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The Russian Invasion of Ukraine Part 4

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Ziggurat said:
If it always pulls to one side, then you can correct for that. I'd be more worried about what that means for catastrophic barrel failure than what it means for aiming.
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It isn't like a hand held rifle. They would need to bore site the gun at some point. Never had to do something like that myself, but there are limits to what you can correct for.
 
Explosions are heard at Kerch. Russia appears to be engaging aerial targets there, probably Ukrainian drones.

River crossings near Kherson also just got hit. An ammo dump in Belbek airfield Crimea and another (big one) in Belgorod (Russia proper) at the Stary Oskol airfield.

Ukraine is busy tonight.

Here's some video of Russian civilian activity in Crimea.
 
Among the Russian failures another is their new Superrifle , issued for testing purposes, seems to be a total bust.
What is gobsmacking is is proving to be totally unreliable in combat.
Russia seems to have forgot that is huge sucess in small arms..one area where RUssia can claim to have been hugely sucessful...is based on one thing:Relibatily. The AK family of rifles put a huge emphasis on being "Soldier Proof"..able to withstand rough handling, bad conditions, and soldiers who might not be over attentive to weapon maintenance. They threw all that out the windows in pursuit of some kind of ultra futuristic weapon, and have a fiasco on their hands.
 
crescent said:
I saw a thing highlighting Russian tactics:

Shell an area for a time - hours, days, multiple days. Not a large area necessarily, not with accurate artillery, but just hammer it for a good long time.

Maybe do a bit of shoot and scoot, but so far Ukrainian counter-battery fire has been of very limited effectiveness. Efforts to limit supplies of ordnance delivered to the Russian guns has had some success, but not actual destruction of the guns. And they seem to be working through the logistics problems a bit. The Russians are not as flush with ammo as they were a month ago, but they've got more than now than they did in that first week or two after HIMARS equipment first starting hitting the ammo unloading points.

Finally, after hours or days of utterly hammering an area, send in a platoon or two of infantry. That's all, no huge movement of thousands of soldiers, literally just one or two platoons sized groups.

If they don't face much resistance, they take the area and dig in - mind you, they are not taking large areas when they do this, just a small village, a city block or two, or a patch of forest, even just a forested strip between fields.

If they face resistance, pull the infantry back. Go back to the first step (pound it with artillery) and start over. They don't need good infantry to do this because they don't try very hard. The Russian infantry are just there to mop up survivors of the artillery barrage, and if there are too many survivors, they just pull back and let the big guns go back to work.

This is a pretty low risk strategy, and the most crucial bit - the artillery troops - are not taking much casualties at all. They can keep it up as long as they've got artillery guns and ammo. They don't need much accuracy, it does not matter so much if the target is an area some hundreds of meters across being targeted by dozens or hundreds of guns for a day or two continuously.

It is, however, a very slow strategy.

It seems like everyone is settling in for a long-duration war.
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Yes, that seems to be the case and it's "working" because the things which are most prized by Western armies, speed, resource effectiveness and limiting your own and civilian casualties are completely irrelevant to Russia. :(
 
The Don said:
Yes, that seems to be the case and it's "working" because the things which are most prized by Western armies, speed, resource effectiveness and limiting your own and civilian casualties are completely irrelevant to Russia. :(
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It's "working" in that they're using the largest amount of resources for the smallest gain. As crescent pointed out, the attacks in Crimea and surrounding Kherson from Ukraine are doing more and more damage. Not just to the physical items, but to Russia. They continuously have to make up stories to explain why all of these "random events" seem to happen to Russia constantly but I can't recall a single Ukrainian ammunitions depot blowing up due to someone smoking.

I really don't see Russia's attacks, or the damage they're taking, as sustainable. Russians are fleeing their homes en masse and now Ukraine is attacking Russia on their own soil.
 
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Aridas said:
Let's hope not. If they do, though, classifying them as a State Sponsor of Terrorism becomes immensely more likely.
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The global backlash if they were to cause a nuclear event would be swift, I really believe that.

Ironically, the original plan for 9/11 was to attack nuclear power plants but even OBL and KSM said the global backlash would be immediate and devastating.
 
plague311 said:
It's "working" in that they're using the largest amount of resources for the smallest gain. As crescent pointed out, the attacks in Crimea and surrounding Kherson from Ukraine is doing more and more damage. Not just to the physical items, but to Russia. They continuously have to make up stories to explain away all of these "random events" that seem to happen to Russia constantly but I can't recall a single Ukrainian ammunitions depot blowing up due to someone smoking.

I really don't see Russia's attacks, or the damage they're taking, as sustainable. Russians are fleeing their homes en masse and now the Ukraine is attacking Russia on their own soil.
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They seem to be making up these stories to avoid having to make good on their previous threats of massive retaliation for attacks on "Russian" soil.
 
dudalb said:
Among the Russian failures another is their new Superrifle , issued for testing purposes, seems to be a total bust.
What is gobsmacking is is proving to be totally unreliable in combat.
Russia seems to have forgot that is huge sucess in small arms..one area where RUssia can claim to have been hugely sucessful...is based on one thing:Relibatily. The AK family of rifles put a huge emphasis on being "Soldier Proof"..able to withstand rough handling, bad conditions, and soldiers who might not be over attentive to weapon maintenance. They threw all that out the windows in pursuit of some kind of ultra futuristic weapon, and have a fiasco on their hands.
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Forgotten Weapons has a good episode on this. Fiasco? No, just another flub in the long history of armies sweating the small stuff. And of inventors getting too damn clever.

