Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[grumbler]

The Russians have gone to mobile ICBMs in an effort to avoid counter-force strikes.  I'm not sure how concealable those massive launchers are, and they sacrifice accuracy by going mobile because the launch vehicles don't have the precise knowledge of launch position that a boomer or silo has.

Putting your own SSNs in a boomer box way increases the chance of blue-on-blue (or, I guess red-on-red in this case) now that most sonar tracking is done via broadband (flow and propeller noises) than the old narrowband (equipment noise).  Broadband gives little IFF data.  A boomer couldn't tell whether a sub it picked up was friend or foe, nor could the "escorting" SSN.

It has always been an interesting dance.  Haven't played it in 25 years, but I still miss it a little bit.

[DGuller]

I came across a pretty shocking article about a certain Russian division: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/29/2088757/-Ukraine-update-The-story-of-Russia-s-4th-Armored-division-and-Ukraine-s-biggest-victory-to-date. 

At first, the "4th armored division" didn't tell me anything, but then I realized it was the Kantemirovskaya division.  An analogy to the US would be something like a 101st Airborne (by fame in the society anyway, I have no way of knowing the actual military importance of either).  To have a flagship division being humbled like that is stunning even after five weeks of constant Russian debacles.

Incidentally, I suspect that this division is probably the reason why under both Yeltsin and Putin so many Russian generals expired prematurely.  In both 1991 and 1993, this division was the one that had its tanks rolling on Moscow streets, and both times they proved decisive for the eventual outcome.  In 1991, the coup fell apart when this division's leadership refused to fire on civilians, and in 1993 what may be called Yeltsin's auto-coup succeeded when they eventually decided to fire on the parliament building.  As with Khrushchev in 1956, the first thing that a Russian leader does after being bailed out by the army is to make sure that the army can't do something like that again.

[Berkut]

Like I said, the Russians are not just not winning, they are losing. Badly.

And it is going to go from bad to really bad if they don't GTFO. What happened to this division will be repeated. 

The Russian soldiers are not interested in fighting, much less dying, for this bullshit.

[Threviel]

Listened to the War on the Rocks podcast and there was an interesting point. There's lots and lots of talks about the abysmal morale in the Russian forces, but i morale was so abysmal we ought to start seeing mass surrenders and we're not seeing that.

It might come in the coming weeks, but perhaps the morale isn't as rock bottom low as we suspect.

[Admiral Yi]

Listened to the War on the Rocks podcast and there was an interesting point. There's lots and lots of talks about the abysmal morale in the Russian forces, but i morale was so abysmal we ought to start seeing mass surrenders and we're not seeing that.

It might come in the coming weeks, but perhaps the morale isn't as rock bottom low as we suspect.

To defect en masse you need the acquiescence of NCOs and officers.  Small scale surrendering is not inconsistent with bad morale.

[Josquius]

Listened to the War on the Rocks podcast and there was an interesting point. There's lots and lots of talks about the abysmal morale in the Russian forces, but i morale was so abysmal we ought to start seeing mass surrenders and we're not seeing that.

It might come in the coming weeks, but perhaps the morale isn't as rock bottom low as we suspect.

Makes me wonder with that video floating about of Ukrainians torturing Russian prisoners - Russian propeganda to discourage this?

[The Brain]

I came across a pretty shocking article about a certain Russian division: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/29/2088757/-Ukraine-update-The-story-of-Russia-s-4th-Armored-division-and-Ukraine-s-biggest-victory-to-date. 

At first, the "4th armored division" didn't tell me anything, but then I realized it was the Kantemirovskaya division.  An analogy to the US would be something like a 101st Airborne (by fame in the society anyway, I have no way of knowing the actual military importance of either).  To have a flagship division being humbled like that is stunning even after five weeks of constant Russian debacles.

Incidentally, I suspect that this division is probably the reason why under both Yeltsin and Putin so many Russian generals expired prematurely.  In both 1991 and 1993, this division was the one that had its tanks rolling on Moscow streets, and both times they proved decisive for the eventual outcome.  In 1991, the coup fell apart when this division's leadership refused to fire on civilians, and in 1993 what may be called Yeltsin's auto-coup succeeded when they eventually decided to fire on the parliament building.  As with Khrushchev in 1956, the first thing that a Russian leader does after being bailed out by the army is to make sure that the army can't do something like that again.

Interesting link.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Listened to the War on the Rocks podcast and there was an interesting point. There's lots and lots of talks about the abysmal morale in the Russian forces, but i morale was so abysmal we ought to start seeing mass surrenders and we're not seeing that.

It might come in the coming weeks, but perhaps the morale isn't as rock bottom low as we suspect.

To defect en masse you need the acquiescence of NCOs and officers.  Small scale surrendering is not inconsistent with bad morale.

And this wouldn't be shocking in a military where the NCOs and officers are career soldiers but the vast majority of the enlisted men are on conscription contracts--conscription contracts that would have said under Russian law they cannot be deployed outside Russia, and then some of them were forced to "volunteer."

[celedhring]

Does the Russian army still employ politruks? 

[DGuller]

The modern version of the German tank problem: https://informnapalm.org/en/medal-count-osint-analysis-of-real-russian-losses-for-the-first-week-of-hostilities-in-ukraine/.

TLDR: Analysis of the serial numbers of posthumous awards seems to indicate that Ukrainians were dead accurate in more ways than one; the analysis validates the Ukrainian figures of Russian dead.

[DGuller]

Does the Russian army still employ politruks? 

They reinstituted them several years ago, IIRC.  The one story and only known story of the decency of individual Russian soldiers involves politruks ordering Russian soldiers to fire on the decent Russian soldiers, for trying to save Ukrainian civilians.

[Josquius]

So.... Are tanks done as a front line military weapon?

[crazy canuck]

Listened to the War on the Rocks podcast and there was an interesting point. There's lots and lots of talks about the abysmal morale in the Russian forces, but i morale was so abysmal we ought to start seeing mass surrenders and we're not seeing that.

It might come in the coming weeks, but perhaps the morale isn't as rock bottom low as we suspect.

According to the article that was posted most of the equipment that was lost was abandoned. It may simply be that the Russian soldiers think that their best way out isn't surrender but walking away. The border is not very far away after all.

[crazy canuck]

Here is an interesting take on Putin's strategy.  I gift one of my free monthly links to Languish

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/opinion/ukraine-war-putin.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DODmwTiOMNAo6B_EGKeKl5bto10nGETcUEKKIzRfo0zvNaOwYlbTiUlaa-ucZPJTQp-8X0V3kq3pnJUPdk-G7nNDPkcKIglLbn-k_ePmD1UKLe1WkiLFxn9MdmJ1ug3ncY1-ySRL4Or9p01fwkBpBwRC5RJ3XZ-qm1VGgtfYmOfRre6QIpWutGWzi1ndSU6rgIcAQ6GkuRBTokoj56sIUATYtRaKXvLBcge978hKERAgFrLoSrBZ4yTuvEhnabUCO-vdx9JZfPMPEmPPQ&smid=url-share

[viper37]

So.... Are tanks done as a front line military weapon?

Tanks need to move with infantry support, and ideally, behind an aerial bombardment.  I haven't seen this in the current war, but I'll let the experts in tanks discuss the finer points of strategy.