Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[Razgovory]

I think both anti-tank and pro-tank warfare will shift to drones, there are just too many advantages to them.  In anti-tank warfare, drones would assume the role of helicopters.  In tank defense, drones would replace supporting infantry for sniffing out the ambush teams blasting them away before they fire their Javelins.

I think you can stop drones with Electronic warfare.  The Russians just don't seem do EW.  They don't even have secure radios.

[jimmy olsen]

I hear claims that Russian soldiers who took up positions in the "Red Forest" area of Chernobyl have been withdrawn with acute radiation sickness and sent to a specialist medical facility in Belarus. If in fact there are cases of acute radiation sickness they must have gotten a very high dose. I will observe though that simply sending people to a special facility doesn't necessarily mean that they have radiation sickness. It could simply be for examinations to determine how much internal contamination they have.

I read that they dug trenches in an extremely contaminated area.

Also, some folks online were speculating that high level officers let it happen so they could blame Ukraine for using a dirty bomb.

[Josquius]

I hear claims that Russian soldiers who took up positions in the "Red Forest" area of Chernobyl have been withdrawn with acute radiation sickness and sent to a specialist medical facility in Belarus. If in fact there are cases of acute radiation sickness they must have gotten a very high dose. I will observe though that simply sending people to a special facility doesn't necessarily mean that they have radiation sickness. It could simply be for examinations to determine how much internal contamination they have.

I think if you are conscripted cannon fodder in a war of aggression you most definitely not want to be part of and used to garrison the site of a former nuclear incident, convincing others and/or yourself that you have radiation poisoning is a pretty good way of getting out of it.

Even if they're totally honest I'd imagine a lot will grow paranoid and convince themselves every sniffle is radiation sickness.

[The Larch]

Russia has just announced it's drafting 125k+ new recruits, but says they won't be sent to Ukraine. No words about fingers being crossed behind the back of whoever did the announcement.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I think people talking about the need for infantry support are missing the point.

Touche.  It took a lot of luck and finesse to kill a tank with man portable weapons in WWII, unlike now.

They relevant point though is that all man portable AT weapons in WW2 themselves had lower range than infantry small arms. Hence having supporting infantry could actually screen armor from infantry attack.

That is no longer the case - man portable AT weapons have much longer range then the weapons of the infantry that would be screening the armor. So that entire "ZOMG Armor needs infantry support!" as a response to seeing modern armor falling to modern man portable AT weapons doesn't actually make much sense.

Then we can move on to the effectiveness of attack helicopters in the modern battlespace. 

[Tamas]

Russia has just announced it's drafting 125k+ new recruits, but says they won't be sent to Ukraine. No words about fingers being crossed behind the back of whoever did the announcement.

I guess that means calling in reservists? I don't think they have a draft system.

[Grey Fox]

They do. New cycle starts tomorrow.

[Tamas]

I mean, drafting in the US sense. I don't think the Russians are calling up people to be trained via draft. They have conscription, and I assume similarly to how it was in Hungary, conscripts are assigned to a reserve unit and if that unit is mobilised they are called in from their civilian lives to serve in that unit.

[Berkut]

I think both anti-tank and pro-tank warfare will shift to drones, there are just too many advantages to them.  In anti-tank warfare, drones would assume the role of helicopters.  In tank defense, drones would replace supporting infantry for sniffing out the ambush teams blasting them away before they fire their Javelins.

I think at that point, aren't the drones the actual dominant weapon system?

I mentioned this earlier - I don't actually really have an opinion (not that it would be very informed anyway) on what the future battlefield is going to look like. I just don't see how heavy armor makes much sense on it anymore. 

I don't know what it does that other weapon systems cannot do without the expense and vulnerability.

[Legbiter]

They do. New cycle starts tomorrow.

The current batch that will otherwise discharge tomorrow will be strongly persuaded to sign a contract and probably there will be a stop-loss measure to retain them.

[The Minsky Moment]

That article is very interesting, but that comment section... .

That stuff drives me crazy.  What kind of self-proclaimed leftist accepts the most crass and brutal realpolitik justifications for war and political violence?  Russia was "provoked" because the Ukrainians choose to seek closer relationships with the US and Europe?  It's the old spousal abuser "she had it coming" rationale adapted to international state relations.  It's this kind of thinking that gets the left branded as unpatriotic haters of their own country. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think most people recognize that in high intensity warfare against near peers, helos are just too vulnerable though. You can only use them when you have air superiority, and they are very vulnerable to any kind of near technology AA systems.

