Defensive works are of no value if bypassed. Ukraine doesn't need to attack most of them, just punch a hole somewhere and cut off the troops in the trenches. They can sit there and starve.
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How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?
- Thread starter Harry Bosch
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Cheerful Charlie
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They can sit in their trenches. It is their artillery, MLRS systems and anti-aircraft systems that need destroying. The next big problem are minefields. The Russian problem with unreliable artillery munitions helps. I have no idea how bad that problem is. Every shell? 1 out of 10? 1 out of 50? Does a bad shell destroy the breech? The breech and crew? The other problem is counter battery fire. Shoot and scoot is hard to pull off in a dug in system. Then Russian artillery is just a target.
Jayjay
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Ukraine is reporting 163 artillery pieces destroyed in last 7 days. I'd take that number with a bit of grain of salt, but it's a lot compared to what the situation was six months ago. So I do think they're doing exactly what you're suggesting.
The main problem is surveillance drones that would let Ukraine know where to hit, and to correct fire and confirm the kills. The artillery maybe mostly stationary, but they're 10km or so behind the front lines.
Tigers!
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I am sure that Barbos will help him.
DrZoidberg
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A big difference between Ukrainian and Russian armaments is the range and accuracy of artillery. Ukrainian artillery is much better.
Ukraine has access to US (extremely good) real time satellite imagery.
US has donated an extremely hard hitting combination of weapons to Ukraine.
Russias edge is that they have much more weapons.
DrZoidberg
Contributor
The military analyst Mick Ryan has said (I assume, flippantly) that Ukraine has the best army in the world today. Namely that it's per capita the best equiped army and, at the moment, the only army fully experienced to use the latest generation of arms.
That doesn't mean it's a sure win. Boromir was the best warrior of Gondor. He still got taken out.
That doesn't mean it's a sure win. Boromir was the best warrior of Gondor. He still got taken out.
Jayjay
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Ukraine also seems to use the range to protect its artillery pieces from counter-battery fire, which to some extent negates the accuracy advantage.
There is a huge difference between guided rounds, and dumb rounds: for example, 155mm Excalibur or M30/31 rockets. The advantage is that accuracy doesn't degrade with distance, as it does with dumb rounds, and if you know the coordinates, you might get one-hit kills. But while Ukraine has more guided munitions (maybe?) they're still rare compared to dumb rounds, something like 1% or 0.1% of everything that gets fired? I wouldn't know. Ukraine also suffers that something like half of its guns are still old soviet standard.
With dumb rounds, the idea is that you need real-time correction. You fire one or two rounds, see where they land, correct and fire again. This isn't possible unless you have eyes on the target, and satellite isn't good enough because it's not real-time. Russia's got near infinite supply of cheap Orlan-10 drones that are purpose made for this, and they're embedded in artillery units. Ukraine is using a hodge-podge of commercial quadcopters and various fixed-wing UAVs, but they don't have as many of the latter, and at least last year they still had some organizational issues with how they they were utilized.
In other words... counter-battery fire is hard.
Harry Bosch
Contributor
This is true, but to a small degree. The weak spot remains the Ukraine Russia border. Despite the incursions, the vast bulk of the Orcs remain in the southern Ukraine area waiting for Ukraine counter attack. In most wars, the Ukraine counterattack would attack the enemy's weak spot - the Russia border. Invade far in, force the Orcs to withdraw and defend their country. It's incredibly unfair, but due to Russia's nukes, we wouldn't allow Ukraine to do this. This is why Russia has to be stopped from profiting from this war. If they succeed in their stated aim of conquering all of Ukraine and enslaving it, we'll be at war for a 100 years. There has to be a return to the concept that sovereignty and freedom matter - or the world is fucked.
DrZoidberg
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Here's a video on Ukrainian Nazism. Which can help explain Barbos insistance on it.
During ww2 many Ukrainians saw Germany as a way to break free from the Soviet Union. So many Ukrainians joined up. To me that looks like, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
No shit Ukrainian ww2 Nazis who famously fought the USSR has become praised national heroes again now in what is essentielly round 2 of Ukraines attempt to finally break free from Russian dominance.
I think we can give them a free pass on this. It's totally understandable and doesn't at all prove that they are actually Nazis.
BTW, Barbos is wrong on the ethnicity as well. The Ukrainian SS volunteers were called Galicians because Galicia was once part of the Holy Roman empire and therefore Aryan. Cleverly dodging the ban on slavic SS troops. But it was bullshit. Ukrainian SS volunteers, no matter where they were from in Ukrain or ethnic background were labelled Galicians.
