Cont: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine part 8

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lobosrul5 said:
Hopefully thats because Ukraine is running out of targets. Next up they need ATACMS to take out most of Russia's air defense systems, and then F-16's can operated with impunity. I don't think the Russia Army will survive the winter.
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Hopefully.

With that said, I wouldn't keep my hopes up for F-16's being able to operate with impunity, though, even if that happened, and nor would I count on them arriving soon enough to make a significant difference before the end of the year, especially given that it's very unlikely that Ukraine will be able to immediately use them as part of combined arms or immediately execute complex group missions with them. They might be game changers when it comes to the Black Sea, but I don't see them being game changers in general. Useful, though, yes.

As for Russia's Army surviving the winter... I rather expect that they will. The southern offensive's strategic goal of breaking the GLOC's is quite important, but it's not a means to immediately break the Russian forces. It'll likely take time to liberate the cut-off areas, for starters, like it took time to liberate Kherson City, and it will have limited direct impact on the eastern front, where Russia's logistics are much shorter and harder to break.
 
[vatnik] Nothing that happened at Sevastopol matters because Russia doesn't care about the Black Sea Fleet [/vatnik]
 
theprestige said:
Key to what?

Bakhmut is obviously a boondoggle. It remains to be seen which side benefits most from the snipe hunt. But don't pretend there's some great strategic jumping-off point in contest there.
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Russia have a fixation with it. They keep putting resources in to it's defence and they keep losing them. They put their airborne troops in to bolster it's defences and they were all but destroyed.
They were redeployed from the front around Robotyne allowing Ukraine to advance there
It's becoming symbolic for them and draining resources.
 
It feels like many weeks ago Denys Davydov began telling us of the imminent liberation of Klishchiivka and speculating on which target would be next. Reality has been agonisingly slower though, slower even than Robotyne. I hope the time spent represents a lot Russian materiel being fed into resisting its liberation and being destroyed, but that could just be my wishful thinkning. Territory matters but destroying Russian resources faster than Russia can replace them matters too.
 
Russia have squandered some of their best units there
All the roads in and out are under fire from Ukrainian artillery.

It's in their interest to not take the city but to keep Russian forces fixed there.
 
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theprestige said:
Immediate counterattack is sound doctrine.

It can be very difficult to tell ahead of time how much staying power the enemy has. Sometimes, your best bet is simply to keep on testing them until they break or you do. Ultimately, the only way to win a war is to hit the enemy's main strength with your main strength, and see who prevails. That's what Hitler ordered, and there's wisdom in that order. The orders failed not because they were stupid, but because the German army was already strategically exhausted. Falling back would have been even worse, since it would still degrade the German army, without even testing the Russian's strength.

You'll notice that Moscow is ignoring Hitler's "military genius", and doing all this very close to their own borders, not balls-deep in Western Europe with no exit strategy.

Not everything going on in Ukraine right now is properly understood as a replay of WW2.
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The immediate counter attack was mostly based on the fact that Soviets had gotten extremely good at digging in. They took the phrase “the shovel is the brother to the gun” to heart and any land taken would be almost immediately be dug in and entrenched unless immediately expelled by counter-attack.
 
Aridas said:
...I wouldn't keep my hopes up for F-16's being able to operate with impunity, though, even if that happened, and nor would I count on them arriving soon enough to make a significant difference before the end of the year, especially given that it's very unlikely that Ukraine will be able to immediately use them as part of combined arms or immediately execute complex group missions with them. They might be game changers when it comes to the Black Sea, but I don't see them being game changers in general. Useful, though, yes....
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Wondering out loud:

One of the surprises of the war is that Russia has not achieved air superiority over Ukraine. That they seem to be using their air force remarkably sparingly. At least that's my impression, as I see little reporting of the RUAF in use - please correct me if my impression is wrong.
The only part of their air fleet that seems to be regularly employed with good effect is the heavy bombers that launch long-range missiles from like the Caspian Sea far into Ukraine. Those stay a long way away from the border.

The reason for this, I suppose, is that Russia lacks the ability to find and take out Ukraine's air defense, from manpads to Patriots and Irises with any meaure of reliability, such that they would suffer more damage than they could inflict if they tried to cross the border or even just get too near to it.

Likewise, Ukraines air force is so weak they can't penetrate into Russian-held territory and are very careful to come near with their SU's and Mig's. and when they do they don't inflict all that much damage - because Russian air defense is still good enough to deter Ukraine from risking what little they have in attack capabilities.
Again, the exception, since lately, are air-launched mid-range missiles (Storm Shadows).

With me so far?

Now. Enter F-16s.
The point of equipping Ukraine with Western fighter jets is for them to be able to penetrate into occupied area, to operate more freely over the Black Sea, or even to go into Russia proper (if NATO donors allow that).

How will the Russians react to that?
Is that when we will see Russian fighters in action? To do dog fights? Rumor has it that some planes+arms in their arsenal aren't all that bad in that regard. We have seen Flankers in action - will we see many more once F-16s are in service? How will that play out?
What are Russian Early Warning capabilities, how fast and where would they be able to intercept Ukrainian attacks? Will this trigger a similar response? I mean once their own airspace becomes dangerous with the presence of F-16s, why not go into UA air space and take the fight there?

