it a suicide bombing or what? The Ukrainians hired a transport company and loaded explosives in rolls of film so the x-ray didn't see through them. Then they detonated the truck on the bridge killing the driver and a random passerby car with 4 people.
>>14373 The other guy is much too kind to you, you don't know shit and write such retarded shit, it makes me wonder about humanity. You have no independent thought or ability to reason, otherwise you wouldn't have written something so stupid. Can't make tooling?! It's the ball bearing story all over again, except even stupider this time. Jesus Christ.
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>>14414 What's going on in that clip? The RGD-5s and the climbing gear make me imagine somebody had a plan that was inspired by the Boondock Saints. >>14419 >there were no details at all that I recall of the withdrawals I suspect there were barely any details, but Ukraine was claiming to have captured a gorillion abandooned tanks and stuff, so they maybe there is enough information out there that if I research into it enough and read between the lines I could find out more about what actually happened. >The Ukrainians hired a transport company and loaded explosives in rolls of film so the x-ray didn't see through them. ngl that's pretty lulzy. >>14468 2/10, would be a 4/10 if the ai voice was better, and a 7/10 if it the instrument being played poorly was an accordion. To get to 10/10 it'd have to not be incredibly butthurt.
My current outlook is that a Russian strategic defeat is probably imminent, but exactly when I can’t say, I can only point out patterns and trends. The key trend is that Putin appears to have dropped the Russian military and MIC as a focus last year. Why I don’t know — probably there was only so much he could flog out of a peasant military and a MIC which had languished under corruption and apathy for decades. All the big moves Russia was making in the military and industrial spheres have petered out and the war seems to have stagnated into the current form. In fact the scale of Russia’s operations have actually gone DOWN. Earlier in the wait it was reported that Putin was dealing with operational planning PERSONALLY — what happened with that? What happened to all the aggressive purging of officers, to large and immediate changes to deal with the immediate shortfalls and problems? It feels like Putin has let the military go to do what it’s comfortable doing and that’s all. On the industrial side of things, there were big aggressive moves being made like the courts seizing MIC companies from corrupt owners, huge production and investment announcements. Aggressive technological advancement across the board, big increases in domestic MIC part production, etc and so on. New tanks, new missiles, new guns, etc etc — where are they? Why hasn’t cruise missile production DRAMATICALLY increased? Why isn’t Kiev a pile of rubble by now? Everything their MIC needs is available via sanction evasion networks and China, there’s no excuse. Putin appears to have dropped the MIC as one of his priorities too. WHY he’s given up on these areas I don’t know. My guess is, as stated above, he’s not powerful enough to launch a WW2-level purge and reorganization of the both the military and the MIC. Maybe he’s flogged them as hard as he could and decided it was no longer worth the political capital (which is energy money in Putin’s system). The problem is, if it’s not to win the war and force the Ukrainian government to collapse, then how is he going to secure the PIPELINE access to Europe? Power of Siberia 2 is stalled (last I checked) thanks to sanction efforts and China being non-comital. The West’s actions against the shadow fleet is mounting and taking shape, it’s not going to operate freely for much longer. Frankly it looks bad on the strategic level which si why it makes me forecast a Russian defeat. Even if Russia keeps all the lan it’s taken so far that is irrelevant to Putin and not what this war is about. Putin CANT let go of the European energy market, there’s NO realistic replacement. But, if he’s forced to let go of it because his military wasn’t able to get a win when he desperately needed it, then what does that look like? A retirement of some kind with a transition to someone in the dynasty? I don’t know. My guess is some interesting moves will come out o Russia in the coming weeks or months to give us a hint.
>>14599 >Why hasn't Putin forced the russian MIC to do X Because the russian MIC couldn't even if there was a gun to its head. >What's Putin planning for His foreign assets to somehow deliver a W into his lap >European energy markets There is no reality in which Europeans get back on the russian gas supply while russia continues to exist in its current state. You only get to pull a move like directly weaponizing your trade once, and if it doesn't work you're shit out of luck. Since the russians have shown they don't think things like treaties and contracts are worth the paper they're written on no western company is going to base its future success on them honoring either. >Siberian pipeline 2 Chiang Kai Shek boogaloo The Chinese are noncommittal because even they see how corrupt and incompetent the russians are and know that unless they built it themselves it's going to come in ten years late at twenty times the original cost. They also don't see the value in directly pulling western sanctions down on their heads for something that will require a long enough time frame to complete that by the time it's done the wells that supply it (which rely on western equipment) might be inoperable, or the government that controls it might no longer be friendly. Much better to wait until the inevitable collapse and power struggle after Putin acks it, seize eastern Siberia, and build it out themselves.
>>14486 You always need rope. You can do many... things with it. >claiming to have captured a gorillion abandooned tanks and stuff, That was Lyman, where they actually did capture a wealth of equipment. Whole staging areas of vehicles.
>>14599 PipelineSchizo, I always resisted the urge to respond to you back on 4/k/, but I've really gotta know. Are you a diagnosed schizophrenic? Because your posts sometimes make me think you might actually be schizophrenic, not just because of what you say but how you say it. I am a bit of a connoisseur of internet schizophrenia, and you write a lot like the sorts of people who make blogs about beings from Andromeda or how hospitals a conspiracy to steal your organs and replace them with fakes. Not that you're on that level of crazy or anything, you just write in a similar way and are prone to... flights of fancy. >>14601 dude, I'm trying to be nice to you since I think you're sincerely mistaken and just have a lot of confirmation bias to overcome, but have you noticed that the only person who agrees with you in this thread is someone who clearly has a tenuous grip on reality? Fantasies that Russia is going to collapse on its own are completely disconnected from reality. You've never even postulated how you think Ukraine could win the war. If you can envision some path to victory for them, please tell us, but if it's "Russia will just collapse politically/economically due to internal problems" then explain how the hell you expect that to happen. >>14604 >You always need rope. That reminds me, I need to check out /tg/ here.
>>14678 The pro-Ukraine crowd drank ALL the Kool-Aid. Russia can't make tooling. Russia will collapse for the third year in a row because the Ruble is rubble. Russia ran out of missiles and steals washing machines for chips, but they can't make new stuff anyway and the Kievan spectre shot them all down. The infantry is charging ahead with shovels. Putin shat himself and had a stroke, but it's his body double anyway because he died ages ago and the oligarchs will kill him soon after he gets coup'd by the army. The funniest thing is he says Russia will collapse, while the US is inches away from pulling support because Zelensky keeps refusing to play ball.
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>>14687 >The pro-Ukraine crowd drank ALL the Kool-Aid. They even sometimes made their own Flavor-Aid when they ran out of the official Ukrainian government produced Kool-Aid. I remember a few days before 4chan finally died they were claiming footage of an airstrike by Russia was evidence of Russian incompetence because they missed a dam, but if you looked closely at the footage, there was no dam, and when somebody posted satellite images of the location there was very clearly an intersection in the road right where the bomb hit. >Russia will collapse for the third year in a row because the Ruble is rubble. Russia ran out of missiles and steals washing machines for chips, but they can't make new stuff anyway and the Kievan spectre shot them all down. I find it really interesting how they reconcile their memories that they used to believe things that later were demonstrated to be completely wrong. For instance claims that Russia will run out of missiles have become Zenos missile paradox. The Ghost of Kiev is now Russian propaganda rather than Ukrainian. I don't think they've been confronted with enough evidence they can't ignore about Russian production to need to come up with a doublethink rationalization for it, but I'm sure it'd be fascinating. It's actually an important reminder that being smart doesn't mean you can't be wrong, and smart people are much better at rationalizing away discrepancies in their beliefs. I don't think that the pro-Ukraine guy here is stupid, in fact he seems to be quite smart. He displays incredible mental agility when it comes to rationalizing the contradictions between what he sees and what he already has decided will be proven true in the end. I think when he misunderstands arguments he would have trouble countering he isn't even doing that as part of a conscious strategy of deception, I think he's doing it on a subconscious level. I'm reminded of a passage from 1984: <A Party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline. The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, CRIMESTOP. CRIMESTOP means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. CRIMESTOP, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one's own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body. Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is BLACKWHITE. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as DOUBLETHINK. What is that launcher in your clip? That's a big explosion from just one rocket, is it a TOS? Shit, I keep thinking of more things I need to look into from early in the war, like the Chernobyl stuff, and I should probably look into the Moskva sinking since they always bring that up as if to go "see, the Russians were just as annoying as us, we were just ruining the board for 3 years in defense". There's definitely also stuff I never even heard of because I tuned out the war pretty early on to protect my sanity.
>>14709 Speaking of Chernobyl, all the soldiers died because they dug the trenches in irradiated soil. Nuclear scientists who say that's retarded are all on Russia's payroll, okay? Personally I always thought Orwell was overly-dramatizing, no human being would ever come to such a point of self-delusion. Not even in the staunchest communism which he was caricaturing did people act in such a manner. But then I read /k/. >What is that launcher in your clip? Indeed it is a TOS-2 on a truck. I think that bigger blast is probably a secondary. But since you mention an airstrike, this vid is a few weeks old, or rather it was published a few weeks ago and there was lots of speculation about it. What's your opinion? CGI fakery? Early war? Anyone else with actual verifiable info feel free to chime in.
>>14709 Forgot to say, there was very few details from the Moskva sinking. Ukraine said it used Neptune missiles, while Russia without denying it got hit, said it sank later on due to the fire. There was also a vid of it on fire, but that was about it. A lot later some unverified info came out that the ship was not in a battle-ready state at all with radars not operating and other stuff lacking spare parts and repair, but take that with a grain of salt.
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>>14730 >Speaking of Chernobyl, all the soldiers died because they dug the trenches in irradiated soil. It's interesting how consistently the narrative that Russians are incompetent is pushed. If they were as buffoonishly inept as they are portrayed, it'd be unlikely that any of them managed to survive to adulthood to even fight in the war. It feels like every single piece of news about the war is somehow used as further evidence of Russian incompetence, no matter how much of an absurd stretch it takes. If Russia hits something with an unguided bomb, that's proof that they are too stupid to make guided bombs, if they hit something with a guided bomb, it's proof that they can't SEAD, if they destroy an air defense battery, it's proof they suck because they did it wrong, they should have just done SEAD, which is a magic spell that makes air defenses disappear. >What's your opinion? I really don't know, but I can add to the speculation. I think that the missile is the most interesting part. It's obviously not a MANPADS or a long ranged system like an S-300 or PATRIOT, but it also doesn't look quite like a medium ranged system like BUK. Ukraine doesn't have a lot of SHORAD, but using them to protect the western volunteers seems plausible. My gut says Crotale, but I don't have anything to back that up other than eliminating pretty much every other system I can think of. I suspect that it wouldn't be a radar guided system, since that would probably draw too much attention on the front lines. Maybe that Gravehawk thing the bongs made, that might look kinda like what we saw. Another possibility is that was filmed further behind Ukrainian lines than we'd expect at first blush, and that's a medium ranged SAM that was fired around when the bombs dropped, and it's on its sustainer phase. Its trajectory could be explained by the Sukhoi pulling up after it is no longer in frame, and the missile was tracking the Sukhoi as it gained altitude. An interesting thing to note is that the response time for the SAM was rather slow, if it was a SHORAD system, since it would have been about 15 seconds from the time the Sukhoi passed nearly overhead of the SAM to when they finally launched. That could be a sign that it was a radar guided system but they had the radar switched off and it took time to boot up. I'll be honest I don't know enough about radars to offer much info there. > CGI fakery? Early war? Could be, maybe even a combination of things. Like a video of an airstrike that wasn't released for a while that Ukrainian information warfare people dubbed in English voices and added the missile for some reason. I don't know what the motivation to fake it would be, and I can't see any obvious signs of it being fake, so I'm going to guess it's real. It is a little weird that the camera looks in the direction the missile is coming from seemingly right after it's launched. >>14734 >Forgot to say, there was very few details from the Moskva sinking. Ukraine said it used Neptune missiles, while Russia without denying it got hit, said it sank later on due to the fire. There was also a vid of it on fire, but that was about it. So did Russia ever even officially say the whole "returned to port under its own power" thing that is constantly used as an example of Russian lies? Because I looked up the some combinations of keywords, like "returned port power" and "under own power" on desuarchive starting from the date of the sinking, and literally every example of the phrase being used is people claiming Russian shills were spouting that line. Is that video Shahed drones?
>>14797 >So did Russia ever even officially say the whole "returned to port under its own power" thing that is constantly used as an example of Russian lies? rumod officially claimed the fires had been contained, there was no ammunition detonation, the ship retained buoyancy, and it was being towed back, and then later that it sunk under tow due to a fire from ammunition detonation and heavy weather "under its own power" was specifically the pro-russia twitter retard brigade, who were probably doing it for free and probably getting the claim from russian telegram channels
>>14797 When the same verbatim message is parroted by dozens of supposedly organic telegram groups minutes apart from each other, it's pretty damn near official communication. The stuff comes from above. See also: "There is no panic."
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>>14808 >>14811 So the justification for ruining /k/ for 3 years was "some retards on twitter and telegram said something"? Goddamn I hate those newfags even more, since whenever they justify their actions they go "well the Russians were shilling too, remember how they said the Moskva returned to port under its own power? That totally gave us the right to ruin /k/ for 3 years straight". I hope Russia doesn't agree to any peace deal and just conquers the whole country, renames every city after collaborators, gulags the men, gives the women as brides to Russian war criminals, and repopulates the entire region with Russians who hate Ukrainians. Not because I give a fuck about Ukraine, but because it'd be fucking funny.
>>14819 Your narrative is as synthetic as the opioids you snort.
>>14829 what narrative? That you assholes have been shitting up /k/ with retarded bullshit for the last 3 years?
>>14831 >I’ll shit up this discussion because I’m butthurt It was pretty tame earlier here but you ain’t helping
>>14486 Whole of slavic world is pozzed at Russia. The drunk scumbag trailer park next door. Boys thumbs up on cool soviet gear but you're negrofaggots.
>>14797 Some russians said it at first then a million people mocked it, that's why it seems that way. Not many rus shills all said it.
>>14797 This board is so fucking reactionary to 10% of /k that was tolerated out of entertainment. It's not hard to conclude that: 1- russia doesn't talk about chernobyl much if at all 2- "bad stuff happened a long time ago" is a magic memory hole to anyone 3- you dig because you're told to dig by a guy who got told to dig by a guy who's ass isn't on the line 4-russians irradiated themselves That's all we got and it's almost ordinary incompetence.
>>14797 The long response time of the missile might be because they turn off their radars. Despite the memes, Russia can and does SEAD combat air patrols all the time. Vids related, H-31P anti-radiation missiles on the planes. It does look very real, too real to be fakery, but I doubt Russia does much CAS these days, so maybe earlier in the war. >So did Russia ever even officially say the whole "returned to port under its own power" No, I don't know the origin of that bullshit. It might have been a pro-Russia shill, as they can get pretty retarded too. Yes, that was Shaheeds being successfully intercepted by a target in Odessa last month.
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Fuck, missed one
>>14865 >was tolerated out of entertainment. Is that why any Russian content was banned on sight? >russians irradiated themselves https://without-lie.info/propaganda-stop/feyk-chutky-pro-te-shcho-rosiyskykh-viyskovykh-shcho-znakhodylysya-u-chornobyli-vid-pochatku-zakhoplennya-mista-vyvezly-do-bilorusi-iz-oznakamy-promenevoyi-khvoroby/amp/ <Thus, we will get an average dose of 185 μSv/h (microGray per hour), and in terms of a month, if they do not get out of there, it will be 0.13 Sv. In order to feel fatigue and nausea - symptoms of radiation sickness - you need to get 1 Sv per day. Pro-Ukrainian source by the way.
>>14709 >there was no dam there absolutely was, if you want to whine about the technicality of whether or not it's a "dyke" and not a dam you're retarded. there was a raised land obstruction keeping water from flooding a bunch of land. god feels like half the posts in this place now are a reactionary retcon of things that did infact actually happen. >For instance claims that Russia will run out of missiles have become Zenos missile paradox. i remember people pretty clearly explaining the difference between >running out and >ran out and people trying very hard to ignore former because it was invalidating their strawman of this argument. >>14687 >russia can't make tooling this is pretty true though, this isn't even bullying poor little russia, this is literally a fact for over 95% of the world. there is only a very small amount of countries that can build the machine that makes the machine, mostly the US, germany, france, china and japan.
>>14866 >russia can and does SEAD patrols all the time if they were any good at it and had equipment to match that doctrine, they would actually have gotten air superiority over ukraine. that's the reason people are glazing air defence systems so hard these days. they refuse to understand that this war doesn't necessarily inform how wars are fought, it's a product of the circumstances it's being fought in. one of those circumstances is that both countries have crap airforces and barely any of the training and equipment needed for proper SEAD, and good air defence with proper coverage (relatively speaking.
>>14932 >i remember people pretty clearly explaining the difference between >running out >ran out So running out for 3 years apparently without the ability to manufacture new ones... when do they run out? >this is pretty true though No it's not. When you say a spacefaring country can't make tooling, it's not just plain old butthurt over Russia, that's mental retardation.
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>>14865 >This board is so fucking reactionary to 10% of /k that was tolerated out of entertainment. It wasn't tolerated out of entertainment, anyone who disagreed with you morons got banned. The reaction you're seeing here is /k/ being finally free to say what we've felt for years. >>14866 >The long response time of the missile might be because they turn off their radars. Yeah, the more I think about it the more likely that seems. >Despite the memes, Russia can and does SEAD combat air patrols all the time. Yeah, I'm well aware that Russia isn't retarded and can do SEAD. Hence my initial gut feeling that it might be a Crotale. >Vids related, H-31P anti-radiation missiles on the planes. The NAFO crowd pretty obviously thinks that SEAD is a magic spell that causes IADS to disappear. I'm well aware that Russia is capable of conducting SEAD operations. >but I doubt Russia does much CAS these days, so maybe earlier in the war. So one thought that occurred to me after I made that post is that you can't see the Sukhoi's wingman. Perhaps they are doing the classic SEAD tactic of having one plane bait the SAMs into switching on their radars, and the wingman was flying higher and further back to monitor for radars coming online and fire an anti-radiation missile at them. >>14932 >there absolutely was, if you want to whine about the technicality of whether or not it's a "dyke" and not a dam you're retarded. Picrel is supposedly a FAB-500 crater, a dam can be destroyed by an explosion that size, but a FAB-500 wouldn't move enough earth to flood the surrounding area. You seem to be caught in a mental feedback loop, where everything you see is evidence of Russian incompetence, so when you see something new you find a way to turn it into evidence of Russian incompetence. >i remember people pretty clearly explaining the difference between running out and ran out and people trying very hard to ignore former because it was invalidating their strawman of this argument. Here's the rub: that doesn't make you right that Russia is running out of missiles, since they pretty obviously aren't. They still launch hundreds of missiles each month, with spikes and dips in usage coinciding with operational requirements, and an overall downward trend which corresponds to the fact that their campaign has been successful enough that Ukraine now has less infrastructure left that's worth hitting. >there is only a very small amount of countries that can build the machine that makes the machine, mostly the US, germany, france, china and japan. Depends on what kind of tooling you're referring to. Russia can make a lot of types of tooling just fine. >>14933 Since you seem to think that being good at SEAD means you can gain air supremacy over any adversary, please give me a detailed description about how you imagine USAF SEAD operations against Russian air defenses would be conducted in a hypothetical US intervention in Ukraine. I expect you to tell me what air bases the operations would be launched from, how many planes of which types would be involved, how many sorties would be needed, what the Russian Aerospace Forces are expected to be doing in response, and most importantly how they would locate, identify, and suppress/destroy each element of Russia's IADS without being shot down. Don't dodge this, if you think you know enough about air defenses and SEAD to say the shit you just said, then you had better prove you're a fucking expert.
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>>14965 >where everything you see is evidence of Russian incompetence so what was the purpose of bombing fucking ground? What a retarded zigur lol lmao even
>>14958 >spacefaring country can’t make tooling Maybe you forgot about the fact that they were once a foremost superpower, they have a lot of legacy equipment lying around, it’s why they’re still able to make things in the factories that weren’t disassembled and sold off during the 90’s. There’s massive metal forming presses from the 1950’s still in operation in the US, same for russia. Many of these expensive specialized factory toolings are exceptional archeotech in russia, they’re not making more of them, which is why new large production lines for complex equipment like tanks is completely off the table for them, hell, it’s off the table for a lot of countries.
>>14975 What tooling do you think they need but can't make or buy?
>>14965 >and an overall downward trend which corresponds to the fact that their campaign has been successful enough Jesus anon, you’re really trying the >”heh, i was only using 30% of my power” explanation? come on man that’s weak, reads like a “gesture of goodwill” level copout explanation. ukraine has plenty of both civilian and military infrastructure they could strike, ukraine’s powergrid is still up, their airbases and other military installations are still functional, and that’s just the static targets russia would be able to consistently send munitions to one location with, because they also use random roads as landing strips and service aircraft there, and most of their newer munitions factories, equipment depots and repair installations are spread out and very well concealed. The reality is these strikes are just not always that effective because GLONASS’ worse CEP along with jamming has made these ballistic and cruise missiles inconsistently accurate. Ukraine has TOO many targets to hit and their production is bottlenecking and possibly floundering because of lack or components, either that or they’re storing up munitions for when they might actually have something that absolutely needs them.
>>14933 Except they do have air superiority by textbook definition. Air superiority does not mean uncontested skies by enemy AA. And since Ukraine keeps getting supplied with AA, the skies will never be uncontested. Not to mention the info being relayed to Ukraine by foreign radar coverage, Russia literally can't eliminate the integrated air defense coverage without starting WW3.
>>14975 What legacy Soviet equipment made the new domestic jet airliner they launched two days ago? This is a country that when they lost a cosmodrome, went and built another with all the specialized shit that entails. When they lost the Ukrainian engines for their helis, they went and built their own. A country that builds satellites, nuclear reactors, everything... can't make tooling. Mental retardation.
>>14965 >Perhaps they are doing the classic SEAD tactic of having one plane bait the SAMs into switching on their radars, and the wingman was flying higher and further back to monitor for radars coming online and fire an anti-radiation missile at them. I guess, but flying low specifically avoids radars and opens it up to ground fire where a Ukrainian grandpa can shoot it down and win a medal. I think those are done in a different manner, as in the plane goes high up and exposes itself at the edge of the engagement envelope where it has time to book it out of there and maneuver to exhaust the missile's energy.
>>14977 >Jesus anon, you’re really trying the ”heh, i was only using 30% of my power” explanation? No, I'm saying that when they are planning a strike, they allocate enough munitions to get what they consider to be an acceptable chance of striking their target. After a strike they need to figure out if they hit it, and if they did they need to figure out whether they damaged it adequately before deciding whether to try hitting it again. What they don't do is have someone go AAAHHH MOTHERLAND and then pressing a big red button to fire all the missiles. >ukraine has plenty of both civilian and military infrastructure they could strike yes, but there is a lot less of it than there used to be. >ukraine’s powergrid is still up, their airbases and other military installations are still functional, and that’s just the static targets russia would be able to consistently send munitions to one location with Striking Ukraine's civilian infrastructure isn't going to do all that much to reduce their ability to continue fighting, since they mostly aren't making their own weapons except the drones, which require minimal infrastructure. >The reality is these strikes are just not always that effective because GLONASS’ worse CEP along with jamming has made these ballistic and cruise missiles inconsistently accurate. If they fire enough missiles to compensate for CEP issues and interception, but don't destroy the target increasing the number of missiles in that salvo is unlikely to increase the odds much further, since there will be plenty of shared factors in strike success, like if their targeting data is wrong, or electronic warfare is screwing with the missiles, or the target turns out to be hardened and they're going to need to use something with a bigger warhead to have the desired effect. >because they also use random roads as landing strips and service aircraft there, and most of their newer munitions factories, equipment depots and repair installations are spread out and very well concealed. are you suggesting that the correct way to deal with that would be to simply fling missiles around at random? Those things are just more reasons why Russia isn't firing as many missiles, rather than evidence that Russia is running out of missiles. The intelligence cycle of strategic missile operations is easy to forget about, but it's probably the biggest bottleneck here. >>14982 I resisted mentioning that because I was hoping he'd tell us all about how SEAD operations work in his mind. I suspect he has a mental picture of multirole jets launching anti-radiation missiles at isolated systems which they already know the location of and are just sitting in the open with their radars switched on. Maybe one step more complex than that, but I don't think he has any idea how modern integrated air defense systems work, and how SEAD operations are actually conducted. >>14989 >I guess, but flying low specifically avoids radars and opens it up to ground fire where a Ukrainian grandpa can shoot it down and win a medal. Yeah, it'd be crazy, although if the sound is synced up properly that Sukhoi is about 2km from the camera, and it's high enough that it'd have a bit of warning if a MANPADS was fired at it even from directly below. If that is what they did, it'd need to be a section of the front they've thoroughly reconnoitered and know where the Ukrainian positions are, so they would have picked an approach vector that minimized their amount of time they were in MANPADS range of any individual Ukrainian position, and the bombing target they picked was inside a treeline, so the target itself would have had very little time between getting a clear view of the jet and experiencing a significant emotional event that would make it difficult to effectively operate a MANPADS. >I think those are done in a different manner, as in the plane goes high up and exposes itself at the edge of the engagement envelope where it has time to book it out of there and maneuver to exhaust the missile's energy. I think the only reason to do a low altitude bombing run like that at this stage in the war is if that SHORAD battery was a real thorn in their side, and it wasn't taking the bait when they tried the usual tricks. I think they knew there was a SHORAD system somewhere in that area, but between camouflage and being repositioned regularly they couldn't pin its location down exactly enough at any given time to just hit it with artillery or something. So they have one plane go in and bomb a Ukrainian position in the area at an altitude where long ranged systems can't target him, while his wingman is far enough away that the SHORAD battery isn't going to know it's there until after its switched on its radar. This is all just theorycrafting though. Do you know if there are any maps which have information about air defense coverage? Even if it's out of date or of dubious accuracy it'd still be interesting to see and might help give an idea of what happened here. I'm guessing the footage hasn't been geolocated.
