Russia and Ukraine

[Thumpalumpacus]

You're too kind, thanks.

I get your point about SEAD, though I think that would be very difficult anyway given that most Ukrainian AD is in the form of MANPADs. For this reason, I was thinking more along the lines of attacking Ukrainian airfields harboring combat planes or repair facilities with stand-off missiles in the opening minutes of the war.

They may well be husbanding their more advanced aircraft in order to address any potential NATO intervention, too.

I'd have to go digging through the toobs, but one of the people I watch semi-regularly from before the war when he was doing his analysis pointed out the fact that the Russian airforce are doing all their sorties at low altitude, indicating that quite a lot of Ukrainian long range and high altitude air defence is still active.  They picked off the fixed point radar installations early on, but that's no real achievement, any airforce with superiority in numbers should be able to do that.  But Russia look to be absolutely cack at taking out mobile air defence and at taking out airfields.

I hadn't really considered your point about high-alt AD, and I knew the Ukrainians did field some S-300s. Mobile AD, especially MANPADs, are very hard to target with air, that's a ground job there if ever we see one.

I'm really surprised the Russians didn't go after military airfields and repair facilities, though. The best place to kill an enemy air force is on the ground.

PS I'm sceptical about the idea that Russia are holding back their more advanced aircraft because, a) they know NATO won't involve themselves directly without nukes falling, and b) they've put in their best units and equipment in every other department (which got absolutely spankered as a result) so why keep their planes back (unless they've nobody to fly them)?

I've seen very little reportage regarding Su-35s and -57s, and very little about their heavy bombers being involved, as well, which is the basis for my point. I could certainly be wrong, obvs.

---

The incompetence we've seen on display this last month is stunning, to me.

Even if Russia had more-than-competent field commanders, their invasion force would still be in the weeds because their equipment and logistics are shit. They attempted a half-arsed blitzkrieg with four different lines of assault using armour and artillery that hadn’t been properly maintained and couldn’t be reliably supported.

Boru

It's worse than that, Boru. Combat capability starts at the level of the soldier, and these Russian troops are clearly deficient in simple tactics. Their morale also seems lacking. I've read that many of them were told they were on maneuvers and were not expecting live fire at all. Young conscripts with less than a year in service being confronted with a surprise offensive ... yeah, no.

Good troops can rarely, but sometimes, overcome bad plans or poor equipment, but they still need food, fuel, and ammo to do so. Overcoming poor planning is just as hard, but still sometimes doable; we see instances of that in the Pacific in WWII, for instance, except when as in this case the poor planning happens in logistics as well as operations.

But when you throw undertrained troops in with poor leadership and shitty planning, expecting anything other than a clusterfuck is rainbows-and-unicorns territory.

---

And I'd even forgotten about rasputitsa when I made the "can't fight 50 miles outside its borders" predicition.

Add to this last comment the fact that the winter has been very mild there this year, and you're looking at four months of mud. Rasputitsa doesn't typically start until late March/early april there, and last until the end of May, though there've been instances of it going into late June -- just ask the Germans why they had to delay Barbarossa a month.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and the best place to kill enemy infantry is in their beds - but the russians don't have nvg's just like they have fucking Garmins glued to the cockpit shelfs of their supposed next gen multi-roles.....- so that's moot. More military malpractice.

[Thumpalumpacus]

-and the best place to kill enemy infantry is in their beds -

Sam Houston is sitting up and grinning.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

This

 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the...9742a79d72

may help explain why Russia hasn't established air superiority (and isn't likely to do so) - it isn't so much that they don't have the planes or the pilots, it's that they aren't using the correct munitions to make the best use of these planes. They aren't using guided munitions because they don't have guided munitions. 

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

@Thumpalumpacus

Uncle Vlad is looking alot like Russia's Santa Anna right now - minus all of the positive qualities.....

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Russians are now using military weapons mounted on commandeered civilian vehicles in Ukraine, confirmed by Andrey Kelin (I’m sure there’s a correct military term for these hybrids). Some questions for people who know more about military stuff than I do:

Is it because their tanks are bogging down in the mud? Is it because they’re running out of tank fuel? It it because they’re running out of tanks? Is it a good idea use these when they can be disabled by a simple hunting rifle? Doesn’t this argue against Russia holding its premier equipment in reserve?

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

NSTVs or techs.

They're matching ukrainian tactics. There may be other reasons, but that would be the primary reason to do it if you had another choice. They're not holding their premiere anythings in reserve, not even troops. They used their good troops too.. and those guys got smashed. They brought their mbts, smashed. They brought their su35s and their brand new ka's and some big beautiful alligator landing ships......all of it...dogshit. Potatoes in ukranian fields.

Ukraine is doing it to replicate the humvee use the us defaulted to - where one or two armored vehicles might be up front, but it's mostly small wheeled vehicles (the drone guys are using quad atv's) full of infantry. Russia is doing it because they can't keep losing all that expensive shit to guys in suvs. As in literally can't - they're having trouble manufacturing spare parts...and there's a bit of a cash problem. This war was supposed to be a product demo. Womp womp.

[onlinebiker]

Russians are now using military weapons mounted on commandeered civilian vehicles in Ukraine, confirmed by Andrey Kelin (I’m sure there’s a correct military term for these hybrids). Some questions for people who know more about military stuff than I do:

Is it because their tanks are bogging down in the mud? Is it because they’re running out of tank fuel? It it because they’re running out of tanks? Is it a good idea use these when they can be disabled by a simple hunting rifle? Doesn’t this argue against Russia holding its premier equipment in reserve?

Boru

Putin developed this tactic after a two day binge of Red Bull and Stolychnia while playing non-stop Grand Theft Auto.........

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Russians are now using military weapons mounted on commandeered civilian vehicles in Ukraine, confirmed by Andrey Kelin (I’m sure there’s a correct military term for these hybrids). Some questions for people who know more about military stuff than I do:

Is it because their tanks are bogging down in the mud? Is it because they’re running out of tank fuel? It it because they’re running out of tanks? Is it a good idea use these when they can be disabled by a simple hunting rifle? Doesn’t this argue against Russia holding its premier equipment in reserve?

Boru

Putin developed this tactic after a two day binge of Red Bull and Stolychnia while playing non-stop Grand Theft Auto.........

I’d be much surprised if Putin even knows about it. If Nudger’s right (and I have no reason to suspect he isn’t), this is really bad news for Russia. The Ukrainians are employing it as a deliberate tactic, while the Russians look like they’re being forced into it as a desperate response to a logistical nightmare.

Giving Putin this level of bad news is kind of a career-ender.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

It's deliberate on their part, but not entirely voluntary. They're short on standard vehicles too. Particularly APCs. The russians suffered no such shortage - but...mech infantry don't actually fight -in- the APCs, they dismount. Consider the massive number of russian APCs confirmed to be destroyed in that not entirely obvious light. If the point of mech infantry is to deposit ground forces in some place rapidly - and you can get them where you want them with a pickup truck just as easily or faster, the standard vehicle is superfluous and an asset at risk.

Russian APC losses, in particular, give a picture of what must be happening in these engagements. The Ukrainians are setting ambushes, absolutely, but they must also be getting into the russian formations, because the APCs after contact will be behind the infantry line, not with it. That's basic, automatic stuff. Infantry dismount to advance while the vehicles retreat firing parting shots and popping smoke.