Russia Invades Ukraine. Volume 3

[J4CKO]

CrutyRammers said:

sisu said:

wolfracesonic said:

rxe said:

We need a new adjective for ammo dumps blowing up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/vqtgmu/a...

I’m going with “biblical”.

Russian ammo dumps are like our recycling plants in regard to not catching fire…

The Donbas battle has been going on for 76 days, the longest battle in Europe for quite some time, only the WW1 battles like the Somme were longer at 141 days.
The Ukrainians withdrew over the last week without taking a loss. However the HIMARs are taking out ammunition dumps deep into Russian territory. One every day for a week, not only does this take out ammo, it also takes out the Trucks that move the ammo as they are parked in the depot. Russia's tactical truck fleet (armoured trucks) have suffered the same rate of loss since its failed Kyiv offensive in March.
This slows the Russians down even more.

It certainly seems like the best option for them. We'll see its effect over the next couple of weeks, I guess. I've no idea how many of these dumps there would be and how big a blow each one is.

Yeah, do they put loads together or spread it out for just this sort of eventuality ?

Certainly looked very impressive, like that was a lot of munitions going up, and guess it will be a percentage that go off, not perhaps all.

Always heartening to see that happen as every shell or missile that gets destroyed is one that can’t then be used on a school, hospital or shopping mall, never mind against Ukrainian troops.

Wonder if it is conceivable that they could end up with no heavy munitions left in some areas ?

[Adam.]

NRS said:

At the moment Russia is clearly focusing it’s attention on one area, and just smashing it all to bits with whatever they can. Ukraine has more tech, but more limited numbers of it. We don’t know how it will play out, as now it’s basically who runs out of equipment/men/will first. Ukraine is defending the country, but also sees how these current tactics are wiping out anything (cities etc).

You’d expect Russia to give up in a normal fight like now, but it’s a Mafia state, and Putin is crushing any sign of protest, and knows his legacy/time in power rests on this. He doesn’t care about the people, so I doubt Russia will give up until they have to. If they do they’ll presumably highlight the destruction meaning the ‘Ukrainian Nazis’ will have to rebuild so it’s a win. They’ve lost any possibility of working together in future though, same as all Eastern Europe apart from a dictatorship or two.

What we’re seeing now is basically trench warfare, it’s very hard to see a winner as territory means very little, it’s how the supplies and losses add up over time that shows the winner. We see all the Ukraine wins (ammo dumps exploding) but presumably the Russians are doing similar - strikes on railways etc.

Cheers NRS and a very balanced summary.

My fear is the slow speed the western kit is appearing at the front line. This may be for good reasons (training) but needs accelerating. Ukraine are tactically withdrawing as they don’t have the kit to counter the volume of Russian artillery.

[BikeBikeBIke]

Adam. said:

Cheers NRS and a very balanced summary.

My fear is the slow speed the western kit is appearing at the front line.

Agree. I'm sure they're doing it as fast as possible but it's better if your enemy don't have time to adapt their tactics to a new weapon before it arrives in large quantities.

[Flooble]

sisu said:

The Donbas battle has been going on for 76 days, the longest battle in Europe for quite some time, only the WW1 battles like the Somme were longer at 141 days.
The Ukrainians withdrew over the last week without taking a loss. However the HIMARs are taking out ammunition dumps deep into Russian territory. One every day for a week, not only does this take out ammo, it also takes out the Trucks that move the ammo as they are parked in the depot. Russia's tactical truck fleet (armoured trucks) have suffered the same rate of loss since its failed Kyiv offensive in March.
This slows the Russians down even more.

This sort of answers a question I was pondering. Most "campaigns" in recent history have been relatively short in duration (Gulf War 1 and 2, Afghanistan, Falklands). Granted that's ignoring the following insurgency, or where the conflict was a civil wars (e.g. Syria, whatever happened in Libya, Balkans).

Can anyone remember the last time there was a full-scale conflict which lasted this long? Russia in Afghanistan? Vietnam? I grant you that a case could easily be made for Iraq and the US invasion of Afghanistan counting.

I did wonder if the Western powers had sufficient stockpiles to keep supplying Ukraine for much longer. As anyone who has tried to buy anything recently will attest, "supply chain disruption" and "Staff Shortage due to Covid" have combined to make lots of things hard to find.