>>14996 No pictures of that, but there was an interesting picture posted of the Ukrainian view of the skies.
>>15001 >windows with none of the malware removed Jesus Christ, it's amazing Russia hasn't completely wiped them out yet. Any idea what the pink dots are? >No pictures of that I remember that one leak from the Texan nasty girl early in the war supposedly had information about their air defense coverage. I'm still finding good sources for war updates, but I think I remember a map shown in some youtube video had circles showing estimated S-300 and Patriot coverage. I'll have to look for it.
>>14982 Posting here with 4chan coming back is kind of a waste of time because this site missed its window of opportunity to bring in enough bandwidth, but oh well. The reason why the Russians can’t do SEAD isn’t because of ww3, it’s because they don’t have the officer corps required to develop modern SEAD doctrines and train pilots on them, arrange all the logistics and operational elements, etc, to do SEAD. Just doing daily glide bomb releases is the maximum extent of the Russian military’s organizational power.
>>15009 >Posting here with 4chan coming back is kind of a waste of time I'm not going back, and I think a lot of us aren't. >The reason why the Russians can’t do SEAD Russia does do SEAD though. > it’s because they don’t have the officer corps required to develop modern SEAD doctrines and train pilots on them, arrange all the logistics and operational elements, etc, to do SEAD. You've demonstrated a comical lack of understanding about modern air and anti-air operations and of what Russia is and isn't capable of. You probably think that if you just stick to sweeping generalizations you can hide your ignorance, but it's pretty clear you haven't got a clue how SEAD operations are conducted beyond a vague idea that Anti-Radiation missiles are somehow involved.
>>15017 Russia runs a peasant military. The Air Force is an elite branch, not peasants, but the very weak officer corps results in a weak organization. Modern military operations require a huge amount of coordination between many different moving parts simultaneously and in an on-going deterministic manner. That’s simply beyond the Russian military. So all they can do is somehow keep their airframes slapped together and transport basic logistics just enough to do daily sorties dropping bombs. They can’t even conduct large scale bombing ops. Peasant militaries are characterized by not only having low-IQ (ie peasant) soldiers but also by the lack of a large, advanced officer corps. 90% of the strength of the US military is it’s massive, highly developed officer corps which keeps the massive machine working. You’re denying this because the truth makes you feel bad. I’m sorry it’s just reality. If the USAF was magically in charge of Russia’s Air Force, Russia would attain complete and overwhelming air supremacy in a month or two (if the Russian MIC could keep up with the op tempo of course). Russia is just BAD at war. Most countries are in fact, it’s not just Russia. For example, Israel’s peasant army completely failed at completing an ethnic cleansing so exactly the same reason why the Russian military fails to break through and overwhelm the UA. Peasant militaries have an AWFUL track record in modern war.
>>15020 You have no understanding of military affairs, you just dress up your fantasies of racial hierarchy in military language. I'm not going to respond to you further. >>15001 I hope this thread attracts some more participants, you're cool but this other guy is fucking retarded and we need to stop feeding the trolls.
>>15021 Look just go back to 4chan, plenty of your fellow low-IQs to enjoy social reinforcement with. The site died the instant 4chan came back because they couldn’t tolerate the awful performance for one moment longer than absolutely necessary. Social feedback is literally the reason why most people come to these boards in the first place as you’ve clearly demonstrated.
>>14982 they clearly don't otherwise they would be able to leverage it. ultimately this is a ground war, it'd look very different with actual competent airforces at play.
>>15020 i don't think they would gain air superiority even then, because lack of training hours (this was an issue long before the war btw, russian airforce was struggling to keep enough airframes in the air to get pilots meeting their needed flight hours, they also had a shortage of pilots to begin with) that's not the only issue. it's an equipment issue as well, russia just doesn't have doctrinally appropriate equipment in sufficient numbers to conduct a proper SEAD campaign. they don't have a lot of anti-radiation missiles and their command and control and intelligence gathering cycle is evidently too slow to keep up with dispersing AA forces (i think a big part of this is the smaller amount of signals detection equipment and satellites in their arsenal) in the way the US was able to with iraq, which had much denser anti-air coverage than ukraine and many of the same tactics for fighting against SEAD campaigns.
>>15017 even during the vietnam war, which was probably one of the easiest theaters of war to conduct anti-air operations out of due to all the concealment, the US was already figuring out how to deal with anti-air. turning your radar off and changing position every once in a while is not the magic bullet you seem to think it is, because if you're forced to do that enough, SEAD works as planned and you don't functionally have an air defence to speak of, it's been forced into hiding and air operations can continue as normal with minimal interference from you. russia did not do this in ukraine, because it's not capable of doing so, where another country might be. russia's airforce actively tries to avoid any AA period and makes minimal attempts to surpress them, same for ukraine against russia only firing a ballistic missile or two when a battery is caught lacking. you don't have air superiority if you can't even fly regularly to do ops over the enemy country. if this was the US airforce against ukraine, supply lines to ukraine's front would be getting constantly disrupted because nowhere is safe, storage depots would be getting hit constantly. they and other locations of operation would also be getting detected faster because you've literally got aircraft flying overhead doing constant reconnaissance, and "close" air support would make holding a position even behind the lines very oppressive. no, manpads don't solve that issue either because close air support just means the support fire is close to friendly forces, not necessarily the aircraft, a b1 dropping jdams can do CAS just fine. if you ask me this whole thing just seems like a way of dealing with the fact that you don't like how oppressive western airpower can be, so you will it out of existence and pretend it's irrelevant. SEAD is not some rinky dink little tactic that's going out of style, it's how you make life near-impossible for the enemy by actually allowing your airframes to do work without quickly losing them, there's a reason why the US focuses on it to the extent that it does, china has a similarly dense AA network to deal with and they're planning on handling it the same way.
>>14985 I remember last year someone on 4/k/ claiming with a straight face that Russia can't make new artillery barrels because they're some kind of super secret alien technology
>>15030 they can, just not enough to keep up with demand. that's why the new korean arty's been such a godsend for them, it's a temporary patch for some of the bleeding their arty forces are suffering due to insufficient replacement barrels and western style counter-battery arty.
>>15026 >they clearly don't otherwise they would be able to leverage it. They do leverage it though. They do air strikes pretty much constantly. Meanwhile Ukraine's air force is mostly relegated to shooting down Shaheds. >>15027 >because lack of training hours They've been at war for 3 years now doing nearly constant sorties. Their pilots have plenty of flight hours at this point. >russia just doesn't have doctrinally appropriate equipment in sufficient numbers to conduct a proper SEAD campaign. You know, whenever I hear that sort of claim, I try to get the person who made it to give me an idea of how much they know about modern air and anti-air operations or see if they know much about how modern IADS operate. For some reason you guys never answer. The guy you're responding to didn't when I asked him. Something tells me you know fucking nothing. >>15028 >the vietnam war The USAF took extremely heavy casualties from AA during that war, and IADS have become much more advanced since then. >turning your radar off and changing position every once in a while is not the magic bullet you seem to think it is If you think that's all IADS networks can do to defend themselves you've outed yourself as not knowing enough about the topic to have an opinion. >because if you're forced to do that enough, SEAD works as planned and you don't functionally have an air defence to speak of, it's been forced into hiding and air operations can continue as normal with minimal interference from you. A modern IADS does not keep all of their radars switched on most of the time. You're demonstrating incredible ignorance of how the landscape has changed in the last 50 years. >russia did not do this in ukraine, because it's not capable of doing so, where another country might be. russia's airforce actively tries to avoid any AA period and makes minimal attempts to surpress them, same for ukraine against russia only firing a ballistic missile or two when a battery is caught lacking. you don't have air superiority if you can't even fly regularly to do ops over the enemy country. every single part of this is wrong except that Russia's air force avoids being shot down. >supply lines to ukraine's front would be getting constantly disrupted because nowhere is safe, storage depots would be getting hit constantly. That's happening right now with Russia against Ukraine, so I don't know what you think that proves. >close air support just means the support fire is close to friendly forces The level of ignorance you project onto people who know more than you is insulting. The truly frustrating thing though is that you obviously don't know how much you don't know. Your problem isn't just being wrong on one or two points, it's that you fundamentally don't understand the entire topic, which is to say that you don't need to be corrected, you need an education. If you would like, I am willing to take the time and make a reading list of books that would help you understand the topic. >if you ask me this whole thing just seems like a way of dealing with the fact that you don't like how oppressive western airpower can be I didn't ask you. Anyone who would ask you is a fucking moron. You just spew ignorant nonsense and don't even know how much you don't know. >SEAD is not some rinky dink little tactic that's going out of style SEAD isn't a panacea, or a magic spell that makes air defenses disappear. It's a complex and extremely difficult component of an air campaign that needs to be performed nearly continuously in order to enable exploitation of contested airspace. It's also something you clearly know nothing about.
>>15030 a few weeks ago on 4/k/ I saw a whole thread about how Ukraine was now making more artillery than Russia and that they had fire superiority over the whole front. I suspect that if Ukraine falls they will declare that by being annexed Ukraine has conquered Russia from within.
>>15046 I could go into a long effortpost about how the different components of a modern SEAD campaign works, explaining in detail key subjects like No-Escape-Zone, ESM, sensors and their interactions / weaknesses, SEAD campaigns in history, C4 issues, etc and so on. I won’t. Why? Because YOU DON’T CARE You’re just here to feel good, and nothing I post will make you interested in learning. I’ll post about it if anyone is actually interested — it’s just that you clearly are not.
>>15008 >Any idea what the pink dots are? No idea, the post didn't come with an explanation. Though maybe AA assets? They're spaced out far enough to cover the whole territory, maybe just the radar emissions of all AA. No idea, if there's any NATO golems that recognize the software and icons, they can chime in. I suppose the blue lines are the air defense sectors of responsibility maybe. >I remember that one leak from the Texan nasty girl early in the war You mean the Air National Guardsman what's his face? I didn't see the source leaks, just a whole bunch of second-hand reports mostly focused on the casualty numbers, so that one missed me.
>>15009 We couldn't be posting this on 4chan, so it's a moot point. And you keep saying they can't do SEAD, even though that's exactly what they're doing, then rationalizing it with some bullshit. The only thing about the whole SEAD argument that holds true is that Russia cannot match US capabilities.
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>>15050 >I could go into a long effortpost about how the different components of a modern SEAD campaign works, explaining in detail key subjects like No-Escape-Zone, ESM, sensors and their interactions / weaknesses, SEAD campaigns in history, C4 issues, etc and so on. I won’t. Why? Because you'd just embarrass yourself further. You don't know shit and that's emphasized by the fact that you thought that you could show off your knowledge with a collection of buzzwords that get thrown around in powerpoint presentations. It's like someone saying they know a lot about networking technology since they once read a marketing brochure from a phone company. >You’re just here to feel good Well talking about the war seriously for once without getting banned is really nice, so I do feel pretty good, the other guy I replied to here is a real breath of fresh air. I enjoy learning. I don't enjoy having my time wasted by idiots. > I’ll post about it if anyone is actually interested Anyone can just search DTIC and find some buzzword salad masters thesis paper or whatever that'd do the same thing. Here, have one. They're a dime a dozen. >>15054 >maybe AA assets? I guessed so too. If you look closely the little dots are a bit different from one another, but the image is too low quality to really make anything out. >I suppose the blue lines are the air defense sectors of responsibility That's my guess. >You mean the Air National Guardsman what's his face? yeah, that retard. > I didn't see the source leaks neither did I, but I really should look around, I'm sure they're out there somewhere. Cool clips btw, I love Kamov helicopters. Got any clips of the Ka-27 or Ka-29 from the war? I remember seeing an article somewhere about how the Ka-29 was getting refitted, and it'd be dope to see it dropping off marines or something. Not that I'm picky about cool footage, and I think that in hindsight I was too harsh on the gore. Although I stand by grenade drops on people who are already wounded being boring as hell. >>15063 >The only thing about the whole SEAD argument that holds true is that Russia cannot match US capabilities. I've said it before, he clearly thinks SEAD is a magic spell that makes air defenses vanish into thin air. If you read their posts like that and realize that any component of SEAD operations is, to them, a part of the magical "no more air defense" ritual, like a rain dance or something, it suddenly makes sense why they say the things they do. The post you replied to was the equivalent of saying "it no rain, so they no do rain dance, Russia no have rain dance juju".
>>15020 Like the other guy says, this is some racial hirearchy shit right here. If anything, the Russian military and leadership have consistently defied the stereotypes during this war, they've shown adaptability, flexibility and grounded realism at every step of the way. The logistics have also proven to be excellent with the flexibility to transport huge numbers of troops and equipment to urgent areas, not to mention supplying the entire front of this high-intensity conflict for 3 years and counting. Not bad for a peasant low-IQ mitary I'd say.
>>15067 >this is some racial hirearchy shit I really do think this is the root cause of the problem with the NAFO people. It's not that they support Ukraine or even that they dislike Russia that causes them to be unable to engage rationally with the war. It's that they imagine that there is a hierarchy of races, and that Russia is lower on it than Ukrainians, and consequently nothing Russians do will ever be as good as what Ukrainians do, and that Ukrainians will never be as good as the master race, which they usually call NATO as a euphemism. Even if they don't use those terms when they think about it, that's the basic structure of their thoughts, and it essentially precludes the ability to comprehend Russia behaving intelligently or Ukraine (or god forbid NATO) doing something worse than Russia. I don't think there is any way we can really get through to people like that. It's probably best to just ignore them when they show up.
>>15066 >and it'd be dope to see it dropping off marines or something. There was exactly such a case a while ago when they boarded a Turkish cargo ship. >"it no rain, so they no do rain dance, Russia no have rain dance juju" lol, prety good summary. Make up an arbitrary reason to support a foregone conclusion and run in a circular logic with it forevermore. Russia is bad, can't be good without SEAD, no SEAD because low IQ.
>>15077 Which is even funnier considering Ukrainians are basically mostly Russians and were considered to be backwards hicks back in the day. But yeah, this line of thought is ingrained in a lot of people through media portrayal. Once you start paying attention to the language used and things emphasized. Like that shitheap of a show Chernobyl that was lauded as some historically accurate drama, but had such absurd scenes and dialogue, Goebbels would have considered it too on the nose.
>>15046 >they do airstrikes pretty much constantly yes, they launch jdamski's at maximum ranges from a long way inside russia that are just about able to hit forward and rearward positions on the frontline. i do think that's different from actual heavily utilized air superiority. >The USAF took extremely heavy casualties from AA during that war, and IADS have become much more advanced since then. yep, and they were figuring out how to deal with those during that war. during operation desert storm, the US faced a much denser and arguably more intergrated air defense system than russia did in ukraine, SEAD worked pretty well there, as it did in the balkan wars, with minimal casualties in return. please go ahead and tell me how turning off your targeting and acquisition equipment because dozens of SEAD aircraft are flying sortees over your head daily, is going to magically shoot down said aircraft and stop them from carrying out their missions. sure, you can absolutely do SOME damage by occasionally setting up and trying to shoot down some aircraft, but this is a very different scenario from the situation in ukraine, where russia, since the end of the beginning of the war, has absolutely refused to go anywhere near ukrainian AA coverage if at all possible, that's air superiority to you? >A modern IADS does not keep all of their radars switched on most of the time. You're demonstrating incredible ignorance of how the landscape has changed in the last 50 years. yes, and? aircraft aren't flying around blasting out signals at all times either, they can do passive detection just as well. you can try to shoot your shot when you think you've got a solid firing solution but that's also going to mark your location to every aircraft in the area, just attacking in and of itself will put you in danger. >That's happening right now with Russia against Ukraine, so I don't know what you think that proves. it isn't though, lol, neither ukraine nor russia is really finding any success in hitting smaller mobile strategic targets behind the line anymore. i'm talking about a scenario where russia is flying over all of ukraine and hitting any transport they can, you seemingly refuse to acknowledge that this is possible, just because russia can't do it. >SEAD isn't a panacea, or a magic spell that makes air defenses disappear. It's a complex and extremely difficult component of an air campaign that needs to be performed nearly continuously in order to enable exploitation of contested airspace. oh i know that, i've made numerous references to continuous aircraft coverage but you seemingly just ignore those, and complex and extremely difficult is right, which is why countries with an afterthought airforce like russia and many others are not capable of this. pleasant talking to you, and if you're willing to give me that reading list, i'd appreciate it, there may be something of interest there for me. btw the defensive and degrading tone just ends up coming out as severely impotent rage instead. i can talk about whatever i want, and say it however i want, i don't require some random anon's approval for whatever i squirt out of this keyboard every time i do it. if you want to rub your dick on me and show me who's boss, then actually show it off instead of alluding to it every next sentence like it's a dragon ball Z outro, not that i'm forcing you to waste a bunch of your time doing so, choice is up to you.
>>15047 currently, yeah, russian arty fires numbers continue to drop, it's pretty visible on IR sats, they're trying to compensate for this by dropping more glide bombs. ukrainian arty is generally far more accurate, so a smaller amount of shells is able to do more work, not exactly a lot of D30's in ukraine's arsenal, when compared to russia, anyway.
>>15063 >that russia cannot match US capabilities that's putting it lightly, you're upset about the technicality that *technically* russia can do some amount of SEAD, they're not completely incapable of it, even if it's effect is so light that they can basically never fly over ukraine's border to strike at deeper targets or they're in immediate high risk of losing their airframe. you're so upset about this that you haven't noticed nobody is defending that notion, most have just pointed out that they can't do SEAD in sufficient numbers and ability to make a serious difference, which is exactly what you've stated here.
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>>15079 >1st clip Jesus Christ, that pilot is fucking good. Compensating for uneven prop wash and hovering next to a moving target in windy weather on choppy seas, and then compensating for a bunch of changes in balance as people climb in. I can't find "Russian Aviation" on Youtube, is it a telegram thing? >>15080 >2nd clip there is something about how those coaxial rotor choppers fly that is just slick. It's the way they don't have quite as clearly defined a front and back I think, so they sometimes just sort of slide along through the sky. I know it's hard, but we've gotta stop feeding the trolls btw. No matter how juicy the bait. I know there is a lot of tantalizingly stupid things you feel like you could just rip into, but anything you say will slide over their smooth brain without penetrating it. God damn it's hard for me too.
>>15066 >part of the magical "no more air defense ritual" this is a pretty sad showing, i understand how complex and difficult these OPS are, and how they have to be performed intensively over weeks to months to effectively degrade air defense and keep the remainder hidden and minimally disrupting your operations, but you forget that people are pointing out russia is currently stuck in this mire because they CAN'T do that, they can't leverage their airforce to that degree because they're not capable of doing it, and because of that, they cannot keep ukraine's airforce on the ground, and they cannot make life absolutely impossible for ukraine by performing a heavy aerial bombing campaign over every single part of their country to the degree that other countries with GOOD S.E.A.D capability can. i'll excuse all the downright resentful and angry end points as you just being angry and resentful because cuckchan constantly and unjustly bans any and all pro-russian arguments, so whatever, idc.
>>15082 Again, Russia cannot eliminate Ukraine's radar coverage without starting WW3. And the USAF in Yugoslavia and Iraq wasn't facing Patriot batteries, they were facing Dvinas from the 60s. Yugo air defences were never fully suppressed either, despite the much smaller area of land. Radars are also hunted constantly, just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it's not happening (don't @me nerd, I know these are SHORAD, it's just an example).
>>15083 This is just out of touch with reality at this point.
>>15088 >russia cannot eliminate ukraine's radar coverage without starting ww3 sure, it can't get rid of western ISR, but it's inability to consistently destroy or suppress ukraine's own stuff is not a choice, it's an inability. i see this a lot from pro russians, everything russia doesn't do is a choice, rather than an inability, russia is just intentionally handicapping itself like an anime protaganist, as a gesture of goodwill, and could totally do things that would make the war easier for themselves because they just love being at war so much. nobody is pulling punches in this conflict, if russia thinks it can actually do an oppressive SEAD/DEAD campaign and neuter ukraine's ability to defend themselves, they would. >>15089 hey man, i'm not a paragon of truth, you can check it out yourself if you want.
>>15088 >>15089 stop eating the bait. I know it's tasty, there are things I want to rip into too. He's not going to engage seriously though, he'll just keep repeating the same shit the moment he feels like he can get away with it. Instead let's just talk about air defenses. Did you know the Pantsir can engage incoming anti-radiation missiles and the Verba actually can be linked to the IADS so the operator can see incoming aircraft before they are in visual range?
>>15085 Glad you agree then. >>15090 No, Russia cannot do what the US can, i.e. dedicate thousands of planes at once, specialized EW platforms, stealth niggatry, tomahawks, drones, HARMs just floating everywhere just waiting for a target. So, no, Russia cannot do SEAD at the scale the US can. Nobody can. So why would that be the default standard for SEAD, if only one country can do it? >hey man, i'm not a paragon of truth, you can check it out yourself if you want. So according to you Ukraine has fire superiority (even though Russia is outproducing the entire Ukraine helper block in shells by far), but doesn't need it anyway since their artillery is so much more accurate, but somehow Russians are still gaining ground all along the front? That's your story?
>>15086 I'd say that pilot is a typical cowboy who takes safety guidelines as a suggestion. Don't know what channel it came from, I grabbed it off a completely different one. >I know it's hard That's what she said.
>>15092 Did not know that about the Verba, pretty cool tidbit. Got any details on how it looks display-wise?
>>15095 > i.e. dedicate thousands of planes at once In a hypothetical US intervention in Ukraine where the US tries to treat Russia like it treated Yugoslavia and engages in an air campaign without putting boots on the ground in Ukraine, I don't think the US could dedicate thousands of planes at once for SEAD missions. The closest major American air base is Incirlik, that's the only one that's in F-35 range, and that's just barely, since Crimea is in F-35/F-15 range from Incirlik but the rest of the front isn't. So everything else is coming from a smaller base that is being borrowed from a NATO ally, or using aerial refueling to reach the target, which leads to some serious bottlenecks in what can actually be used in a single strike, especially since Russia would be trying to shoot down the tankers and AEW&C planes. I think that the US could only actually use a few hundred planes at a time in that scenario. Certainly nothing to sneeze at, but the disparity in total quantities of planes both sides could muster at a time would be much smaller than people think, and Russia would have the advantage of operating inside of its IADS. >>15097 >Got any details on how it looks display-wise? Afraid not, it was just mentioned in Mihajlo Mihajlovic's book Defending Putin's Empire - Russia's Air Defense System. That book is definitely worth checking out if you haven't already. I'm pretty sure it's on Libgen.
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>>15095 The Russians should put a custom made level 4 vest and helmet on bear, give it some meth or PCP or something, and sent it into Ukrainian trenches. It'd be unstoppable without heavy weapons.
>>15100 I think in that hypothetical the play would be a lot different. It wouldn't be opening with shock'n'awe, but instead a lot of standoff distance shit to slowly degrade Russian AA. Realistically, I don't think Russia could win this scenario, the US would just do the same Russia is doing right now, stay at standoff range and lob stuff at the enemy. >Afraid not Found a description along with a picture of the visor. Interesting stuff, I just thought they made the missile better. https://www.army-technology.com/projects/verba-9k333-man-portable-air-defence-system-manpads/?cf-view&cf-closed
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>>15106 >I think in that hypothetical the play would be a lot different. It wouldn't be opening with shock'n'awe, but instead a lot of standoff distance shit to slowly degrade Russian AA. Realistically, I don't think Russia could win this scenario, the US would just do the same Russia is doing right now, stay at standoff range and lob stuff at the enemy. I think that in that hypothetical scenario Russia would hit targets with nuclear weapons if needed. The conflict might not escalate into a massive general exchange of nuclear warheads between the US and Russia, but Russia would use nuclear weapons to neutralize the air bases the strikes were being launched from if it couldn't do it with conventional weapons. Russia might be able to do it conventionally though, since the US only has so many bases that can support those kinds of operations, and the USAF only has so many stratotankers and AEW&C planes. I wouldn't want to be in Europe if it happened, since I think there is a non zero chance Russia would decide that in order to avoid escalating into a general nuclear exchange, they would use chemical and biological weapons to clear a path for their ground forces to reach the air bases in Germany. The conflict would very quickly turn into WWIII no matter how the European front escalates though, because with the US busy with Russia, China would definitely take a crack at Taiwan and North Korea at South Korea, and Iran might even take a swing at Israel. I am sure other conflicts would flare up all over the world, like maybe there would be another Yugoslav war. The only thing we can really talk about in a hypothetical scenario where the US is conducting SEAD against Russia is the scenario and the first strikes, since after that it'd become way too chaotic to have any idea what would happen. > I just thought they made the missile better. Yeah, I thought so too. Having MANPADS be part of your IADS aside from giving them an IFF interrogator is pretty crazy, but it's damn cool. It shows to the importance Russia places on networking their IADS capabilities together. A lot of Russian air defense stuff has capabilities I tend to think of as "party tricks". Another example of a capability I think of as a party trick is that the TOR can apparently lock onto and destroy bombs that are dropped at it. I am sure it's got legitimate uses, but it's kinda a weird capability and stands out. I've got a whole book about the TOR system that I've been meaning to read.
