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Cont: The Russian invasion of Ukraine part 7

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jimbob said:
That included Ukraine
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yeah, the decision to invade Ukraine rapidly revealed itself to be incredibly unwise. Presumably Putin thought it was going to go much better than it did, but clearly that was a wild miscalculation.
 
1. Russians controlled the dam

2. Only the Russians, in control of Kakhovka dam, could allow the levels of the reservoir to rise to record levels. (Russian apologists, including Kimdotcom on Twitter have said that the Ukrainians had control over the reservoir levels from upstream facilities??? ) They have been corrected by community notes and informed Tweeters, but the lies stay up. https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1666138891458580480?s=20

3. As the Ukrainians pushed toward Kherson (Oct. 21 2022) we found out that the Russians put explosives inside the dam, with intentions of stopping Kherson from being liberated. Where did they get this info? From dam workers? or captured Russians? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/21/zelenskyy-calls-on-west-to-warn-russia-not-to-blow-up-dam
In a television address late on Friday, Zelenskyy said Russian forces had planted explosives inside the huge Nova Kakhovka dam, which holds back an enormous reservoir that dominates much of southern Ukraine, and were planning to blow it up.
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4. The Kakhovka Dam blew up. Russian Telegrams sources went from praising the explosion to realizing the scale of what they had done, and then changing their story. Here it is with sources.
https://twitter.com/VolodyaTretyak/status/1666015265971118082?s=20
Paraphrased from linked Tweet without archives links said:
A. The Russians still think that they have neatly blown up a small part of the HPP and are flooding our military on the islands. 6:06AM
B. Russian OSINT intelligence community Rybar picks up the thesis and says a small area was blown up at 6:51 a.m
C. At 6:51 in Nova Kakhovka, they see that the dam is a complete ass, and the mom's stratagems start to realize that they are in trouble. 6:51 AM
D. But the propagandists, who do not know what the **** has happened, continue to work according to the methodology and continue to throw into the information space that the dam was previously shelled, and then it got a little tired and broke a little
E. Other telegram channels that cooperate with the military are happily hopping on one leg, cheering, because of the undermining of the Kakhovka dam, the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the islands are flooded, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to evacuate and escape, and then they publish joyful reports of how they are hitting the positions of our guys on the islands. 08:25AM
F. Here, the Russians are slowly realizing that they have created a large-scale man-made environmental disaster, almost as large as Chernobyl. And they are starting to reverse.
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5. Now we see the Russians firing at the already destroyed dam, to make it look like artillery hit it.
https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1666129084127096851?s=20

ADDENDUM TO 4, how do we know the dam blew up? Explosions heard by locals, at the exact time the dam blew up, 2:20AM local time
https://twitter.com/COUPSURE/status/1666031403471982592?s=20
 
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jeremyp said:
Yes but does Putin know how bad a state his nuclear arsenal is in?
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Quite likely not. The problem is, we definitely don't.

Plus, Russia's nuclear force is an effective deterrent even at a fraction of its nominal power. If your conventional forces are only, say, 20% effective, you're not much of a threat, but 20% of the almost 1,600 deployed nuclear warheads (with several times that in storage) are very much a threat.
 
Ziggurat said:
Quite likely not. The problem is, we definitely don't.

Plus, Russia's nuclear force is an effective deterrent even at a fraction of its nominal power. If your conventional forces are only, say, 20% effective, you're not much of a threat, but 20% of the almost 1,600 deployed nuclear warheads (with several times that in storage) are very much a threat.
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I wonder what is considered the "minimum safe" ratio of interceptors to nukes, by the scholars of such things.

20% of 1,600 is 320 nukes. Say they're all MIRVs in ICBMs (they're not, but bear with me). So you could deploy 320 anti-MIRV interceptor missiles - one for each MIRV. But you'd probably want 2 or 3 interceptors per MIRV. Maybe more, if the MIRVs are accompanied by effective penetration aids (decoys, jammers, etc.).

So, say, at minimum you'd need a thousand interceptors. This is further complicated by the fact that some of the nukes will be air-launched. Some will be shorter-ranged ground-launched. And some will be submarine-launched. The sub-launched ones will be very hard to intercept in time.

I don't know what the actual ratio of interceptors to nukes should be, to theoretically guarantee that none of the nukes gets through to a target, but I think...

