War in Ukraine, assorted opinions

[Stuart Galbraith]

3 hours ago, crazyinsane105 said:

No military on this planet will probe enemy defenses for two months and lose 30 percent (or more) of their vehicles in such a probing attack. 
 

This is the Ukrainian offensive, they have committed 150K troops in multiple directions and failed to make significant headway into any area (maybe Bakhmut but even then, they aren’t anywhere close to encircling the gutted out city). 

They will do if,

A, they have no recce vehicles worth a damn.

B The enemy has months and millions of mines to sow.

C They lack air superiority.

D They lack any effective armoured engineer vehicles.

F Artillery dominance, at least initially.

If you put the British Army, the German Army, the French, maybe even the Americans, in the same circumstances, I believe you would see exactly the same result.

And the reason why the Russians had months to place those mines? Because we took far, far too long to deliver the equipment they needed to undertake the offensive.

 

Truth be told, these guys should have been taken to somewhere like Fort Irwin, or even Suffield (if some clueless prick hadnt closed it) and shown them how to do combined arms on a large scale. But even then, short of giving them the armoured engineer kit to successfully breach large areas, and training up a large amount of sappers, the same result may have applied.

 

Edited August 8, 2023 by Stuart Galbraith

[urbanoid]

Isn't being the best at everything pretty much a standard requirement and if you fail you have to give back your (Ger)man card?

[sunday]

9 minutes ago, urbanoid said:

Isn't being the best at everything pretty much a standard requirement and if you fail you have to give back your (Ger)man card?

Well, one could always deny reality and take cover in theoretical constructs.

For a time, at least.

[glenn239]

19 hours ago, TrustMe said:

That's the Attrition way of warfare used by the US upto the AirLand battle concept, and what us Brits use as of today (as far as I know). The Maneuver concept of war is what the Soviets practiced. The idea was that after the initial breakthrough of the defensive belts, and a rapid drive to the rear then encirclement of enemy units to destroy them.

I'm sure that the Russian could use Maneuver warfare in this current struggle, it's just about finding out where the Ukrainians are at their weakest point.

Flying columns in the enemy backfield these days surely must be tracked by drones and hammered with artillery and AT missiles from all directions?

[TrustMe]

50 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

Flying columns in the enemy backfield these days surely must be tracked by drones and hammered with artillery and AT missiles from all directions?

I'd say that in any war the 'Fog of War' will exist.

[Markus Becker]

6 hours ago, urbanoid said:

Isn't being the best at everything pretty much a standard requirement and if you fail you have to give back your (Ger)man card?

It was. Nowadays we even struggle with mediocrity. 

[crazyinsane105]

8 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

They will do if,

A, they have no recce vehicles worth a damn.

B The enemy has months and millions of mines to sow.

C They lack air superiority.

D They lack any effective armoured engineer vehicles.

F Artillery dominance, at least initially.

If you put the British Army, the German Army, the French, maybe even the Americans, in the same circumstances, I believe you would see exactly the same result.

And the reason why the Russians had months to place those mines? Because we took far, far too long to deliver the equipment they needed to undertake the offensive.

 

Truth be told, these guys should have been taken to somewhere like Fort Irwin, or even Suffield (if some clueless prick hadnt closed it) and shown them how to do combined arms on a large scale. But even then, short of giving them the armoured engineer kit to successfully breach large areas, and training up a large amount of sappers, the same result may have applied.

 

Except the article I posted a while ago specifically said that Ukraine has been unable to conduct combined arms operations because it doesn’t have the experience to do so. This is something that takes YEARS to perfect and implement, not a few months of training at whatever location. 
 

Russian artillery dominance is still 7:1 and I have no idea how the West will manage to cover this gap if it has not already after 18 months of conflict.

Millions of mines is also not something the West has an answer for. 

[mandeb48]

I would not consider the offensive failed yet. there is one summer month left and we do not know how many forces each side has left. This may still turn out to be Operation Mars or Uranus.

with gerasimov and shougu in command anything (bad for russia) can happen.

[sunday]

Looks like more Operation Polar Star, at the moment.

[crazyinsane105]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=H9l3hN-zbGg&feature=share
 

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 hour ago, X-Files said:

"Show me the test strips"

There seems to have been at least 3 such claims since the war began, usually with riot gas, but at least one other was claimed to be something a bit sportier. Its worth relating, nobody ever seems that bothered about checking too closely. In that, I guess they learned the lesson from Syria.

31 minutes ago, mandeb48 said:

I would not consider the offensive failed yet. there is one summer month left and we do not know how many forces each side has left. This may still turn out to be Operation Mars or Uranus.

with gerasimov and shougu in command anything (bad for russia) can happen.

They dont have enough time left to get to Mariupol or Crimea. I think they are going to have to be content with thinning out the Russian artillery park, and destroying more KA52's. Useful progress, but its hardly going to win them a war.