>>15095 Russia can’t do SEAD, and I’m trying to explain WHY. You just want to hide behind the overwhelming dominance of the US which you feel is a good-enough excuse.Ie, no one can do SEAD like the US can so obviously Russia can’t do SEAD. The REASON WHY Russia can’t do SEAD like the US can is only partly due to technology and budget. The MAJOR reason, the MAIN reason, is that the Russian military does not have the organizational power to tie all the moving parts of a SEAD campaign together to make it work. AD is a SOLVED PROBLEM since Vietnam when the USAF and USN had to learn how to deal with SAMs. The first, and most powerful way was to use Wild Weasel tactics. Leveraging the physics of rocket-powered missiles (No-Escape Zone) a doctrine was developed for baiting AD to engage planes at bad ranges allowing planes to reliably evade thereby wasting those missiles. By the end of Linebacker 2 the NVA had stopped using SAMs altogether in order to preserve the few shots they had remaining, they were utterly defeated. For those who are interested to learn: No-Escape Zone refers to the powered flight envelope of a missile. The rocket motors on missiles use up all their fuel once ignited, and do not shut off / re-start, their energy is used up all at once (ignoring things like Meteor which aren’t relevant in Ukraine anyway). It’s a bit more complicated of course when you add in multi-stage boosters and multi-density rocket fuel etc but the fundamental principal still applies. In that period of time in which the missile still has fuel, it is said to be inside of the No-Escape Zone, named for the fact that no plane will be able to evade a missile that is still in powered flight. However, MOST of a missile’s maximum range is OUTSIDE of the NEZ. To engage at longer ranges, a missile boosts high into the air in a wide ballistic arc and then spends most of its time gliding passively downward towards the target. Each time it maneuvers it bleeds energy further. Wild Weasel is based on exploiting this low terminal performance of SAMs being used at long range; within the NEZ the plane will probably die but outside of it the plane will probably survive — BUT only if certain conditions are met: 1. Skilled pilots working in formation. 2. Good radar coverage to detect incoming missiles. 3. Strong coordination between air control and pilots And THAT is why Russia can’t even do Wild Weasel, let alone more advanced forms of SEAD. They have the planes and they have (probably) the pilots — but they do NOT have the other critical pieces such as good radar coverage and most importantly STRONG COORDINATION between all these pieces. The organizational power of the Russian military is poor, it’s really that simple. Because even IF they could bring all three factors together — for how long? As an ongoing campaign over many days and weeks? No, because the Russian Air Force will probably fall apart along the way for one of many sundry reason related to having a WEAK ORGANIZATION. Planes under such heavy stress will quickly run out of spares because critical logistics chains aren’t up to snuff. Radar specialist gets injured / sick and the AWACSs fails because the training pipeline didn’t supply a sufficient number of specialists. Someone in the command staff screwed something up causing a glitch in the chain of command thereby grounding the whole operation because Russia’s command staff is really weak and failure-prone. The REASON why I named, specifically, Russia’s weak OFFICER CORPS is because that’s the institution which makes a modern high-quality military capable of doing things like SEAD. A strong officer corps must be there to set up robust logistics trains, make complex operations run smoothly, deal with all the complex moving pieces in something like SEAD. It’s a complex human endeavor and without a strong leadership component it will simply fall flat on it’s face. It’s the reason why peasant militaries do so poorly in modern warfare. Did you read the leaked readiness report of the Moskva? Want to know why it was a barely functional heap of garbage? Because there wasn’t a strong chain of command in the navy and MoD generally which would have made sure the ship’s readiness met an acceptable standard. That’s one tiny example, the lack of leadership is ENDEMIC throughout Russia’s armed forces and the thing which turns it into a JOKE. I didn’t just make it up to make you feel bad or to tickle my racism.
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>>15122 He’s right though
>>15109 Everyone is probably aware that Russia would be forced to respond in a nuclear manner eventually, that's why nobody is going to intervene, despite the bluster. >>15121 Your conclusion is just plain wrong. Russia (or rather the SU) did not structure its air force to focus on such missions, it was always an emphasis on a frontal aviation aspect combined with long-range interceptors. And that's exactly how it's being employed. Again, the way the US does SEAD is due to their massive investments into it as part of their doctrine, nobody else can do that, not the French, not the British, not the Germans, nobody. So apparently all of those are peasant militaries.
>>15125 >Your conclusion is just plain wrong. Of course his conclusion is wrong. His points don't even actually make sense as arguments in support of his conclusion. He might not even believe in his supposed conclusion. He's just trolling you. You need to stop gulping down all that yummy bait. You will literally never convince him. Everything he knows about SEAD is stuff you could learn in 20 minutes by reading some articles. If you argue with someone who isn't engaging in good faith, you're going to lose no matter what.
>>15125 >Everyone is probably aware that Russia would be forced to respond in a nuclear manner eventually They might not, it'd require a lot of very careful diplomacy from both sides to avoid it, but there are paths that both sides could take that would not require nuclear escalation. An example would be the use of chemical weapons to open a large gap in the defenses at the front extremely quickly and just end the conflict before the US strategy of standoff attacks could tip the war in Ukraine's favor. The standoff attacks would still be dangerous to US planes, since Russia's air force is geared for long ranged interceptions, and the standoff strikes would be operating near the edge of their envelope. There are escalation options that aren't nuclear war, but some of them are arguably worse, like decimating Ukraine's population with biological weaponry.
>>15134 Hence why I said I won’t engage the discussion with you. I KNOW you don’t care. I went against my better judgement to respond anyway and this is the result There is literally no point discussing it with you because you don’t WANT to learn anything, you want to just enjoy social feedback loops — just like most everyone. Sure I got to flaunt my superior knowledge but what was the end result? I may as well flaunted it on Substack or something, it’s pointless here
>>15142 >reee you pointed out that I'm a fucking moron and laughed at me rather than taking my shitty bait If you had worked harder to make your bait believable I might have kept taking it. Don't be mad at me for not taking the bait, be mad at yourself for making such shitty bait.
>>15149 Regardless of whether he's really retarded or just pretending, he's not engaging honestly. If he were he wouldn't try to pretend he is an expert because he read an article or two about SEAD once, and would instead just say what he is really thinking. Everything he's saying is just rationalizing backwards from the conclusion that Russians are inferior/incompetent. Just like how you can't convince a young earth creationist that Noah's flood wasn't real by showing them evidence of the geologic column, you won't convince this guy that he's wrong by explaining how military operations work, because creationists don't talk about geology because they care about geology, they do it to try to defend their faith. Similarly NAFO people don't talk about military matters because they care about them, they do it to defend their belief in a hierarchy of races where Russians are at the bottom.
>>15140 In today's environment I doubt Russia could do any large push like you describe. Modern ISR and drones everywhere make that a pretty daunting task. Not to mention the insane losses of equipment already sustained. Plus, using chemical weapons is exactly what planners envisioned as a precursor to using nukes back in the day. Personally I am really concerned of the mental conditioning that was/is going on about nuclear war. As in, Russian nukes don't work, they're old, they're not that bad, nuclear war is survivable, the Chinese steal fuel from theirs too btw.
>>15150 >Russians are at the bottom At least they have good company along with all the other peasants that can't do SEAD.
>>15155 >In today's environment I doubt Russia could do any large push like you describe. I think that it wouldn't require a particularly large force. A large section of the front suddenly being cleared out by chemical weapons would free up all the troops who were fighting there, and chemical attacks on logistical hubs would massively slow down any response to the breakthrough. Chemical weapons aren't just lethal after all, they're also capable of area denial. >Not to mention the insane losses of equipment already sustained. While Russia has lost a decent amount of equipment, they've hardly taken heavy enough losses to prevent them from conducting major offensives. They've just learned that big mechanized columns aren't exactly optimal for the current kind of fighting going on. >using chemical weapons is exactly what planners envisioned as a precursor to using nukes back in the day. It'd require careful diplomacy and clear communication as to what they'd consider to be worth escalating to nuclear warfare over, but it might be possible to prevent it from escalating into a general nuclear exchange. It's just interesting to think about alternative escalation paths other than nuclear weapons, I don't think any of it will happen. >Russian nukes don't work I don't get this, like part of the New START treaty was that we got to go in and inspect them. We know they work. >nuclear war is survivable It is, but the breakdown of the logistics needed to get food from farm to table probably wouldn't be. >the Chinese steal fuel from theirs too btw. Sorta related, I remember in an old Oppenheimer thread he mentioned that the Chinese actually kept their nukes partially disassembled for a long time after Mao's son tried to take control of some nukes during a coup attempt or something. Not that they didn't have a ton of working nukes or anything, just that they were kept in an insanely low state of readiness most of the time.
>>15155 >Modern ISR and drones everywhere make that a pretty daunting task. One thing I think is interesting to note is that nobody outside of Ukraine and Russia seems to be taking the lessons of this war particularly seriously. Drones being everywhere on the battlefield in Ukraine doesn't mean that they would be everywhere if Russia attacked Europe, and even once they acquire drones in adequate quantities, they're still years behind Russia and Ukraine in terms of experience in using them and fighting against them. Nobody in Europe is making a big push to acquire huge quantities of cheap drones to ensure every infantry squad has a few, and nobody is updating their doctrine to account for the increased importance of infantry with drones. If Russia decided to try to neutralize US air bases in Europe with a ground offensive, I think the Russians would make progress much more quickly against opponents who haven't spent the last 3 years learning alongside them at a breakneck pace.
>>15163 Yeah, it's survivable, bjt I don't want the experience either way. And it would make sense for the Chinese to keep low level of readiness for their nukes, as they mostly only have to be concerned with an Indian arsenal, everything else would have a buildup to war, kind of like now.
>>15165 We don't really know that. For all we know there are supply lines to make their own cheap chink drones being organized right now. And we definitely know they're all looking for antidotes to the drone menace. It's amazing they haven't been picked up by terrorist cells in the West yet.
>>15196 Actually I think the capability gap between armies at war and peacetime armies is genuinely concerning a lot of officers around the world right now, but it's not something they can easily remedy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv2fjrJt3LU&t=933
>>15196 The procurement procedures may differ from country to country and I'm unfamiliar with them but heavily relying on Chinese-made parts to equip regular army would probably be generally frowned upon. I assume that spinning up (pun not intended) domestic production would make the news before it reaches the scale necessary to sustain an actual war (that's thousands of drones every day). Seen news articles about European car manufacturers and similar factories looking for ways to stay afloat and offering their production capabilities to MIC. If one of them were to get a contract, it would probably leak. Moreover, it's not just the drones themselves that need to be constructed, but their operators have to be trained. They're much harder to operate than the commercial dji's. There is no stabilization or gps. Radio-controlled ones are extremely agile and easy to crash. Fiber-optic ones are more unwieldy and have a lot of inertia to them. Operators need to learn to recover from getting jammed, spot and avoid nets in time, dodge ground fire, account for lag when aiming at weak points of moving vehicles etc. When a government does something like that by the numbers and not at a frantic pace like Russia&Ukraine are, bureaucracy slows things down further. Maybe the West will opt to skip the operator part entirely and invest in the more automated drones with computer vision (aka man-made horrors) instead though. What the West is definitely doing, although probably not fast enough, is explore tech-based anti-drone measures, e.g. lasers or mgs wired to radars and/or cameras to intercept them. I also hear that the reason there's fewer lancet footage lately is because some portable Israeli-made radar is that good at pinpointing Zala's recon drones (works in conjunction with Ukrainian-made quadcopter drones who intercept these) as well as the proliferation of jammers. >t.NTA
>>15202 Yeah, bureaucracy and dinosaurs in the general staff are always a detriment. >>15208 I get that, but there's very few countries that can fully domestically produce their own drones without oitside supply. I know the French were to try and make their own semiconductor plant in the next years and probably others too. I agree with the thoughts about the rest, you still need to teach people how to use it, coordinate between units for maximum effect and all that. >I also hear that the reason there's fewer lancet footage lately is because some portable Israeli-made radar is that good at pinpointing Zala's recon drones (works in conjunction with Ukrainian-made quadcopter drones who intercept these) as well as the proliferation of jammers. I don't think so, there's still footage of Lancets regularly, they just don't see the light of day in the West. Also not as interesting to the public as chasing some unfortunate soul with an FPV drone.
>>15208 That's far better than I, the anon who he was replying to, would have been able to put it. >>15213 >Yeah, bureaucracy and dinosaurs in the general staff are always a detriment. Don't forget politicians. It's not like it's possible for the relatively young officers whose brains aren't calcified to get funding for a major restructuring of the armed forces onto the next appropriations bill. >there's still footage of Lancets regularly, they just don't see the light of day in the West. Also not as interesting to the public as chasing some unfortunate soul with an FPV drone. I find it really annoying that nobody has taken it upon themselves to make a big archive of all the Ukraine war footage that's come out. You'd think that'd be a big priority for OSINT types.
>>15208 >What the West is definitely doing, although probably not fast enough, is explore tech-based anti-drone measures, e.g. lasers or mgs wired to radars and/or cameras to intercept them. Cheap drones in the hands of infantry aren't the end all be all of weapons systems, but they're a major shift and it seems like a lot of western militaries are pretending we can just make counter measures that will bring back the good ol' days before they existed. A lot of people have vested interests in making sure things don't get shaken up too much. I know I keep bringing this up in the thread, but it's fascinating to think about how the Russian military is going to restructure itself in the years immediately after this war, and if they use their newfound and nearly unique prowess in this new style of warfare to curbstomp some of their neighbors like Georgia. Someone brought up a comparison to the Winter War in the refugee thread, and I think that's apt, but I also think there are strong analogues to the Russo-Japanese war in how the whole world watched a WW1 style battle take place and just ignored it because the people participating "weren't white". I mentioned that parallel on 4/k/ once and iirc the only response I got was "well Russians aren't white".
>>15213 >I get that, but there's very few countries that can fully domestically produce their own drones without oitside supply. Oh for sure. Producing a prototype is one thing, but a full cycle production, on large scale is something else entirely. We've all been lulled by the comfort of globalization and cheap Chinese labor for too long. As it is, afaik, practically all electronics (PCBs, cameras, motors, batteries) used in Ukrainian and Russian suicide drones are imported from China. Frames are 3d-printed locally. Fwiw, I've seen a post about some Russian manufacturer having spun up a domestic production of drone PCBs, so that's a start; realistically this is the best possible opportunity to revive this industry. > coordinate between units for maximum effect and all that. Totally forgot about that part, yes. >I don't think so, there's still footage of Lancets regularly, Hm you're right, at least I expected the numbers to be lower. Consulted https://lostarmour.info/tags/lancet and they've been sort of on par with the same months last year. Except for April, which has been a bad month for them Let's see if it's a fluke or a trend. Admittedly, I haven't been paying as much attention lately and just repeated what I heard from a milblogger/volunteer who brushes shoulders with folks directly involved. Wish I remembered which video it was, had it on as background noise a few days ago. I'll go over the recent vids when I have the time, just to get better context. Haven't heard or read anything else of the sort lately, though it is, of course, evident that a drone arms race is on. Wars truly do wonders to R&D. >>15216 >a big archive of all the Ukraine war footage that's come out. Still bashing myself for not having archived every obscure piece of media from the 2014 phase of the war. So much content gone. Early on, before things got too violent, there were independent livestreamers walking around with their phones out delivering visceral, unedited footage. Today, almost everything is filmed by drones, faces are masked or blurred, it's depressing. This time there's multiple major aggregators of the footage that comes out (some of them based in telegram though), but all of them seem biased and focusing on one side of the story so a one single archival place doesn't seem to exist and probably won't for a while until after this ceases to be a hot topic. >>15217 >a lot of western militaries are pretending we can just make counter measures that will bring back the good ol' days before they existed. Yeah, it's silly seeing some militaries placing more orders on tanks instead of drones when the current nature of warfare is such that tanks can't even properly serve their purpose and are often used from distances where they'd need a drone to correct fire for them anyway. It's not so simple, of course, e.g. Americans have had pic related for almost a decade, but it seems to only be issued to spec ops or something. >how the Russian military is going to restructure itself in the years immediately after this war Russia has entered the war completely unprepared in that regard and the less corrupt and indifferent officers have been moving heaven and earth to plug the most glaring gaps. There have been some improvements, e.g. easier fire mission approval, anti-air units now a part of the airforce (or was it the other way around? Either way, it improved coordination and reduced the amount of friendly fire) and forming an entire branch of military around UAV systems. Some areas will take ages to fix, e.g. military communications is a hot mess of baofengs, civilian dmrs, starlinks, telegram, discord and Soviet era wired phones. Also, to their credit, Ukrainians were the first to separate UAVs into a new military branch. For them, suicide drones have been such a perfect asymmetrical response and equalizer that I'm surprised more small countries don't invest in those instead. FSA did and it paid off handsomely (though arguably SAA would've broken all the same regardless). >curbstomp some of their neighbors like Georgia. Imho if the troops from Ukraine were to suddenly be freed up, they could overrun Georgia with or without the drones, just because Georgia is a small country with shitty neighbors, armed forces that aren't much to write home about and they don't have the land to trade for time to be used to speedrun their own drone program, so to say. Thankfully, the relations between the two countries are currently rather warm. I could see them invading Belarus if Lukashenko kicks the bucket and the pro-Western part of population does a Maidan though. Obviously not looking forward to it. Anything more serious than that I'm not sure Russia would have the resources and willpower to attempt for a while now. Too much Soviet surplus has been burnt through — and while most of it is junk by modern standards it still beats driving into battle on a spraypainted convertible'd Lada. The Soviets were an industrial powerhouse, Russia is not. I can't remember the last time I saw frontline footage featuring Tigr or Typhoon MRAP (maybe they'll show them on parade on the 9th?). Drones are amazing for widening the gray zone and locking areas down, but unless slugging it out (like R&U are now), you have to also advance. This modern take on Western front has become so tiresome and painful to watch.
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>>15082 Goddammit after I went on and on about not taking the bait, here I am coming back and gobbling down that yummy yummy bait. >they launch jdamski's at maximum ranges from a long way inside russia that are just about able to hit forward and rearward positions on the frontline. That means they have air supremacy over their own territory and the front line, and air superiority deep enough into Ukraine's territory to prevent Ukraine from conducting their own CAS. >i do think that's different from actual heavily utilized air superiority. That doesn't match the definition of air superiority used by the USAF, or of any other military I know of. One of the many indications of a complete lack of understanding of the topic is simply not knowing basic terminology, like the difference between air superiority and air supremacy. Another indication of poor understanding is treating air superiority and air supremacy as real things which exist, rather than abstractions designed to communicate complex states of affairs that are typically highly localized in both time and space. >during operation desert storm, the US faced a much denser and arguably more intergrated air defense system than russia did in ukraine That is untrue in every way that matters. While the popular accounts of the war claim that the Iraqi air defense network was formidable, in reality it was quite frankly totally inadequate, with no strategic SAMs at all, and the French made KARI system which you describe as being "more integrated" was only capable of tracking about 40 threats simultaneously, and didn't integrate any of their AAA at all. Here is an interesting article about Iraq's air defenses: https://balloonstodrones.com/2022/10/19/looking-back-at-iraqi-air-defences-during-operation-desert-storm/ This stands in contrast to how Ukraine has had large quantities of strategic SAMs since the very start of the war, and they have received constant supplies of new systems. Additionally their air defense network is highly integrated. While it's difficult to know the exact capabilities of Ukraine's IADS at this point, due to wartime secrecy and the unknown ways in which various systems have been integrated, it's likely to be a major point of focus for western assistance since it is easily put under the umbrella of intel sharing and advising rather than direct military aid. >please go ahead and tell me how turning off your targeting and acquisition equipment because dozens of SEAD aircraft are flying sortees over your head daily, is going to magically shoot down said aircraft and stop them from carrying out their missions. Modern IADS like those operated by Ukraine and Russia are actually capable of acquiring targets using targeting data from long ranged early warning radars, and can launch based upon that data and only activate their targeting radars for the last few seconds before the missile hits. I say modern, but really even the Krug was capable of that. If you can't suppress the long ranged early warning radars, then you can't really do much to suppress a modern IADS. More importantly, shooting down planes is not necessary for air defenses to achieve the goal of hampering enemy air operations, in fact shooting down planes implies they haven't accomplished that goal very well, since the attacker should be able to pick and choose where to employ their planes, and if they think there is a high chance of being shot down, they are simply not going to send their planes and pilots into that situation. >sure, you can absolutely do SOME damage by occasionally setting up and trying to shoot down some aircraft Modern air defense systems stay in near constant motion, even systems like the S-300 can go from marching to combat positions in five minutes. >russia, since the end of the beginning of the war, has absolutely refused to go anywhere near ukrainian AA coverage if at all possible It speaks volumes that you have to use such a grammatically tortured sentence. At the start of the war Russia had suppressed nearly all of Ukraine's air defenses through a combination of cyber warfare, air power, missile strikes, and aggressive ground operations. To use a bit of jargon that I think has fallen out of favor at the Pentagon, they conducted J-SEAD operations across multiple domains. >that's air superiority to you? yes, it is. It's also air superiority according to the US military and NATO definition. >yes, and? Being ignorant of 50 years of development in air-defenses is like someone in 'Nam thinking that air power is inconsequential because their understanding of air power comes from the use of biplanes in WW1. >i'm talking about a scenario where russia is flying over all of ukraine and hitting any transport they can No, you were talking about supply lines being constantly disrupted and storage depots being hit constantly. Both those things are happening. >you seemingly refuse to acknowledge that this is possible It's probably possible for Russia to temporarily suppress all of Ukraine's air defenses and strike wherever the hell they want, but it'd be insanely costly and they can already hit anywhere in Ukraine by means other than air power, so doing so would be stupid of them. Saying that Russia's air force should prove they are competent by launching a wasteful campaign to suppress Ukrainian air defenses across the whole country is like a creationist asking for a crocoduck to prove that evolution is real. It's not only not proof, but it'd disprove the thing it's supposedly proof of. >oh i know that, i've made numerous references to continuous aircraft coverage but you seemingly just ignore those A common tactic in online debates is to make an offhand reference to something and acting dismissive of it so that when people later go "you fucking moron, you completely ignored the importance of X" the person who didn't want to actually engage with that can just go "nuh uh, I already covered X, so I already won that argument and now I'll move on and act like you're an idiot if you keep bringing it up". >complex and extremely difficult is right, which is why countries with an afterthought airforce like russia and many others are not capable of this. For any airforce there is a level of opposition a point where they simply cannot sustain a SEAD campaign indefinitely, and one where they can't suppress enemy air defenses it in the first place. Even the US is unlikely to be capable of sustaining an air campaign against Russia for long. >if you're willing to give me that reading list, i'd appreciate it, there may be something of interest there for me. I actually didn't get this far into the post when I first read it, since I didn't want to take the bait. It'll take some time to make a reading list, and I'll try to keep it to stuff on libgen or otherwise available online. You should start with Clausewitz's classic "On War", that one's on Gutenberg. Next read Soviet Military Operational Art - In Pursuit of Deep Battle by David M. Glantz to get a general idea of Soviet doctrine and keep in mind that they have updated their doctrine much like we have. In terms of acquainting yourself with the specifics of anti-aircraft systems, I'd suggest Defending Putin's Empire - Russia's Air Defense System by Mihajlo Mihajlovic. I've mentioned it before in this thread, it's the best and most recent book on Russian air defenses, and to be honest I'm not aware of many books that provide in depth information of the systems Ukraine uses that aren't Soviet in origin, although I've never really looked since a lot of them are either so new as to be unlikely to have good books written about them, or are things that Ukraine has in small numbers that aren't really going to make a huge difference to the overall situation (I should probably find a book to recommend with good information on the Patriot though). I'll need some time to find good sources on the other side of things, since even if I remembered the titles of all those books about air power I checked out from the library as a teenager, most of them were pretty out of date even then. There are tons of other things I think it'd be good to read, like manuals about how to plan operations, some more in depth histories of wars like Iraq and Yugoslavia, but I'm going to try to keep this short, I've had to pair it down a lot because even my reading list keeps pushing this post over the 12000 character limit. >>15087 >i understand how complex and difficult these OPS are, and how they have to be performed intensively over weeks to months It's easy to say you understand something, but much harder to demonstrate it. I hate bringing up Dunning-Kruger, but it can be very difficult to be aware of one's own ignorance. >i'll excuse all the downright resentful and angry end points as you just being angry and resentful because cuckchan What I resent is having someone who clearly doesn't have a deep understanding of the topic try to lecture me about something I've had an interest in since childhood. It's not hard to tell that you don't know what you're talking about. >actually show it off instead of alluding to it every next sentence like it's a dragon ball Z outro The issue is that aside from correcting things, explaining why you're wrong on a fundamental level would require an education, not just a post on an imageboard. I could quite literally write a book about what you've got wrong, condensing it down into just a few pages would be pretty difficult. This isn't like a DBZ outro where they could just answer the question in one sentence (Goku is going to beat whoever the current arc villain is, but not for another 20 episodes). >>15121 >For those who are interested to learn This is going to be funny isn't it? >No-Escape Zone refers to the powered flight envelope of a missile. no, it absolutely doesn't. It's the zone where a plane is unlikely to evade a missile by maneuvers. >It’s a bit more complicated of course this is another example of that sort of cop-out I mentioned earlier. The definition you give is fundamentally wrong, but any response can just be ignored by going "well I said it's a bit more complicated". >MOST of a missile’s maximum range is OUTSIDE of the NEZ. A fundamental misunderstanding of the very concept of a no-escape zone will obviously lead to not knowing how to apply it. As an illustrative example, the NEZs for a B-52, stratotanker, or E-7 being targeted by a S-300 are very different from the NEZs of an F-22 or F-15 being targeted by the same. >To engage at longer ranges, a missile boosts high into the air in a wide ballistic arc Some systems do that, not all. It's also not very relevant since a missile coming down from a ballistic trajectory is typically moving at fairly high mach numbers.
[Expand Post]>low terminal performance of SAMs being used at long range Saying that they have low performance at that stage is inaccurate. With all of their potential energy converted into speed and most of their mass burned off meaning that maneuvers will have to overcome less inertia, it's pretty much the hardest time to dodge them. >The REASON why I named, specifically, Russia’s weak OFFICER CORPS is because Is because it's a nebulous enough statement that any evidence against it can be ignored, but it can also be used to justify believing whatever negative stereotypes you want, it's like WW1 and WW2 intelligence reports that relied on assessments of "national character" which were just thinly veiled racism. >It’s a complex human endeavor and without a strong leadership component it will simply fall flat on it’s face. It’s the reason why peasant militaries do so poorly in modern warfare. You said something reasonable, then immediately followed it with racist hogwash. While I prefer intelligent conversations, I can't deny that seeing someone ping pong between being intelligent and being a fucking moron isn't funny.