In Iraq, we did NOT fly lots of helo missions at all in the early stages where there was any chance of the Iraqis having unsuppressed modern AA. It was only afterwards, when we had largely neutralized that threat that we used heloes routinely.

Once that happened, and in Afghanistan, there wasn't significant amount of good AA amongst our enemies. And we still lost a decent number, a couple hundred losses, IIRC? That is low compared to missions run, but not THAT low.

AT helos are certainly a threat to armor, of course. But their use has their own issues. You cannot use them without air superiority, they are incredibly expensive, require extensive training for their crews and support teams, have a huge logistical footprint themselves, and are vulnerable themselves. That doesn't really compare to some routine soldier with a Javelin.

An Apache itself costs something like 2.5 times what a modern MBT costs. A Javelin missile and launcher costs 1/15th what a MBT costs. The Apache requires an airbase, and fuel, and an entire crew of people to fly it, and a larger crew to maintain it. It has a limited range. A javelin can be used by any infantryman with half a brain and almost no training, and takes no appreciable support.

I think helos are more an example of what you mentioned earlier - a threat that has to be considered and dealt with, but doesn't really change the calculus of armored warfare.

Your last couple of points aren't really accurate IMO--the numbers I see are 10 shoot downs of Apaches in Iraq that left the Apache permanently disabled, I'm not sure the numbers in Afghanistan. But that was from 2003 to 2014, which would have included tons and tons of sorties. We operate thousands of Apaches.

The last point I really disagree with--all of this stuff is really "threats that have to be considered." Nothing the military puts into a warzone is understood to be some irreplaceable thing. If you really can't afford to lose it, you can't use it, and if you can't use it, it isn't valuable. Everything we sent into Iraq and Afghanistan was replaceable (and yes, that includes the pilots.) That's the way a military is designed to function, force replenishment is part of war, equipment and losses of men are part of war. There's obviously a calculus you get into where you recognize (if you're lucky) certain situations will cause certain losses to be very high, to the point you should probably consider different tactics or strategy, or different equipment for that job.

Note that weapons like Stingers and such used to shoot down helos are a good bit less threatening than javelins because of the basic geography involved--both have a similar operating range, except helos can easily keep outside that range. E.x. an Apache force is told U.S. soldiers are fighting hostiles on the other side of a ridge line, the Apaches can approach that battle using the mountain for cover, swing into the field of battle and unleash their payload, then zoom back out. There is not a requirement they approach the battle low and slow, at threat of man portable anti-air the whole time, and there is not a requirement they not use the geography of the battlefield in ways that put them at big advantages over ground forces.

Video of Russian helos flying low and slow over urban areas and getting hit are things we didn't even do regularly versus poorly equipped insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan for all the obvious reasons. Proper use of helicopters is going to involve basic battlefield intel and imaging to know where they can and can't go, obviously.

I also think for large armor formations, helos are a significantly bigger threat than man portable anti-tank, for the reason that they can be anywhere very quickly, infantry still have to be relatively close to a tank to use a javelin style system, so in the sort of massive armor invasions that Cold War planners theorized about, there would be a lot of positional disadvantages to dismounted infantry. I think it's frankly been unrealistic given modern anti-tank firepower deployable from the air that any large armor formations would factor into a large war between close-peer nations.

[OttoVonBismarck]

What can a manned helicopter do that a drone can't do much cheaper and safer for the pilot?

There is nothing, in theory, a manned aircraft can do that a drone cannot. The reason you'd still use helicopters is we already have the systems developed and thousands in the field, with pilots and ordinance ready to go. It is non-trivial to engineer and design drones, and we aren't building drones of complexity to do what say, the Apache does right now. There isn't a core technological limit preventing it, but it's a non-trivial engineering task to get it to production, so you obviously use the systems you have right now.

My guess is that a lot of war will shift to drones and drone importance will grow throughout the 21st century. The big x-factor will be how hardened can drones be made against signal-jamming and signal-interference, there have been cases of drones getting hijacked by unfriendly forces. That is a real big problem if it happens at scale.

[viper37]

I once read somewhere that T-72s were godlike invincible machines that were better than Abrams tanks. Can't remember where I read that, though.

some russian forum?

[Tamas]

Putin has signed the decree that from tomorrow only rubel payments are accepted for Russian gas shipments. Will be very interesting to see which countries will dare call his bluff.