The Russian Invasion of Ukraine Part 4

[Nessie]

Is there any sign that Ukraine is winning?

 

[theprestige]

Is there any sign that Ukraine is winning?

Yes.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Dumb missiles, as in unguided, would be no better than katyushas, although a 300 mm big 'un would make a much more effective bang.

Are you sure about that?

 

[ponderingturtle]

Yeah, just because most of the world wants Putin to drop dead, that doesn't mean it's going to happen soon enough.

So much for The Secret.

 

[Craig4]

Is there any sign that Ukraine is winning?

This isn't a football match nor is it a game of chess with a clear victor and vanquished. Modern war is a game of Go. It's about relative cost and advantage. We will know who "won" when one side begins to suffer a greater cost than the value they place on the thing they are fighting for. I suspect both sides will reach a point of exhaustion when giving up some of what they value will become less expensive than continued fighting.

 

[Aridas]

This isn't a football match nor is it a game of chess with a clear victor and vanquished. Modern war is a game of Go. It's about relative cost and advantage. We will know who "won" when one side begins to suffer a greater cost than the value they place on the thing they are fighting for. I suspect both sides will reach a point of exhaustion when giving up some of what they value will become less expensive than continued fighting.

I'd add to this that Russia and Ukraine look like they're either at or are very close to even effective strength right now, going by the movement and changes of the last couple weeks. That's a massive change from the initial massive advantage that Russia had.

 

[jimbob]

Looks like a third one of your Wunderwaffe HIMARS made "boom" in a way it wasn't designed to. Interesting eight minutes video about that:


In other news, it seems like Siversk has been taken over by the LPR opolchenie.

This isn't a football match nor is it a game of chess with a clear victor and vanquished. Modern war is a game of Go. It's about relative cost and advantage. We will know who "won" when one side begins to suffer a greater cost than the value they place on the thing they are fighting for. I suspect both sides will reach a point of exhaustion when giving up some of what they value will become less expensive than continued fighting.

Well, your answer was better pilut than the one I started drafting a few hours ago.

North Vietnam suffered more casualties and a higher cost than the US, and it had less resources in the first place, but they won the Vietnam war.

I take slight issue with your use of the phrase "modern war" because I'd argue that has gone back hundreds if not thousands of years. Certainly from the time the Roman Empire abandoned Britannia.

 

[SpitfireIX]

Dumb missiles, as in unguided, would be no better than katyushas, although a 300 mm big 'un would make a much more effective bang.

But a dim missile, i.e, one that knows just enough to follow a smart one, would be impossible to jam and hard to decoy.

The point isn't for the dumb MLRS to hit anything. The point is that even upgraded S-400 systems won't be able to tell the difference between them and the GMLRS. Suppose that a section of two HIMARS or a single M270 fires eight dumb MLRS and four GMLRS at a target. The Russians will have to expend just as many missiles to stop the attack, but the Ukrainians will only have used up 1/3 as many GMLRS as a full salvo. And we already know the Russians will have serious difficulty producing any kind of sophisticated missiles with the chip shortage.

 

[lomiller]

Looks like a third one of your Wunderwaffe HIMARS made "boom" in a way it wasn't designed to. Interesting eight minutes video about that:


In other news, it seems like Siversk has been taken over by the LPR opolchenie.

Pretty bad. He's trying to overlay model builder images to "prove" it's a MLRS instead of just a flatbed truck and when the dimensions don't work he claims it's just a shadow, but "shadow" of the truck is 3X longer than the shadow of the multi-story building sitting right next to it.

 

[lomiller]

There is another reason to think the analysis is wrong. Shadows. The shadow behind the cab is half the length of the one from the back of the vehicle to the ground. The cab is higher than the missiles but not by much.

If that was a HIMARS the shadow behind the cab should be several times shorter based on the profile view of the vehicle. Instead it is half the length of the rear shadow.

And both "shadows" are longer than the shadow of the building right beside the truck and the other truck sitting right beside it.

 

[Childlike Empress]

The neo-con morons/propagandists at ISW literally tweeted this today. Telegram is rolling on the floor laughing.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops rescued a cat during clearing operations on #SnakeIsland and evacuated it back to the Ukrainian mainland on July 20.

The cat reportedly survived the duration of the Russian occupation of the island.

 

[Andy_Ross]

The neo-con morons/propagandists at ISW literally tweeted this today. Telegram is rolling on the floor laughing.

and?

 

[Craig4]

It tells you everything you need to know about the Russian military that they saved a cat and murdered and continue to murder all those civilians. A bunch of degenerates that dress alike.

 

[The Don]

and?

Russians would have sent it to a reeducation camp before attempting to conscript it.

 

[jimbob]

Is there any sign that Ukraine is winning?

Yes.

Indeed. Survival is winning for Ukraine when Russia wants to extinguish Ukraine as a country and many of those who parrot Russian propaganda refuse to accept that Ukraine is even a proper country.

 

[Craig4]

Russians would have sent it to a reeducation camp before attempting to conscript it.

I'm sure they'd have executed the poor thing except you can't tie a cat's paws behind their backs.

 

[Stout]

The neo-con morons/propagandists at ISW literally tweeted this today. Telegram is rolling on the floor laughing.

The Internet tells me that Russians are cat lovers so it's no surprise it "survived" the occupation.

 

[sackett]

The point isn't for the dumb MLRS to hit anything. The point is that even upgraded S-400 systems won't be able to tell the difference between them and the GMLRS. Suppose that a section of two HIMARS or a single M270 fires eight dumb MLRS and four GMLRS at a target. The Russians will have to expend just as many missiles to stop the attack, but the Ukrainians will only have used up 1/3 as many GMLRS as a full salvo. And we already know the Russians will have serious difficulty producing any kind of sophisticated missiles with the chip shortage.

And I'm proposing a form of guidance that may be new to MLRSs (or it may not; guys who are paid to work on these things will come up with a lotta stuff) but is not radical or unachieveable: missiles formating on or following another, guided missile. This would achieve high accuracy for an entire volley without the need for sophisticated guidance for every munition -- and we know that with sophistication comes complexity and vulnerability. The odds of the New Master Race knocking out the smart guided missile in time to disperse a volley are no greater than before.

I don't want the Ukrainians having to waste my expensive rockets. I want smoking craters ringed with the scraps of Putler's expensive rockets. And tanks, trucks, planes, makhorka, and barrels of pickled herring.

 

[Andy_Ross]

And I'm proposing a form of guidance that may be new to MLRSs (or it may not; guys who are paid to work on these things will come up with a lotta stuff) but is not radical or unachieveable: missiles formating on or following another, guided missile. This would achieve high accuracy for an entire volley without the need for sophisticated guidance for every munition -- and we know that with sophistication comes complexity and vulnerability. The odds of the New Master Race knocking out the smart guided missile in time to disperse a volley are no greater than before.

I don't want the Ukrainians having to waste my expensive rockets. I want smoking craters ringed with the scraps of Putler's expensive rockets. And tanks, trucks, planes, makhorka, and barrels of pickled herring.

So how much extra would the technology to make one missile follow another be? why not just give them all the gps guidance?

 

[theprestige]

The general paradigm for dealing with improved air defenses seems to be a combination of increased stealth, and the addition of "penetration aids" to the salvo. What we'll probably see with rocket artillery is that some of the rockets will have conventional warheads, and some will function as buses for decoys and jammers.

We may also see the expansion of drones into the SEAD role. Or "drones". Loitering missiles ready to pounce on enemy air defense radars is a trick that goes all the way back to Vietnam.