>>15219 >Still bashing myself for not having archived every obscure piece of media from the 2014 phase of the war. I bet all that stuff is archived somewhere but not in one place. Huge amounts of that stuff is probably scattered across a bunch of video streaming sites but not archived in any way that is searchable. >there's multiple major aggregators of the footage that comes out (some of them based in telegram though), but all of them seem biased and focusing on one side of the story so a one single archival place doesn't seem to exist and probably won't for a while until after this ceases to be a hot topic. That's a shame. I am kinda tempted to start my own archive. Curating and moderating it though would be a full time job, and I wouldn't exactly be able to run ads to offset the storage and bandwidth costs even before getting into the fact that it'd probably be a legal minefield. >it's silly seeing some militaries placing more orders on tanks instead of drones Tanks and drones fill different roles. Tanks aren't obsolete, and neither are attack helicopters. >tanks can't even properly serve their purpose and are often used from distances where they'd need a drone to correct fire for them anyway. I think is interesting to think about how various systems will be adapted to integrate drones. For instance tanks with a drone operator in the crew, possibly in the place of a loader. Another thing that might happen is IFVs with drone storage and launchers for the infantry inside to use, like an actually useful version of the old firing ports on APCs that were supposed to let them fire out the side. IFVs and tanks might even provide electronic warfare support for dismounted infantry, and act as repeaters to allow them to overcome jamming. >Russia has entered the war completely unprepared in that regard Everyone was completely unprepared for how much drones had changed the battlefield. >anti-air units now a part of the airforce The PVO was absorbed into the VVS around the end of the cold war, while the ground forces air defense units remained part of the ground forces chain of command. I don't know if the air defense units of the ground forces have been integrated somehow into the VVS or VKS, but I am still catching up on the war. >if the troops from Ukraine were to suddenly be freed up, they could overrun Georgia with or without the drones Of course, if hundreds of thousands of experienced combat veterans are sent to fight a country with a military that has like 30,000 active personnel they're going to win, I'm just interested in seeing it how it looks. It'll be a lot easier to see the revolution in military affairs that has taken place when it's placed up against an opponent that hasn't updated their military. >Too much Soviet surplus has been burnt through — and while most of it is junk by modern standards it still beats driving into battle on a spraypainted convertible'd Lada. The idea that Russia is trying to use Ladas as tanks is just propaganda. The use of reconnaissance units equipped with light but mobile vehicles like motorcycles and dirtbikes to scout ahead of their armored units is because they're not so stupid that they would continue using big armored columns that did little but attract fire. > can't remember the last time I saw frontline footage featuring Tigr or Typhoon MRAP You've demonstrated in this thread that you tend not to see footage that makes Russia look good. But even if they are less common in footage, it's unlikely that those would be used for the sort of light recon that the motorcycle units are doing, and delivering troops to hot zones is likely done with BMPs or BTRs, so the MRAPs are likely just not on the front lines much right now due to the nature of the fighting having changed again. >This modern take on Western front has become so tiresome and painful to watch. On the Western front of WW1, all was not actually quiet. Both sides were constantly innovating and feverishly working to break the stalemate, and the places with the least visible movement were frequently the locations of the most fighting and losses. That is similar now, and I personally find the innovation more interesting than the territorial changes.
>>15216 >I find it really annoying that nobody has taken it upon themselves to make a big archive of all the Ukraine war footage that's come out. You'd think that'd be a big priority for OSINT types. There's just too much of it. A lot is also random explosions with no damage assesment. >>15217 >It's fascinating to think about how the Russian military is going to restructure itself in the years immediately after this war Yeah, the huge vacuum of armored equipment loss is going to leave some opening for debate on what to do. It should be pretty interesting. >curbstomp some of their neighbors like Georgia Georgia is incomparable. It has neither the population, nor the size to withstand what Ukraine did. Few countries could. Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe after all (after Russia).
>>15222 >Huge amounts of that stuff is probably scattered across a bunch of video streaming sites but not archived in any way that is searchable. Not related, but it feels like searching anything in general has become so much more difficult in the past few years too. Searching for a particular topic (could be anything, like trying to troubleshoot a malfunctioning appliance or searching for a user-made photo of a product) produces fewer useful results than ever and it's all mostly just web-optimized articles and stock footage (lately it's also AI generated). At first, opening a page to find that the article is just a wall of tautology tailored specifically to repeat the same keyword search term over and over to improve SEO rankings was amusing in a way, but now it feels like that's what the majority of the hits are. Fewer and fewer results are specialized forums. Or maybe that's just what getting old is like, and/or the useful information is now posted inside social networks that require an account. > I wouldn't exactly be able to run ads to offset the storage and bandwidth costs Yeah no way, ads won't cover video hosting at all, would probably have to rely on donations. But then Visa & Mastercard act as moral arbiters of the highest instance and get to dictate what is verboten and if they withdraw it will be down to crypto. Personally, I've just been saving anything interesting and naming files in a way that makes it possible to then look it up later. Everything's sort of scattered across different PCs and lately the footage has become so repetitive (drone flies into an object, feed cuts) that I've only been saving the more unique ones and those that come a couple of particular categories. To give an example, one of the folders, last updated in March 2022, has 1354 files and takes up 9.7GB. The entire last year's haul is probably smaller than that — not for the lack of footage, it's just too repetitive to bother saving. >it'd probably be a legal minefield. It definitely can be (if the project gets enough notoriety) if one is a first-worlder. Having it registered on a Kuwaiti and hosted in UAE or something would ward off everything but the 3-letter agencies. >Tanks and drones fill different roles. Tanks aren't obsolete, Sure but it makes little sense to invest into more tanks when you don't have drones or anti-drone measures yet. Tanks take a huge risk whenever they get within enemy drone range (which is often over 10 km now) without some plan of countering said drones (properly tuned EW modules on the tank itself, allied drone teams on the lookout for their counterparts, artillery barrage, some other action nearby drawing attention, weather conditions etc). Having listened to an interview with a Russian tanker a couple of months ago, iirc most missions he talked about involved rolling to a pre-determined position, using indirect fire to hit a faraway target then bailing before the response came. Could be survivorship bias and the tankers who do old-school tank assaults just die before they get to be interviewed, I don't know. Utilizing a tank as infantry/ifv support at closer ranges seems to be a rare occurrence nowadays. >and neither are attack helicopters. Having a human in the seat definitely has its benefits and production lines for helicopters are already set up but from a cost-effectiveness perspective Bayraktar/Orion type of drones seem to be very lucrative. They carry similar payloads but have the benefit of being smaller and more expendable. A helicopter reqiures more maintenance. Pilots are fairly expensive to train and upkeep and losing them is costly, from a morale/optics standpoint as well. Case in point, Ukrainian naval drones vs Russian helicopters west of Crimea. Losing a dozen such drones is nothing, they are mayflies. Eventually losing a helicopter to such a drone was a touche and a PR disaster. Talking from an armchair here but on paper a combo of a strike drone loitering a dozen km from the frontline + a cheap disposable recon drone much closer, painting the target for a missile, sounds like a dream team. Gone are the days of Apaches indiscriminately unloading on infantry with an autocannon. >I think is interesting to think about how various systems will be adapted to integrate drones. For instance tanks with a drone operator in the crew, possibly in the place of a loader. Looking forward to seeing such developments. Interestingly enough, Armata developers promised a drone, attached by wire, that would do just that (and, obviously, Soviet tank design did away with loader crewmen ages ago), so at least someone on the team had forward thinking in a similar key. The possibilities seem to be plentiful, but we probably don't see the entire picture. Or maybe it's the other way around those in charge don't. Or both. > I don't know if the air defense units of the ground forces have been integrated somehow into the VVS or VKS, but I am still catching up on the war. Looked up what I was recalling in the previous post: >the Air Force and Air Defence Forces ceased to be subordinated to military districts and were placed under the direct command of the Russian Aerospace Forces. In addition, the naval infantry ceased to function under the brigade system, and began according to the division system. The source is Polish quoting Estonians (https://pism.pl/publications/russias-armed-forces-two-years-after-the-full-scale-invasion-of-ukraine#_ftn6) but the news is legit and I distinctly recall VKS-affiliated guys being excited about it. Something to do with improving coordination. >It'll be a lot easier to see the revolution in military affairs that has taken place when it's placed up against an opponent that hasn't updated their military. Oh yes, humanitarian side of things aside, that would be a sight to see. The opening days of ODS would be hard to beat due to the sheer scale and complexity of the operation and the amount of coordination required, but I'd expect a similar gap. Uncontested usage of drones gives such a major advantage it's insane. I wouldn't be surprised if some operators didn't have more kills than the best snipers of old. >The idea that Russia is trying to use Ladas as tanks is just propaganda. Not as tanks, no. Tanks don't even see that much use anymore. Most of the vehicles used anywhere close to the frontline are part of the logistics chain. All is fair in love and war so if a Lada is the only vehicle available then so be it. That does however beg the question why that is the case and why troops have to buy and pimp their own cars or rely on volunteers to do that for them. Attrition takes its toll. I just can't imagine there's that much surplus left and it's obvious that whoever's producing tigrs and typhoons can't keep up with the demand (or the military doesn't place enough orders on those). Hence the conclusion that since after the war units have to be re-equipped and it stands to reason that having a surplus is also necessary, it would take a while to restock both. >you tend not to see footage that makes Russia look good. Not exactly, since the beginning I've been following the conflict mainly through the prism of pro-Russian non-government sources. Obviously, to get a less distorted picture one has to also keep track of what the other side is showing or saying, at least in broad strokes. Not that the folks that I normally follow keep mum about the issues, they often do. One of such sources, an active duty officer faced so much pressure and threats from the within the armed forces after putting such issues to light he eventually shot himself. Imo these problems shouldn't be ignored. Sure, with the war on budget is stretched thin and vehicles cost money, but at ~$140k per KIA investing into means of reducing casualties seems more prudent. > it's unlikely that those would be used for the sort of light recon that the motorcycle units are doing, Lada isn't famous for producing motorcycles. Which reminds me, turns out according to those who used both electric bikes are superior to ICE ones, kind of amusing. But yes, there's legitimate reasons to use a bike an ATV at times. >and delivering troops to hot zones is likely done with BMPs or BTRs, The thing is, everything ~10km around the line of contact is a hot zone these days and these days the "getting there" part is more dangerous is actually holding the position. Some MRAPs are quite large and more conspicuous but I somehow doubt that the troops riding Nivas do that by choice and that they wouldn't rather have a Typhoon instead. Besides, honestly, I'm really not sure a BMP is more survivable than an average MRAP. For one, the idea of putting fuel tanks into the same rear doors that troops are supposed to disembark through because it is assumed that the enemy will always be in front of the BMP and won't be able to score a hit from behind has... not aged well. During assaults, most vehicles used by Russia tend to be armored, yes. During rotation and supply runs however it's whatever they can get their hands on, and usually unarmored. Watching compilations of Ukrainian suicide drone strikes on what appear to be logistics chains paints a similar picture. However whenever I look at Russians hitting Ukrainian vehicles, a much higher percentage of targets are MRAPs. They do have their own Mad Max cars or just regular civilian ones (often with number plates from EU countries, by the way), whereas Russia has to rely on what it has in storage or can produce, it can't import (except for Chinese, which I assume, are procured through MoD and in small quantities). > Both sides were constantly innovating and feverishly working to break the stalemate, and the places with the least visible movement were frequently the locations of the most fighting and losses. That is similar now Yes, definitely. >I personally find the innovation more interesting than the territorial changes. Understandable, it's just that until the front starts moving again, one direction or another, a lasting peace is unattainable. As for the innovation, I feel like the humanity has speedrun the drone tech far enough for one round, time to call it a day and go do some homework/restocking. Attached are a screencap of some aftermarket upgrades from a recent post in one channel, a rather shortlived story of a Niva used on what I assume is Chasov Yar part of the frontline (lasted a week apparently, but they're expected to be that expendable) and a helicopter blowing up a naval drone with mg fire recently; there have been calls for replacing these helicopters with strike drones not to endanger the crews.
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>>15228 >the huge vacuum of armored equipment loss I really don't think Russian equipment losses have been as substantial as are often claimed. I know they've lost a lot, but I've mentioned before that I think the Oryx figures are likely an overestimate rather than an underestimate, and I've explained some of the reasons why. >some opening for debate on what to do. It should be pretty interesting. I think the lessons learned will spur a lot of interesting development in tank and IFV design. I suspect that they'll either quietly abandon the Armata in favor of some clean sheet design based on the lesson's they've learned, or they'll try to crank out Armatas as quickly as possible to replenish their armored units. >Georgia is incomparable. It has neither the population, nor the size to withstand what Ukraine did. I'm aware that it would be a curbstomp no matter what, but even if it's only a brief demonstration, it'd be an interesting one. >>15229 >it feels like searching anything in general has become so much more difficult in the past few years too. I stopped using Google a few years ago, and that definitely improved my search experience by a lot, I haven't switched to searxng yet but I intend to. Right now I'm using duckduckgo and I have a big .txt file of sites to exclude from certain types of searches. I'm sure there is some way to just automate excluding them, but the .txt file is pretty simple. It is getting harder and harder to find anything useful though. >the article is just a wall of tautology tailored specifically to repeat the same keyword search term over and over to improve SEO rankings The first few time I saw one of those I was pretty drunk and thought it must make sense and I just needed to focus. I feel like the fact that those articles even work to increase search engine rank is a sign that companies like Google had all the actual talent leave more than a decade ago. It would not be hard to make that sort of shit not work, but nobody has fixed it. >Fewer and fewer results are specialized forums. Well there are fewer and fewer specialized forums, it's becoming a landscape of megacorporate monopolies with the backing of some government or another. >maybe that's just what getting old is like It's not because you're getting old, it's called enshittification. https://wikiless.northboot.xyz/wiki/Enshittification?lang=en >then Visa & Mastercard act as moral arbiters of the highest instance Moralfags are the greatest cancer upon the internet. >it makes little sense to invest into more tanks when you don't have drones or anti-drone measures yet. It depends on a lot of factors, like if you don't currently have any tanks then it's probably a good idea to acquire at least a few. It's not like drones cost much, for the price of a single t-72 you can get literally thousands of cheap Chinese drones. So for a small country with 0 tanks and 0 drones, it's not a question of getting tanks vs getting drones, it's a question of getting one more tank or enough drones to outfit every squad with a few. >Having a human in the seat definitely has its benefits and production lines for helicopters are already set up but from a cost-effectiveness perspective Bayraktar/Orion type of drones seem to be very lucrative. Attack helicopters are no longer considered fires elements in modern US doctrine, and that probably applies to Russian doctrine as well. Drones can do the fire support job that attack helicopters used to do, but they can't maneuver into the divisional deep area ahead of the armored brigades to prepare the way for them. https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=t1E6FXHQhDQ >Armata developers promised a drone, attached by wire, that would do just that I suspect that future developments in drones which are considered to be part of a tank will involve a variety of drones available to the rigger. I suspect that tanks and IFVs will have a specialized drone that is used to dogfight and shoot down other drones before they come in range, perhaps even a whole ecosystem of drones designed to protect armored systems will emerge, like fighters, interceptors, AEW&C drones, EWAR drones. >Oh yes, humanitarian side of things aside, that would be a sight to see. That's the spirit. Fuck pearl clutching, war's fucking beautiful. >I wouldn't be surprised if some operators didn't have more kills than the best snipers of old. I would. I think the war would be over too fast for anyone to rack up a serious kill count. >Most of the vehicles used anywhere close to the frontline are part of the logistics chain. true, and I think most of where you see ladas is going to be places which have already been cleared of mines, or at least where paths have been cleared, so the only benefit of an MRAP would be the shrapnel protection from artillery. I'd say the Ladas probably aren't optimal, but they're probably surprisingly close to an MRAP in terms of survivability, given their speed and the fact that the driver and passengers can bail extremely fast from a convertible. Welding on a little extra metal as shrapnel protection would close the gap even further. > Attrition takes its toll. I don't think that it's a sign of attrition, I don't think Russian equipment losses have been substantial enough to make a major dent in their warfighting capacity. >That does however beg the question why that is the case and why troops have to buy and pimp their own cars or rely on volunteers to do that for them. Motorized rifle units probably aren't given MRAPs, and the big Ural trucks they were probably expected to use as transport before the war are too dangerous to use near the front lines. Bureaucracy moves at a snails pace compared to the speed at which things change on the front line, so getting more MRAPs ordered and then assigned to them would take far longer than just coming up with a solution themselves. >Not exactly There have been multiple instances where you said something about a relative paucity of Russian footage and were demonstrated to be wrong, so please forgive me for being skeptical of claims you make about how much certain things appear. >Lada isn't famous for producing motorcycles. I've gotten used to ladas and motorcycles being mentioned in the same sentence. They serve different roles and I suspect that they are both adaptations to wartime circumstances rather than a symptom of desperation due to attrition. >according to those who used both electric bikes are superior to ICE ones I'm not surprised. There are a lot of advantages to the electric bikes, and the advantages of gas powered bikes aren't really going to come up much in the situations they are used in. >everything ~10km around the line of contact is a hot zone these days I think that for areas beyond 1-2km from the line of contact the modified Ladas aren't much worse than an MRAP. Especially if you're driving between islands of electronic warfare coverage. > the idea of putting fuel tanks into the same rear doors that troops are supposed to disembark through because it is assumed that the enemy will always be in front of the BMP and won't be able to score a hit from behind has... not aged well. They're supposed to drain the fuel from the door tanks and replace it with sand or dirt if they are expecting combat. It's not as good as proper armor, but it'll stop rifle rounds and shrapnel. >whenever I look at Russians hitting Ukrainian vehicles, a much higher percentage of targets are MRAPs Russia and Ukraine don't have identical things to worry about. Russia has to worry more about suicide drones, while Ukraine has to worry more about artillery. Russia likes to use artillery to just keep up pressure on supply lines and stuff, so shrapnel protection anywhere near the front is pretty much mandatory. Meanwhile Ukraine tends to use more precision stuff, so an MRAP isn't going to survive much better than a Lada, in fact in some ways it's worse, since splitting a squad between a couple Ladas makes each one a less appealing target for a precision weapon.
>>15231 >"Is of very simple, Boris." >"Tatar and Chuvash conscripts are of expendable." >"Mobile garden sheds constructed atop chassis of rusted out sixty year old tank hulls are not of expendable."
>>15236 Today I found out that NAFO isn't just a misspelling of NATO that is used to make fun of the pro-Ukraine people. Turns out it's an organization and it's totally gay. It's so retarded it's got its own Kiwifarms thread. https://kiwifarms.st/threads/north-atlantic-fellas-organization-nafo.171587/
>>15238 You know you're not going to get paid for posting this stuff, right? Glavset ran out of money.
>>15239 >reee you must be a Russian shill <just ignore all the government backing for NAFO In ten years everyone will have gone back to thinking of Ukraine as being the part of Russia where all the cheap whores in Europe come from, and there is a 41% chance you will have killed yourself.
>>15241 Big Daddy Vladdy will never give you cummies, no matter how hard you simp for him. But if it's that important to you, the Russians are accepting volunteers. Just don't take any pictures of anything, or they'll shoot you as a spy, just like they did with that Antifa faggot from Austin last year who thought he was going to be a kommissar in Donbass after the war.
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>>15243 Is this you?
>>15219 >Yeah, it's silly seeing some militaries placing more orders on tanks Well, if anti-drone efforts are successful, tanks will still have a huge role on the battlefield. Maybe they'll all eventually be outfitted with radars and AA, or will all be accompanied by some dedicated unit. Even the crappy casemate panel upgrade increased the survivability somewhat. Not to mention, the more heavily armored a vehicle is, the better chance the crew has. And tactically, they could still be used in deep penetration assignments that aren't possible in Ukraine right now, but are still on the table. >>15222 >You've demonstrated in this thread that you tend not to see footage that makes Russia look good. But even if they are less common in footage, it's unlikely that those would be used for the sort of light recon that the motorcycle units are doing, and delivering troops to hot zones is likely done with BMPs or BTRs, so the MRAPs are likely just not on the front lines much right now due to the nature of the fighting having changed again. I agree with the other guy on this, there has been a drop-off of appropriate armored vehicles for troops seen in videos. Russia has from the start tried to sacrifice vehicles to save manpower, but attrition has taken a toll.
>>15245 >tactically, they could still be used in deep penetration assignments that aren't possible in Ukraine right now, but are still on the table. I think that's actually the main thing. Tanks are still useful, just not so much in Ukraine right now. I wonder if when Russia decides to really try to make a breakthrough we'll finally see T-14s. While early in the war I would have found it funnier to see T-14s be humiliated, at the point after all the shit that has been said about them being total garbage, having them actually be a major part of breaking the stalemate would be funnier. It wouldn't make them a wunderwaffe, since ultimately it the breakthrough will come from attrition depleting Ukrainian positions to the point that a breakthrough can't be stopped, but to the NAFO people who don't know anything about war except memes about Russia being incompetent, it sure would look like the T-14 was a war winning wunderwaffle. Seeing that fat Scottish fag cope would be a nice bonus. >I agree with the other guy on this, there has been a drop-off of appropriate armored vehicles for troops seen in videos. If you two are in accord I've got no real reason to doubt it then. I still don't think that it implies anything about how much is left from Soviet stockpiles. The Soviets didn't even make MRAPs. According to Wikipedia Russia didn't even start making the Tigr until 2004, and the Typhoons didn't enter service until 2014, so I don't think they ever had huge quantities of them. Also according to Wikipedos, there is an Albanian MRAP called Boku no Pico Shota. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shota_(vehicle) >Russia has from the start tried to sacrifice vehicles to save manpower, but attrition has taken a toll. I checked Oryx and the number of visually confirmed losses of MRAPs and IMVs on the Russian side aren't actually that high, only 60 MRAPs and 380 IMVs. I can't find much info on how many IMVs or MRAPs Russia has, but what I could find indicates they had about 2000 Tigrs in 2014, and around 300 Kamaz Typhoons around 2017. Even if that accounted for their whole fleet of IMVs and MRAPs, (which it definitely doesn't) it still would mean that only ~20% has been visually confirmed to be destroyed, which is unlikely to have led to the massive proliferation of Mad Max stuff we have seen. While I think MRAPs and IMVs are some of the only cases where Oryx's disclaimer about the actual losses being higher might be accurate, I don't think that's enough to account for what has been seen.
Hello my fellow ziggers, how are we feeling today?
>>15248 Hello my fellow fed, you meet your dog shooting quota for this month?
>>15249 Start of a new month means a new quota. I'll swing by your place later this month to make sure I met the numbers for May. Be sure those puppers are leashed for my safety.
>>15250 >Start of a new month means a new quota. Oh, shit, so they changed things so it actually aligns with the calendar month now? I really need to check my email more often. I probably was way under last month since I got so many around the end of March and figured I was set. Nobody has come around to yell at me yet, so I'm just going to act like nothing is wrong and hope nobody notices.
>>15244 Why on earth is it in a jar.
>>15246 >T-14 I don't think we'll see them used in mainline combat because there's too few of them and losing them to a bunch of drones would be too much of a gifted propaganda victory to the NAFO tards. >I still don't think that it implies anything about how much is left from Soviet stockpiles. I think it does though. What I meant by "appropriate" armored vehicles was APCs and IFVs. Now of course there is an argument to be made that motorcycles are better to assault treelines with and Buhankas are better to transport troops and we can't really know for certain whether it is a switch in tactics or a lack of APCs, but due to the astronomically high attrition rates for vehicles in this war, I'm guessing it's the latter. The frontline is huge after all and it's the third year of a high intensity conflict, not everyone can get what they would maybe want. And when the mechanized assaults do happen, it's a mix of what's available, no more columns of a tank or two followed by BMPs, it's more rag-tag. Speaking of rag-tag, found a pic of a Tigr shell over a buggy, as a decoy I guess.
>>15248 So this is it? The US takes what's left of Ukraine's resources after the war in return for allowing other countries to send US gear? I'm okay with it.
>>15256 >I don't think we'll see them used in mainline combat because there's too few of them and losing them to a bunch of drones would be too much of a gifted propaganda victory to the NAFO tards. I don't think we'll see them used in combat either, I'm just saying that it'd be hilarious if they did get used in combat and were highly successful. I guess they could wheel them out for a few engagements where they've cut off some Ukrainian tanks and have so much electronic warfare in the area that drones are pretty much useless. Bonus points if the tanks they decide to dunk on are Abrams. >>15256 >there is an argument to be made that motorcycles are better to assault treelines The Austrian Bundesheer certainly thinks so. I've linked this video before with different timestamps, but it keeps being relevant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv2fjrJt3LU&t=240 >the astronomically high attrition rates for vehicles in this war, I'm guessing it's the latter. Can you explain why you think the attrition rates have been astronomically high? Yes, they have taken a lot of vehicle losses, but I've explained before that I think Oryx's figures in many cases represent an upper limit on losses rather than a lower limit. Between new production and refurbishing stuff from Soviet stockpiles, I don't see why they'd be in any serious pinch for armored vehicles. >>15257 Wasn't Zelensky pointing out at some point that they get basically nothing out of it, and now they're taking the deal that gives them table scraps in exchange for everything they've got?
>>15258 >Can you explain why you think the attrition rates have been astronomically high? I did, the drop off in modern armored vehicles used in assaults is one indicator. And even if some Oryx losses may be duplicated, losing thousands of armored vehicles is an insane loss rate. This is equipment stockpiled over decades and can't be replaced on a whim. I was also talking about vehicle losses in general, both sides, all types of vehicles. There's been so many videos of burnt out wrecked vehicles, god knows how much more we don't even see. Armor, logistics, cars, all of it. >Between new production and refurbishing stuff from Soviet stockpiles, I don't see why they'd be in any serious pinch for armored vehicles. Maybe not in a pinch right now, but tank depots are running out, and the refurbished and upgraded vehicles are not a substitute for the modern production, which definitely isn't going to keep up with the losses. >Wasn't Zelensky pointing out at some point that they get basically nothing out of it, and now they're taking the deal that gives them table scraps in exchange for everything they've got? Well nobody is jumping at the opportunity to endlessly shuffle money into the black hole that is Ukraine. Sooner or later all the other US vassals will want something in exchange. Even the retarded Europeans.
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>>15269 >the drop off in modern armored vehicles used in assaults is one indicator. I've explained before that I don't think that is strong evidence for a number of reasons. Aside from the factors I've mentioned before, another thing I think it's important to keep in mind is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We may simply be seeing less of it because less are getting blown up or engaged by Ukrainians in a way that leads to them publishing footage, and footage from the Russians might be lessened because they don't have interesting footage. >modern What exactly do you mean by modern btw? I remember reading that Russia uses a system where units are tiered and the higher tiered units get more modern stuff, so if you aren't seeing much modern stuff, but they are still using a lot of older stuff, that could indicate that the higher tier units have been rotated out or they are preparing for an offensive. >even if some Oryx losses may be duplicated I think that bigger problems are that both sides probably engage in systematic misattribution of destroyed equipment and that Oryx seems to regularly declare things to be destroyed when it's impossible to tell what the actual extent of the damage was, as an example I attached two pictures of T-55as, one Oryx has listed as destroyed, the other as damaged, try to guess which is which without checking. If a piece of their own equipment is destroyed and they think they can get away with claiming it belonged to the enemy, they're going to, possibly repeatedly (they being both sides of the conflict). They may also attempt to claim that whatever was destroyed is more impressive than it actually is, like using editing to make it seem like a destroyed T-72 is actually a T-90M. Any tank that is listed as captured is probably also listed as destroyed or damaged, possibly more than once. Both sides probably have intel units just dedicated to fabricating evidence of enemy losses. > losing thousands of armored vehicles is an insane loss rate. I don't think either reason you gave points exclusively at the conclusion that Russian equipment losses have been severe enough to impede operations. There are too many other possible explanations for the available evidence to make hard conclusions. >tank depots are running out Are they? I thought Russia had like 18 thousand tanks in storage when the war started, mostly pretty old ones that would take a long time to get working again and upgraded to at least somewhat modern standards. If you have some evidence that the depots are running out I'd be interested to see it. All I could find was an article from a Ukraine aligned newspaper that claimed that one of Russia's depots had been depleted by 40% back in 2023. >The refurbished and upgraded vehicles are not a substitute for the modern production According to this video they did seem to be producing T-90Ms faster than they were losing them back in July of 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QshWvoWqrRU I am guessing they have ramped up production since then, since that was less than a year after the war had started. So the modern tanks in their inventory are likely staying at a stable proportion of their overall tank fleet. >which definitely isn't going to keep up with the losses. I think it's keeping up well enough that their Soviet stockpiles aren't going to get depleted anytime soon. It's really difficult to get accurate information about the actual production figures, with Ukrainian aligned sources claiming they've produced less than 300 new tanks since the start of the war (I remember the NAFO people back on 4/k/ were saying they weren't producing any at all), while Russia aligned sources say thousands per year. My gut says that the claims that they're producing about 200 to 300 per year are correct, but that's mostly because it feels like a reasonable middle ground than a careful analysis of the data.
>>15273 As an addendum to this post, I have found a reasonably objective seeming analysis of Russian armored production from the German Kiel Institute for World Economy. It starts on page 20 of this PDF.
>>15273 >absence of evidence is not evidence of absence Rumsfeld in the house. Sure, we can't say for certain, it's just a bunch of indicators that show the background. >What exactly do you mean by modern btw? I remember reading that Russia uses a system where units are tiered and the higher tiered units get more modern stuff, so if you aren't seeing much modern stuff, but they are still using a lot of older stuff, that could indicate that the higher tier units have been rotated out or they are preparing for an offensive. I know "modern" is a relative term, but stuff like the BTR-82, BMP-3, T-72B3 (2016), etc. The tiered system is a peace-time thing, the Moscow garrison gets the newest things first, while the far East gets stuff last, the war-time order of things is you get stuff as it comes. Russia is using the full complement of its professional military, the only tier left out are the conscripts and reserves (minus the ones called up). Remember, effectively half of the people in service are out of rotation at any given time for r&r, reforming and reserve. > I attached two pictures of T-55as, one Oryx has listed as destroyed, the other as damaged, try to guess which is which without checking. Naturally the burnt one is destroyed. When the vehicle burns down, it's scrap metal, even if the shell still looks okay at first glance. Yes, some may be duplicated, some may be misidentified, some may be lies, but it's still a minority in the huge loss numbers. >If you have some evidence that the depots are running out I'd be interested to see it. Covert Cabal on youtube does periodic counts of satellite image numbers and he has a good track record of being a neutral observer, again a youtuber is a better analyst than the fake analysts at ISW. It's not perfect, but still. >According to this video they did seem to be producing T-90Ms faster than they were losing them back in July of 2023. The caveat being that the T-90M makes up an overall small number of tanks used and therefore obviously has fewer losses. >It's really difficult to get accurate information about the actual production figures Yeah, they stopped giving precise production figures when the whole thing started, though they released some, I'll try to look into it for the next post.
>>15275 >Rumsfeld in the house. The guy was a scumbag, but he was an intelligent scumbag. That's probably why he got along so poorly with Kissinger, who was just a scumbag. >Sure, we can't say for certain, it's just a bunch of indicators that show the background. I used to agree with this, but I no longer believe that to be the case. I no longer think that based upon what I know I can confidently say that Russian losses have even been greater than Ukrainian losses. I'm not saying that they aren't greater, just that I do not believe I can compellingly make that case. It's important to realize that we are coming into this with some prior assumptions, and back on 4/k/ we both had the idea that Russian losses are higher than Ukrainian losses repeated to us for so long that it was treated as just being fact. >I know "modern" is a relative term, but stuff like the BTR-82, BMP-3, T-72B3 (2016), etc. Thx for clarifying. Are the overall quantities of armor being seen going down over all or is it just proportionally less modern stuff? Also what sort of things are being used in place of modern stuff? Like those T-72Bs with Kontakt-5 and 2nd generation thermals are modern enough that I don't think the difference between them and a T-72B3 is enough to make the difference in most engagements. Similarly in most engagements a modernized BMP-2 or BTR-70 even modernized BTR-60s wouldn't represent a major downgrade. >The tiered system is a peace-time thing That's interesting. I would have thought that they would make sure to have better equipped units to make breakthroughs and respond to enemy offensives. >Russia is using the full complement of its professional military yes, but raw recruits aren't going to be the same as units composed primarily of veterans, I'd think that when they rotate units out they would merge units that had seen a lot of action and provide them with additional training and equipment. >Naturally the burnt one is destroyed I don't know enough to know if the external fuel tanks catching fire would look the same as the tank actually burning internally, or that any number of other factors might make it look like it was burned when it in fact the damage is only superficial, like the smoke launchers being hit and coating the tank in phosphorous. My point is just that damage assessment is hard, and even in the things right at the top of the list there are ones where it can be hard to tell, so it's not like the problem is just limited to a few of the hundreds of claimed T-72s. >Yes, some may be duplicated, some may be misidentified, some may be lies, I actually think misattribution is the single largest source of error. There is pretty much never any way to verify which side a piece of destroyed equipment belonged to, and Russia is advancing slowly enough that most destroyed equipment will be behind Ukrainian lines for a decent amount of time. So I think that most Ukrainian equipment that gets destroyed ends up with Ukrainians taking pictures of it and sending them to Oryx and claiming it was Russian, and that Oryx has no way of verifying if that's true or not. Given Oryx's pro Ukrainian bias he is also going to be more likely to believe Ukraine's claims when there is a dispute. I'm not saying Oryx is secretly a CIA propaganda outlet, but I am saying that Oryx is a blog made by like 2 guys, and the people trying to deceive them are entire nation state intel agencies. >it's still a minority in the huge loss numbers. I don't actually think that there is any reason to believe it's a minority. The NAFO thing proves that western governments are trying co opt OSINT as an avenue for propaganda, so a major OSINT source which already has a pro-Ukrainian bias but is viewed as trustworthy would be a prime target for subversion. I don't know if any significant efforts have been made to analyze how accurate Oryx is, but if someone did the NAFO people and the intelligence agencies that back them would likely quickly work to suppress and discredit any analysis that did not line up with their claims. Continued public support for funding and arming Ukraine relies on the perception that Ukraine has any chance of winning, which in turn relies on the idea that they are inflicting disproportionate losses on the Russians. Most of the factors what would normally lead to one side inflicting disproportionate losses on the other favor the Russians rather than the Ukrainians, since they have fire superiority, air superiority, numerical superiority, more and generally better armor, higher quality recruits who receive more training, and generally superior equipment. Until recently I was under the impression that Russia was indeed taking larger losses than the Ukrainians, but I have come to realize that was largely rooted in preconceptions that I can't substantiate with evidence. >Covert Cabal on youtube I'll check it out. My list of things I'm trying to do to catch up on the war keeps growing, so it'll probably be a while before I can actually get to it. >The caveat being that the T-90M makes up an overall small number of tanks used and therefore obviously has fewer losses. True, and T-90 production is probably the one with the largest proportion being new production instead of refurbishment (aside from T-14 production if that is actually happening, since they have no mothballed T-14s) >they stopped giving precise production figures when the whole thing started check out that PDF I attached to the post above yours. I'm interested in finding out what you think of their methodology and conclusions.
>>15257 >The US takes what's left of Ukraine's resources after the war anon, that's not what the deal is at all. See: >https://web.archive.org/web/20250302200431/https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25545394/read-the-draft-text-obtained-by-cnn-on-wednesday-morning.pdf Ukes still own all the resources, they're just required to pay half of the revenues from licensing agreements and etc. into the fund, which itself is supposed to invest into relevant infrastructure and development projects. It amounts to making oil and minerals as cheap as possible, something both the US and the Ukes benefit from.
>>15277 >that's not what the deal is at all <it's actually even worse >Ukes still own all the resources <which means they still have to pay for all the extraction themselves >they're just required to pay half of the revenues from licensing agreements and etc. into the fund <which has sole discretion as to whether they will reimburse any costs from extraction >which itself is supposed to invest into relevant infrastructure and development projects <which is to say, given to Halliburton >It amounts to making oil and minerals as cheap as possible <for whichever megacorporations the current administration has stocks in >something both the US and the Ukes benefit from. <Their politicians and oligarchs that is, obviously not the ordinary people. The funniest part will be if this bit eventually gets used against Ukraine after a peace deal inevitably includes limitations on the Ukrainian military: >The Fund Agreement will pay particular attention to the control mechanisms that make it impossible to weaken, violate or circumvent sanctions and other restrictive measures.
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>>15231 >searxng Seems promising, going to give it a try at one point, cheers. Gave up on duckduckgo after discovering they also filter search results in adherence to their own """values""", a few years ago. The way I search for valuable information these days is sift through the mainstream search engines' output until discovering a worthwhile website, then limit the search to that and go into specifics. These websites tend to be forums which again proves how solid their concept is and how much we're losing without them, it's rather disheartening. > companies like Google had all the actual talent leave more than a decade ago. True, most of these large companies seem to have been stagnant for a while, at least as far as actual user experience and not shareholder value is concerned (cannot attest to the latter). >enshittification Heard this term a while ago once, it didn't ring as true as it did today (well, 6 days ago, was indisposed until now). Ah well, can't do anything about it other than not support the services that turn for the worse and look for newer, better, alternatives. >Moralfags are the greatest cancer upon the internet. Everything is definitely overmoderated and oversensitive these days, of course. I mean, there's got to be some limits to what one should be able to get away with before encountering some kind of restrictions (and even this board has rules), but things like that should be agreed upon by the society itself, not administered by private companies which are supposed to provide services, not setting moral trends on a global scale as they see fit. Even then, the state, which is supposed to be the reflection of the will of its constituent citizens, often errs — a gun enthusiast should be well aware of that, obviously, seeing how I'm not sure there's a single noteworthy country that has had its gun laws relaxed in a meaningful manner lately. Somehow, firearm ownership used to be way more lax yet the amount of violence was lower. But no one cares, of course, because oh look, another celebrity couple is breaking up or whatever makes (or rather is made) headlines these days. >It depends on a lot of factors, like if you don't currently have any tanks then it's probably a good idea to acquire at least a few. Had the relevant articles open before getting interrupted but iirc the country in question was the Netherlands. They ordered a few dozen latest Leos, for a hefty sum. I'm not aware of them investing into small suicide drones but imo if their aim is to increase combat readiness they would've done better by ordering a couple tanks less and investing the freed up funds into outfitting an experimental unit with quads. Tanks do look more imposing on paper and parades though. In a hypothetical scenario, without adding too many variables e.g. terrain, weather conditions, EW capabilities of both sides involved etc, if I were holed up in a dugout and my options of fire support was a shiny new Leo2a8 with a trained crew or a trained drone team with a comparable payload, I'd rather trust the drones. Of course, having both options for more specific conditions is preferable however. >Attack helicopters are no longer considered fires elements in modern US doctrine, and that probably applies to Russian doctrine as well. Haven't kept up with what Americans are up to these days, but being an aviation enthusiast I've paid attention to how the Russians have been using theirs. Here are some observations. Currently: —Mi-24/35 are just mini-grads that fire unguided rockets at the general area where the targets are, do 360 and fly away. —Ka-52 and Mi-28 are often used for the same task but tend to also put an ATGM pack on one of the pylons just in case (exploiting the blind spot in NATO anti-air loadout). On special occasions a heavy TV-guided missiles is used, again, from the safety of the rear. On such missions attack helicopters are always accompanied by a SAR Mi-8 in case their friends need a ride home. —All 3 are also sometimes put on anti-air tasks, shooting down long-range drones with cannons or iglas. IIrc they were also used vs naval drones a few times but I may have dreamt that up. Mi-8 definitely have been though. I reckon that still pegs them as fire support elements, at least currently. Russia did try using helicopters to pave way for land units in the opening days of the war and it did not work at all, for many reasons: —A lot of this can be attributed to the ineptitude of the military, communication issues, inability to apply the concept of combined arms in practice. —Some can be attributed to poor instruments. E.g. Apache visors are way more informative and its autocannon is not only actually useful but can also be aimed by simply looking at the area that needs lighting up. This would've been huge. —Facing an enemy that was thoroughly saturated with anti-air weapons also played a huge role. BKO unironically works wonders vs heat-seeking missiles and helicopter crews swear by it but probability of 1 is non-existent irl anyway. I honestly don't think other helicopters would've fared much better there. For it to succeed, the opponent has no be ill-equipped, demoralized, disorganized — or the attacker has to be willing to accept heavy airframe and crew losses as the price for success. Americans lost over 5000 helicopters in Vietnam, they could take these losses. But aircraft are considerably more expensive and complex, making pilots much more valuable as well. If one such campaign would've decided the end of the war these would've been acceptable losses, but by early spring of '22 they realized this is unsustainable, so they play it safe. But similar tasks could be delegated to a recon+ucav drone combo. Current biggest threat to Russian attack helicopters? Barring long range missles (vs parked aircraft) — drones again. Near zero success rate but near infinite attempts. Pilots now bring drone detectors with them to get some forewarning. >v=t1E6FXHQhDQ Okay, this video does a good job explaining what NATO (or rather the Americans) want their helicopters to do, alright. It also mentions the sale of tanks to Netherlands I'd written about earlier. I'm however not convinced that the same goal as he describes can't be accomplished with drones, without endangering the lives of pilots or providing opportunities to score a PR victory by parading them as prisoners afterwards. NATO-trained NATO-equipped units being stopped cold two summers ago with German officers suggesting driving around the mines and UK intelligence blaming bushes, should've been one's clue that maybe NATO as a brand isn't what it used to be. The speaker would've done better to refer to the equipment and tactics as US/American instead, as they still have some notoriety, unlike the rest of the alliance. >no emissions from Apaches Yeah aside from the audible noise, heat signatures, longbow radar, data exchange between the individual aircraft. Totally inconspicuous by the patrolling air assets either. >544 (?) round trip Subtract 50km as that's the minimal (!) distance for a helicopter to be parked away from the frontline, then divide by 2 and that's the distance a UCAV would have to fly to accomplish the same task because it doesn't necessarily need to get back and that's definitely accomplishable by drones if not now then soon. Lancets have flown 70ish kilometers in. They have also struck modern NATO anti-air systems. Ukrainians are already experimenting with mothership drones that get the smaller ones past the frontline and then act as relays for smaller suicide drones they carry. >getting through under the cover of artillery Doesn't affect recon drone crews, they're snug as bugs in their dugouts. Some antennas may be knocked out but the current frontline is what, 3500 kilometers long? And still has uninterrupted feeds from multiple drones at a time on all but the quietest parts of the frontline. If anything, a barrage would mean it's time to get more birds in the air. How would one go about sneaking a dozen helicopters past that? They'd need half an hour to get to their target AO at which point everyone anywhere important will have been roused and on the lookout. Ukrainians again set an example of how air defence can be organized without having air superiority. They employ a network of listening (not just radar, but all the way down to men with binoculars) posts, mobile fire groups, active air defence systems, air defence systems in standby etc etc, all interlinked using both military and civilian infrastructure for redundancy. Most of the assets are only activated when they have an opportunity to shoot the target down, reducing the effectiveness of SEAD. >airforce with NATO-level capability This is again a very presumptious statement considering that early into the war, when everyone was already on high alert, drones and AWACS licking the borders 24/7, a 40 year old Soviet drone/missile launched by Ukraine flew through half of Europe and landed next to Croatian capital with no one being the wiser. Using multimillion dollar jets to chase disposable drones also doesn't seem economically viable — unless when the enemy has an order or two of magnitude smaller bugdet/production capability, which is par for the course for NATO — so I guess this is argument doesn't count, but judging by the videos where Ukrainian F-16s have to basically tail missiles/shaheds these older radars don't really work that well vs something that small. Drone defence sounds like a decent enough task to earn some experience for their pilots but drone intercept rates seem to be at their lowest lately. I wonder how they'd fair were they to have 10 times the jets (newer ones too) and the pilots. Since I mentioned pilots, I may as well again repeat how valuable they are and how long it takes to train them. You don't need anything of the sort for drones. Economic aspect of war shouldn't be neglected. Unless you've an infinite budget, of course. And even then you have to have manpower reserves for when/if the war goes hot because even if a war breaks out and you can crank out a hundred Apaches a month, for the first few years you'd have to rely on retired pilots to crew those.
[Expand Post]>super effective backline raid All of this hinges on the assumption that the target won't have any air defence in place because these are apparently only present along the frontline. Which is precisely the lesson everyone that's been paying attention is supposed to be taken notes on (thanks to the drones mentioned in the video) and investing into . >emissions Satellite communications, high-directivity antennas aimed straight up. >no lag Having seen what commercially available starlinks can do, the lag is negligible. I'd imagine a drone pilot would not be as stressed as someone constantly one lucky piece of schrapnel away from death however. >no jam/signal loss Laser guidance on Hellfires (or other missiles used by other helicopters) relies on the target being in line of sight, not obscured by terrain or smoke.
Overall imo this man is committing the popular fallacy of preparing for the previous war, whereas in reality rules have shifted already. Unless the aim is to curbstomp sandpeople again instead of anything near-peer and prepared. As a devil's advocate though, if a military has the budget and the willpower for it, sure, why not? Besides what if you have helicopters and crews but none of the drones yet? Anecdotally, back in 2023 a PMC made out of retired pilots was being in the works in Russia. The project got canned following Prigozhin's mutiny and now we know that their objectives would likely be similar to what this gentleman describes, i.e. daring raids far beyond the frontline. Why Ru MoD won't do it themselves is beyond me, probably because their higher-ups are afraid of the responsibility and the whole apparatus is too rigid to allow it anyway. But the notion was there so someone must've seen the merit in something like that. However that was 2 years ago, drones are a rapidly developing field. Besides Russians are more likely to approve and partake in suicidal missions, I wouldn't expect such readiness from NATO pilots. Then again, they do have a larger pool to select from. I'd not call attack helicopters dead or obsolete either, just shift the focus away from them somewhat. Were something to change, some kind of technological breakthrough to render drones useless or to empower crewed aircraft, it would be great to have the production lines, pilots, educational facilities ready. Restarting is much more difficult. >I suspect that tanks and IFVs will have a specialized drone that is used to dogfight and shoot down other drones before they come in range, perhaps even a whole ecosystem of drones designed to protect armored systems will emerge, like fighters, interceptors, AEW&C drones, EWAR drones. Ideally yes. Can see bigger players like USA and China investing into something like that. Countries with smaller military budgets probably can't (though ironically it's more economically viable for them; it's just a large upfront investment that one can't always justify). Then we have militaries that tend to compensate their technological, supply and infrastructural shortcomings with the sheer amount of troops or munitions. Quantity is a quality of its own. It just lacks the finesse. As tired of the drones as I am, outfitting everything with purpose-built drones is currently the smarter way of going about things. Conversely, seen a drone manufacturer hypothesize equipping vehicles with an active protection system updated to account for the slower flying drones that would be rigged to a 12ga gatling. One way or another this sort of thing would be better off automated. >That's the spirit. Fuck pearl clutching, war's fucking beautiful. Yes, I reckon this is one of the prerequisite for being here in the first place. Pic somewhat related (unless I forget to attach any). >I would. I think the war would be over too fast for anyone to rack up a serious kill count. Meant this ongoing war, not a hypothetical CIS afterparty (given their current states, that one would indeed be over quick). It is estimated that circa 80% of casualties are caused by drone strikes. Those drone operators do maybe 10 sorties a day. Even if, on average, only 1 in 5 drones hits something, that's still 2 hits a day. If the hit results in a WIA instead of KIA, that's even better because now the wounded must be evacuated which is like a bonus round. Many, if not most, operators get deeply invested in the job and work overtime. They know the capabilities, weak and strong points of drones, keep track of their counterparts' models, know how to conceal themselves. It is somewhat safe to say they're less likely to be killed or wounded than, say, whoever brings them supplies. The war has been going for over 1000 days. Even at 1 kill a day someone must've racked over a thousand killed. > I think most of where you see ladas is going to be places which have already been cleared of mines, or at least where paths have been cleared Kind of, yes, a couple of years ago this would've constituted a "rear", but these days drones are often used for remote mining as well, with anything from concealed anti-personnel mines to the heavy anti-tank ones that baba yagas plant at night. >benefit of an MRAP would be the shrapnel protection from artillery Depending on what an incoming drone may be loaded with, it could mitigate the damage from that too. I haven't seen any comparative experiments but expect there to be more sharp objects flying across the interior of an unarmored vehicle if it gets struck by a drone with any kind of payload. Probably even when hit with a shaped charge? Not sure. Think wooden splinter wounds from cannonballs hitting ships in the age of sail. >driver and passengers can bail extremely fast from a convertible. True, this seems to be the MO for unarmored vehicles from both sides in general. Visibility is also better. >Welding on a little extra metal as shrapnel protection would close the gap even further. For sure. Seen vids of them doing that, too. The armor is on the inside and doesn't stand out as much as all the exterior modifications. >I don't think that it's a sign of attrition, What would be a sign of one then? Using electric scooters? Donkeys? Camels? We've seen it all by now. There has been a shortage of equipment since the first days and it's not getting better because the industry can't keep up. Most of the civilian-tier vehicles we see in the vids are purchased by volunteers or by the servicemen themselves. Without those the logistics would've been completely dead (or the government would've had to finally step in and start requisitioning or buying these from civilians at the expense of something else). MoD doesn't provide nearly enough. Moreover, now and then they try to instill order into this whole mess and force servicemen to register the donated vehicles (which involves abandoning one's post (after getting the permission), lots of travel and paperwork, all for an expendable old car) and confiscate whatever's not registered. >I don't think Russian equipment losses have been substantial enough to make a major dent in their warfighting capacity. Eh, logistics/evac are barely hanging on, but in their excuse no one could really the predict the severity of pressure drones would exert on that part of the system. Tanks/armor have taken a major beating but factories are churning out fresh stuff and crews are much more experienced now so it sort of evens out. Besides the current role of tanks is such that they're not even in such large numbers anymore. Infantry is now in better shape than before due to the accumulated experience and better personal gear. This comes at a cost of losing god knows how many soldiers so the total available manpower is down but it's not like there's a war requiring total mobilization on the horizon (...or is there?). Black sea fleet has been bullied into a corner but it's the weakest and least useful of the 4 anyway. I haven't been keeping track but wouldn't be surprised if in the past 3 years the combined tonnage of the of the Navy has increased due to new ships getting commissioned. The Airforce is at its strongest in ages, assuming the wear hasn't gotten to the older airframes yet (most notably, there's currently no way to make more Mig-31s). The losses have been minimal, the experience gain substantial. Missile stockpiles are depleted but boy has the production increased to keep up. Factories are working around the clock and the pay, for once, is quite good. So yeah, technically, if we overlook the war weariness and the struggling economy the armed forces' overall capability hasn't gone down. It' just comes at a price, paid in blood and strained homefront. Again the logistics are the weakest point still and is where attrition is the most noticeable, but volunteers pay for much more than just frontline Ladas. I've seen VDV fundraise for rubber boats, technicians being donated power tools and socket wrench sets (these are actually among the most requested things it seems). Drone detectors, radios and drones themselves are also crowdfunded. Drones are being issued now as well (as in, dji mavics being given to infantry units, not specialized drone recon ones), but last I heard the bureaucracy involved with upkeeping one made the idea questionable. Oh I'm diverging here but smartphones and tablets are supposed to be banned, but obviously troops rely on those. You can see a smartphone on almost every piece of cockpit footage featuring, say, Su-25. Why? Because internal navigation is unwieldy, uninformative and just won't do for the tasks given. So everyone just brings a phone with an app written by a retired pilot (!) in his free time (!), for free (!), that helps them plot and plan courses, make complex calculations fast and keep track of where they are. Last I heard, the developer's contribution still hasn't been officially acknowledged. In contrast to that, on my other PC I have a file with radio chatter I've recorded using some websdr, during one of the opening days of the war, where one of the Russian vehicles was asking for directions, in the open, because they were hopelessly lost. They described a road sign pointing towards a gas station with a toilet. No one knew where they were. I wonder what happened to them. >Motorized rifle units probably aren't given MRAPs That's the problem, hardly anyone is. Spetsnaz units tend to get better stuff, others make do. That doesn't mean that normies aren't exposed to the same weapons and couldn't use more protection. It is a known problem which is why if you head to Russian TG channels and look at posts showcasing mraps being (homemade or trophy) paraded you'll see people, often channel owners themselves calling for them to be delivered to the frontline where infantry is struggling without them. > the big Ural trucks they were probably expected to use as transport before the war are too dangerous to use near the front lines. Definitely. >Bureaucracy moves at a snails pace compared to the speed at which things change on the front line, so getting more MRAPs ordered and then assigned to them would take far longer than just coming up with a solution themselves. Where there's a will, there is a way. Unfortunately, in this war, most of this will is concentrated among the men doing the fighting and their families and friends, not among those who make decisions. MRAPs were rare even before the war for reasons that should be all too obvious and procurement isn't as simple as a unit commander placing a requisition order and waiting for a bit. So yeah, the reality is that for the majority of units the only way to keep up with the losses is fundraising.
