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The Russian Invasion of Ukraine Part 4

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Craig4 said:
Well, it can let the howitzers continue their artillery duel and the MRLS and (whatever the British system is) to go after Russian logistics and formations before they get to the FEBA (I may be dating myself with that term).
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The British system is the US system.

Video of training using low power practice rockets.

 
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Captain_Swoop said:
Old jets need even more maintenance.
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theprestige said:
And these days I think even the F-35 logistics chain may be cheaper than the A-10's. Sourcing obsolete electronics is no easy thing. Buying parts is sets of ten is a lot more expensive than buying them in sets of a hundred. Or a thousand.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallm...ys-fighter-fleet-infographic/?sh=12f47621685f

Cost per hour of flight time (not including the airframe) is $6k for the A10, and $28k for the F35. That's a pretty good indicator of their respective logistics needs.
 
Craig4 said:
Well, it can let the howitzers continue their artillery duel and the MRLS and (whatever the British system is) to go after Russian logistics and formations before they get to the FEBA (I may be dating myself with that term).
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As Swoop already said, the UK uses the US MLRS system. At one time they called it the 70 km sniper.

FEBA was coming into use when I was going out of the guard. I think they might still use it if only to get people to stop thinking about rear areas being safe. For those reading along, FEBA means "forward edge of the battle area". It was a replacement term for "front line" and part of a doctrine change in the US where combat was expected to take place anywhere and not just at a front line.

All of that said, the MLRS launchers may be a sore point with the Russians. The bigger, longer ranged rocket they can fire but we won't be seeing in Ukraine is called the Advanced Tactical Missile system. In the mid 80's it was supposed to be a replacement for the Lance missile, which was a short ranged and rather outdated nuke.

The project was cancelled in an effort to get an intermediate nuclear weapons treaty with the Russians. Building it at that time would have stopped the treaty from happening since there would be no good way to verify the presence of the missiles among the large number of MLRS launch platforms.

The ATM was revived after the treaty was signed but only as a non-nuclear weapon. The Russians regard this as the US having cheated on the treaty. The US also has claims that the Russians were cheating as well. And of course Trump pulled us out of the treaty rather than trying to fix what was broken.
 
I asked this 4 1/2 days ago:

Oystein said:
...
I am wondering: All that wheat, before it goes on a cargo ship in Odesa harbor, got to the harbor via land transportation. (Some by river ship. perhaps). Is it impossible to transport by land to, say, Romania? Does Romania have a harbor that can deal with loads of wheat? (I know there is Transnistria in the way, so the land rout would have to take very significant detours)

Perhaps someone (Wendover Productions...) has already made a video about this.
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Just now, I spotted an article on German public-law news source Tagesschau:
https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/rumaenien-ukraine-weizen-exporte-101.html

Title: "Romania is groaning under Ukraine transports"
Subtitle: "Romania's border crossings and harbors are at their limits: In the course of the Russian aggression, Ukraine reroutes its cereals via the neighboring country. But there they hardly manage to process the huge amounts."

So there is a problem with transport capacities - not in Ukraine, but in Romania: Freight truck traffic across the border has increased by 400%. There is a small harbor in the Danube delta, in the town Sulina - and 100 ships with loads of Ukrainian wheat are currently waiting to enter the canal from Sulina to the open sea. Neglected Sulina harbor used to be prepared to process only 3 or 4 ships - per day! So on to the larger harbor of Constanta: Rail tracks are in bad shape there: They had 700 abandoned freight cars blocking tracks, by now they were able to remove half of those, but the rest is in such disrepair, or even heavily overgrown with vegetation, that it was not possible to remove them yet.

Since mid-May, Ukraine has been able to export 240,000 tons of wheat via Constanta - which is about 1% of the wheat currently in storage Ukraine (25 million tons), and in about 6 weeks, the summer harvest will add another 40 million tons.

So there is an urgent job for the EU to do, now: Repair and expand capacities in Romania, provide trucks, rail cars, ships, and get as much wheat onto the Black Sea as soon as possible.
 
Everyone really should read today's update from ISW:

The Russian invasion of Ukraine that aimed to seize and occupy the entire country has become a desperate and bloody offensive to capture a single city in the east while defending important but limited gains in the south and east. Ukraine has twice forced Putin to define down his military objectives. Ukraine defeated Russia in the Battle of Kyiv, forcing Putin to reduce his subsequent military objectives to seizing Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine stopped him from achieving that aim as well, forcing him to focus on completing the seizure of Luhansk Oblast alone. Putin is now hurling men and munitions at the last remaining major population center in that oblast, Severodonetsk, as if taking it would win the war for the Kremlin. He is wrong. When the Battle of Severodonetsk ends, regardless of which side holds the city, the Russian offensive at the operational and strategic levels will likely have culminated, giving Ukraine the chance to restart its operational-level counteroffensives to push Russian forces back. . . .