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Actually, I'm not sure what I think. The US probably has a good idea of how many Russian ICBMs are aimed at the country itself. And I wouldn't be surprised if they have enough interceptors, afloat and ashore, to counter that threat entirely or almost entirely. If Russia tried a MAD first strike and only 20% of its ICBM arsenal actually launched... Who knows? Does the US intercept all the ones that launch? Do they all launch but only 20% of the warheads actually work? If the US fails to intercept one and it's one of the duds, no harm, no foul. But if the US misses one of the 20% that actually work... Is that an acceptable risk?

It'd be easier to quantify the risk if we had some idea of where Moscow might be concentrating it's 20% competence and reliability. Is it working to ensure its submarine-launched arsenal is still operational, while leaving the land-based ICBMs to rot? Or vice-versa? Or does anyone even in Russia really know?

You could imagine the Russian submarine forces having a certain pride and political support, and ensuring their missiles still work. You could also imagine a Russian submarine captain having enough to worry about just ensuring his boat can still safely submerge and his crew can still do basic damage control. Maybe he's just routinely signing off on missiles and launch systems he knows haven't been properly maintained and won't launch. He takes his boat out, sails in his assigned area for the assigned time period, and brings his boat back, all the while figuring that if the balloon goes up he'll have a radio malfunction and be unable to receive any launch orders anyway.

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Anyway, as has already been pointed out, if Russia were to un-ass a single functional warhead, they could probably drive it into Ukraine and nuke something without there being any way to stop it (short of James Bond or Top Gun shenanigans).
 
theprestige said:
I wonder what is considered the "minimum safe" ratio of interceptors to nukes, by the scholars of such things.

20% of 1,600 is 320 nukes. Say they're all MIRVs in ICBMs (they're not, but bear with me). So you could deploy 320 anti-MIRV interceptor missiles - one for each MIRV. But you'd probably want 2 or 3 interceptors per MIRV. Maybe more, if the MIRVs are accompanied by effective penetration aids (decoys, jammers, etc.).

So, say, at minimum you'd need a thousand interceptors. This is further complicated by the fact that some of the nukes will be air-launched. Some will be shorter-ranged ground-launched. And some will be submarine-launched. The sub-launched ones will be very hard to intercept in time.

I don't know what the actual ratio of interceptors to nukes should be, to theoretically guarantee that none of the nukes gets through to a target, but I think...

---

Actually, I'm not sure what I think. The US probably has a good idea of how many Russian ICBMs are aimed at the country itself. And I wouldn't be surprised if they have enough interceptors, afloat and ashore, to counter that threat entirely or almost entirely. If Russia tried a MAD first strike and only 20% of its ICBM arsenal actually launched... Who knows? Does the US intercept all the ones that launch? Do they all launch but only 20% of the warheads actually work? If the US fails to intercept one and it's one of the duds, no harm, no foul. But if the US misses one of the 20% that actually work... Is that an acceptable risk?

It'd be easier to quantify the risk if we had some idea of where Moscow might be concentrating it's 20% competence and reliability. Is it working to ensure its submarine-launched arsenal is still operational, while leaving the land-based ICBMs to rot? Or vice-versa? Or does anyone even in Russia really know?

You could imagine the Russian submarine forces having a certain pride and political support, and ensuring their missiles still work. You could also imagine a Russian submarine captain having enough to worry about just ensuring his boat can still safely submerge and his crew can still do basic damage control. Maybe he's just routinely signing off on missiles and launch systems he knows haven't been properly maintained and won't launch. He takes his boat out, sails in his assigned area for the assigned time period, and brings his boat back, all the while figuring that if the balloon goes up he'll have a radio malfunction and be unable to receive any launch orders anyway.

---

Anyway, as has already been pointed out, if Russia were to un-ass a single functional warhead, they could probably drive it into Ukraine and nuke something without there being any way to stop it (short of James Bond or Top Gun shenanigans).
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If Russia was smart (lol, they're totally not), they'd insure at least ONE warhead in each of their MIRV's is functional. It would be more difficult to counter 500 working ICBM'S with 1 warhead, than 100 ICBM's each with 5 warheads.

