Russia's War Against Ukraine

Started by ArizonaTank, November 26, 2021, 04:54:38 PM

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ArizonaTank

#5925
Quote from: W8taminute on January 27, 2023, 09:03:28 AMOne thing is for certain, this war is offering an opportunity to test out weapons systems.  Similar to what happened in the Spanish Civil war in the late '30s.

+1  I bet that every CEO of all the major western defense companies are pestering their governments to get their stuff 'in there.'

They all want to be the next 'HIMARS'. I bet Lockheed's order book filled past capacity after the Ukrainians showed what a well aimed HIMARS can do last summer.

I half suspect that holding its place in military industrial complex land is partially France's recent motivation in sending stuff like the AMX-10 RCs to Ukraine. They are now talking about sending Leclerc MBTs. But to be fair to France, they are late to the party and just playing catch-up.

I know this sounds a little cynical. But I don't really think of it that way. We know that NATO is involved with observing how these weapons actually perform in this high intensity conflict. I have no doubt that the lessons learned are going to help NATO separate the "wheat from the chaff" in terms of weapons and doctrine. And that is a good thing in my book.
Johannes "Honus" Wagner
"The Flying Dutchman"
Shortstop: Pittsburgh Pirates 1900-1917
Rated as the 2nd most valuable player of all time by Bill James.

Sir Slash

I think War is the ultimate teaching tool. Prior to this conflict, wars were supposed to be quick and decisive like the Iraq wars or very low kinetic affairs like in Syria against ISIS. A need for massive amounts of arty shells, air to air missiles, and tanks? Nonsense. That was the old way of war. Now however the orthodox has been upended by the unexpected, and nations are clamoring for what they thought they'd never need anymore.  :doh: Oh, and don't forget the many, "We'll be in Paris by Christmas" claims a year ago.
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

MengJiao

Quote from: Sir Slash on January 27, 2023, 11:44:20 AMI think War is the ultimate teaching tool. Prior to this conflict, wars were supposed to be quick and decisive like the Iraq wars or very low kinetic affairs like in Syria against ISIS. A need for massive amounts of arty shells, air to air missiles, and tanks? Nonsense. That was the old way of war. Now however the orthodox has been upended by the unexpected, and nations are clamoring for what they thought they'd never need anymore.  :doh: Oh, and don't forget the many, "We'll be in Paris by Christmas" claims a year ago.

  Yep.  I wasn't expecting anything at all like this war.  But still, here's my latest guess at the current state of Russian Problems.  As usual (as I have learned over the last 10 months), the Russians are in a bind -- they need to attack now (X) before the Ukrainians build up and retrain and deploy better armor, but:
a) the Russians still seem to be somewhat wrecked by their earlier problems
b) they still seem to have many of those earlier problems
c) the Ukrainians seem to have their defensive capabilities working reasonably well
And D...if the Russians foul up an offensive now, it will just be so much worse when the Ukrainians
do attack
And E...maybe the Ukrainians can actually just stay generally on the defensive and crush whatever the Russians throw at them
AND F...what if a 1-2 year stalemate is more or less fine with the Ukrainians?  The assumption that a stalemate helps the Russians may not be true which takes us back to (X) and the possibility that for the moment a stalemate does seem to favor the Ukrainians for the short (2-6 month) term and maybe even more

GDS_Starfury

per the last 2 posts I wouldnt draw any conclusions about how our high intensity wars are going to be fought.
theres a lot thats missing from the US playbook so far.
1. no unified air campaign with its associated SEAD and interdiction missions
2. no cohesive massive missile strikes
3. not much in the way of real combined arms warfare above the company level
4. effectively no naval component on the Ukraine side
Toonces - Don't ask me, I just close my eyes and take it.

Gus - I use sweatpants with flannel shorts to soak up my crotch sweat.

Banzai Cat - There is no "partial credit" in grammar. Like anal sex. It's either in, or it's not.

Mirth - We learned long ago that they key isn't to outrun Star, it's to outrun Gus.

Martok - I don't know if it's possible to have an "anti-boner"...but I now have one.

Gus - Celery is vile and has no reason to exist. Like underwear on Star.