And ultimately, we have to get better resourcing them, on time. The amount of time its taken for the Abrams to arrive has been an utter joke.

[Stuart Galbraith]

50 minutes ago, crazyinsane105 said:

Except the article I posted a while ago specifically said that Ukraine has been unable to conduct combined arms operations because it doesn’t have the experience to do so. This is something that takes YEARS to perfect and implement, not a few months of training at whatever location. 
 

Russian artillery dominance is still 7:1 and I have no idea how the West will manage to cover this gap if it has not already after 18 months of conflict.

Millions of mines is also not something the West has an answer for. 

Except, Im not sure its true. They were doing it perfectly well in 2014. Does that skill set exist the same across all the formations employed? Probably not, its true.

I think it a bit rich us lecturing us on combined arms warfare, when most European nations would struggle to do any better these days. We lack the training facilities to do something like that effectively, which would mean replicating something like Fort Irwin in Europe. Nobody seems keen to stump up for something like that.

 Its all very well gun superiority, they have to be fed. I believe Ukraine is up to the job of attacking those ammunition stockpiles, or making them so damn small as to be operationally useless. But only If we give them the right weapons to go after it. In fact during this offensive, Ukraine said they had local artillery superiority. Im willing to credit that.

Well, we certainly did. In British Army service it was called Giant Viper. We had the methodology to breach minefields. But like everything else, we kidded ourself mechanised warfare had gone the way of the dodo, and we dont put much emphasis on it anymore. This clearly was an error. Im hardly going to complain about how backward Ukraine is breaching minefields. Britain and American havent done it since 1991, and im sure even we would struggle to deal with something that large.

[JWB]

17 minutes ago, crazyinsane105 said:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=H9l3hN-zbGg&feature=share
 

 

For some reason that vid failed to embed. Here it is;

 

[Tim Sielbeck]

12 hours ago, crazyinsane105 said:

No military on this planet will probe enemy defenses for two months and lose 30 percent (or more) of their vehicles in such a probing attack. 

That is an opinion that you cannot prove.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Operation Goodwood springs to mind here.

Looked at another way, the USSR itself lost one hell of a lot more in just a month.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mars

Edited August 8, 2023 by Stuart Galbraith

[sunday]

18 hours ago, Tim Sielbeck said:

An incompetently conducted probe to test the strength of the defenses.

 

1 minute ago, Tim Sielbeck said:

That is an opinion that you cannot prove.

Not the first, not the last.

[glenn239]

1 hour ago, mandeb48 said:

I would not consider the offensive failed yet. there is one summer month left and we do not know how many forces each side has left. This may still turn out to be Operation Mars or Uranus.

with gerasimov and shougu in command anything (bad for russia) can happen.

Reports this morning suggest that, at least today, the Ukrainians are on the offensive in one spot, the Russians at many points along the front.

[crazyinsane105]

1 hour ago, Tim Sielbeck said:

That is an opinion that you cannot prove.

Every outlet and analyst out there is calling this the offensive, not a probing attack in any way. If that’s not enough proof, I’m not sure what is.

[Tim Sielbeck]

Opinions are never proof, only opinions.

[sunday]

6 minutes ago, Tim Sielbeck said:

Opinions are never proof, only opinions.

With the due respect, and not an small amount, yours too.

[Tim Sielbeck]

7 minutes ago, sunday said:

With the due respect, and not an small amount, yours too.

I never said differently.

[sunday]

Good for you! 🙂

[crazyinsane105]

2 hours ago, Tim Sielbeck said:

Opinions are never proof, only opinions.

So even when Ukraine themselves announce it’s the offensive, and that they are blaming other countries for lack of weaponry as the reason the offensive (not probing attack) is not making progress…that’s also an opinion? 
 

So therefore, even the official Ukrainian position is an opinion? 
 

Not sure how to make any sense of this. 

[Ssnake]

5 hours ago, JWB said:

For some reason that vid failed to embed.

The forum will only recognize YouTube links without query elements (usually anything coming after the first "&" sign in a URL; delete that shit and it'll be fine).

Of course, on mobile devices it requires you to paste a link first into a text editor and check for the stuff that gets auto-added to URLs if you just tap a Share button because it helps better user tracking and they know that 99% of all users won't bother with that extra effort (mostly because Facebook and others support all the extra URL shit, just not something outdated like an internet forum (what are you, a boomer luddite?))

[Tim Sielbeck]

1 hour ago, crazyinsane105 said:

So even when Ukraine themselves announce it’s the offensive, and that they are blaming other countries for lack of weaponry as the reason the offensive (not probing attack) is not making progress…that’s also an opinion? 
 

So therefore, even the official Ukrainian position is an opinion? 
 

Not sure how to make any sense of this. 

The Ukrainians saying it is the "Offensive" is a fact.  Their reasoning for its failure is an opinion.  Official position or not.