Either way. The history is fascinating
During ww2 many Ukrainians saw Germany as a way to break free from the Soviet Union. So many Ukrainians joined up. To me that looks like, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
No shit Ukrainian ww2 Nazis who famously fought the USSR has become praised national heroes again now in what is essentielly round 2 of Ukraines attempt to finally break free from Russian dominance.
I think we can give them a free pass on this. It's totally understandable and doesn't at all prove that they are actually Nazis.
BTW, Barbos is wrong on the ethnicity as well. The Ukrainian SS volunteers were called Galicians because Galicia was once part of the Holy Roman empire and therefore Aryan. Cleverly dodging the ban on slavic SS troops. But it was bullshit. Ukrainian SS volunteers, no matter where they were from in Ukrain or ethnic background were labelled Galicians.
Either way. The history is fascinating
And only the artillery that hasn't had it's supply lines cut. If Ukraine cuts the train into Crimea everything past that point will soon run out of shells and be pretty much useless. Russia simply doesn't have the trucks to do major resupply by roads even if they have roads that aren't cut.
Cheerful Charlie
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A youtuber, Jake Broe has some interesting videos on this war. Yesterday, videos of a Russian position taken by Ukraine was shown. Trenches surrounded by berm with thick logs as roofs to avoid drone dropped grenades. They enter in holes in the low sides to hide. They had a firing pit from which to engage Ukrainian troops, when there did not seem to be drones around. While tough to crack, it is hard to fight hiding in holes. Ukraine apparently has some thermobaric grenades. This from other sources. And Poland just put out bids for thermobaric munitions from grenades to missiles. Bulgaria may have sold thermobaric weapons to Ukraine. It is going to be tough on everybody.
steve_bank
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Sounds lie WWI trench warfare.
NATO is havng large scale NATO air combat war games over Germany.
NATO is havng large scale NATO air combat war games over Germany.
bilby
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Back in the '90s, I spent a drunken evening in the company of a friend's elderly father, who came to Australia as a refugee after WWII. He was a Ukrainian, and was captured by the British in Germany in the last weeks of the war in Europe.
He had a lot of romantic reminiscences about his youth in Ukraine, and how much the local girls loved a man in uniform who was fighting to defend his homeland against Stalin.
He wasn't a Nazi, or even particularly anti-communist; He just wanted an adventure and to do his bit to liberate Ukraine from Stalin, so when the Soviets were pushed out, and the Germans gave the young men in his village the "choice" of joining their army or being shot as communists, he joined up.
He was embarrassed, but unrepentant, about having ended up fighting for the Germans. It wasn't as though he'd had any real choice, and he'd mostly been fighting Soviet forces, which he certainly didn't object to. He was absolutely ecstatic about the (then recent) collapse of the USSR, which he still hated some five decades later.
None of his unit were Nazis. They were given lots of political instruction by Nazis, but they didn't care much about it; Politics is a priority for political officers, but soldiers ignore them as much as possible (and of course, that was true on both sides of the Eastern Front). He saw a lot of "very bad things". He didn't draw any distinction between those motivated by politics, and those motivated by ordinary wartime viciousness; he just kept his head down and hoped not to be ordered to do too many things he would later feel shame over.
I don't think his experience was radically different from the experience of young men at war in any era; Certainly it sounded a lot like the way Vietnam veterans describe their time as soldiers. Lots of boredom, lots of asinine orders and irrelevant training in stuff nobody cared about, punctuated with occasional fun adventures, and occasional pants-shitting terror.
T.G.G. Moogly
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There are reports that Russia is employing blocking units behind front line units. Ukraine has video proof that retreating Russians are regularly shot. It also has prisoners admitting to same. This is nothing new for Russia, of course.
It's a 10 second video and it's being reported by bullshit places like the Daily Mail.
Footage appears to show Putin's forces being shot as they try to flee
Captured by a Ukrainian drone and posted to online messaging platform Telegram, the footage shows three Russian soldiers aiming weapons in the direction of at least seven comrades.
I think it's more likely Russian troops are so poorly trained that they can't coordinate anything.
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If I've learned anything from the streets its this. Individuals who undervalue and trivialize their adversaries often find their tenure in the field to be fleeting. I'm certain war is similar. Here we talk a big game, but out there? Pfft. It's ugly AF for everybody out there.
Harry Bosch
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Well they are in someone elses country. Uninvited. They won’t get many compliments from me.
Jayjay
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The skeptic in me thinks that even if Russia didn't use "blocking units", it would be beneficial for them to make their cannon fodder think they do. So probably in some places they might do it, in other places they just spread rumors that there are such units.