But the storied Battle of Relibatily! Ah, there was an epic combat, more glorious with every telling!
 
The Don said:
Yes, that seems to be the case and it's "working" because the things which are most prized by Western armies, speed, resource effectiveness and limiting your own and civilian casualties are completely irrelevant to Russia. : (
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You're wrong, though. These things are supremely relevant to any army, including the Russian army. It's just that in the Russian army's current condition, the closest they can get to the ideal is, apparently:

- bombard an empty field
- send in a couple platoons
- hope nobody bombards those platoons when they arrive in the empty field
- fight the war a quarter mile at a time and call it "winning"

Lord Haw Haw would be proud.
 
Drones are being mentioned fairly often in stories about Ukraine’s attacks inside Crimea. This is after a number of essays appearing about the declining utility of UAVs in the war. What's up here?

We also hear opinions about Ukrainian infiltrators hitting juicy targets with -- what? Demolition charges? Mortars? Rockets? Swarms of Switchblades?

Gotta think that both sides are using infiltrators in this fight; a russian can pass for a ukrie, and vice versa, pretty easily. Difference might be in how readily you can bribe your way past the sentries in question. If a rooshian grunt goes blind and deaf for, say, 1,000 rubles and a litre of vodka, nobody should be surprised.
 
sackett said:
Drones are being mentioned fairly often in stories about Ukraine’s attacks inside Crimea. This is after a number of essays appearing about the declining utility of UAVs in the war. What's up here?

We also hear opinions about Ukrainian infiltrators hitting juicy targets with -- what? Demolition charges? Mortars? Rockets? Swarms of Switchblades?

Gotta think that both sides are using infiltrators in this fight; a russian can pass for a ukrie, and vice versa, pretty easily. Difference might be in how readily you can bribe your way past the sentries in question. If a rooshian grunt goes blind and deaf for, say, 1,000 rubles and a litre of vodka, nobody should be surprised.
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According to the soldier in the linked story, some Russian soldiers are willing to shoot themselves to be sent home and get some money. It wouldn't shock me if they'd take a bribe from anyone.

My guess as far as what they're using to blow up these targets is...I don't have one. I do know that the civilians were willing and able to turn anything and everything into a weapon when the Russians first invaded.
 
plague311 said:
The global backlash if they were to cause a nuclear event would be swift, I really believe that.

Ironically, the original plan for 9/11 was to attack nuclear power plants but even OBL and KSM said the global backlash would be immediate and devastating.
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That might not have been the only concern. At an operational level, US reactor containment buildings are designed to withstand an aircraft impact. So a 9/11 type of attack would absolutely have shut down a nuclear plant, but likely wouldn't have resulted in destruction of the reactor or significant radioactive release.

On the other hand, Russian-style reactors weren't built like US reactors. Chernobyl, for example, didn't even have a containment building in the US style.
 
plague311 said:
The global backlash if they were to cause a nuclear event would be swift, I really believe that.

Ironically, the original plan for 9/11 was to attack nuclear power plants but even OBL and KSM said the global backlash would be immediate and devastating.
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Hell, the US backlash would have been devastaing. I think that the use of tactical nukes on Al Qaida training camps would have been a near certaintiy.
 
sackett said:
Forgotten Weapons has a good episode on this. Fiasco? No, just another flub in the long history of armies sweating the small stuff. And of inventors getting too damn clever.

But the storied Battle of Relibatily! Ah, there was an epic combat, more glorious with every telling!
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What is surprising it that the design flew in the face of everything that had made Russian small arms so sucessful.
 
dudalb said:
What is surprising it that the design flew in the face of everything that had made Russian small arms so sucessful.
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That's an example of an inventor getting too damn clever for any good use. What purpose the AK 12 was supposed to serve is, ahem, difficult to discern.

Firearms are what's called a terminal technology, that is, further improvement can only be minimal. I'd opine even that seeming improvements are apt to be no more than changes, and bought at the price of accompanying flaws.

But don't tell Mr. Putler that. He'd feel awful.
 
sackett said:
That's an example of an inventor getting too damn clever for any good use. What purpose the AK 12 was supposed to serve is, ahem, difficult to discern.

Firearms are what's called a terminal technology, that is, further improvement can only be minimal. I'd opine even that seeming improvements are apt to be no more than changes, and bought at the price of accompanying flaws.

But don't tell Mr. Putler that. He'd feel awful.
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At least the US Army ditched the OICW program in the early 2000's after it became clear it would never be a practical weapon.
This was a super gun that was supposed to be light years ahead of current firearms.Nicknamed the Star Wars gun because it looked like something out of a Star Wars movie. Turned out to be full of bugs and totally unreliable outside the lab.
 
The US Army did just settle on a new space gun with fancy smart optics and whatnot, though. Seems like the Russians just wanted a modernized AK design (sort of like how the Super Tucano is basically a modernized prop fighter from the WWII era), and couldn't even get that right.
 
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