Evidence of eroding military professionalism in the Russian officer corps is mounting. The Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that Russian commanders are attempting to preserve military equipment by forbidding drivers from evacuating wounded servicemen or providing supplies to units that have advanced too far. Refusing to risk equipment to evacuate wounded personnel on the battlefield—other than in extraordinary circumstances—is a remarkable violation of core principles of military professionalism. Such behavior can have serious impacts on morale and the willingness of soldiers to fight and risk getting injured beyond their own defensive lines. ISW cannot independently confirm the GUR’s report, but commentary by Russian milbloggers offers some circumstantial support for it. Russian milblogger Alexander Zhychkovskiy criticized the Russian military command’s disregard for reservists on the deprioritized Zaporizhia Oblast front. Zhychkovskiy reported that Russian commanders trapped lightly-equipped infantry units in areas of intense Ukrainian artillery fire without significant artillery support and did not rotate other units through those areas to relieve them. Zhychkovskiy noted that Russian commanders are responsible for high losses and cases of insanity among servicemen. Another milblogger, Alexander Khodarkovsky, said that Russian commanders are not sending reinforcements in a timely matter, preventing Russian forces from resting between ground assaults. [notes omitted; bolding original]​

Severodonetsk seems to be turning into Putin's Stalingrad.
 
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SpitfireIX said:
Everyone really should read today's update from ISW:
The Russian invasion of Ukraine that aimed to seize and occupy the entire country has become a desperate and bloody offensive to capture a single city in the east while defending important but limited gains in the south and east. Ukraine has twice forced Putin to define down his military objectives. Ukraine defeated Russia in the Battle of Kyiv, forcing Putin to reduce his subsequent military objectives to seizing Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine stopped him from achieving that aim as well, forcing him to focus on completing the seizure of Luhansk Oblast alone. Putin is now hurling men and munitions at the last remaining major population center in that oblast, Severodonetsk, as if taking it would win the war for the Kremlin. He is wrong. When the Battle of Severodonetsk ends, regardless of which side holds the city, the Russian offensive at the operational and strategic levels will likely have culminated, giving Ukraine the chance to restart its operational-level counteroffensives to push Russian forces back. . . .

Evidence of eroding military professionalism in the Russian officer corps is mounting. The Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that Russian commanders are attempting to preserve military equipment by forbidding drivers from evacuating wounded servicemen or providing supplies to units that have advanced too far. Refusing to risk equipment to evacuate wounded personnel on the battlefield—other than in extraordinary circumstances—is a remarkable violation of core principles of military professionalism. Such behavior can have serious impacts on morale and the willingness of soldiers to fight and risk getting injured beyond their own defensive lines. ISW cannot independently confirm the GUR’s report, but commentary by Russian milbloggers offers some circumstantial support for it. Russian milblogger Alexander Zhychkovskiy criticized the Russian military command’s disregard for reservists on the deprioritized Zaporizhia Oblast front. Zhychkovskiy reported that Russian commanders trapped lightly-equipped infantry units in areas of intense Ukrainian artillery fire without significant artillery support and did not rotate other units through those areas to relieve them. Zhychkovskiy noted that Russian commanders are responsible for high losses and cases of insanity among servicemen. Another milblogger, Alexander Khodarkovsky, said that Russian commanders are not sending reinforcements in a timely matter, preventing Russian forces from resting between ground assaults. [notes omitted; bolding original]​
Severodonetsk seems to be turning into Putin's Stalingrad.
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Putin can keep a lid on the losses to his own side for only so long. People were already protesting when the war began but Putin suppressed it using brutality. With so many dead, I don't know how can keep a cap on the coming blockback.
 
theprestige said:
Haha oh wow. Russia is an even bigger fan of rocket artillery than the US. They have more systems than the US does, including systems that predate and post-date the development of MLRS. They are the progenitors of the SCUD missile. But somehow the US is the villain for developing its own rocket artillery, similar to the various rocket artillery systems the Russians have developed?
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I see comprehension on your part is not strong here. Read what I wrote again.

US a villain? No. Trump a moron? Yes. And his moronic decisions are working against US interests. We are going to see the Russians exploit the lack of a treaty and Trump is the moron that ended the treaty. That was the point that flew over your head.

Beyond that, Russian rocket artillery not covered by the intermediate range missile treaty is irrelevant. That stuff cannot be used to launch nukes. Russian missiles that were covered are also not an issue at the moment since they don't currently have them. Scud without a nuke was a bit of crap anyway since it was not accurate. The poor mans V2.

US MLRS launchers are a problem because they can fire both normal rocket artillery and the ATM, which was capable of carrying a nuke. That does not mean we should not give MLRS launchers to Ukraine. It just means we have to deal with the consequences of what Russia will claim about them. The main consequences being that, (1) Russia will use it as an excuse to develop and, if they can afford it, deploy new intermediate range nukes. And (2) Russia will use it as an excuse to claim the US is using Ukraine as a proxy to threaten Russia. If we still had a treaty Russia would not be able to use this for justification of what it wants to do.
 
The tabloids are reporting that Putin is dead and that a body double is being used. I don't believe this but when he does pop his clogs, I've no doubt they will keep it secret for a long time.

