Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[celedhring]

France, Germany, UK (does it really import russki gas?) have already said they're not budging.

If Italy (which I think is the other major buyer) doesn't budge, we'll get ourselves a Mexicand standoff.

[Syt]

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.

I think technically he allows Euro to be sent, but it will require customers to have an account at the Russian bank where it will be converted into Rubles.

[Zanza]

"Germany" isn't buying gas anyway, but private German actors that are free to pay in any currency they want. There is no law or EU sanction that stops them from buying Rubles for payments.

They can also just pay Euro to the Russian bank that handled the transaction (via the still working SWIFT? of course) and that bank then converts it to Rubles for the Russian gas company.

The only thing that helps is reducing the amounts we buy as fast as sustainable.

[viper37]

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? 

Most of them?
These guys parents defended the USSR.  It's no different here.

[crazy canuck]

Politics is inherited?

[viper37]

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.

Link

They're talking 134 500 new conscripts.

[viper37]

Politics is inherited?

Quite often, the apple does not fall far from the tree.

But you could see it as a metaphor: the generation of leftist preceding the modern ones trained them with a mindset of USSR = not evil, USA = evil.

[Berkut]

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.

The threat to helos is not really stingers though (although that is a real threat).

That might be the threat to them in low intensity conflicts, but in high intensity, where you would actually want AT helos in force to attack armored formations, is that those armored formations are going to have attached mobile SAMs that have radically greater capabilities then MANPADS. 

There is a lot of question (and has been for a long time) about whether or not something like an Apache can operate at all in the Cold War style armored divisions clashing kind of scenario.

I am not really sure why you brought them up here though. Even in the war in Ukraine, helos are not really a threat to Russian armor, since Ukraine doesn't have any to speak of, and the number of nations that have dedicated AT heloes is like....4? I don't even know if China has them. They are insanely expensive to develop, purchase, and operate. Very much a rich nations toy, and not generally considered to be in the discussion about the viability of armor. All the scenarios under which they could be decisive, would be scenarios that involve force on force among first order nations where the threat environment is radically different from anything seen since Korea or something like that. Maybe they would be dominant, or maybe they would get blown away, I don't think anyone really knows. What is more, I don't think we will ever find out. 

Attack helos are useful tools for sure, but I don't see their relevance to the discussion. They are one way to kill a tank, among many, and simply do not compare to the impact of long range, very deadly man portable and cheap AT weapons.

Nothing has really changed in the capabilities of the attack helicopter, and the things that have changed are around replacing attack helos with drones. The next gen attack helo won't be all that different from the previous generation, and you can tell it cannot be seen as THAT important considering we are still producing the Apache some 40+ years after it was initially designed.

Anyway, the entire helo thing feels like a red herring to the discussion.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Well I think it is relevant and you misunderstand why most militaries keep investing in main battle tanks. The MBT is almost entirely a great power conflict, hypothetical war planning tool. That is the financial and investment justification. They have been limited in insurgent wars and known to be so for 50-60 years due to such wars often being fought in jungles, cities, mountain caves etc. The USMC is actually moving away from even fielding armored battalions at all, for example. That has much more to do with the actual low ability to meaningfully bring armor to bear, due to geographic/structural limitations of where armor can operate more than it does fear of shoulder fired anti-tank missiles.

If you expect to fight a lot of insurgencies, armor has always been a relatively poor investment, the theory going back at least to the 80s when a lot of these questions were getting raised, was that you might still need a lot of tanks if two near-peer great power type countries had to duke it out somewhere. The thought being you wouldn't want your military to get caught in a situation where it's on the wrong end of a front where one side has 15,000 tanks and the other side has less than 1,000. That sort of positioning could potentially get you a bad repeat of the initial battles of WWII that went so well for the Germans.

Note that if a major armored group for example caused us to lose half of West Germany, the fact that we might have killed 3/4 of those tanks in that week of fighting doesn't matter much because now we've lost half of West Germany and it's been filled up with Soviet infantry, meaning there is no non-disastrous way to push them back out.

I just think this entire line of discussion that military planners are just now figuring out shoulder fire anti-tank exists is silly. I also think talk about how this or that system can get shot down in the air is confusing to me. You seem to act like we can't use systems unless those systems don't have counters? I go back--okay why do we use infantry then? Infantry has as many counters as you can imagine (including a sharp stick.) Do you know what the casualty rate was for bomber crews in WWII? Guess we can't use bombers because they get shot down.

