Russia/Ukraine conflict

[petit_bateau]

Zirkove posylannya.

Yeah, karma is a real b1tch.

After all it was Gorshkov who led the way towards network-centric warfare with the seek/strike complex.

 

[Sandor]

Yeah, karma is a real b1tch.

After all it was Gorshkov who led the way towards network-centric warfare with the seek/strike complex.

Unfortunately for Russia, Gorshkov died in 1988 and instead of "better is the enemy of good enough" they've went to "better for me personally; screw anyone else" motto

 

[FlatSix911]

One of the reasons this discussion has gone a bit haywire is that I'm not sure you understand that US and Russian doctrine are very, very different and they always have been. The US has always been fairly intolerant of high combat losses unless necessary and the Russia approach has been that life is cheap and they just throw bodies at the enemy until they win or they don't. With their population falling like a rock, it's a very bad thing to do today, even if the leadership doesn't care about the lives.

American political leadership can be overly optimistic about the enemy, but the US military always errs on the side of over estimation of the enemy and pessimism. It's easier to deal with crushing the enemy like breaking an egg with a sledgehammer (as was done in the 1991 war) than to try and explain high personnel losses.

Many years ago I read a story about a German soldier who was taken prisoner in Italy in WW II. He had fought the British, Americans, and Russians and his interrogators were interested of his assessments of each. He said that the British were very methodical and liked to stick to a plan no matter how many problems they run into. He said their individual soldiers were very high quality and they were a dangerous foe, though their rigidity sometimes led to failures when the Germans decided to do something the British didn't expect.

He said the Russians were fanatic on both defense and offense. Their commanders would plant their troops in one place on defense and they were told they couldn't leave unless their commander told them to leave or they were dead. On offense they just kept coming at the enemy until there were not enough left or they won.

When asked about fighting Americans he paused. He said that he had encountered Americans in battle, and they fought well, but most of the time he couldn't see them through the artillery barrages and bombs dropping on them. The American doctrine was to bomb the heck out the enemy and then send in the troops to mop up.

As part of this steel wall approach the US became very, very good at combined arms. Other countries have learned since, but the US integrates together everything and allows all units to communicate with one another.

Where the US was weak, they fixed it and became masters at it. Before WW II the Japanese trained their carrier pilots to work together in multi-deck strike groups. Their six fleet carriers were combined into 3 divisions and the pair of carriers in each division worked as a team. To launch a strike package one carrier would launch torpedo bombers and the other would launch dive bombers. Then for the second wave they would switch. For the Pearl Harbor attack they trained to coordinate all six carriers into one strike group.

The US had not trained for multi-deck operations and each carrier sent their strike packages individually. This almost led to disaster at Midway. Halsey placed the US carriers where the Japanese didn't expect them, but when the Japanese were spotted, the three US carriers launched on their own and each strike commander made their own decision about where the Japanese had gone since the last sighting. The CAG (Carried Air Group Commander) for the Hornet Stanhope Ring was an idiot and sent his dive bombers off in a completely wrong direction. His torpedo squadron commander Lt Commander John Waldron disobeyed orders and flew where he though the Japanese were. He got his torpedo bombers wiped out, but in doing so he pulled the Japanese fighters down to sea level.

The Enterprise's strike package and the Yorktown's ventured in the general vicinity of the Japanese, but one went too far north and the other too far south. They just happened to realize they were off and turn in the correct direction. The Yorktown's strike group arrived on the north end of the Japanese carriers just as the Enterprise's arrived to the south. Each had two dive bomber squadrons, but instead of sending one squadron after each carrier, they only attacked one each. The CAG for the Enterprise had very little dive bombing experience. He was leading one squadron and Command Best was leading the other. Best realized that they were making a mistake and shifted his vic of three planes to the other carrier. The bulk of the Enterprise's dive bombers pummeled the Kaga into a burning wreck, but Best got lucky and all three bombers in his vic scored on the Akagi. Best put his bomb in the center of the deck starting a massive fire and his other two bombers scored near misses, one of which fatally jammed the rudder.

The Yorktown pummeled the Soryu leaving the Hiryu undamaged. The commander of the Hiryu was suicidally aggressive and his pilots managed to cripple the Yorktown later in the day. An afternoon strike crippled the Hiryu and she was scuttled the next day.