W8taminute

I'm astonished on how this whole war is transpiring.  Based off of all the media clips that we've no doubt all seen if I were to say one thing that characterizes this war is it looks like a bunch of confusion mixed in with some chaos, alongside some spectacular images of stuff blowing up. 

Compare to what happened in '91-92 with Desert Storm.  Although Iraq had a million man army armed with all kinds of toys it evaporated in seconds in the face of a easily recognizable and understandable blitzkrieg campaign. It was all over in a matter of days.  The flipside is that it took more than a decade to clean up the mess and it's still messed up to this day even though we're not there anymore. 

This should have been the case in Ukraine and here we are a year later and nothing really to show for it from either side except killing, videos of stuff blowing up, and people suffering.  It just doesn't make sense when you compare this to all of the other wars that have happened in recent memory. 
"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Romulan Commander to Kirk

GDS_Starfury

we had a long and deliberate build up for both Gulf Wars along with all the elements I listed about.
its also a desert with little in the way of forests or water barriers.
the russians in their brilliance decided to start this shit show in winter after a major exercise and had their movements mostly restricted to roads. 
that single axis advance of Kiev and the resulting traffic jam was a predictable result.
the russians may have finally learned operational level warfare by 1945 but they have sure as shit forgotten
about it now.
Toonces - Don't ask me, I just close my eyes and take it.

Gus - I use sweatpants with flannel shorts to soak up my crotch sweat.

Banzai Cat - There is no "partial credit" in grammar. Like anal sex. It's either in, or it's not.

Mirth - We learned long ago that they key isn't to outrun Star, it's to outrun Gus.

Martok - I don't know if it's possible to have an "anti-boner"...but I now have one.

Gus - Celery is vile and has no reason to exist. Like underwear on Star.


SirAndrewD

Quote from: W8taminute on January 27, 2023, 04:47:40 PMThis should have been the case in Ukraine and here we are a year later and nothing really to show for it from either side except killing, videos of stuff blowing up, and people suffering.  It just doesn't make sense when you compare this to all of the other wars that have happened in recent memory. 

Why should that have been the case in Ukraine?

Quite a few, myself included if you check early in this thread, believed this was a possible, even likely outcome based on how the Russians chose to conduct the first stage of the war. 

Also, recent memory should also stir the Iran-Iraq war where something similar happened.  The Iraqis made a lot of the same mistakes in their calculations that the Russians made. 

Really, this war came down last year to the fact that the Russians vastly underestimated the Ukrainian armed forces, vastly underestimated the will and capacity of NATO to equip them, and tried to win the war on the cheap. 

The invasion had vast scope over a huge (unnecessarily so) swath of land and was executed with only a fraction of the forces that would be required for it to be guaranteed to succeed.

There's also a problem that perception of Russia's strength was also vastly inflated by Western media and governments.  It's like the constant refrain early on in the press that Russia had "13,000" tanks.  It's a number I still hear repeated.  The real number is a lot closer to 3000 which is not the overwhelming force that was advertised. 

The Russians should have mobilized a reserve months before the invasion and prepared to fight a long war even if you expect a short one.  For the ambitious plan they executed, the should have committed at least 500k, double what they sent. 

At best the UAF was outnumbered 2:1 at the start of the war.  They had reserves and manpower to close that gap, given time, and that's exactly what they did.  Russia botched the initial invasion by going cheap and expecting to have functionally destroyed the UAF in the first week.  Once their initial "blitzkrieg" failed it settled into a grinding war of attrition for the Russians.  Don't even get started on the massive institutional problems with the Russian Air Force that have done a lot more than western missiles have to keep the Russians from achieving air supremacy.

With all that considered I don't find anything particularly odd or shocking about any of it, and there are definitely recent conflicts where similar things occurred (Iran-Iraq, Chechnya) . 
"These men do not want a happy ship. They are deeply sick and try to compensate by making me feel miserable. Last week was my birthday. Nobody even said "happy birthday" to me. Someday this tape will be played and then they'll feel sorry."  - Sgt. Pinback

GDS_Starfury

its like the soviet method of modern war doesn't work that well.   :buck2:
Toonces - Don't ask me, I just close my eyes and take it.