>you said something about a relative paucity of Russian footage and were demonstrated to be wrong, You mean the part where the amount of footage featuring Lancet hits dropped to a 2-year low last month? What about it is wrong though? >were demonstrated By whom, anyway? >so please forgive me for being skeptical of claims you make about how much certain things appear Oh it's no problem, feel free to ask for sources on anything, I'll do my best to oblige. A lot of it comes from listening to interviews with active duty servicemen though and these tend to be quite long and numerous so I may not always be able to find the correct video and a timestamp. For example, yesterday I watched an interview with an infantryman from Somali battalion who's been through Mariupol, among other places. He did mention the ubiquitous "problems with cars", Moskvich 412 having a surprisingly decent offroad performance, referred to cars turned into expendable convertibles as "jihads" (though I suppose this has less to do with the passenger safety and has probably carried over from the early DPR militia jargon). He also asked the civilian viewers to donate smoothbores, or for the government to facilitate something of the sort, because there's not nearly enough of those available to the troops. Lastly, he lamented not having nearly enough delivery drones to alleviate the need to conduct supply runs in land vehicles, endangering their crews. Oh and he did mention that Ukrainian baba yagas now carry up to 4 AT mines at a time. More or less what I've been talking about really. >they are both adaptations to wartime circumstances Definitely. However attrition and supply shortage are technically constituent parts of wartime circumstances. Motorcycles and ATVs definitely have their use even . Without accounting for economical aspects and industrial capabilities however there is zero excuse to send a paper bukhanka instead of a MRAP however. >for areas beyond 1-2km from the line of contact the modified Ladas aren't much worse than an MRAP. Drones fly much further than that. Ergo this again boils down to whether: —a passenger's chances of surviving an fpv hit or running over a drone-planted AT mine in a Lada are "much worse" than in a MRAP (the latter part should also take into account the visibility from either as better visibility increases the likelihood of noticing it in time and avoiding it entirely). Personally, I'd rather take my chances in a MRAP, or at least have such an option. Honestly cba to look up testimonies of those who actually have to use Ladas to corroborate something that seems so obvious to me but if I stumble upon something of the sort again later and remember about this thread I'll link to it. Also, as if to further support my mention of 10km being the drone zone, a couple of days ago a Himars was destroyed by a simple suicide drone. Frankly, I haven't personally confirmed the veracity of the coordinates provided by OSINT groups but if they are correct then the distance from those to the forward Russian position are... circa 10km. >Especially if you're driving between islands of electronic warfare coverage. Depends on the drone, of course. Not only fiber optic ones are unaffected by EW, the radio-controlled ones are adaptable. Transceiver and antenna modules (on decent models anyway) are swappable, programmable. When drones start losing signal in an area, they adjust those on the ones they send next. Theoretically it's definitely possible to adjust the jammer on the fly as well but this goes beyond the scope of a "push the button and go" models they issue to grunts. Which reminds me, another recent anecdote — on one part of the front MPs have been ordered to waive off any approaching vehicles not equipped with EW modules, but there's not enough of those to go around yet while the logistics have to be maintained so the troops make EW module mockups to please the MP. So it goes. >They're supposed to drain the fuel from the door tanks and replace it with sand or dirt if they are expecting combat. I rest my case. In the 70s, you knew when to expect combat. Today, combat will find you dozens kilometers in the rear, you put yourself at risk any time you drive into the open. Besides, are you certain that filling those tanks with sand is what "they're supposed" to do, as opposed to what "the actual crews operating these vehicles have come up with to mitigate such a glaring flaw"? A quick search through a rather thorough bmp manual intended for a mechanized squad commander (https://ebooks.grsu.by/takt_i_tech_podg/tema-2-obshchee-ustrojstvo-bmp-2.htm) goes into detail how these tanks are connected and drained, but makes no mention of doing anything you described. In fact, considering that the only orifices in those tanks are intended for refueling and draining, how do you stuff these tanks with dirt (have you seen the soil of Eastern Europe?) and how do you clean it, or fuel-drenched sticky sand, out afterwards? BMPs are known to be less than ideal when it comes to crew comfort and safety, that shouldn't be a controversial topic at all. We don't see infantry riding on top of Bradleys, M113s or any sort of mrap nearly as often as they do on BMPs and BTRs, as opposed to staying inside, do we? Web search isn't what it used to be and a lot of websites some sources refer to are now gone but the only mention of using sand or water state that this is something the troops themselves came up with during Afghan war (which stands to perfect reason). It's also something I've heard about external fuel tanks on mbts. >Russia and Ukraine don't have identical things to worry about. Russia has to worry more about suicide drones, while Ukraine has to worry more about artillery Technically true, though to remove the ambiguity here Ukraine still has to worry about drones more than about artillery, just less so than Russia does. Most casualties are still caused by drones. Unguided artillery doesn't scare infantry anymore nearly as much as it used to. There's still TOS which are spooky, but the range of those puts them into the reach of drones and accuracy at max range is questionable at most. No, what's more likely is that Ukraine just has more MRAPs at its disposal and plenty more coming. They have received thousands of those. At least 700ish Kirpis, 450ish maxxpros, the list goes on. The West has plenty of those to go around and has been generously donating them. Now, how many Tigrs are being produced and why we don't see them as often as one would've wished is a reasonable question. The only answer that doesn't make Russia look bad is "stockpiling for the eventual mobile warfare phase". On a related note, Samara May 9 parade will be featuring Chekan MRAPs (a model commissioned by/for Wagner and used in Africa), so there's that too. On another related note, the bigger mystery of SMO is where have all the Shilkas gone. They would've made a decent counter to the low and slow cessna drones striking oil refineries and the like but have been completely absent. Surely a few could've been restored out of cannibalized parts and boomers who remember how to operate those unnecessarily perplexing controls could be scrounged up. >splitting a squad between a couple Ladas makes each one a less appealing target for a precision weapon. Ukraine has enough drones to toy with individual soldiers for tiktok clout, they can afford spending an extra one on the second Lada. Again I'm not saying that MRAPs do much better vs drone strikes (but would again point out that they should much better vs drone-dropped AT mines), just that the advantages of using 50 year old civilian car models in their stead are circumstantial at most. The message length limit is 12000 characters, not too shabby & good to know, but hopefully won't come up again.
>>15276 >I no longer think that based upon what I know I can confidently say that Russian losses have even been greater than Ukrainian losses I didn't mean to imply Russian losses were greater. Ukrainians are getting massacred, that much is certain from the latest body exchanges. I'm just saying vehicle losses have been catastrophic. >Are the overall quantities of armor being seen going down over all or is it just proportionally less modern stuff? Both I think. Though the quanitity aspect would make sense as gathering a huge force of vehicles is just asking for a HIMARS or ATACMS strike, so I don't think they lack vehicles themselves for now, but the composition of strike groups went from pretty standardized to rag-tag. As you say, in most engagements it's not THAT detrimental, since it looks like vehicles are one-way expendable taxis and long range support these days. >I would have thought that they would make sure to have better equipped units to make breakthroughs and respond to enemy offensives. Units that get slated for attack get priority in supplies and manpower before the battle, other than maybe different amounts of pull from certain commanders, I doubt they get dibs on a BMP-3 over an MT-LB. With these rates of attrition and scale of a conflict, you get what you get and be happy you even got it. >I'd think that when they rotate units out they would merge units that had seen a lot of action and provide them with additional training and equipment. I think they do the opposite, replenish veteran units with fresh troops to spread the experience around. But I can't know for sure. >I'm not saying Oryx is secretly a CIA propaganda outlet You probably wouldn't be wrong if you did, I understand your points completely. But the losses just make sense in this environment and length of the conflict as well as circumstantial evidence. >Continued public support for funding and arming Ukraine relies on the perception that Ukraine has any chance of winning, which in turn relies on the idea that they are inflicting disproportionate losses on the Russians. You are right about that of course, but it's worth pointing out that the notion Russia is going to stop is stupid. The war turned into small unit infantry tactics anyway, so even if and when Russia loses the entire stock of old Soviet gear, it's not going to change a lot in how the war is played. Russia is focused on winning the war through attrition, not fire and maneuver. >Most of the factors what would normally lead to one side inflicting disproportionate losses on the other favor the Russians rather than the Ukrainians They do and Russia plays to its strengths. Like I mentioned earlier, Russian political and military leadership was quick to realize the writing on the wall and switched strategy to trying to kill as much of the hohol troops as possible to break their resolve. >check out that PDF I attached to the post above yours. I'm interested in finding out what you think of their methodology and conclusions. A mostly sober outlook and conclusions (the Krupp plant in Germany laid off workers in 2024, so the indication is there are no major orders coming), leagues above the British MOD in projecting future developments (when Soviet stocks end, production might not slow down to the extent one might expect), so at least they're not in the butthurt crowd, though I think they're barking up the wrong tree in trying to tell Europe to arm itself for various reasons. But I don't know if basing it off how many new armies were created is a good idea, because that is all theoretical. In practise you can have understrength and underequipped formations trying to make the best of it with what they have, which is probably the case, though who knows to what extent. I found a thing that quotes official numbers and explains where the refurbished fit in to the numbers. https://tehnoomsk.ru/archives/11403 Here's a bonus, North Korean MLRS M1991 on video bedides the Gerans.
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>>15296 > Gave up on duckduckgo after discovering they also filter search results in adherence to their own """values""", a few years ago I decided to switch away from it when I found out about that too, but I put it off long enough that it got added to the massive pile of "projects" which I need to get around to "someday". Just like installing the new graphics card I got as a gift 5 years ago and switching my desktop off of Windows 7. > The way I search for valuable information these days is sift through the mainstream search engines' output until discovering a worthwhile website, then limit the search to that and go into specifics. that's a good way of doing things, my strategy of excluding high volume poor quality sources is becoming less useful due to the incredible proliferation of absolute garbage. Are you a Neal Stephenson fan by any chance? His book Fall: OR Dodge in Hell made some really interesting predictions about the future of the internet which seem to be coming true. > Ah well, can't do anything about it other than not support the services that turn for the worse and look for newer, better, alternatives. I don't agree with Cory Doctorow that government intervention will fix the problem, I think the solution is technical, "protocols not platforms" is the right way of thinking. If you can program, you can help. >things like that should be agreed upon by the society itself, not administered by private companies which are supposed to provide services, not setting moral trends on a global scale as they see fit. I think that the internet needs to become diverse enough that people can just go back to finding communities that suited their morals. So tranny suicide cults or whatever don't have to share a website with boomers who want to talk fishing rods. >Even then, the state, which is supposed to be the reflection of the will of its constituent citizens, often errs My political feelings are distinctly anarchic, although I don't really subscribe to a particular flavor of anarchism. So you'd have a much harder time convincing me that the state ever actually reflects the will of the people it subjugates. >a gun enthusiast should be well aware of that, obviously, seeing how I'm not sure there's a single noteworthy country that has had its gun laws relaxed in a meaningful manner lately. I actually have nearly zero interest in small arms. Nearly every weapon that interests me is already illegal in the US. >In a hypothetical scenario, without adding too many variables e.g. terrain, weather conditions, EW capabilities of both sides involved Nothing happens in a vacuum, so I don't see the point of imagining weapons systems operating in a vacuum except for goofs. I agree with the general idea that they should have invested in infantry drone systems though. >how the Russians have been using theirs Helicopters cannot be used as a maneuver asset in a positional war. So how the Russians have been using theirs probably doesn't reflect how their doctrine says they should use them. >Russia did try using helicopters to pave way for land units in the opening days of the war and it did not work at all I am starting to suspect that our picture of the early days of the war might be very different from what actually happened. Untangling what was really going on during the first few days of the war is going to be tricky business because that was probably the most intense period of information warfare on top of the extremely confusing situation on the ground. So I have no idea what they tried to do, much less if it worked. I don't think that Russian maneuvers in the early days of the war entirely failed, in fact they seem to have accomplished most of their primary goals in spite of things being an absolute clusterfuck. So Russian rotary wing assets probably did an okay job. >BKO unironically works wonders vs heat-seeking missiles and helicopter crews swear by it but probability of 1 is non-existent irl anyway Wasn't there a clip from a Ka-52 cockpit during the initial battle for the Hostomel airport where it evaded several MANPADS? I think I remember that it was automatically popping flares whenever it happened. >If one such campaign would've decided the end of the war these would've been acceptable losses I think that the war was not winnable through maneuver, at least not with the forces Russia had on hand at the start of the war, and once that became apparent the Russians stopped trying to fight a war of maneuver and dug in. I don't think the Russians really expected Ukraine to be dumb enough to try and beat Russia in a war of attrition, and it really should have been obvious from the start that the counteroffensives weren't going to achieve some major breakthrough. In hindsight it's really weird that Ukraine didn't do the reasonable thing and accept a peace deal with Russia that gave them control of the territory they had conquered and forced Ukraine to stay neutral, and instead decided to throw away a huge portion of their population and economy to bash their head against a wall for years on end. >NATO-trained NATO-equipped units being stopped cold two summers ago In pretty much all modern military thinking, at least in languages I can read (English and German) positional warfare is not thought of as a valid way of waging war, but instead is a problem to be overcome. When officers think of a war like the one in Ukraine, they think of the war as being in a stalemate, and that in order to win the stalemate must be broken so that they can engage in maneuver warfare. Because no thought is given to positional warfare except in the context of turning it into maneuver warfare, the perception is created in the minds of officers that no matter how well entrenched the enemy is, making a breakthrough and then winning the war is just a matter of skill. I think this sort of thinking comes from how positional warfare does not provide officers the opportunity to engage in glorious sweeping maneuvers which demonstrate their genius, and instead it relies on slow methodical work where excellence is more about carefully accountant like management of resources than heroic derring-do. This isn't to say that maneuver warfare is bad either, I think the correct approach is to fight the war in front of you rather than trying to force it into matching your conceptions of what a war should be, and that in peacetime militaries should prepare for a mix of both. >with German officers suggesting driving around the mines <ACH VY DO YOU NOT JUST GO AROUND ZE DEFENSES? IT VERKED ZO VELL IN 1940! >UK intelligence blaming bushes That sounds hilarious, I need to know more. >should've been one's clue that maybe NATO as a brand isn't what it used to be. I don't think that NATO was ever as good as they thought they were. NATO is composed of a bunch of extremely rich countries that are geographically insulated from any serious threat. Up until the 80s they basically had no hope of winning, and the change wasn't because NATO got substantially better, they just got a little better while the Soviet Union shat its pants economically. It wasn't until the Soviet Union was collapsing that NATO gained real superiority, which they demonstrated against Iraq during the Gulf War, and then promptly scrapped due to the peace dividend and the end of history. >I'm however not convinced that the same goal as he describes can't be accomplished with drones It can't. The division deep area he's describing can be dozens or hundreds of kilometers behind the line of contact. A drone would need to be satellite controlled or have a complex system of relay drones, and would consequently be too vulnerable to EW and could have their emissions detected by the enemy. Apaches are definitely sub optimal for the role, the Comanche would have filled the role far better than the Apache, but it doesn't change that drones can't really do the job at all. The real question isn't whether drones can do it, but if technology currently allows for maneuver warfare between peers at all. I think it is, but that it wouldn't look like WW2, and it'd be a very fragile state that would end the moment one side feels like they are losing and digs in. I don't think NATO militaries actually have the capability to properly dig in right now, they've gone all in on maneuver for so long that their stocks of necessary equipment like landmines are completely inadequate, and they have basically no doctrine around which to base their defenses. They don't seem to be doing anything about that problem though and are living in a fantasy land where Russia is inept and is about to collapse internally so they have nothing to worry about. >Doesn't affect recon drone crews, they're snug as bugs in their dugouts. If there are entrenched drone operators covering the whole front line, the war is already a positional war. >This is again a very presumptious statement NATO has its head so far up its ass that it's coming out of its mouth. Of course they make presumptuous statements >All of this hinges on the assumption that the target won't have any air defence in place because these are apparently only present along the frontline. While it does the usual US/NATO thing about hand waving away the enemy's air defenses and airforce, the Apaches would be too low for most theater level air defenses to see easily, and tactical air defenses move with the units and would be densest along the front line. The Apaches would be attacking poorly protected targets that wouldn't have much in the way of air defenses, and they would coordinate with the air force who would suppress air defenses they do encounter. This is all hypothetical of course, the US isn't going to pick a fight with anyone who can fight back, and if they did they would just declare victory and leave if they started taking serious casualties. >Satellite communications, high-directivity antennas aimed straight up. Every country that is a military peer with the US has anti-satellite weapons, and the near peers have electronic warfare which wouldn't be as effective but would still make drones less viable than apaches.
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>>15297 >Unless the aim is to curbstomp sandpeople again instead of anything near-peer and prepared. Mostly that. You could probably do those sorts of maneuvers against Iran, and Iran is really the only near peer threat that the US is likely to actually fight. Everyone else has nukes and saving Israel after they something absolutely batshit insane and start a war they can't win is the only reason the US government would give up on the whole global empire by engaging in a major conventional war which would render them unable to protect their other allies. >daring raids far beyond the frontline. IIRC the original idea for air assault forces in the US military was to do shit like that. Go deep behind enemy lines, hit poorly defended targets, and GTFO before they can respond in force. I think the VDV could still do it on a limited basis, but I don't think it'd benefit the war effort enough to be worth the risk. If they have identified targets they could raid, they can just hit them with an Iskander or Shahed without risking the VDV. The idea of a PMC doing it though is very cool, and it'd probably be profitable if the Russians set up prize courts and allowed them to loot, plus it'd make the Euros butthurt because they all got together and declared that privateering wasn't allowed anymore. They'd need a full air assault unit with all the fixins to make it really profitable though, since they'd need infantry to help lock down the AO and suppress air defenses with mortars and stuff, and cargo helicopters to haul the loot. Ukraine probably doesn't have anything worth stealing anymore through, so they probably abandoned the idea. >Besides Russians are more likely to approve and partake in suicidal missions, I wouldn't expect such readiness from NATO pilots. Then again, they do have a larger pool to select from. Helicopter pilots are crazy to start with, it's a prerequisite for the job. >I'd not call attack helicopters dead or obsolete either, just shift the focus away from them somewhat. I think they still could be extremely effective in support of air assault forces in conflicts that are so large that you could have an air assault unit could go a thousand miles behind enemy lines and run around blowing shit up while running off captured supplies. Like a land war in China or something. It'll never happen, but it'd be dope as fuck. Maybe in some unpredictable future scenario like the US balkanizing and then an independent Cascadia invades China. >Can see bigger players like USA and China investing into something like that. Countries with smaller military budgets probably can't (though ironically it's more economically viable for them; it's just a large upfront investment that one can't always justify). I think the US is too stagnant militarily to do something like that, and China's tank designs have never impressed me. I think smaller players are more dynamic and would be more likely to allow an innovation ecosystem that could actually do something like that. >I reckon this is one of the prerequisite for being here in the first place. Yep, that's why the NAFOs always stuck out like a sore thumb. >Meant this ongoing war oh >Many, if not most, operators get deeply invested in the job and work overtime. They know the capabilities, weak and strong points of drones, keep track of their counterparts' models, know how to conceal themselves. Well they say if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. >Depending on what an incoming drone may be loaded with, it could mitigate the damage from that too. I think that if drones were mostly encountering MRAPs they'd primarily use munitions that can destroy them. >The armor is on the inside makes sense, less total space to cover with armor like that and thus it's lighter >What would be a sign of one then? Innovation and adaptation to changing battlefield conditions. If MRAPs don't seriously improve your chances of survival, and the MOD isn't going to give you them anyway since they aren't on your TOE, then improvising something is a lot better than waiting for the MOD to give you MRAPs. >Donkeys? Camels? Hadn't heard of camels being used, but pack animals can cover terrain even ATVs can't, and aren't nearly as loud. >Most of the civilian-tier vehicles we see in the vids are purchased by volunteers or by the servicemen themselves. Given how much they make and how big their sign up bonuses are, that probably doesn't really matter to them. They're still rich by their standards. >Moreover, now and then they try to instill order into this whole mess and force servicemen to register the donated vehicles (which involves abandoning one's post (after getting the permission), lots of travel and paperwork, all for an expendable old car) and confiscate whatever's not registered. Fucking DMV sucks in Russia too? >Without those the logistics would've been completely dead Again, it seems like they adapted to meet changing needs. They didn't have enough MRAPs and IMVs for the role anyway, and the improvised vehicles can be made by the troops extremely quickly and seem to work alright. >if we overlook the war weariness and the struggling economy Somebody suggested a youtuber called willyoam in this thread a while back, and one of his videos was an interview with an economist who said the Russian economy has actually been growing and hasn't really been struggling that badly. I don't think the war has effected people on the home front enough to make them start caring. > So everyone just brings a phone with an app written by a retired pilot (!) in his free time (!), for free (!), that helps them plot and plan courses, make complex calculations fast and keep track of where they are. Last I heard, the developer's contribution still hasn't been officially acknowledged. Russia has so many skilled programmers it's insane. They tend to actually understand the underlying computer science behind what they are doing too, which leads to them doing things that Americans think are janky or bad ideas, because they aren't doing something the way you're "supposed to". >Unfortunately, in this war, most of this will is concentrated among the men doing the fighting and their families and friends, not among those who make decisions. I think the people making decisions about procurement have to make hard choices, and things that don't make a huge difference or which can be done without aren't prioritized. An Iskander that blows up an ammo dump will probably statistically protect more troops than its price in MRAPs. >procurement isn't as simple as a unit commander placing a requisition order and waiting for a bit. So yeah, the reality is that for the majority of units the only way to keep up with the losses is fundraising. I don't think it's due to losses, I don't think they had enough MRAPs and IMVs in the first place, it's not attrition, it just isn't something they ever had a lot of, and improvised ones aren't replacements for better systems that were lost, they just didn't have a suitable system before and were trying to make do with trucks or making much more limited numbers of runs using their existing supplies of MRAPs and IMVs before the improvised vehicle craze took off.
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>>15298 >By whom, anyway? I may be misremembering, and regardless the anon who posts a bunch of footage with all his posts agreed with you, so it doesn't really matter, I don't have any reason to doubt that you are correct about the amounts of footage. >Drones fly much further than that. Yeah, but I'm sure the density of drone attacks goes down as you get further from the front. The time between a recon drone spotting a Lada hauling ass to get in and out and then when the FPV drone gets there is going to be longer further from the front too, which makes the whole thing harder for the drone teams. > this again boils down to whether I don't think you should compare it between an MRAP or a modified Lada, I think you should be comparing between the modified Ladas and whatever they were using for supply runs before they started making Mad Max Ladas. I doubt they were using MRAPs for every supply run before then. >Depends on the drone, of course. Not only fiber optic ones are unaffected by EW, the radio-controlled ones are adaptable. of course, it's an ever shifting landscape, but EW protection is going to cause drones to get lost and your Lada might be out of sight before they adapt. >In the 70s, you knew when to expect combat. Right now they can just expect that they might come under fire pretty much whenever and never fill the door tanks. They aren't doing long road marches where they'd need them filled. >Besides, are you certain that filling those tanks with sand is what "they're supposed" to do In hindsight no, I'm repeating that but I have no reliable sources for it. I wonder if they actually do fill them with sand or if it's entirely a myth. >A quick search through a rather thorough bmp manual intended for a mechanized squad commander I did hear in an interview with a former Warsaw Pact tanker that in the Warsaw Pact they almost never read the manuals, and almost all training was hands on apprenticeship style stuff. It worked well for making sure even illiterate people knew how to do their jobs, but it did lead to a lot of stuff that was extremely non-standard. The BMP doors full of dirt thing might have been a bit of common knowledge that wasn't ever really official but everyone knew it. >We don't see infantry riding on top of Bradleys, M113s or any sort of mrap nearly as often as they do on BMPs and BTRs, I'm pretty sure that every western APC and IFV is a lot more comfortable to ride in. I'm sure you've seen what BMPs and BTRs look like on the inside. I wouldn't want to be cooped up in one for a long drive no matter how much safer I would be. Now imagine everyone inside has been living in field conditions and hasn't had a proper shower in months. Shrapnel is bad, but a poorly ventilated BMP full of unwashed men on a two hour drive would be a special kind of hell. Even a few minutes would be unbearable. >Unguided artillery doesn't scare infantry anymore nearly as much as it used to. That happened in WW1 too. Ever read In the Storm of Steel? It is amazing what a person can get used to. >The only answer that doesn't make Russia look bad is "stockpiling for the eventual mobile warfare phase". I think that might be a possibility, but I think that MRAPs just aren't a huge priority since the modified vehicles are almost as good. We are getting a bit sidetracked from whether Mad Max vehicles are an indicator of attrition, since I think we can both agree that they never had that many of them. I think Russia isn't producing a huge number of MRAPs, but I don't think that's a sign that they are suffering serious attrition, and I don't think it's a sign that their military industry is incapable of keeping up with demand, I just think that nobody has infinite resources, and MRAPs are a relatively low on the list of priorities. They aren't just replacing losses, they also massively expanded their army, so that's even more demand for something they never had many of. I do think Russia is preparing for another mobile warfare phase though. Ukraine's lines seem to be getting extremely weak, and this would be the time to do it. >Ukraine has enough drones to toy with individual soldiers for tiktok clout When they spot a Lada a couple kilometers behind the front it's going to take a few minutes for the FPV drone to reach it, and then the second Lada will take another drone and another few minutes. It's not like a howitzer where you can just fire it and it'll hit where you aimed it, the drones take an operator's constant attention and more targets will require more operators or more time. Also sending out drones repeatedly from the same position in quick succession would risk the position getting compromised.