The USN got very very lucky and started developing both better coordination of defenses as well as offenses. By the end of the war the US was conducting massive multiple deck strikes with precision and their defense directing from ships became excellent.

US doctrine thinks big with complex coordination. When planning an offensive operation, it involves massive expenditure of munitions and then the ground troops go in once everything that can shoot back has been pounded flat. The US doctrinially assumes a potential battlefield opponent is going to be very capable and plans accordingly. Where the US has fallen down many times (Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan) is underestimating insurgencies. The US is very bad at fighting insurgencies.

Russian planning for this war was very amateurish. Their military does not plan like the US military does. All assumptions were that the Ukrainians were going to mostly just roll over and give up. They didn't attack many infrastructure targets in the early going because they thought it was going to be over quickly. Why destroy infrastructure in a country that is essentially going to be incorporated into yours if you don't have to?

All sorts of bad decisions stemmed from bad assumptions. Very few military analysts inside or outside of Russia thought that Ukraine would be able to stand up to Russia for more than a few days. Some western leaders who had worked with the Ukrainian military the last 8 years knew the Ukrainians were capable, but even their own people weren't listening to them.

The Russians never had much of a chance in a major fight because they suck at combined arms. They don't really train for it, their communications are not set up to do it, and they have never been very strong at coordinated combined arms. The BTG concept was an attempt to put combined arms in a small package that could hopefully all work together within the unit, but none of the troops got any training in actually working with their new unit concept.

The BTG concept is a great unit structure for small, professional militaries like some of the smaller countries in western Europe. But making all those different weapons types work together requires lots of training and a command structure that completely understands all the elements under its command and work out how to use them effectively.

The Russians threw together these units without any thought about how they would work cohesively. As a result, a lot of their equipment was destroyed and a lot of their troops killed. I've seen videos of them in combat and even their VDV "elites" run around like chickens with their heads cut off.



The Russians never considered it before the war started. They were doctrinely blind to it.



They spend 1/2 the time of NATO pilots in the cockpit, but all NATO pilots spend vast amounts of time on the ground training. They have many, many hours of simulator training as well as lots of time evaluating and honing their skills. The Russians do very little of that.

Another thing is NATO pilots train to work in groups ranging from a couple of planes up to vast, coordinated strike groups. The Russians have little or not training for any operations more than a few planes in a strike.

Communications for NATO pilots can range all over the map. They can communicate with airborne command posts, back to base, infantry and tank units on the ground, as well as with each other. Part of their training involves dealing with communication overload and how to triage information.

Russian aircraft are designed to communicate with other planes in their unit that are airborne, but otherwise the only other communication point is back to their base. It vastly reduces their flexibility in combat. They have no idea what is going on on the ground and if troops on the ground are trying to call in an air strike, it has to bounce through several channels before it can happen.

When the Germans inherited a bunch of ex-Soviet planes when the country reunified, they were initially exited to get more planes, but when they evaluated the Russian planes they realized they would take a lot of rework to incorporate them into NATO command and control structures. They were going to need a lot of new avionics.

One reason the Russians may not want the Ukrainians to get NATO MiGs is I think the NATO MiGs have been updated to NATO standards and adapted to carry NATO weaponry, which would make the missile supply problem easy for NATO countries.



I doubt anybody is seriously considering sending troops into Russia.



My degree is in Electronic Engineering and I have been working specifically in the IC industry since 2010. The array of chips and their capabilities and intended rolls is vast. Saying a chip is a chip is like equating Russian MREs with the food from a Michelin 5 star restaurant. It's all food right?

The ICs that get the headlines are the most complex, and most expensive ICs. The US is a world leader in designing these devices, but so is Taiwan. Taiwan produces top tier devices.

But just like almost nobody eats at top restaurants every day, the vast majority of ICs are well behind the bleeding edge. You hear about the Apple M1 and the AMD Ryzen, but one of the most common processors in the world are derivatives of the Intel 8051 that was introduced in 1981. It's off patent and many companies make versions of it. Most are integrated into ICs that do something specific like a USB interface controller.

There are even more ICs that don't have microprocessors. Those are used everywhere too.

China produces vast amounts of the older chips. They do produce a few newer chips, but not many.