Our first, and best line of defense against their submarine based systems is to fire a nuclear tipped torpedo (or several to be sure) at them before they launch.

Looking at wiki it appears the Russian Navy has 10 SSBN's, and 7 SSGN's currently active (the ones not being refit). At best 2 thirds can be deployed at any given time. So ~12 of them. The USN alone has 51 attack subs, The Royal Navy and French have a further 6 attack boats each We could assign several to each Russian sub to be sure... plus surface and air ASW assets. To counter that Russia has 8 active nuclear attack boats, and some diesels that probably wouldn't be too effective out in open water. And a surface fleet that is little more than a joke.
 
theprestige said:
20% of 1,600 is 320 nukes. Say they're all MIRVs in ICBMs (they're not, but bear with me).
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The ~1600 figure is warheads, not missiles. So an RS-28 Sarmat with 15 light warheads counts as 15 for that total, not 1.

So you could deploy 320 anti-MIRV interceptor missiles - one for each MIRV. But you'd probably want 2 or 3 interceptors per MIRV. Maybe more, if the MIRVs are accompanied by effective penetration aids (decoys, jammers, etc.).
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Sure. Except we don't really have interceptors for long range ballistic missiles. THAAD is only designed for short and intermediate range ballistic missile interceptions. Long range ballistic missiles travel faster, and THAAD wasn't designed to take them out. Maybe it can, but that's only a maybe. I don't think it's ever been tested against such targets. I don't think we have any deployed missile defense systems which have been.
 
Ziggurat said:
The ~1600 figure is warheads, not missiles. So an RS-28 Sarmat with 15 light warheads counts as 15 for that total, not 1.



Sure. Except we don't really have interceptors for long range ballistic missiles. THAAD is only designed for short and intermediate range ballistic missile interceptions. Long range ballistic missiles travel faster, and THAAD wasn't designed to take them out. Maybe it can, but that's only a maybe. I don't think it's ever been tested against such targets. I don't think we have any deployed missile defense systems which have been.
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GMD is our main defense against ICBM's, not THAAD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Midcourse_Defense
 
Apparently the Russians have been abandoning Ukrainians (uh, I mean their own legitimate Russian citizens) on the left bank... I wonder how long before they start abandoning their positions, too (those that weren't flooded out in the first place)?
 
Flo said:
But do we, really ? Can we really bet on it being totally ineffectual ?

Not that we should cave in to Russia's bullying, whatever the reality or the severity to the threat is.
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That’s precisely my point. The argument was that Putin won’t launch his weapons if they don’t work, but we do not know that Putin knows what state his nuclear weapons are in. He had no idea how bad his army was but he still invaded Ukraine with it because he was being lied to.

And even if 99 ballistic missiles out of 100 fail, it is still pretty catastrophic for us.
 
jeremyp said:
That’s precisely my point. The argument was that Putin won’t launch his weapons if they don’t work, but we do not know that Putin knows what state his nuclear weapons are in. He had no idea how bad his army was but he still invaded Ukraine with it because he was being lied to.

And even if 99 ballistic missiles out of 100 fail, it is still pretty catastrophic for us.
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That's the problem with widespread pencil whipping, it makes it pretty hard to actually know how things stand and make informed choices. A little fudging the numbers here and there is not really that bad, but if it's rampant then you get to a point that you only have garbage data to use to make decisions.
 
jeremyp said:
That’s precisely my point. The argument was that Putin won’t launch his weapons if they don’t work, but we do not know that Putin knows what state his nuclear weapons are in. He had no idea how bad his army was but he still invaded Ukraine with it because he was being lied to.

And even if 99 ballistic missiles out of 100 fail, it is still pretty catastrophic for us.
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I have no idea if Putin knows how functional his nuclear arsenal is, but I expect he does have a pretty good idea of how much more help Ukraine will be getting if he sets any off. Enough to drive Russia out utterly.

And if he uses any on an American target the U.S. response will make the reaction to Pearl Harbor look like Brownie Scouts throwing mudpies.

This, of course, assumes that he will behave as a rational actor capable of and inclined to making rational decisions. It isn't really very clear that that is the case.
 
Reports today that Moscow is not only declining to evacuate people in occupied territory, but they are also heavily shelling Kherson, where Ukrainian evacuation efforts are underway.
 
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