Gus - I use sweatpants with flannel shorts to soak up my crotch sweat.

Banzai Cat - There is no "partial credit" in grammar. Like anal sex. It's either in, or it's not.

Mirth - We learned long ago that they key isn't to outrun Star, it's to outrun Gus.

Martok - I don't know if it's possible to have an "anti-boner"...but I now have one.

Gus - Celery is vile and has no reason to exist. Like underwear on Star.


GDS_Starfury

Toonces - Don't ask me, I just close my eyes and take it.

Gus - I use sweatpants with flannel shorts to soak up my crotch sweat.

Banzai Cat - There is no "partial credit" in grammar. Like anal sex. It's either in, or it's not.

Mirth - We learned long ago that they key isn't to outrun Star, it's to outrun Gus.

Martok - I don't know if it's possible to have an "anti-boner"...but I now have one.

Gus - Celery is vile and has no reason to exist. Like underwear on Star.


GDS_Starfury

Toonces - Don't ask me, I just close my eyes and take it.

Gus - I use sweatpants with flannel shorts to soak up my crotch sweat.

Banzai Cat - There is no "partial credit" in grammar. Like anal sex. It's either in, or it's not.

Mirth - We learned long ago that they key isn't to outrun Star, it's to outrun Gus.

Martok - I don't know if it's possible to have an "anti-boner"...but I now have one.

Gus - Celery is vile and has no reason to exist. Like underwear on Star.


Staggerwing

Quote from: GDS_Starfury on January 27, 2023, 07:46:31 PMoh the tears...... let them flow.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/vladimir-solovyov-putins-no-1-cheerleader-rips-into-russias-war-failures

A Russian version of the Tik-tok mascara rage. When the Ukes get F-16s then the Russian Tea Room's panty bunch will be epic.
Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?  -Voluspa

Nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost...

"Don't you look at me that way..." -the Abyss
 
'When searching for a meaningful embrace, sometimes my self respect took second place' -Iggy Pop, Cry for Love

... this will go down on your permanent record... -the Violent Femmes, 'Kiss Off'-

"I'm not just anyone, I'm not just anyone-
I got my time machine, got my 'electronic dream!"
-Sonic Reducer, -Dead Boys

Sir Slash

Well I suppose you can count this guy out as one of the reasonable people who would never allow Putin to use nukes against the West.  :HideEyes:
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

GDS_Starfury

Toonces - Don't ask me, I just close my eyes and take it.

Gus - I use sweatpants with flannel shorts to soak up my crotch sweat.

Banzai Cat - There is no "partial credit" in grammar. Like anal sex. It's either in, or it's not.

Mirth - We learned long ago that they key isn't to outrun Star, it's to outrun Gus.

Martok - I don't know if it's possible to have an "anti-boner"...but I now have one.

Gus - Celery is vile and has no reason to exist. Like underwear on Star.


FarAway Sooner

I doubt many of us knew much about the state of readiness of the Ukrainian armed forces 12 months ago, and while we all knew that the Russian army had problems, I'm not sure that any of us imagined how thoroughly dysfunctional the entire command structure would prove itself when finally tested.

Fast-forward today, and I'm a bit more concerned.  The longer this war goes on, the more likely it is that the Russians will figure out how to fight a war.  The Russian definition of "winning" never involved taking fewer casualties; it just involved crushing the enemy's will to fight and occupying their land.

I'm leery of overestimating the Russian leadership again soon.  The notion that the Russians were some sort of murderous Keystone Kops is supported by what we saw in the first part of the fighting, and it's certainly a conceit that plays to Western vanities.  But if we want to go into this open-eyed, it might be worth at least entertaining a few competing narratives.

I'm not saying that the Russians are winning or that they will win.  I just haven't yet seen signs of an imminent Russian collapse.

Gusington

Apropos of nothing, it looks like Turkey (and Erdogan in particular) is continuing to be a thorn in the side of the West, blocking Sweden's entry into NATO and delaying Finland's entry for as long as possible :/


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd