Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-25

[Josquius]

Saw a snippet of news announcing that Russia had retaken some city of Eastern Ukraine, but I can't find anything online about it.

Anyone can confirm the rumour?

Shoigu claimed to have taken Marjinka near Donezk, Bit Ukraine denied this. It's one of the ghost towns near the 2014 frontline .

Thanks.  Not a major movement in any case.  Still some back and forth over a few meters of trench lines.

Bit more than that the BBC are saying. The entire (wrecked) town lost. It had been built up into quite an advanced fortification system.

But inevitable Russia would get some gains. They're griding a lot of meat to do it

[Threviel]

I think the US has spoiled the expectation of a peer war. They have no peer and in every conflict since WWII they've been involved they have been insanely over-powering anyone.

Historically that kind of extreme over-power is very rare. The French navy was a threat up until the end of the Napoleonic wars. Sure, they wouldn't be a able to wrest control over the seas from the British, but raiders and small fleets could still wreak havoc.

The confederates with asymmetrical warfare, mining and coastal artillery, did well against the very superior US navy.

Even the Russians in Sevastopol managed to annoy the allies.

So. For example that time back in the 80's when the US navy destroyed the Iranian navy in an afternoon. They were just so superior that they swatted them away without issue.

In contrast with the more peerish conflict in the Falklands. It was a near run thing and the Argentinians got in a few good hits with asymmetrical warfare. Sure, they had a navy with carriers even, but they used missiles and air attack to try and deny access to the Falklands and they sunk a few ships.

That's how I would expect a peerish conflict to go. The Russian navy is, like the rest of the Russian military, badly run with maintenance issues. But still a formidable enemy not to be taken lightly. The Ukrainians probably got intel advantages through Nato and spies and the distances are short enough that land based missiles can deny sea access close to Ukraine. It's been a few years and they have got access to good weapons and hitting Russian ships in port seems easier than hitting them at sea.

Since Russia has air superiority over the Black Sea I expect that there will be no large scale naval shenanigans from the Ukrainians, but they seem to pick apart the Black Sea Fleet ship by ship. If Ukraine gets access to F-16s they might go for sea denial as a first measure, over the Black Sea there will be a levelish playing field where Ukraine might be able to take on the Russian Air Force. If they get enough F-16s they might be able to put the Russians under Blockade instead, which would be wild. Still won't be able to get close to the coast due to AA.

[Legbiter]

If Ukraine gets access to F-16s they might go for sea denial as a first measure, over the Black Sea there will be a levelish playing field where Ukraine might be able to take on the Russian Air Force. If they get enough F-16s they might be able to put the Russians under Blockade instead, which would be wild. Still won't be able to get close to the coast due to AA.

If the Ukrainians get all the pledged F-16s we're talking about barely one squadron. They just got their 3rd Patriot battery. Everything is parceled out in dribs and drabs following months of intense negotiations. 

If you want them to actually outright win you get them 4 squadrons of semi-modern fighter jets with the best air-to-air missiles and you kit them out with 20 Patriot batteries. And so for 2024 the Ukrainians are looking to draft about half a million men to replenish their ranks and to be able to continue their attritional war with the Russians. 

[Threviel]

The west outside the US doesn't have the numbers to be able to do that. There aren't enough planes and tanks and AA and whatever to supply Ukraine and keep up our own defense. We don't have the production capacity to build lots either.

The US can do it for certain stuff, planes and tanks and logistics and so on, but even they don't have enough shells and AA missiles to supply Ukraine.

If we had invested in factories day one they would probably still not produce enough, but perhaps next year they would be up and running.

But we didn't. And we still don't.

[Threviel]

I've been thinking about something that I haven't really seen discussed.

The reason for the shell shortage continuation is an unwillingness from the suppliers to expand their factories without long-term contracts, contracts which are not coming. I watched a news snippet yesterday about the Swedish shell factory. The limiting factor seems to be temperature controlled cooling after production, it takes about 16 h and there are some 16ish ovens it can happen in for 10 shells at a time, giving a max production rate of 240 shells per 24h. The number of cooling stations will soon be increased to 32, doubling production.

Expensive investments that will bear fruit in decades to come, but the huge production rate for Ukraine will only happen the next 5 years, and then the suppliers will stand there with unused huge factories and no contracts. I wouldn't invest either.