For most industrial applications, the chips are custom made for a specific purpose. Often there is only one source for that chip. I was involved years ago with speccing out a part for a product and we were talking to Texas Instruments to make it for us. It was an involved process and they would have been the only supplier.

Russia was dependent on chips made by a company in Germany. They could either redesign their hardware to use a Chinese part off the shelf that might be close, or they would have to contract with a Chinese company to make it for them. Russia has been hemorrhaging the people with the technical skills to make the changes needed. Even if the personnel needed are still in place, the process is going to take at least a year and probably a couple to get the right parts in place to start production again.

Claims the Russians can just source form Japan is like suggesting that car makers solve the shortage of li-ion batteries with AA alkaline batteries. It's not going to work. You could redesign an electric car to take a different battery package (with a delay), but you're not going to substitute alkaline batteries for li-ion.



The real concern with China is that China has license built a lot of Russian weapons and bought Russian weapons. They could supply some weapons to Russia to replace losses. Any concerns about them getting Russian defense production back online is going to take years to achieve.



From what I've read all the videos of Russia's FOABs never show it being carried by an aircraft or dropped. They may not have managed to package it into a package that can be conveniently carried in a plane.



Once the tooling is in place, making something like a very large bomb, especially a dumb one is cheap. But they may have never built the tooling. They may have tested some prototypes and decided for one reason or another not to put it into production. Their defense budget is so small they have to be careful about where they put their procurement rubles. What we know of their orders for their newest weapons, they tend to be ordered in very small batches.

The Russians are very secretive about their defense industry. Much more so than the US. The hurdles to get the bomb from prototype to production may have competed with other priorities and it fell off the bottom of the wish list? Or somebody decided their pet project took priority, or something else.

They may not have the means to make more of them beyond more hand made prototypes. We don't know.

In a war with NATO, they would probably have a problem delivering them to NATO targets, even if they do have a delivery system. Their small strategic bomber force will be very vulnerable.



From what I read that class of cruiser was designed with the main magazine in the middle of the ship rather that forward and astern like most surface ships. And missiles like the Neptune are programed to aim for the center of the ship. If the ship was maneuvering the first hit may have been somewhere else, but the second one probably hit amidship which most likely penetrated the magazine.

The reports said the cruiser took on a heavy list almost immediately and sank fairly quickly. It's possible it broke up and one portion remained afloat and on fire for a bit.

An interesting bit of trivia, one of Moskva's sisters is abandoned in Mykolaiv The four built cruisers of the class were built there and the fourth one hadn't been completed when the USSR broke up. The Ukrainians said it would be sold for scrap in 2021, but that hasn't happened yet.



Published Russian nuclear doctrine calls for a first strike if conventional ground forces enter Russia and pose any threat to major Russian population centers. I strongly doubt that any war plan involves NATO or anybody else entering Russia. Reducing their military assets to a point where they have no conventional capability to harm any neighbors would be just fine for all their potential enemies.

You are talking about a scenario the Russians are paranoid about, but nobody is contemplating.



One of Russia's stated goals in this war was to weaken NATO's influence. It's strengthened NATO's bonds, caused Germany to up its defense budget and start rearming, and it's going to get Sweden and Finland into NATO. Both countries have good professional militaries and Finland in NATO is a nightmare for Russia, it puts NATO right next door to St Petersburg and forces Russia to defend a new very long border.

Excellent analysis... as a former Army officer I can say that most of what you wrote about Military Doctrine is spot on.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Yeah, karma is a real b1tch.

After all it was Gorshkov who led the way towards network-centric warfare with the seek/strike complex.

... and neither Starlink or SpaceX would even exist if the Russians had just sold Elon a damn ICBM like he asked.

Budmo!

 

[Sandor]

... and neither Starlink or SpaceX would even exist if the Russians had just sold Elon a damn ICBM like he asked.

Budmo!

3

 

[sundaymorning]

One of the reasons this discussion has gone a bit haywire is that I'm not sure you understand that US and Russian doctrine are very, very different and they always have been. The US has always been fairly intolerant of high combat losses unless necessary and the Russia approach has been that life is cheap and they just throw bodies at the enemy until they win or they don't. With their population falling like a rock, it's a very bad thing to do today, even if the leadership doesn't care about the lives.