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You probably see how I know pretty little about such operations.
Happy to see comments.
 
how can Russia react?
I mean apart from attacking any possible airfield with cruise missiles all the time.

What won't happen is an escalation by Russia: they had so many red lines that where just ignored without any consequences, there is no reason that plane would suddenly change that.
 
Moscow is murdering civilians across Ukraine every day. Moscow will continue to murder Ukrainians until Ukraine stops resisting. That's the reaction. That's the escalation. Just because they're comically bad at strategic bombing, that doesn't mean they're not retaliating, not exacting a heavy price from Ukraine for all the fighting they're doing and all the help they're getting.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Russia have a fixation with it. They keep putting resources in to it's defence and they keep losing them. They put their airborne troops in to bolster it's defences and they were all but destroyed.
They were redeployed from the front around Robotyne allowing Ukraine to advance there
It's becoming symbolic for them and draining resources.
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Oddly like Stalingrad became for Hitler;so much so he gave it a greater priority on men and resources then the drive for the Oil Fields in the Cacauses Mountains.....one of his most fatal mistakes.
In the original Case Blue, Stalingrad was a secondary objective; it would be taken or screened only to protect the northern flank of the Drive to the Cacausue and it's Oil Fields. But GROFAZ turned that on on it's head, and catastrophe followed.

"We won't go back from the VOlga! We won't go back from the Volga".
 
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lobosrul5 said:
They'd be carpet bombing Kyiv right now if they had the capability.
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There is a certain tragicomedy in the fact that on the one hand, Moscow's precision-guided munitions cannot be precisely guided enough to be strategically or tactically decisive, and on the other hand, Moscow can't even manage the much more primitive strategy of just spamming dumb bombs at enemy cities.
 
Oystein said:
Wondering out loud:

One of the surprises of the war is that Russia has not achieved air superiority over Ukraine. That they seem to be using their air force remarkably sparingly. At least that's my impression, as I see little reporting of the RUAF in use - please correct me if my impression is wrong.
The only part of their air fleet that seems to be regularly employed with good effect is the heavy bombers that launch long-range missiles from like the Caspian Sea far into Ukraine. Those stay a long way away from the border.

The reason for this, I suppose, is that Russia lacks the ability to find and take out Ukraine's air defense, from manpads to Patriots and Irises with any meaure of reliability, such that they would suffer more damage than they could inflict if they tried to cross the border or even just get too near to it.

Likewise, Ukraines air force is so weak they can't penetrate into Russian-held territory and are very careful to come near with their SU's and Mig's. and when they do they don't inflict all that much damage - because Russian air defense is still good enough to deter Ukraine from risking what little they have in attack capabilities.
Again, the exception, since lately, are air-launched mid-range missiles (Storm Shadows).

With me so far?

Now. Enter F-16s.
The point of equipping Ukraine with Western fighter jets is for them to be able to penetrate into occupied area, to operate more freely over the Black Sea, or even to go into Russia proper (if NATO donors allow that).

How will the Russians react to that?
Is that when we will see Russian fighters in action? To do dog fights? Rumor has it that some planes+arms in their arsenal aren't all that bad in that regard. We have seen Flankers in action - will we see many more once F-16s are in service? How will that play out?
What are Russian Early Warning capabilities, how fast and where would they be able to intercept Ukrainian attacks? Will this trigger a similar response? I mean once their own airspace becomes dangerous with the presence of F-16s, why not go into UA air space and take the fight there?

----

You probably see how I know pretty little about such operations.
Happy to see comments.
Click to expand...

Not an air force guy, so I am pretty much taking educated guesses here as well.

Russia does not seem to have any reliable airborne early warning ability. They did build planes for this, but it seems they never did get the job done. Without that, they cannot reliably know what is going on over Ukraine. They do have local control with ground based radar in their own area. Not sure how good that is. But given that they have a dedicated branch of the military for air defence, you would think it should have some serious abilities. But then, look at the rest of the Russian military.

Without AEW, they have limited ability to put aircraft over Ukraine to look for anti-aircraft systems. Satellites should tell them something but we don't see any results. It seems they still have not hit a HIMARS launcher.

The F-16s are probably best brought in slowly rather than go for a deep strike right off the bat. Start in the west and get some experience where they are safer. Then start working east.

That last part has a big chance of being wrong. Way back during the gulf war, I figured the air campaign would not start for a couple of days after the deadline for Iraq to withdraw. Give the air defence crews a chance to think nothing would happen. That is the opposite of what did happen.
 
The US is pretty unique in being able to sortie the equivalent of every other air force in all of human history combined, all at once, to the other side of the planet, on D-Day. Ukraine will probably take a more moderate approach.

I suspect the F-16s will be appreciated at first as more and better bombers. Modern avionics, able to mount the entire complement of NATO arms. Just what Ukraine needs, to properly suppress and destroy Moscow's ground based air defense complexes. After that? The sky's the limit, I think.
 
Ukraine are using their aircraft selectively. Those strikes on Sevastopol were by Storm Shadow missiles which are sir launched.
 
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