An intelligence source said it was likely Putin's recent appearances in public had been pre-recorded.

Alternatively, he could have already died with a body double taking his place.

The source told the Daily Star: "Putin is very ill and when he dies his death will be kept secret for weeks, if not months.

“There is also the possibility that he is already dead. It’s impossible to know.
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SUN (I know, I know).
 
Doubt said:
All of that said, the MLRS launchers may be a sore point with the Russians.
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We have to get past the escalation concern when it comes to providing conventional weapons to Ukraine. That scenario is over. The West keeps wringing its hand over what we should give them next. After much angst, we give it to them (S-300s, APCs, tanks, howitzers) and then no escalation. There's nothing behind Putin's red lines. If we're going to arm the Ukrainians, we should arm them to win not arm them to stalemate.
 
Russia has rejected accusations that its invasion of Ukraine has created serious threats to global food security, instead blaming Western sanctions.

The attempts of the West to attribute all troubles to the special military operation and accuse Russia of blocking foreign ships in the ports of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov are absolutely groundless,
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The main catalyst for the existing negative trends was the anti-Russian sanctions of the West, which led to a rupture of ties in the field of global logistics and transport infrastructure,
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/wor...91f8914259031cb5a255bd&pinned_post_type=share
 
Doubt said:
US MLRS launchers are a problem because they can fire both normal rocket artillery and the ATM, which was capable of carrying a nuke. That does not mean we should not give MLRS launchers to Ukraine. It just means we have to deal with the consequences of what Russia will claim about them. The main consequences being that, (1) Russia will use it as an excuse to develop and, if they can afford it, deploy new intermediate range nukes. And (2) Russia will use it as an excuse to claim the US is using Ukraine as a proxy to threaten Russia. If we still had a treaty Russia would not be able to use this for justification of what it wants to do.
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I think this analysis is completely wrong. First off, Russia is already claiming the US is using Ukraine to threaten Russia, even without any MLRS. Having the treaty would do nothing on this front. They don’t need additional excuses, they have those in abundance already.

Second, Russia cannot afford to develop and deploy new intermediate range nukes. They can barely afford their current arsenal.

Do you remember Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (aka Star Wars)? We never got a working system in place, but even so, it was devastating to the USSR. Why? Because even trying to keep up with it helped bankrupt them. Even the threat of a missile defense system required pouring resources into countering it that they couldn’t afford. Russia wants this treaty precisely because they don’t want to spend the money to develop a new class of nukes, because they can’t afford to now either.
 
Ziggurat said:
I think this analysis is completely wrong. First off, Russia is already claiming the US is using Ukraine to threaten Russia, even without any MLRS. Having the treaty would do nothing on this front. They don’t need additional excuses, they have those in abundance already.

Second, Russia cannot afford to develop and deploy new intermediate range nukes. They can barely afford their current arsenal.

Do you remember Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (aka Star Wars)? We never got a working system in place, but even so, it was devastating to the USSR. Why? Because even trying to keep up with it helped bankrupt them. Even the threat of a missile defense system required pouring resources into countering it that they couldn’t afford. Russia wants this treaty precisely because they don’t want to spend the money to develop a new class of nukes, because they can’t afford to now either.
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Ah, that last paragraph. A hallmark of BS thinking by people that were not actually paying attention to the Soviet Union but love to credit Reagan with things he did not actually accomplish.

My favorite part is when Reagan gets credited with Jimmy Carter's defense build up.

About the only "counter" developed for the SDI was maneuverable warheads for atmospheric movement after re-entry. The US was doing the same thing at the same time. The Russian effort did not actually cost that much and had very little to do with SDI project. Meanwhile nothing was being done about boost phase or apogee interception. But since the SDI was horse crap to start with, they really did not have too much to worry about.

The Soviet Union was not "bankrupted". Their economy did not in anyway fit with how the non-communist world worked. The ruble was worth whatever the politburo decided it was worth and the costs of everything inside the country also reflected political decisions. Their economy was unsustainable from the start. Nothing done on our end made it collapse. That was going to happen anyway. The end happened when some guy named Gorbachev decided to get serious about fulfilling some of the promises the Soviet Union was founded under. That just exposed the rot in the system.

In the mean time, the Soviets still controlled valuable commodities needed to build weapons in the west. As an example, titanium needed to build high tech 80s era jet fighters came from the Ukraine. If we were actually going to "bankrupt" the Soviets we would have needed to stop feeding them money to build our weapons.
 
Vixen said:
The tabloids are reporting that Putin is dead and that a body double is being used. I don't believe this but when he does pop his clogs, I've no doubt they will keep it secret for a long time.

SUN (I know, I know).
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They are also saying that he has 3 years to live and 5 years to live and had 5 years left to live in 2015 so it looks like they have access to about as much accurate information as we do.

I think it is clear that he is losing his grip, possibly exacerbated by health issues, and that is often terminal for someone in his position. And it's also clear that he's not in good health, which itself is often terminal for strongman leaders.
 
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