Yes I understand this W, I’m curious what makes you think I don’t? The US takes very measured steps when attacking the enemy infrastructure in Iraq, they would mostly bomb at night to ensure that civilians are not outside and getting what we coin “collateral damage.”

American political leadership can be overly optimistic about the enemy, but the US military always errs on the side of over estimation of the enemy and pessimism. It's easier to deal with crushing the enemy like breaking an egg with a sledgehammer (as was done in the 1991 war) than to try and explain high personnel losses.

Many years ago I read a story about a German soldier who was taken prisoner in Italy in WW II. He had fought the British, Americans, and Russians and his interrogators were interested of his assessments of each. He said that the British were very methodical and liked to stick to a plan no matter how many problems they run into. He said their individual soldiers were very high quality and they were a dangerous foe, though their rigidity sometimes led to failures when the Germans decided to do something the British didn't expect.

He said the Russians were fanatic on both defense and offense. Their commanders would plant their troops in one place on defense and they were told they couldn't leave unless their commander told them to leave or they were dead. On offense they just kept coming at the enemy until there were not enough left or they won.

When asked about fighting Americans he paused. He said that he had encountered Americans in battle, and they fought well, but most of the time he couldn't see them through the artillery barrages and bombs dropping on them. The American doctrine was to bomb the heck out the enemy and then send in the troops to mop up.

I agree with this assessment, the US loves using bombs and we do it well. I can’t remember who was trying to question me here about the US using plenty more bombs in Iraq than Russia during the first 5 days of war to ensure air superiority, but here I found this for you:

The Russians attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24, article was dated March 6, so after 11-12 days the Russians used 600 missiles vs the US around 2,000 (on day 5). May I rest my case with those who are questioning how air superiority is quickly gained?

As part of this steel wall approach the US became very, very good at combined arms. Other countries have learned since, but the US integrates together everything and allows all units to communicate with one another.

Where the US was weak, they fixed it and became masters at it. Before WW II the Japanese trained their carrier pilots to work together in multi-deck strike groups. Their six fleet carriers were combined into 3 divisions and the pair of carriers in each division worked as a team. To launch a strike package one carrier would launch torpedo bombers and the other would launch dive bombers. Then for the second wave they would switch. For the Pearl Harbor attack they trained to coordinate all six carriers into one strike group.

The US had not trained for multi-deck operations and each carrier sent their strike packages individually. This almost led to disaster at Midway. Halsey placed the US carriers where the Japanese didn't expect them, but when the Japanese were spotted, the three US carriers launched on their own and each strike commander made their own decision about where the Japanese had gone since the last sighting. The CAG (Carried Air Group Commander) for the Hornet Stanhope Ring was an idiot and sent his dive bombers off in a completely wrong direction. His torpedo squadron commander Lt Commander John Waldron disobeyed orders and flew where he though the Japanese were. He got his torpedo bombers wiped out, but in doing so he pulled the Japanese fighters down to sea level.

The Enterprise's strike package and the Yorktown's ventured in the general vicinity of the Japanese, but one went too far north and the other too far south. They just happened to realize they were off and turn in the correct direction. The Yorktown's strike group arrived on the north end of the Japanese carriers just as the Enterprise's arrived to the south. Each had two dive bomber squadrons, but instead of sending one squadron after each carrier, they only attacked one each. The CAG for the Enterprise had very little dive bombing experience. He was leading one squadron and Command Best was leading the other. Best realized that they were making a mistake and shifted his vic of three planes to the other carrier. The bulk of the Enterprise's dive bombers pummeled the Kaga into a burning wreck, but Best got lucky and all three bombers in his vic scored on the Akagi. Best put his bomb in the center of the deck starting a massive fire and his other two bombers scored near misses, one of which fatally jammed the rudder.

The Yorktown pummeled the Soryu leaving the Hiryu undamaged. The commander of the Hiryu was suicidally aggressive and his pilots managed to cripple the Yorktown later in the day. An afternoon strike crippled the Hiryu and she was scuttled the next day.

The USN got very very lucky and started developing both better coordination of defenses as well as offenses. By the end of the war the US was conducting massive multiple deck strikes with precision and their defense directing from ships became excellent.