[BikeBikeBIke]

Flooble said:

This sort of answers a question I was pondering. Most "campaigns" in recent history have been relatively short in duration (Gulf War 1 and 2, Afghanistan, Falklands). Granted that's ignoring the following insurgency, or where the conflict was a civil wars (e.g. Syria, whatever happened in Libya, Balkans).

Can anyone remember the last time there was a full-scale conflict which lasted this long? Russia in Afghanistan? Vietnam? I grant you that a case could easily be made for Iraq and the US invasion of Afghanistan counting.

I don't think the war is especially long but the Battle of Donbas is an exceptionally long battle and long attritional artillery battles must be unheard of since WW1, mustn't they?

The next phase of the war is going to be very different.

[gruffalo]

BikeBikeBIke said:

The next phase of the war is going to be very different.

We or at least I do very much hope so!!!

[J4CKO]

Anyone else think they may withdraw a bit, give chance to get the new kit on stream, perhaps lull the Russians into a false sense of security, then give them hell from a greater distance with the new kit ?

[mondeoman]

J4CKO said:

Anyone else think they may withdraw a bit, give chance to get the new kit on stream, perhaps lull the Russians into a false sense of security, then give them hell from a greater distance with the new kit ?

All (!) they have to do is let the russians extend forward and stretch their supply lines, then hammer the logistics hubs into oblivion (which they can do now with the longer range, high accuracy munitions), let the exposed russians stew for a little while - cant go forward, cant go backwards - then mop them up. Rinse and repeat in 10mile steps.

[CrutyRammers]

Flooble said:

This sort of answers a question I was pondering. Most "campaigns" in recent history have been relatively short in duration (Gulf War 1 and 2, Afghanistan, Falklands). Granted that's ignoring the following insurgency, or where the conflict was a civil wars (e.g. Syria, whatever happened in Libya, Balkans).

Can anyone remember the last time there was a full-scale conflict which lasted this long? Russia in Afghanistan? Vietnam? I grant you that a case could easily be made for Iraq and the US invasion of Afghanistan counting.

I did wonder if the Western powers had sufficient stockpiles to keep supplying Ukraine for much longer. As anyone who has tried to buy anything recently will attest, "supply chain disruption" and "Staff Shortage due to Covid" have combined to make lots of things hard to find.

Iran-Iraq war went on for 8 years.

[CrutyRammers]

J4CKO said:

Anyone else think they may withdraw a bit, give chance to get the new kit on stream, perhaps lull the Russians into a false sense of security, then give them hell from a greater distance with the new kit ?

One presumes that's what they're doing, not through choice mind. Buying time with ground.

[NRS]

BikeBikeBIke said:

Adam. said:

Cheers NRS and a very balanced summary.

My fear is the slow speed the western kit is appearing at the front line.

Agree. I'm sure they're doing it as fast as possible but it's better if your enemy don't have time to adapt their tactics to a new weapon before it arrives in large quantities.

Stuff like the HIMARS isn't arriving in big quantities (at least the launch vehicles). The training will be important as the loss of each one is far bigger than Russia losing a random "dumb" artillery piece. You want to make sure you take out anything that could strike back at you before firing, and then get out of there ASAP so any longer range missiles or aircraft bombing raids don't take you out. That's more important that hitting stuff more quickly but losing it fast too.

mondeoman said:

J4CKO said:

Anyone else think they may withdraw a bit, give chance to get the new kit on stream, perhaps lull the Russians into a false sense of security, then give them hell from a greater distance with the new kit ?

All (!) they have to do is let the russians extend forward and stretch their supply lines, then hammer the logistics hubs into oblivion (which they can do now with the longer range, high accuracy munitions), let the exposed russians stew for a little while - cant go forward, cant go backwards - then mop them up. Rinse and repeat in 10mile steps.

It's a balance - you can use tactic retreats to win, due to the long supply lines meaning the other side has to be more careful with ammo, food etc. The Australians did an excellent example of this in WW2 on Papua New Guinea for example, and the Brits in in India around Imphal as another. The issue for Ukraine is that means more cities absolutely smashed to bits, which can't be easy. Not to mention although it can be great as a tactic it can look very bad with allies/public due to the PR of gaining/losing ground. From memory MacArthur thought the Australian commanders were useless due to this tactic of giving ground to shorten their supply line and extend the Japanese one.