None of the way you're talking comports with how military equipment decisions are made. Also note that in the commentary about helicopters I already mentioned having aerial supremacy to use them, it is standard understanding in any big conflict a lot of aerial equipment would not come to bear until aerial supremacy (which means most such enemy SAM systems are disabled or limited) is achieved.

The biggest threat to the tank is lack of an obvious role for them in many likely conflict scenarios, not weapons that can kill tanks--weapons that can kill tanks have been part of war since tanks existed, and many, many, many tanks have been lost in war. Same for fixed wing aircraft, helos, infantry, artillery etc.

If you read reports on how tanks have been used in jungle, urban insurgency, it very often reads like "okay this is a scenario where they simply had tanks so wanted to find a way to use them", not an actual logical use of armor. Without large scale fronts and big land offensives, there is likely not a ton of practical use for very large armored forces meaning they are a more niche piece of equipment. The single biggest threat to the tank is that large fronts and major offensives with high amounts of men and material seem less likely to occur. By the scale of many previous wars, Russia's 200,000 men to invade all of Ukraine is a "small war." The only military that even seems to still be fielding people on scale for a traditional "large war" is China. I think advances in firepower across the board--artillery, air to ground, surface to surface missiles, sea to surface missiles have made it so any very large offensive front would represent such a concentration of men and material that it would be like an irresistible target for all of these modern long range firepower modalities, which would inflict mass, mass casualties. So wars are going to be fought by more dispersed smaller units (remember the U.S. now organizes at the Brigade tactically, we used to organize at the Division level, Russia organizes at the even smaller battalion level), thus the scenario of huge armored fronts rolling around is just not as realistic.

[Sheilbh]

France, Germany, UK (does it really import russki gas?) have already said they're not budging.

The UK's definitely joined the US boycott of Russian oil - I'm not sure about Russian gas but it is a tiny amount of our energy mix so I think we have probably already transitioned away.

Transitioned to our new and in no way morally ambiguous friends in the Gulf

The only thing that helps is reducing the amounts we buy as fast as sustainable.

Yes. Although I liked Habeck's call that reducing consumption helps Germany and Ukraine - I still think that route is something politicians should explore more.

On the reductions it looks like Poland may be the country to follow because they've announced their strategy/plan to eliminate Russian gas by the end of the year in their network - but also plans to reduce Russian coal and oil imports.

[Zanza]

Poland is so far eliminating Russian gas by importing "German" gas that just happened to get here via Nordstream 1. Let's see if they can rely wean themselves off Russian gas...

[Sheilbh]

Poland is so far eliminating Russian gas by importing "German" gas that just happened to get here via Nordstream 1. Let's see if they can rely wean themselves off Russian gas...

Well also expanding their LNG terminals and links into Baltic LNG terminals - which admittedly Poland and the Baltics have been doing slowly over the last decade, because they thought there was a risk Russia would target them through Nordstream and that reliance on pipeline gas was making them dependent on Russia. They're accelerating that so I think by year end they can get about 50% of what they need through their regasification terminal - currently it looks like the aim is to get the rest by tapping into Norway.

But as a strategy (within the EU plan to reduce reliance on Russian gas by 2/3 by year end) speeding up LNG and signing long term deals with Norways seems reasonably viable.

[Duque de Bragança]

Transitioned to our new and in no way morally ambiguous friends in the Gulf

Of course they are in no way morally ambiguous. 
They are bad morally but there is no alternative.

[celedhring]

Their potential for fucking up other countries is also significantly smaller than Russia's.

But yeah, this whole mess is yet another reason for pushing on renewables. Most of the countries selling oil and gas are cunts.

[Berkut]

But yeah, this whole mess is yet another reason for pushing on renewables. Most of the countries selling oil and gas are cunts.

That seems so consistently true that I wonder if there is something about having large amounts of natural resources that just makes it nearly impossible to manage a reasonably decent government.

Is the enticement for corruption just too overpowering?

Can anyone think of any country that was wealthy via export of abundant natural resources that wasn't a political shithole?

The USA always has had incredible natural resources, but we mostly used them internally, rather then just selling them to the rest of the world (although of course we did that as well, but it wasn't the primary economic engine of the country, so far as I can recall).