US doctrine thinks big with complex coordination. When planning an offensive operation, it involves massive expenditure of munitions and then the ground troops go in once everything that can shoot back has been pounded flat. The US doctrinially assumes a potential battlefield opponent is going to be very capable and plans accordingly. Where the US has fallen down many times (Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan) is underestimating insurgencies. The US is very bad at fighting insurgencies.

Russian planning for this war was very amateurish. Their military does not plan like the US military does. All assumptions were that the Ukrainians were going to mostly just roll over and give up. They didn't attack many infrastructure targets in the early going because they thought it was going to be over quickly. Why destroy infrastructure in a country that is essentially going to be incorporated into yours if you don't have to?

I agree the US does a much better job at planning and coordinating offensive wars and that Russians haven’t done their due diligence and cannot match US standards here.

All sorts of bad decisions stemmed from bad assumptions. Very few military analysts inside or outside of Russia thought that Ukraine would be able to stand up to Russia for more than a few days. Some western leaders who had worked with the Ukrainian military the last 8 years knew the Ukrainians were capable, but even their own people weren't listening to them.

The Russians never had much of a chance in a major fight because they suck at combined arms. They don't really train for it, their communications are not set up to do it, and they have never been very strong at coordinated combined arms. The BTG concept was an attempt to put combined arms in a small package that could hopefully all work together within the unit, but none of the troops got any training in actually working with their new unit concept.

The BTG concept is a great unit structure for small, professional militaries like some of the smaller countries in western Europe. But making all those different weapons types work together requires lots of training and a command structure that completely understands all the elements under its command and work out how to use them effectively.

The Russians threw together these units without any thought about how they would work cohesively. As a result, a lot of their equipment was destroyed and a lot of their troops killed. I've seen videos of them in combat and even their VDV "elites" run around like chickens with their heads cut off.

haha yes, I’ve watched plenty of these videos on YouTube, Twitter, etc. I spend 2-3 hours a days scouring for news on Ukraine and Russia. Lately I’ve been spending more time here, which isn’t very productive as I keep having to repeat myself.

The Russians never considered it before the war started. They were doctrinely blind to it.
They spend 1/2 the time of NATO pilots in the cockpit, but all NATO pilots spend vast amounts of time on the ground training. They have many, many hours of simulator training as well as lots of time evaluating and honing their skills. The Russians do very little of that.

Another thing is NATO pilots train to work in groups ranging from a couple of planes up to vast, coordinated strike groups. The Russians have little or not training for any operations more than a few planes in a strike.

This maybe because the Russians haven’t really met an enemy worth their time, until now. The Russians have been fighting weaker opponents and outmatch them on ammunition. Whereas the US tries not to underestimate its enemy, and sometimes over train. Life is much more valuable in the west than it is in Russia, so we tend to train our boys as much as we can. The media holding our government accountable also helps. Where I find reason to complain about, is how we deal with soldiers after they’ve been retired. More needs to be done to take care of boys who leave the battlefield with PTSD.

Communications for NATO pilots can range all over the map. They can communicate with airborne command posts, back to base, infantry and tank units on the ground, as well as with each other. Part of their training involves dealing with communication overload and how to triage information.

Russian aircraft are designed to communicate with other planes in their unit that are airborne, but otherwise the only other communication point is back to their base. It vastly reduces their flexibility in combat. They have no idea what is going on on the ground and if troops on the ground are trying to call in an air strike, it has to bounce through several channels before it can happen.

When the Germans inherited a bunch of ex-Soviet planes when the country reunified, they were initially exited to get more planes, but when they evaluated the Russian planes they realized they would take a lot of rework to incorporate them into NATO command and control structures. They were going to need a lot of new avionics.

I didn’t know this, you learn something new everyday. Hopefully in don’t forget this piece in future discussions.

My degree is in Electronic Engineering and I have been working specifically in the IC industry since 2010. The array of chips and their capabilities and intended rolls is vast. Saying a chip is a chip is like equating Russian MREs with the food from a Michelin 5 star restaurant. It's all food right?