>>15301 >I didn't mean to imply Russian losses were greater. Ukrainians are getting massacred, that much is certain from the latest body exchanges. I'm just saying vehicle losses have been catastrophic. I don't know if that necessarily means the Ukrainians are getting massacred, they have a much harder time collecting their dead after all. I do think the balance of the evidence indicates Ukraine is losing more men than Russia, I'm just pointing out that almost all the evidence we have has serious flaws and it takes a lot of analysis to get any real information from it. >Though the quanitity aspect would make sense as gathering a huge force of vehicles is just asking for a HIMARS or ATACMS strike Yeah, I think that the main reason they don't do armored columns anymore is that they're suicidal and aren't as effective as motorcycle scout unit working in tandem with a much smaller armored unit. I feel like people who don't get why the scouts + armor thing is so much better haven't played Wargame: Red Dragon. My friend constantly sends tank columns into places he hasn't scouted, and in the ~10 years we've been playing it together he's never beaten me when we've played against each other. He's really good against AI, but when he faces an intelligent opponent the fact that he doesn't scout before attacking totally cripples him. >the composition of strike groups went from pretty standardized to rag-tag. >in most engagements it's not THAT detrimental I still think this might be a sign that they are preparing to launch a big offensive. This is the right time for it, The ground is hard enough for mechanized warfare, Ukraine's manpower problems are reaching critical levels, Ukraine is running extremely low on the things they'd need to contain a breakthrough, and their best forces were mostly wiped out in Kursk. A major offensive some time this summer could smash straight through a weak segment of Ukraine's defenses and wrap up the whole line if they move fast. Their best stuff would make a much bigger difference in a sweeping maneuver than the daily attritional grind, so pulling it off the front and giving it to the breakthrough unit would allow them to give a breakthrough the best odds of succeeding and actually moving fast enough to avoid getting bogged down. >I think they do the opposite, replenish veteran units with fresh troops to spread the experience around. That would be smart, I just remember reading that Soviet doctrine was basically to keep units in the fight until they were heavily depleted, then merge multiple depleted units into a unit which would presumably be extremely competent due to natural selection. Russia not doing that would be wise given the (relatively) slow but constant attrition this war inflicts instead of the massive abrupt losses the Soviets were expecting. They might be doing a bit of both, who knows. >the losses just make sense in this environment and length of the conflict as well as circumstantial evidence. I don't think there is enough evidence to make confident claims other than it's definitely a lot. From our perspective a thousand would look pretty much the same as four thousand or even more. The human brain isn't really great at dealing with big numbers. I think that the evidence doesn't exclusively indicate that they have taken severe losses, but that is one possible explanation for the available evidence out of several. I favor my hypothesis that they might be preparing to conduct a major breakthrough, but I don't have any actual evidence for it, just circumstantial evidence and my gut feeling. >it's worth pointing out that the notion Russia is going to stop is stupid. Yeah, Russia isn't the AI enemy in an RTS, they're intelligent strategists who are fighting people who they are aware are also intelligent, but they also know that the Ukrainians have been drinking a lot of their own information warfare kool-aid, so pulling their best stuff from the lines and mostly using old stuff from Soviet stockpiles in preparation for a major offensive would help conceal their plans for an offensive, since Ukraine has been claiming for years that Russia is running out of everything. > The war turned into small unit infantry tactics anyway, so even if and when Russia loses the entire stock of old Soviet gear, it's not going to change a lot in how the war is played. Yeah, but since they don't really need to burn through their Soviet stockpiles to win the war, there is no reason to believe they would waste all their good stuff since they obviously don't need to. I think they'd cut the tap before they started running very low. The really outdated stuff though they probably want to use up just because they aren't going to get any use out of it at all if they wait any longer. BTR-60s and 70s are already ancient, but if they wait another 10 years for everyone to take the lessons of this war and modernize their militaries, those things are going to be like bringing a T-34 into a modern war. > Russia is focused on winning the war through attrition, not fire and maneuver. I think that at some point Ukraine is going to be so weakened that continuing to wage a war of attrition will be pointless. Then fire and maneuver would allow the Russians to wrap the whole war up quickly and stop having to keep spending so much money on it. It's not like the war is cheap. > I think they're barking up the wrong tree in trying to tell Europe to arm itself for various reasons. Yeah, I meant the parts about Russian industry, of course Europe isn't going to do shit. > I don't know if basing it off how many new armies were created is a good idea I agree, but I also think it's a novel methodology and their conclusions seemed reasonable. >In practise you can have understrength and underequipped formations trying to make the best of it with what they have, which is probably the case, though who knows to what extent. I agree with that too, I don't know how close to paper strength the new armies are, but I do think that they might be right about the production of big ticket items, and I think units are probably equipped well enough that they can at least accomplish their task. A tank unit might have T-62s or might even be a few tanks short, but it'll have tanks. >Here's a bonus, North Korean MLRS M1991 on video bedides the Gerans. dope, after reading about those in Oryx's book it made me wonder why the USSR never adopted 240mm rocket launchers like that. It just seems like a really good idea and a very cost effective way to allow you to bombard targets a lot further behind enemy lines than a 122mm rocket can reach. Neat to see them in action.
>>15302 >That sounds hilarious, I need to know more. https://x.com/DefenceHQ/status/1686977578488274944?s=20
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>>15318 A SHRUBBERY!
I've seen mentions in a few places about T-90Ms with active protection systems being deployed to Ukraine, is there any footage of them in action? Preferably footage where the active protection actually intercepts a missile, but even just being involved in combat and having it mounted would be neat to see.
>>15321 Not only T-90s, other tanks got them too, but only recently, so there is no actual combat footage yet. The video in question is a movie being filmed about Mariupol and it's supposed to represent a Ukrainian tank (hence the flag on the barrel), but whoever is the military advisor should obviously find another job.
>>15305 >I'm just pointing out that almost all the evidence we have has serious flaws and it takes a lot of analysis to get any real information from it. I agree, we can't actuallly know these things, all circumstantial. >Wargame: Red Dragon Bit of a difference here. In RD, it represented more of the combined arms aspect of warfare, as in tanks are easily seen, loud and imposing while infantry could hide better and you were supposed to use them in tandem. What is going on now is the smaller target you are, the less punishing attention you will get. Camouflage discipline is more important than ever. And gathering a bunch of armor for an attack is very noticeable. >I still think this might be a sign that they are preparing to launch a big offensive. People have been saying this since 23, but they just aren't. We saw it doesn't work, they saw it doesn't work, you acknowledge it's suicidal. The tactics have changed to small-unit actions all along the front all the time to beat down the Ukrainians to a pulp. And when that happens, the speed of advance will pick up, as we saw in the aftermath of big Ukrainian defeats like Avdeyevka and Bahmut. It literally is a battle to the last Ukrainian (willing to fight) now. >The really outdated stuff though they probably want to use up just because they aren't going to get any use out of it at all if they wait any longer The outdated stuff is also less capable and troops lose morale when they get issued ancient weapons, not to mention maintenance problems go up if you have gear that needs parts that haven't been in production for decades. >constant attrition this war inflicts instead of the massive abrupt losses Exactly why I think units aren't being merged, despite claims of entire formations being wiped out all the time, that is obviously not the case. >From our perspective a thousand would look pretty much the same as four thousand or even more Even a thousand is a huge number. That was close to the entire Russian "modern" tank stockpile before the war. Even if we were playing devil's advocate and try to minimize losses, they're still an insanely huge expenditure. I'm not saying it could have been different, I'm just saying it's a big deal. As you say, the war isn't cheap. >I think that at some point Ukraine is going to be so weakened that continuing to wage a war of attrition will be pointless. Then fire and maneuver would allow the Russians to wrap the whole war up quickly It's been pointless for a while now, but the reality is there are still going to be too many fanatics mixed in with the conscripted for a collapse of the front for a long time. Brass that disagrees or doesn't deliver has been sacked quickly as well.
>>15323 Well here's hoping we get some cool footage at some point. They really need better anti-drone systems, but getting something they'd already designed and started production on to the front was probably something they could do a lot faster. >>15324 >In RD, it represented more of the combined arms aspect of warfare, as in tanks are easily seen, loud and imposing while infantry could hide better and you were supposed to use them in tandem. There are a lot of things that factor into it, like how some units had different stealth levels than others and stuff (there are a couple countries with recon tanks that actually have okayish stealth, which is pretty funny), but my point is just that attacking with big armored/mechanized columns is a lot less efficient of a way to use armor than using a smaller proportion of armor and a lot more recon. Having more tanks who have no idea where the enemy is doesn't help, while having less tanks doesn't really hurt since if you are doing things right you shouldn't be exposing your tanks to AT weaponry anyway, so having less tanks just means they each need to fire more. >We saw it doesn't work, they saw it doesn't work, you acknowledge it's suicidal. It's suicidal against well built up defensive lines, but from what I have gathered there has actually been very little fighting along a lot of the actual Russo-Ukrainian border. I saw something about Russia taking a Ukrainian border checkpoint that they discovered was completely unguarded recently. If they launch an attack in an area where they can breach the defenses quickly they could exploit the gap they create to penetrate deeply into Ukrainian territory where any resistance they'd met could be outmaneuvered, much like the initial phase of the war. Ukraine can't really do anything at this point to respond to a reverse Kursk, and pushing deep into Ukrainian territory would allow them to cut supply lines which would cause huge sections of the Ukrainian line to collapse, and the Ukrainians wouldn't be able to just retreat to the next defensive line if the supply lines were cut far behind the front lines. >The tactics have changed to small-unit actions all along the front all the time to beat down the Ukrainians to a pulp. Ukrainian units were operating at 40% manpower in November 2024, so the Russians have already beaten them to a pulp, what they're doing now is beating the pulp into a fluid. >when that happens, the speed of advance will pick up Isn't it already speeding up? I thought they'd made some pretty decent gains in the last month or so. >It literally is a battle to the last Ukrainian (willing to fight) now. Unfortunately also a lot of the ones who aren't willing to fight too. L >The outdated stuff is also less capable and troops lose morale when they get issued ancient weapons True, but if it actually is because they are pulling back the good stuff so they can use it in a major offensive, that wouldn't matter as much since it'd be temporary and once the offensive starts morale would skyrocket if it goes well. >Exactly why I think units aren't being merged Yeah, I was agreeing with you that your point made sense. I just hadn't thought of that because I was just assuming they were operating like the Soviets. They might do some merging if a couple units end up really depleted since I think it's easier to spread the knowledge around if you have a bigger proportion of veterans, but you're right that it's probably not a systematic thing. >Even a thousand is a huge number yes, but we're diverging from the question of whether the apparent current reduction in modern armor seen at the front is caused by attrition. >Even if we were playing devil's advocate and try to minimize losses, they're still an insanely huge expenditure. I'm not trying to minimize Russian losses, although I will admit that finding out that so much of what I had been taking for granted was wrong might be causing me to over correct and doubt everything. I'm just trying to figure out what is actually happening. I know that people have been claiming that Russia isn't using its full power or whatever since the start of the war, but I do think that a somewhat sudden reduction in the presence of modern armor along the front right around the time that Ukraine is starting to really struggle with plugging gaps in the line is suspicious. >I'm just saying it's a big deal. As you say, the war isn't cheap. My contention isn't that their losses haven't been substantial or that they haven't effected them, it's that the evidence available doesn't seem strong enough that I would be confident in saying that attrition is to blame for why we see this or that improvised thing or why we don't see something as much anymore. There are plenty of alternative explanations for anything we see, and they don't seem to exclude one another. >It's been pointless for a while now I mean pointless for Russia. There is going to be a point where Ukrainian lines are so weak that for Russia the bite and hold tactics will no longer be more cost effective than making a breakthrough. The Ukrainians seems willing to fight to the last man, or close to it, but Russia doesn't need to let them indulge in that. The stalemate is predicated on the fact that Ukraine's mobile reserves could force a Russian breakthrough into a stalemate that would allow Ukraine to adjust their defensive lines, but since Ukraine doesn't really have much left in the way of mobile reserves, Russia should be able to punch through somewhere, beat the mobile reserves in a maneuver fight, and then engage in decisive action to end the war. >there are still going to be too many fanatics mixed in with the conscripted for a collapse of the front for a long time. It's really weird how utterly detached from reality (almost) everyone who supports the Ukrainian side has become. I wonder if it was like this before the war and we just didn't realize how bad things had gotten, or if things have gotten worse. People talk about how Russia miscalculated at the start of the war, but I don't know if a reasonable person could have predicted the insane behavior of not just Ukrainian leadership, but of most of the western world. Eastern Ukraine is absolutely not worth what has been wasted trying to retake it from the Russians.
>>15001 An interesting tidbit, Ukraine's "Airfaince" tracking system was hacked (and supposedly later bombed). Apparently it is used to track drones.
So what are everyone's expectations and speculations for the summer offensives? >>15352 That's really fascinating. What are all those things that came up in the drop downs for places like Germany and the US? Are they indicating that drones are being controlled from there?
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>>15353 >Are they indicating that drones are being controlled from there? Probably just data feed to the NATO handlers. Some nerds are watching drone vids 24/7 looking for any valuable tactical info probably. In other news Generals Mordvichev and Solodchuk have been resurrected by the necromancer corps and assigned new posts. Mordvichev is now chief of staff and Solodchuk (typical Ukrainian surname by the way) took his place as commander of the center group of forces. So that indicates Russians are trying to make sure they have the right commanders in place for the fighting ahead. I said before, I don't think there will be any major offensive movements until the Ukrainian morale breaks down, just more of the same small gaining, maybe there'll be more fighting along the Northern border.
>>15354 >Probably just data feed to the NATO handlers. Some nerds are watching drone vids 24/7 looking for any valuable tactical info probably. Probably, but I could also see whole rooms full of drone operators on some air force base who are operating Ukrainian drones so the Ukrainian operators can be sent to the front as infantry. >Generals Mordvichev and Solodchuk have been resurrected by the necromancer corps and assigned new posts. I heard about that. I know they are both apparently very competent, but I wonder how much the decision was influenced by the fact that the media was claiming they were dead. On the one hand they were probably the best people to pick, on the other hand, it's just too perfect. >I said before, I don't think there will be any major offensive movements until the Ukrainian morale breaks down So do you think there won't be anything that could be called a summer offensive at all, or are you implying that it will be an offensive within the context of positional attrition warfare? They could conduct a summer offensive where they burn through a larger portion of their stockpiles and fight more aggressively, but don't try to create a breach in Ukraine's lines to enable maneuver warfare. I personally think they'll do something like that initially, and then depending how that goes they might try an offensive elsewhere. >maybe there'll be more fighting along the Northern border. Russia making a breakthrough there could be hilarious. I could see them doing an offensive there so Ukrainian command panics, then just retreating back to prepared defensive lines when Ukraine sends everything they can to contain the breakthrough. If I were Russia I'd try using a mobile force to launch massive attacks on Ukrainian territorial defense units, retreating before Ukrainian mobile reserves can reach the fight, then quickly launching another attack in another sector. Doing that repeatedly could force Ukraine to deplete their defenses on other fronts or eventually enable a breakthrough in the north.
>>15353 >So what are everyone's expectations and speculations for the summer offensives? I think that it will be where the rubber meets the road for the "Russia is actually holding tons of modern materiel in reserve" narrative, one way or another. We might see T-90Ms covered in Relikt and actual SNEED from the air forces causing a major breakthrough or we might be in for more mobiks in sturmladas getting defeated by concertina wire.
>>15355 >I could also see whole rooms full of drone operators on some air force base who are operating Ukrainian drones so the Ukrainian operators can be sent to the front as infantry. That might be a step too far regarding a casus belli. At least with the ATACMS it's the Ukrainians pulling the trigger, even if the targeting is done with US input. >I wonder how much the decision was influenced by the fact that the media was claiming they were dead. None at all, Mordvichev was in the news before when he replaced the much criticized Lapin and they released a picture of him with Kadyrov immediately after the claim of his demise. Just messing around with the reminder of how Russian generals have a habit of coming back from the dead. >So do you think there won't be anything that could be called a summer offensive at all, or are you implying that it will be an offensive within the context of positional attrition warfare? It'll be more of the same. As in offensive actions all along the front with periodic pushes when able. Wording it as offensives means people get the wrong idea, like >>15356 for instance. The strategy is killing the enemy until they collapse or concede, maneuver warfare is not on the table. It's been like this for years at this point, we've been over this. >I personally think they'll do something like that initially, and then depending how that goes they might try an offensive elsewhere. Russians do focus on certain areas more than others, but they're active on the whole frontline to do a death by a thousand cuts on Ukraine rather than a decapitation. Modern ISR makes it basically impossible to gather the forces and supplies for a major push without getting struck in the assembly or en route. >If I were Russia I'd try using a mobile force to launch massive attacks on Ukrainian territorial defense units, retreating before Ukrainian mobile reserves can reach the fight, then quickly launching another attack in another sector. Not doable due to the above reason, but they could keep reinforcing and expanding the forces already there to keep up the pressure in the North.
>>15356 >I think that it will be where the rubber meets the road for the "Russia is actually holding tons of modern materiel in reserve" narrative, one way or another. Russia obviously has stuff in reserve. Ukraine is the one that throws away their reserves of well trained men and modern equipment for strategically worthless PR stunts, not Russia. If Russia decides to use its reserves of modern equipment in an offensive that's because they are confident that the offensive will be worth the investment. If they aren't, they'll wait until next summer, or the summer after that. >We might see T-90Ms covered in Relikt and actual SNEED from the air force We already see both those things. >more mobiks in sturmladas getting defeated by concertina wire. Please stop being retarded. I get that this thread was dead for a few days, but you didn't need to regress to just regurgitating propaganda. We are grown ups here, let's have a grown up discussion. >>15357 >That might be a step too far regarding a casus belli. I think it's deniable enough that it's possible, but I agree that it's unlikely. The question is less "is this an overt act of aggression?" and more "will Russia declare war on us over it?" >Wording it as offensives means people get the wrong idea I don't think it's worthwhile trying to find terminology that won't give certain people the wrong idea. Verdun was an offensive, that doesn't mean it restored maneuver warfare to WWI. >The strategy is killing the enemy until they collapse or concede, maneuver warfare is not on the table. I think that at a certain point the Ukrainians will be so thinned out that even if they don't collapse or concede, the only thing continuing to fight the war as a war of attrition will only serve to waste Russian money and humor the Ukrainians delusions. >we've been over this. I know you've said it before, but I don't agree with you about this. I think that eventually Ukraine will reach a point where they simply cannot contain a Russian breakthrough, and then Russia will be able to launch a decisive offensive which ends the war. Ukraine seems willing to fight to something close to the last man, so waiting for them to collapse on their own is pointless. The question instead is at what point will Ukrainian units be adequately depleted. I think that point may already have been reached, and that if it has, then Russia is probably already carefully staging their forces for the decisive blow. If it hasn't, then Russia will simply continue to attrit Ukrainian materiel and manpower until it is time to do so. > they're active on the whole frontline to do a death by a thousand cuts on Ukraine rather than a decapitation. At this point Russia probably has the manpower to keep the whole front line going while also conducting a large attack. Even a breakthrough of relatively limited depth that cuts off a section of the front could have a massive impact on the war. If it went fast enough it could allow them to outflank neighboring units and wrap up the line like in ancient warfare. >Modern ISR makes it basically impossible to gather the forces and supplies for a major push without getting struck in the assembly or en route. Ukraine did it at Kursk. I'm not saying that Russia doesn't have more to worry about due to American satellite coverage, but they could do it. It'd take a long time to prepare and get everything staged, but Russia is clearly very patient. I could see them pulling their best equipment off the front one piece at a time over the course of months and hiding it away in camouflaged positions in order to assemble a strike package. >they could keep reinforcing and expanding the forces already there to keep up the pressure in the North. They're obviously going to do that. A longer front line favors Russia.
>>15358 >Russia obviously has stuff in reserve. Naturally. My question is how much of the good stuff that's left is going to make it to the front. Especially after hot dog man's thunder run I imagine that more of it than ever is being kept close to Moscow with no plans to move it to the front. >If Russia decides to use its reserves of modern equipment in an offensive that's because they are confident that the offensive will be worth the investment. If they aren't, they'll wait until next summer, or the summer after that. Seeing is believing, at this point. I was expecting that a lot of the good stuff would have been thrown at the Kursk incursion, but while the materiel there was certainly a cut above what's normally seen on the front lines it also wasn't all that impressive IMO. For me, the jury is out on whether the quality of Russian materiel in their response to Kursk was the result of an abundance of caution or simply because that WAS the best that was available. >We already see both those things. Uncommonly, yes. >Please stop being retarded. I get that this thread was dead for a few days, but you didn't need to regress to just regurgitating propaganda. We are grown ups here, let's have a grown up discussion. >propaganda I've seen recent videos of both sturmladas (with that term used loosely) and some pretty gruesome concertina wire shenanigans. No need to get so butthut over a bit of flippancy.
>>15358 >I don't think it's worthwhile trying to find terminology that won't give certain people the wrong idea. Verdun was an offensive, that doesn't mean it restored maneuver warfare to WWI. I think it's just not the same. The whole line is on a constant offensive, the offensive actions aren't really indicative of any grander undertaking than that. >I think that at a certain point the Ukrainians will be so thinned out that even if they don't collapse or concede, the only thing continuing to fight the war as a war of attrition will only serve to waste Russian money and humor the Ukrainians delusions. One could argue that this has been the case for a while now. >I think that eventually Ukraine will reach a point where they simply cannot contain a Russian breakthrough, and then Russia will be able to launch a decisive offensive which ends the war. Ukraine seems willing to fight to something close to the last man, so waiting for them to collapse on their own is pointless. The question instead is at what point will Ukrainian units be adequately depleted. I think that point may already have been reached, and that if it has, then Russia is probably already carefully staging their forces for the decisive blow. If it hasn't, then Russia will simply continue to attrit Ukrainian materiel and manpower until it is time to do so. I don't think this will happen for two reasons. One is the way technology shaped this war, i.e. small unit actions becoming a necessity means that Russians won't commit large formations even when Ukraine is close to breaking, and two, because Ukraine's supply and intel will never run out. It will be necessary to either make them concede, or kill enough of them to cause a collapse. >At this point Russia probably has the manpower to keep the whole front line going while also conducting a large attack. Even a breakthrough of relatively limited depth that cuts off a section of the front could have a massive impact on the war. If it went fast enough it could allow them to outflank neighboring units and wrap up the line like in ancient warfare Ukraine is fuckhuge. Even if they commited every reserve to a banzai and took the whole of Harkov from the Northern flank for example, it still wouldn't guarantee a victory, with the cost in casualties being prohibitive. >Ukraine did it at Kursk. I'm not saying that Russia doesn't have more to worry about due to American satellite coverage, but they could do it. It'd take a long time to prepare and get everything staged, but Russia is clearly very patient. I could see them pulling their best equipment off the front one piece at a time over the course of months and hiding it away in camouflaged positions in order to assemble a strike package. The Kursk debacle was more due to Russian mistakes than Ukrainian capability. And as you point out, Ukraine has American and other intel working for it. >They're obviously going to do that. A longer front line favors Russia. It does, but Russia is juggling priorities here. Economics, human resources, public opinion, stocks of equipment, etc.