[vonuber]

This was linked in the previous thread before it broke and is well worth a view:



Really explains why Germany hasn't stepped up so much - because it can't due to it's own huge failings, despite being better funded than the French military.

Fascinating.

[AstonZagato]

Depressing article in the Times today on British military readiness:
https://archive.ph/jlU5W

Times Article Snipped said:

Politicians have little interest in the unglamorous and costly business of keeping stocks for just-in-case contingencies. “I’m not going to be photographed in front of a f***ing warehouse.”
A land warfare conference last week heard that at Russian rates of fire we would run out of artillery shells in just two days.
If Russia can survive the first week, it wins.

[mondeoman]

AstonZagato said:

Depressing article in the Times today on British military readiness:
https://archive.ph/jlU5W

Times Article Snipped said:

Politicians have little interest in the unglamorous and costly business of keeping stocks for just-in-case contingencies. “I’m not going to be photographed in front of a f***ing warehouse.”
A land warfare conference last week heard that at Russian rates of fire we would run out of artillery shells in just two days.
If Russia can survive the first week, it wins.

If our munitions are "smart", we dont need anything like as much as Russia's "dumb" stuff.

[BikeBikeBIke]

AstonZagato said:

Depressing article in the Times today on British military readiness:
https://archive.ph/jlU5W

Times Article Snipped said:

Politicians have little interest in the unglamorous and costly business of keeping stocks for just-in-case contingencies. “I’m not going to be photographed in front of a f***ing warehouse.”
A land warfare conference last week heard that at Russian rates of fire we would run out of artillery shells in just two days.
If Russia can survive the first week, it wins.

For 10 years I've been thinking the UK didn't need nukes any more. The last 4 months shows how wrong I was.

There are still aggressors in Europe and our conventional forces are puny.

[sisu]

J4CKO said:

Wonder if it is conceivable that they could end up with no heavy munitions left in some areas ?

Yes. Russia are using a scorched earth then move forward WW1 or nuclear level mentality as their logistics are so short. You are sort of screwed if you don't have endless shells or there is a supply problem. Russia has a targeting problem and if they start hitting fuel supplies. Then the troops will abandon their kit like they did in March.

[BikeBikeBIke]

mondeoman said:

If our munitions are "smart", we dont need anything like as much as Russia's "dumb" stuff.

...and we're defending an island. So anti air and anti ship stuff ought to see us safe from invasion (but not from blockade.)

...and we don't have anything anyone wants. So we're pretty safe.

Edited by BikeBikeBIke on Monday 4th July 11:55

[CrutyRammers]

mondeoman said:

AstonZagato said:

Depressing article in the Times today on British military readiness:
https://archive.ph/jlU5W

Times Article Snipped said:

Politicians have little interest in the unglamorous and costly business of keeping stocks for just-in-case contingencies. “I’m not going to be photographed in front of a f***ing warehouse.”
A land warfare conference last week heard that at Russian rates of fire we would run out of artillery shells in just two days.
If Russia can survive the first week, it wins.

If our munitions are "smart", we dont need anything like as much as Russia's "dumb" stuff.

I'd love to think it was such a calculated approach. Unfortunately we have a habit of not having enough / the right gear and expecting the guys on the ground to pull miracles out of the hat. It's almost a national mythos.

[J4CKO]

sisu said:

J4CKO said:

Wonder if it is conceivable that they could end up with no heavy munitions left in some areas ?

Yes. Russia are using a scorched earth then move forward WW1 or nuclear level mentality as their logistics are so short. You are sort of screwed if you don't have endless shells or there is a supply problem. Russia has a targeting problem and if they start hitting fuel supplies. Then the troops will abandon their kit like they did in March.

Is there any knowledge around how many Russian personnel are in Ukraine as of now, 100k went in ?

35k are now allegedly helping with next years Sunflowers, guess quite a few now are missing bits or are irreparably gored, plus some just decided it wasnt much fun.

Are they being topped up ? I know there were Syrian mercenaries, press ganged folk from Donbas etc and Wagner soldiers, Putin hastn yet declared war or done a general mobilisation, the recruitment campaign is not proving very appealing, cant think why.....Are there trainloads of scared looking pale Gopniks being transported there in damp Adidas tracksuits ?


So how many Russians are left in Ukraine, or is that the key question nobody can answer ?

[sisu]

Guess who is within 1km - sniper distance of Kerson today? Just pop your head out the window and have a look?