But what's stopping Ukraine? In WWI all states in a very short time started producing tens of millions of shells. They were far poorer societies that Ukraine with far more primitive production capacity, yet they in very short order turned out huge amounts of shells. Sure, they were more primitive that todays shells, but not that very much more.

There's nothing stopping Ukraine from building/re-purposing huge factories and they ought to be able to turn out huge amounts of shells right now. Western nations could presumably quite easily supply the metal parts necessary, or they could be produced locally, explosives are cheap to make and the advanced mechanics for exploding at the right time could presumably also be scaled up rather more easily than the dangerous and time consuming cooling.

Anyone read anything about this?

[Zanza]

That's something I wonder about in general. For some types of equipment the hyper-engineered solutions of Western militaries are obviously the right approach, e.g. vehicles protecting their inhabitants. But for others, quantity seems more important than quality, e.g. drones, artillery shells etc. and more of lower tech solution might be a better approach. But looks like the decision makers in the West do not see it like that.

[Josquius]

I've thought for a long while that western military solutions seemed way too OTT. When you're just fighting tribesmen in Afghanistan with ak47s and rpgs do you really need a super high tech air superiority fighter or would something closer to a ww2 ground attack fighter be just asgood for many jobs (not literally) .

The key thing is though the west cares a lot about survivability. A few dead troops is a huge disaster for us. So we spend extra millions giving them overkill abilities.

Russia laughs at this idea of course. They don't care about survivability especially now they've lost basically all their semi competent troops.

It does seem though that Ukraines needs lie half way. They care about their soldiers in a way Russia fundamentally doesn't. But a considerably cheaper solution that can bring them far more for the same money, except they can expect a few hundred more troop deaths a month? Sure.

Incidentally that's one thing that has got me in this war. Just how little the Russians care even for their own men. It's like all those arguments about the Soviets in the war and their use of human wave tactics and barrier troops where there would inevitably some claiming exaggeration or even outright fabrications.... Yet here it is in 2023.
It's not that Russian equipment is worse because they favour cost or just don't know how to build kit on such a high level... It's that they don't give a fuck about their men.
I really do wonder how this is altering Russias demographics since they are disproportionately targeting minorities - win win of course to the fascists.

[Threviel]

Western armies have bought over-engineered stuff that's the best reasonably possible since at least WWII. The Sherman was far more expensive than the T-34 and far superior for example. We can afford to equip our armies with huge amounts of the best equipment necessary, just look at what Poland is doing,, it's just that we have chosen not to have large armies since the fall of the wall. Only the US has a mass army, if every other western nation had spent proportionally to them we could have easily equipped Ukraine with whatever they would need from our reserves.

Ukraine has a large military-industrial complex. They have production lines for tanks (T-64 variants), artillery and other armoured vehicles. They should have been able to scale up production and it's weird that they haven't. We must remember that Ukraine is only marginally less corrupt than Russia.

[Zoupa]

You guys make it sound easy. The standard soviet shell is 152 mm. Ukraine is producing those as best they can. These facilities are prime targets for cruise missiles and iranian drones, obviously that was not an issue in 1914.

Ukraine shoots on average about 7 000 standard artillery round a day. That facility in Sweden produces 120 shells per day. Do the math...

Russians are advancing (marginally) everywhere along the front, mainly due to a lack or mortar ammunition. These meat waves attack could easily be repelled with enough mortar ammunition, as Ukraine has enough tubes. A conservatives estimate is that Ukraine would need 5 MILLION mortar bombs per month.

This war is industrial.

[Threviel]

Yes, that's what I'm saying. Ukraine ought to be able to supply a lot of that itself. With western support and money of course.

We also need to get our shit together and start producing, but for us it isn't as important as for the Ukrainians.

[Razgovory]

It's hard to produce stuff when you are being bombed.

[Threviel]

It's not like Germany and the UK weren't bombed in WWII...

And it's not like Russian bombing is very extreme...

[Zoupa]

lolwut 

[Zanza]

Just read a German language article on how the Ukrainian arms industry is actually rather creative and productive, but cannot on its own cannot compete with Russia. Their examples were some kind of drones being mass-produced and an truck-mounted howitzer, basically a less sophisticated Caesar.

[Razgovory]

It's not like Germany and the UK weren't bombed in WWII...

And it's not like Russian bombing is very extreme...

Allied bombing really cut into to German steel production.  There is a reason the Germans started building factories underground.  These days you don't need as many bombs, a few guided missiles can interrupt production.