Cont: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine part 8

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theprestige

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Thread continued from here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=365848.

As is usual, the thread split is arbitrary and posters may quote from the previous thread(s)
Posted By: Agatha



More like Operation Trident. Except that actual missile boats don't seem very survivable in today's world. Even the vaunted US Navy is questioning the wisdom of amphibious attacks in the age of plentiful shore-based anti-ship missiles.

Anyway, I'm happy, as I donated specifically to Ukraine's naval drone fund. I've been waiting for months to see the guys in action. Hope there's more to come.
 
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Good point, and quite possibly, yes. Much more likely IMHO (which really means not much) than a St Nazaire Raid.
 
Blue Mountain said:
A hare brained idea for attacking the Kerch bridge: the boy who cried wolf scenario.
  1. Assemble a large force of rather small non-lethal drones, but large enough to show up on radar
  2. At two to three day intervals, send a few of them to the bridge
  3. The predictable Russian response will be an all-out defence, which will tie up resources against a non-lethal attack force
  4. Wait until the Russian forces get tired of responding in force to the drone attacks
  5. Send in the heavily armed drones

I'm hoping people with actual tactical and military experience will tell me how effective such a strategy might or might not be.
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Needs to be a bit more flexible but you probably aren't the only one thinking along those lines.

If the drones always come from the same direction, the Russians will likely try to move some assets to either detect or intercept the drones. That creates opportunities to come from a different direction. The flexibility is required to deal with any other variations in Russian responses to the smaller drones.

Bigger sticking points are a matter of logistics and security. Launch from the same place too many times and you might get a visit from the Russian air force there. How many drones are required to pull it off also matters.
 
I think the conventional wisdom is that if you can send something on an attack route anyway might as well send a bomb. If it get thru, great! And you can move on to other operations. If not, maybe the next one will. Or the one after that.
 
An observation watching Twitter vids & updates.

The Ukrainians have videos of dozens of vehicle kills per day. The Russians have 1 or 2 and recycle them for days.

Re: The counteroffensive
I feel that there is a major opportunity in the south. if they can get through the remaining defensive line, they can drive to Melitopol quickly. I think they are holding back a brigade of Bradleys to exploit this once they get to the main road. Russian supply chain is all busted up from Crimea and this may be happening in the next week.
 
The claimed figures of Russian troops and equipment taken out of the game is very impressive. How much more hardware and manpower can Russia have left?
 
Ian Osborne said:
The claimed figures of Russian troops and equipment taken out of the game is very impressive. How much more hardware and manpower can Russia have left?
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Manpower, well certainly over 10 million men at military age. They haven't really scratched the surface. Hardware... you don't jaunt off to North Korea begging for scraps if you aren't getting desperate. You also don't pull T-55's out of mothballs for fire support, if you aren't desperate.
 
lobosrul5 said:
Manpower, well certainly over 10 million men at military age. They haven't really scratched the surface. Hardware... you don't jaunt off to North Korea begging for scraps if you aren't getting desperate. You also don't pull T-55's out of mothballs for fire support, if you aren't desperate.
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Joke is they are demanding that Great Britian return that T 34 on display in the Imperial War Museum to Russia.....
 
lobosrul5 said:
Manpower, well certainly over 10 million men at military age. They haven't really scratched the surface. Hardware... you don't jaunt off to North Korea begging for scraps if you aren't getting desperate. You also don't pull T-55's out of mothballs for fire support, if you aren't desperate.
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Is the manpower figure before or after accounting for the number of people that must be reserved to sustain critical industry and a minimum viable amount of economic activity?

Not to mention the number of people that must be reserved for critical military tasks not related to the war in Ukraine?
 
theprestige said:
Is the manpower figure before or after accounting for the number of people that must be reserved to sustain critical industry and a minimum viable amount of economic activity?

Not to mention the number of people that must be reserved for critical military tasks not related to the war in Ukraine?
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They* figured out a way to keep their factories running, and still have a huge military in the 1940's. But, can they do that again? Probably not. But my point was, there's plenty of vatniks they can round up that probably sit around smoking meth and drinking cheap vodka and have a "job" to hand a Mosin-Nagant. The number of educated people they have that aren't in critical work positions, that might be officer candidates, and won't flee the country if drafted? Yeah that number is probably desperately low.

*well, the USSR that is
 
I saw a report earlier today about a couple of organisations that have tallied up all the Obituaries in Russian newspapers and social media. It's over 250,000.
There's now a ban on printing or posting them
 
lobosrul5 said:
They* figured out a way to keep their factories running, and still have a huge military in the 1940's. But, can they do that again? Probably not. But my point was, there's plenty of vatniks they can round up that probably sit around smoking meth and drinking cheap vodka and have a "job" to hand a Mosin-Nagant. The number of educated people they have that aren't in critical work positions, that might be officer candidates, and won't flee the country if drafted? Yeah that number is probably desperately low.

*well, the USSR that is
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I get that nations involved in a total industrial war must figure out some way to keep their factories running while they fight. Usually this means reserving some of your total labor pool for non-military service. The total number of citizens in your labor pool isn't the total number of citizens you can afford to conscript and send to the front.

THUS MY QUESTION.
 
Andy_Ross said:
I saw a report earlier today about a couple of organisations that have tallied up all the Obituaries in Russian newspapers and social media. It's over 250,000.
There's now a ban on printing or posting them
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I've seen some other work that was doing things like looking at the number of probate cases compared to previous years and extrapolating from there. However, the problem with both that method and the obituaries method, is many soldiers are just reported MIA. Or their family just stops hearing from them, and thats it. No official notification of any kind.
 
I for one would not fault a belligerent for deciding that its casualty figures are a matter of national security, for both intelligence and propaganda reasons, and embargoing their publication while hostilities are ongoing. Ukraine also tends to be pretty close-mouthed about these things, except when they're playing up specific stories for sympathy (i.e., propaganda).
 
theprestige said:
I get that nations involved in a total industrial war must figure out some way to keep their factories running while they fight. Usually this means reserving some of your total labor pool for non-military service. The total number of citizens in your labor pool isn't the total number of citizens you can afford to conscript and send to the front.

THUS MY QUESTION.
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Its an impossible one to know. How far can Russia push its civilian population at gunpoint to sit in a trench? I would've thought they'd already have had a serious rebellion by now. But, their population is more cowed and more braindead than I had estimated.

I don't think Russia needs all that many people for employment in their critical industry. You need oil and gas workers drilling, pumping, refinery. Some port infrastructure, and the railroads. A few military factories... 100k workers at the absolute most. Agriculture and food service... sure some there. But its mostly mechanized huge grain field low manpower style agriculture. Most of their consumer goods are imported. I think they could probably still operate as the worlds largest gas station with many millions of men in their military.
 
theprestige said:
I for one would not fault a belligerent for deciding that its casualty figures are a matter of national security, for both intelligence and propaganda reasons, and embargoing their publication while hostilities are ongoing. Ukraine also tends to be pretty close-mouthed about these things, except when they're playing up specific stories for sympathy (i.e., propaganda).
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Yes, heres the thing though. Ukraine has much more video and pictures to show us of destroyed Russian equipment than Russia has to show us of destroyed Ukrainian equipment. That leads me to believe that Ukraine is indeed winning the battle of attrition. Russia would be showing us the masses of western MBT's they've destroyed, if they had indeed destroyed them.
 
The 250,000 number (post #14) is interesting because it's very close to the running count from the official Ukraine Govt, sources. When they release the numbers they get a lot of "what source?" and "how did you count?" responses in Twitter - but it seems they are not inflating.

(And if that's from Obituaries, how many more wounded are there?)
 
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