>>15360 >the good stuff that's left Most of the "good stuff" at this point is new production. > after hot dog man's thunder run I imagine that more of it than ever is being kept close to Moscow I don't think that's likely. The wild ride was a one off, because the only military force operating in Russia right now that doesn't answer to the Russian state is the North Koreans, and they aren't going to try to storm Moscow outside of Norktard's fantasies. >I was expecting that a lot of the good stuff would have been thrown at the Kursk incursion It seems like Russia didn't consider Kursk to be a major threat. They just treated it like another place to grind down Ukrainian manpower. >I've seen recent videos of both sturmladas (with that term used loosely) and some pretty gruesome concertina wire shenanigans. No need to get so butthut over a bit of flippancy. Your whole post was indistinguishable from NAFO shit. You weren't being realistic but flippant, you were being retarded. >>15361 >I think it's just not the same. The whole line is on a constant offensive During WW1 both sides were trying constant offensives. An offensive during a positional war of attrition entails a major logistical investment and force commitment to enable a period of abnormally high operational intensity. During WW1 the places where the front moved the least were frequently the places with the most intense fighting. I think that Russia would have been wise to husband its resources over the winter and through the spring in order to have more available for a large summer offensive. >One could argue that this has been the case for a while now. I suspect it may be, but it's impossible to tell from the outside. It might be impossible to tell from the inside too. Actually identifying where that point is and when it's been reached will be a very hard task for the Russian general staff, and being wrong about it could lead to a disastrous failed offensive. It's better to err on the side of caution, plus once you do assess that it's now time to smash the Ukrainians you have you assemble your package and carefully plan out how you're going to do it. >I don't think this will happen for two reasons. But you said that it might already be the case that continuing to wage a war of attrition against the Ukrainians is pointless. If a war of maneuver is impossible then what alternative do you suggest? Ukraine has proven to be unwilling to negotiate, so Russia will need to defeat them militarily. >One is the way technology shaped this war, i.e. small unit actions becoming a necessity means that Russians won't commit large formations even when Ukraine is close to breaking In the current positional fighting large force concentrations aren't practical, but that's largely due to the insane concentration of force along the front line. Both sides fire assets are all in range of the front line, so the space between being seen and being killed is very small. Given the limited number of places a person can hide in the tiny amount of space that is actually being fought over, larger forces can't really accomplish much more than smaller ones. Most of Ukraine's forces are concentrated within a few dozen kilometers of the front line though, so in the event of a breakthrough the search area goes from a few tree lines and villages to hundreds or even thousands of square kilometers, and the time it takes for Ukraine to put fires onto the targets it locates will be much longer. So a breakthrough in force with a large mechanized unit could avoid the bulk of Ukraine's forces, which are mostly mobiks sitting in trenches, and instead would just have to deal with the relatively small mechanized reserves that Ukraine has left. Doing so would be extremely difficult, since it'd require punching through every line of Ukraine's defenses before they can rush their mobile reserves to the fray to stabilize the front (or muscle through those too), but I think at this point many of Ukraine's positions are so lightly manned that there is probably some place on the front where that could be done. >two, because Ukraine's supply and intel will never run out. Ukraine's supplies of a lot of things have run out or nearly so. They aren't going to run out of everything completely, but they are very low on tanks, IFVs, artillery, and AA. Moreover even the stuff that they do still get supplied to them has to be transported to the front, which is why a breakthrough could work. Once a breakthrough is made the Russians could cut off highways and supply routes along huge sections of the front lines. As for intel, the intel they get from NATO is a powerful tool, but has serious limitations. Satellites aren't overhead at all times, and when the satellite looks at a place they still have to have analysts actually find stuff with them. In the event of a fast moving breakthrough the western intel would mostly be able to tell the Ukrainians where the Russians were a few hours ago. Still useful, but not nearly as much. >Ukraine is fuckhuge yes, that's why I think a breakthrough and subsequent maneuvers could be possible. Ukraine is fuckhueg but almost all of the defenses are concentrated along the front, so if Russia punches through some and reaches past the defenses, they could go hog wild with near impunity. >Even if they commited every reserve to a banzai If they conduct an offensive to breach Ukrainian lines quickly to make a breakthrough that doesn't mean they'd have to attack recklessly. There is no reason to assume a larger commitment of forces means those forces will suddenly become retarded and throw themselves at Ukrainian positions with no regard for their own safety. In fact it would probably result in proportionally less losses, since those forces would still be fighting the same Ukrainian positions, just with more help. >and took the whole of Harkov from the Northern flank for example I don't think an offensive would be aimed at something like Kharkov. During the positional fighting it's fine to just try and pursue territorial objectives, but the goal of a maneuver offensive would be to destroy the fighting power of the Ukrainian military. I think the best way to do this would be to cut their supply routes to the front. As I've pointed out before, even if they don't actually cut off that much of the front, if they make a section of the front collapse entirely instead of falling back to another defensive line, then Ukraine's whole defense is basically done for. At that point the sections next to that part will either collapse too or be outflanked, and so on down the line, while the mobile reserves would be busy trying to re open the supply lines. As more of the front collapses more Russian units would be freed up to launch more offensives or help finish off pockets of resistance. >The Kursk debacle was more due to Russian mistakes than Ukrainian capability. True, but I think that what the Russians did by mistake the Ukrainians are doing by necessity. They simply don't have the forces to man the whole front line very thoroughly, and unlike Russia it's not just a few places where their line is weak. >as you point out, Ukraine has American and other intel working for it. Yes, but that's not omniscient. If Russia is staging for a major offensive, they could do a lot to hide it. Russia is very patient and has a lot of very clever intel people, and it's not like the US can hide its satellites. A piece of equipment here and there being pulled off a train or truck while the spy satellites aren't overhead wouldn't be that hard to pull off, and over the course of months could allow them to squirrel away a substantial strike package. The soldiers involved don't need to know until shortly beforehand. >It does, but Russia is juggling priorities here. True, but they can stretch their front line thinner than they are. If they were to stretch to the point that Russian and Ukrainian troops were at equal density across the whole front line, then they'd have a lot of men left over. I'm not saying they should or will go to that extreme, and it's not quite as huge a difference as that would imply since unlike Ukraine, Russia actually rotates their troops, but they could still stretch the front line a lot without problems. >vid 1 Is that a Ukrainian drone attack in Russia? I only ask because I would think that Ukrainian men wouldn't just be hanging out in the street for fear of being bussified. >vid 3 what on earth is going on there? >vid 4 what's that IFV? With all the cages and shit I can't tell. Props to whoever made it for using Rammstein instead of fucking phonk.
>>15362 >But you said that it might already be the case that continuing to wage a war of attrition against the Ukrainians is pointless. If a war of maneuver is impossible then what alternative do you suggest? Ukraine has proven to be unwilling to negotiate, so Russia will need to defeat them militarily. I meant pointless from the Ukrainian side. From the Russian side, it is the only way to play. The alternative is as I said; keep killing them until there are none left. Sooner or later even the most retarded hohol will realize that the real enemy is the one sending him to the meatgrinder. >I think at this point many of Ukraine's positions are so lightly manned that there is probably some place on the front where that could be done. It's not a bug, it's a feature. The reason positions on both sides are so lightly manned is the ISR force multiplier combined with the necessity to stay hidden. A bigger unit leaves a much bigger footprint and 3 dudes in a treeline can buffer an attack for long enough to bring artillery and drone support to repel an enemy. The truth of the matter is, this is defense in depth and the guys on the forward position are the most expendable. They are meant to be a speedbump for the enemy while you concentrate fire on him. Now if you can imagine this mechanized force you describe having to stop at every such speedbump and losing say 10% of vehicles to each, then it will become combat ineffective pretty fast. And no, there is no way to bypass these speedbumps. >Ukraine's supplies of a lot of things have run out or nearly so. Even at a third of the shell production, that is still a lot of shells to send towards the Russians. >As for intel, the intel they get from NATO is a powerful tool, but has serious limitations. Satellites aren't overhead at all times, and when the satellite looks at a place they still have to have analysts actually find stuff with them. In the event of a fast moving breakthrough the western intel would mostly be able to tell the Ukrainians where the Russians were a few hours ago. Still useful, but not nearly as much. I think you underestimate how many resources US intelligence brings to bear. They are probably radar-mapping the area 24/7. >Ukraine is fuckhueg but almost all of the defenses are concentrated along the front It's not as simple as bypassing the Maginot. Ukraine still should have an overall manpower advantage over Russia in theatre, so they can dedicate a lot to the defense and containment of any push. >There is no reason to assume a larger commitment of forces means those forces will suddenly become retarded and throw themselves at Ukrainian positions with no regard for their own safety. Has nothing to do with regard to safety, if you gather the numbers for the type of thing you're suggesting, it's tens of thousands of troops with accompanying logistics, they will get noticed. They will get ATACM'd in the assembly area, their depots and logistics will get struck repeatedly, their assault will be anticipated and met with drone swarms and mined fields. Kind of like what happened with the Ukrainian dream offensive in 23. A traffic jam of burnt up armor. >True, but I think that what the Russians did by mistake the Ukrainians are doing by necessity. They simply don't have the forces to man the whole front line very thoroughly I really don't know where you got the idea Ukraine has holes in the frontline due to lack of personnel. Sure, there can be issues with units on the front due to attrition, and people need to be press-ganged into service because it's a death sentence, but they are still fielding a huge force. >A piece of equipment here and there being pulled off a train or truck while the spy satellites aren't overhead wouldn't be that hard to pull off, and over the course of months could allow them to squirrel away a substantial strike package. A layered intel gathering operation would still probably pick up on it. The soldiers involved don't need to know until shortly beforehand. Sounds like a recipe for disaster. >True, but they can stretch their front line thinner than they are. If they were to stretch to the point that Russian and Ukrainian troops were at equal density across the whole front line, then they'd have a lot of men left over. I'm not saying they should or will go to that extreme, and it's not quite as huge a difference as that would imply since unlike Ukraine, Russia actually rotates their troops, but they could still stretch the front line a lot without problems. Ukraine does rotate troops, what they don't do is demobilize them. Trust me, if troops didn't get rotation, they'd quit pretty fast. And again, Ukraine still probably holds the numerical advantage. > I only ask because I would think that Ukrainian men wouldn't just be hanging out in the street for fear of being bussified Nah, it's a Geran strike in Ukraine >what on earth is going on there? Need for Speed.
[Expand Post] >what's that IFV? With all the cages and shit I can't tell. Props to whoever made it for using Rammstein instead of fucking phonk. It kind of looks like an MT-LB from the shape of the hatches, but it looks off in my eyes, maybe because of the camera lens and angle.
>>15360 >concertina wire shenanigans Damn that concertina wire, always ruining the best laid plans!

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>>15366 >I meant pointless from the Ukrainian side. Well that goes without saying. Ukraine really doesn't gain anything from this war at all aside from keeping the current regime in power. It's not like they'll manage to hold onto the ground Russia wants, much less regain their pre-2014 borders. >Sooner or later even the most retarded hohol will realize that the real enemy is the one sending him to the meatgrinder. I think they'll just be dead. If they were going to wise up they would have done so a long time ago. >It's not a bug, it's a feature. I have seen multiple pro-Ukrainian sources say that units are operating at 40% manpower or less, and I first heard that figure back in late 2024. I think that Ukraine would definitely man many of their positions more heavily if they could. >Now if you can imagine this mechanized force you describe having to stop at every such speedbump and losing say 10% of vehicles to each, then it will become combat ineffective pretty fast. But I do not imagine it proceeding like that. I imagine that the initial breakthrough would follow similar tactics to the current assaults, but would involve even more fire support and a much larger allocation of artillery and air support to enable them to proceed much faster. The larger numbers of Russian troops involved would not be committed all at once, but instead would be following behind to conduct assaults on subsequent Ukrainian positions immediately after the previous one falls. I don't think the mechanized force would be the same force conducting the breakthrough, they'd be separate and kept in reserve waiting for a breakthrough to exploit. The breakthrough would be conducted with mostly the same light infantry tactics they've been using, but they'd sustain the pressure at a much higher level and provide a lot more support. >Even at a third of the shell production, that is still a lot of shells to send towards the Russians. While my knowledge on the topic is spotty, I did see figures indicating Ukraine only has a few hundred howitzers left, so I think their major bottleneck would be tubes rather than shells right now. Russia can't completely disarm Ukraine, but there are a lot of areas where the west couldn't provide them with enough stuff even if they wanted to. Ukraine has already used up a huge chunk of NATO's stockpiles of Patriot missiles, and they aren't being produced fast enough to keep up with demand. They also probably won't get many more MBTs or planes. Another thing to keep in mind is that if Ukraine is getting a third of the shells Russia is, that increases the relative impact of Russian strikes on Ukrainian logistics. >I think you underestimate how many resources US intelligence brings to bear. I'm probably not. >They are probably radar-mapping the area 24/7. There are lots of things the Russians could do to about that even if they were, which I doubt. Russia has substantial EW capabilities including multiple platforms which are tailored to jam specific AEW&C radars. >It's not as simple as bypassing the Maginot. No, but it's also not as difficult as going through the Maginot line would have been. It might or might not be harder than punching through a WW1 trench line. I suspect it's probably easier, due to the difficulties that actually exploiting a breakthrough in the lines with WW1 technology would have involved, you would have needed a much larger and more sustained breakthrough back then for it to make a difference. >Ukraine still should have an overall manpower advantage over Russia in theatre Do they? I genuinely thought they were at a disadvantage right now in terms of total manpower. Maybe the figures I was saw were including Russian forces outside of the theater or were using a broader definition of what counted as being in the theater. >if you gather the numbers for the type of thing you're suggesting, it's tens of thousands of troops with accompanying logistics, they will get noticed. I envision things being more dispersed than you do. Any large gatherings would be done well inside of Russia, and the actual movements to the front would be done in thousands of small groups over the course of weeks where they would move into small concealed positions and entrenchments. It'd be a major undertaking, but one that is very similar to what they are already doing, just at a much larger scale. They'd be noticed, but Ukraine would not have much reason to believe a mechanized breakthrough was incoming, and even if they did, they wouldn't have much they could do about it. At worst if Ukraine rushes everything they can to reinforce that section of the front then they can just call things off and count the fact that other sectors would suddenly make a ton of progress as a win. >They will get ATACM'd in the assembly area, their depots and logistics will get struck repeatedly, That's why I was suggesting that they would pre position hidden caches of equipment and supplies near the front. It wouldn't be enough to sustain the whole operation, but it'd go a long way towards keeping the tempo up. >their assault will be anticipated and met with drone swarms and mined fields. The drones mostly have something like a 10km range, and the minefields don't extend much past the front line. It'd be infantry tactics like we've been seeing that would clear the way, the mechanized force would be there to exploit the breakthrough, not create it. Once the path is cleared of Ukrainian forces, the mechanized exploitation force would need to clear paths through the minefields and get through before the Ukrainians can respond. >I really don't know where you got the idea Ukraine has holes in the frontline due to lack of personnel. I don't think there are holes. I think that there are places where the speed bumps are a lot thinner on the ground than they should be, and the forces that are there to respond to those speed bumps being turned into potholes are much weaker than they would need to be in order to contain a major Russian attempt to make a breakthrough. >A layered intel gathering operation would still probably pick up on it. Russian intelligence is pretty famous for their deception operations. I don't think it'd be hard to convince HUMINT that it's just corruption or something and to create a convincing cover story. Or they could just move stuff around so much that things get lost in the noise. There are lots of options here. It doesn't really matter if western intelligence knows something is up, just that they don't know what is up. >Sounds like a recipe for disaster. The officers would need to know what's going on, but the troops already are doing the same stuff they'd be doing. The mobile element that actually exploits the breakthrough might need a week or two of notice so they can get briefed on everything, but they aren't going to be at risk of being taken POW until it's already too late for the Ukrainians, so as long as they keep them from telling anyone or posting about it on the internet, it should be fine. >Ukraine does rotate troops, what they don't do is demobilize them. Just today WillyOAM was talking about a post by a Ukrainian officer where he complained that his men sit in dugouts for months with no human contact at all getting food and water by drone. Some units might have the luxury of rotating, but not all of them. >Trust me, if troops didn't get rotation, they'd quit pretty fast. From what I've gathered Ukraine does have a pretty major desertion problem. >again, Ukraine still probably holds the numerical advantage. We really should dig into this. I'll try to take some time to tomorrow and see if I can find some credible estimates. >it's a Geran strike in Ukraine I figured. I think I read somewhere that there are Gerans with thermobaric warheads being made, do you have any clips of those? >It kind of looks like an MT-LB from the shape of the hatches I think you're right. I was thrown by the shape of the cage over the top which made me think it had a turret, which was reinforced by the dude laying on the front firing at the drone which I thought was coming from said turret.
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>>1473 unemployed? looking for excitement?
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>>15372 >Well that goes without saying. Ukraine really doesn't gain anything from this war at all aside from keeping the current regime in power. It's not like they'll manage to hold onto the ground Russia wants, much less regain their pre-2014 borders. Their strategic plan is to exhaust Russia, or make it too costly to continue. It is a logical plan and it might work. Killing the populace is just an added benefit
>>15402 >Their strategic plan is to exhaust Russia I think that's just "cope". They switched to saying that after the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive and the Kursk offensive(s). In reality it seems like they recognized that their only realistic hope was to break the stalemate and defeat the Russians with some bold maneuver which would destroy the Russian army in the field. Once it became clear that was impossible, they started to double down on their propaganda claims about casualty figures and claim they were inexplicably winning the war off attrition in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. >It is a logical plan and it might work. Lol no. You'd have to be fucking retarded to actually believe that. >Killing the populace is just an added benefit Killing the populace of Ukraine doesn't really benefit anyone, in spite of what conspiracists claim about Zelensky trying to use this as some mechanism to exterminate the white race or whatever they go on about.
>>15403 It is perfectly logical to use your vast resources to absorb the enemy hits and try to make it too expensive for them to continue. And if Ukraine's "partners" weren't a bunch of hypocritical scum, it might have a lot more effect. I wasn't saying it's an anti-white conspiracy. The people dying now are Russian speakers, so from Ukraine's point of view, it's killing off unwanted trash anyway. It literally costs them nothing to shovel more ethnic Russians into the meat grinder.
>>15409 >It is perfectly logical to use your vast resources to absorb the enemy hits and try to make it too expensive for them to continue. If Ukraine had vast resources, your post would make sense. Russia doesn't seem to be using their vast resources to absorb hits and make it too expensive for the Ukrainians to continue, instead they seem to be using them to kill Ukrainians. > if Ukraine's "partners" weren't a bunch of hypocritical scum, it might have a lot more effect. If Ukraine's "partners" weren't a bunch of hypocritical scum, they wouldn't be supporting them in the first place, so be careful what you wish for. A lot of them have already given them pretty much everything they can give, and the ones that haven't aren't going to because Ukraine still wouldn't win. >I wasn't saying it's an anti-white conspiracy. Given the degree to which you seem to be totally detached from reality, it's not clear what flavor of schizophrenic nonsense you believe. >The people dying now are Russian speakers No duh, it's a war between two Russian speaking countries. >so from Ukraine's point of view, it's killing off unwanted trash anyway. It literally costs them nothing to shovel more ethnic Russians into the meat grinder. Is this some schizo shit about Zelensky being an Israeli agent or something?
>>15410 Ukraine is a huge country nigger, it has vast resources. One of those resources are people they can shovel into the meat grinder. And they're backed by the pre-eminent military alliance on the planet. The ruling clique has proven they hate Russians, so why would they care if Russians die in their defense?
>>15413 >>15413 >Ukraine is a huge country nigger, it has vast resources. Ukraine is a large country going up against one of the world's top 3 military powers. You could describe it as having "vast resources" if it were fighting a small country, but Russia isn't a small country, it's not even a large or even huge country, it's a fuckhueg country. >One of those resources are people they can shovel into the meat grinder. Not really, even with conscription and press ganging people off the street they haven't even been able to recruit half of what Russia has through just volunteers. Ukraine's population is much smaller than Russia's, but more importantly they lack the effective state capacity to actually leverage their population even with conscription. >they're backed by the pre-eminent military alliance on the planet. Which mostly ran out of stuff to give them within the first year of the war. NATO is high tech, but lacks the production capacity to actually sustain Ukraine's war of attrition. >The ruling clique has proven they hate Russians, so why would they care if Russians die in their defense? I don't think the rulers of most countries care about their soldiers. They do tend to care about winning though, and Ukraine is not in a position to sacrifice their soldiers in a way that secures victory. So your prior point about Ukraine making it too costly for Russia to continue is stupid, since they can't fucking do that. Expendable manpower is a resource, and even from the perspective of Ukraine's command, they are wasting it.
>>15414 Except Russia isn't in total war mode and is not utilizing all the resources it could, as opposed to Ukraine that is basically fighting to the death. And for most of the conflict it had superiority in numbers, so I don't know what you're on about.
>>15416 >Except Russia isn't in total war mode and is not utilizing all the resources it coul How is that an "except"? Russia is massively out producing the collective west and they aren't even in total war mode, meanwhile Ukraine is trying to fight to the last Ukrainian and they can barely mobilize half of what Russia is getting as volunteers. Russia's resources are definitely vast, while Ukraine's aren't. >for most of the conflict it had superiority in numbers, Well they don't right now.
>>15417 >How is that an "except"? It means Russia is still doing a balancing act between keeping its economy in good shape and trying to win a war against the West. Just because they're outproducing the enemy, doesn't mean it's enough. If Ukraine really does shovel every last Ukrainian into the meat grinder, they might last long enough for Russia to start running out of volunteers. Because this can still go on for several years. >>15417 >Well they don't right now. And you know this how?
>>15414 >Ukraine is a large country going up against one of the world's top 3 military powers. At this point, I would say that including Russia in that club is tenuous. Ignoring nukes, of course. >Which mostly ran out of stuff to give them within the first year of the war. NATO is high tech, but lacks the production capacity to actually sustain Ukraine's war of attrition. NATO also isn't even nominally on a wartime footing and the Russian MIC is dogshit. Their production of airframes has tanked since the fall of the USSR, their armored vehicle production relies on raiding boneyards and their domestic electronics are atrocious - and all of this is with something like 35% of their budget currently going to their military, catastrophic levels of inflation, their currency in the shitter and as much leverage as the government can bring to bear to keep things wheezing along. >I don't think the rulers of most countries care about their soldiers. They do tend to care about winning though, and Ukraine is not in a position to sacrifice their soldiers in a way that secures victory. All victories come at a cost of men and materiel - the bang you get for your buck is what matters. >So your prior point about Ukraine making it too costly for Russia to continue is stupid, since they can't fucking do that. Expendable manpower is a resource, and even from the perspective of Ukraine's command, they are wasting it. It's not about cost, it's about exchange. How many Ukrainian lives was it worth to destroy 40% of Russia's strategic bombers? How many Russian lives is it worth to move the trenches another hundred yards to the west?
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>>15418 >>15419 Jesus fucking Christ you're retarded.
>>15421 t. vatnigger
>>15427 You are not better
>>15432 Sometime it's better to just let them get the last word in. He did the equivalent of trying to win an argument by shitting his pants.
>>15433 I mean in my language there is proverb that "the smarter one retreats" and It makes sense
>>15372 >There are lots of things the Russians could do to about that even if they were, which I doubt. Russia has substantial EW capabilities including multiple platforms which are tailored to jam specific AEW&C radars. What I meant with that was satellite radar mapping of the ground. Though I can't say to what extent jamming works and the capabilities of the satellites, as I'm a layman on the subject. >Do they? I genuinely thought they were at a disadvantage right now in terms of total manpower. Maybe the figures I was saw were including Russian forces outside of the theater or were using a broader definition of what counted as being in the theater. Honestly, we don't know. Ukraine is definitely keeping up the "recruitment" efforts at a steady pace and shuffling rear echelon troops into the trench, so I doubt they're critically low on numbers. >Just today WillyOAM was talking about a post by a Ukrainian officer where he complained that his men sit in dugouts for months with no human contact at all getting food and water by drone. Some units might have the luxury of rotating, but not all of them. What that could mean is simply once they get engaged, there's no way out. Once a sector gets attention, there'll be drones hitting any logistics and reinforcements coming in and disrupt casevac, while arty and planes erradicate the frontline. >I figured. I think I read somewhere that there are Gerans with thermobaric warheads being made, do you have any clips of those? Haven't really seen any claim of a vid being specifically a certain warhead. And it's hard to judge by the videos.
>>15435 >What I meant with that was satellite radar mapping of the ground. there are going to be serious limitations involved in a satellite based approach. It's also still possible to interfere with it with electronic warfare. >Honestly, we don't know. What I've been seeing indicates that Russia may have less men allocated to the front at any given time, but overall they have about 5x to 7x as many total soldiers. They rotate them more and keep a much larger reserve. >Ukraine is definitely keeping up the "recruitment" efforts at a steady pace and shuffling rear echelon troops into the trench, so I doubt they're critically low on numbers. We'll see, although I get the impression that their recruitment is extremely low, with even the press gangs being unable to kidnap enough people to make up for their losses. I think that most surviving Ukrainian men are extremely unwilling to fight, and the recruitment process is so corrupt that it's trivial to avoid being sent to fight unless you're flat broke. >What that could mean is simply once they get engaged, there's no way out. Once a sector gets attention, there'll be drones hitting any logistics and reinforcements coming in and disrupt casevac, while arty and planes erradicate the frontline. I think you're right, although I've read in multiple places that Ukraine doesn't provide their troops with leave and doesn't rotate their troops adequately. They probably do pull troops out of the trenches for a bit and reshuffle them, but I don't think they rotate them to the rear very often. >Haven't really seen any claim of a vid being specifically a certain warhead. And it's hard to judge by the videos. makes sense, I suspect that thermobaric Gerans won't be used much until they increase production to the point that they are using them on front line positions, but it's not like it'd be easy to tell. The buzzing noise they make really is intimidating.
>>15436 >What I've been seeing indicates that Russia may have less men allocated to the front at any given time, but overall they have about 5x to 7x as many total soldiers. They rotate them more and keep a much larger reserve. The estimates of Ukrainian numbers are still close to a million and remember, small unit action. When an advance is made, it wasn't a platoon wiped out, it was just a fire team or two holding a treeline or a squad in a village. All perfectly manageable losses. As I mentioned before, Russian estimates on enemy KIA was less than half a million in two years, which probably means even fewer. >it's trivial to avoid being sent to fight unless you're flat broke Well, lucky for them Okraina is a poor shithole. >The buzzing noise they make really is intimidating. I fucking love the sounds of war. I'm not weird, you're weird!
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>>15439 >The estimates of Ukrainian numbers are still close to a million and remember, small unit action. When an advance is made, it wasn't a platoon wiped out, it was just a fire team or two holding a treeline or a squad in a village. All perfectly manageable losses. As I mentioned before, Russian estimates on enemy KIA was less than half a million in two years, which probably means even fewer. I think that Ukrainian manpower shortages are more problematic than you're making it sound, but I also think that my earlier estimation that their manpower levels are critical was an over correction. >Well, lucky for them Okraina is a poor shithole. I don't think it's luck, I think it's a poor shithole for the same reason they're having these problems to begin with. >I fucking love the sounds of war same >I'm not weird, you're weird! Why can't I find the other weirdos? I just want to find other people who love war and weapons and don't give a fuck about morality. /k/ used to be the place to find them.


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