I agree with you here, the Chinese don’t have high quality chips because their IP is protected by TSMC and the equipment is highly protected by ASML, some of these equipments are so expensive that ASML requires NVDIA/TSMC to be joint partners in R&D cost in order to develop faster compute power equipment. One of these chip making machines go as high as $600,000,000 a piece. The Chinese have been trying to buy them, but Trump passed a law preventing the Dutch from selling these machines to the Chinese. China, in turn passed a $1.4 trillion spending bill to partner their state government with private enterprise in order to beef up their chip making capabilities. It will take a lot of time and physics to catch up, maybe 10-15 years, but I think the Chinese will eventually figure it out. You can tell I follow this situation closely as well, although I’m not an engineer by trade I can put the two and two together.

Recently, the Ukrainians discovered that the Russian drones had chips made from western and Asian companies, some researchers have found those chips to be outsourced “from Asia,” although no one knew exactly where it came from, but the cost of the chip gave it away, $2 which can only mean it came from China. Yes, although the Chinese can’t yet make chips that go into fighter jets or iPhones, they can still make them for drones and missiles. In fact, our military has discovered some of these knockoff chips in their own equipment/missiles, that come from China for purposes of espionage. Here are some articles you might enjoy:

The chip challenge: Keeping Western semiconductors out of Russian weapons

When Silicon Valley chipmaker Marvell learned that one of its chips was found in a Russian surveilla

www.thehindu.com

China-sourced fake chips used in US military, says BusinessWeek | Technology | The Guardian

<p>Fake microchips from China are causing a growing number of failures in military systems, according to <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_41/b4103034193886.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories">an investigation by BusinessWeek magazine</a></p>

amp.theguardian.com

The ICs that get the headlines are the most complex, and most expensive ICs. The US is a world leader in designing these devices, but so is Taiwan. Taiwan produces top tier devices.

But just like almost nobody eats at top restaurants every day, the vast majority of ICs are well behind the bleeding edge. You hear about the Apple M1 and the AMD Ryzen, but one of the most common processors in the world are derivatives of the Intel 8051 that was introduced in 1981. It's off patent and many companies make versions of it. Most are integrated into ICs that do something specific like a USB interface controller.

There are even more ICs that don't have microprocessors. Those are used everywhere too.

China produces vast amounts of the older chips. They do produce a few newer chips, but not many.

For most industrial applications, the chips are custom made for a specific purpose. Often there is only one source for that chip. I was involved years ago with speccing out a part for a product and we were talking to Texas Instruments to make it for us. It was an involved process and they would have been the only supplier.

Russia was dependent on chips made by a company in Germany. They could either redesign their hardware to use a Chinese part off the shelf that might be close, or they would have to contract with a Chinese company to make it for them. Russia has been hemorrhaging the people with the technical skills to make the changes needed. Even if the personnel needed are still in place, the process is going to take at least a year and probably a couple to get the right parts in place to start production again.

Claims the Russians can just source form Japan is like suggesting that car makers solve the shortage of li-ion batteries with AA alkaline batteries. It's not going to work. You could redesign an electric car to take a different battery package (with a delay), but you're not going to substitute alkaline batteries for li-ion.



The real concern with China is that China has license built a lot of Russian weapons and bought Russian weapons. They could supply some weapons to Russia to replace losses. Any concerns about them getting Russian defense production back online is going to take years to achieve.

See my post above, it will take 10-15 years for the Chinese to catch up in the chip making department, just like it would take time for them to catch up to tesla. But once they do catch up, it’s off to the races, they will have many more brains working on this, and their government will continue to throw money at the problem. Many here can’t seem to accept that China might surpass us one day. Bring this topic of China surpassing the US and you’ll trigger lots of nerves.

From what I've read all the videos of Russia's FOABs never show it being carried by an aircraft or dropped. They may not have managed to package it into a package that can be conveniently carried in a plane.



Once the tooling is in place, making something like a very large bomb, especially a dumb one is cheap. But they may have never built the tooling. They may have tested some prototypes and decided for one reason or another not to put it into production. Their defense budget is so small they have to be careful about where they put their procurement rubles. What we know of their orders for their newest weapons, they tend to be ordered in very small batches.

The Russians are very secretive about their defense industry. Much more so than the US. The hurdles to get the bomb from prototype to production may have competed with other priorities and it fell off the bottom of the wish list? Or somebody decided their pet project took priority, or something else.

They may not have the means to make more of them beyond more hand made prototypes. We don't know.

What we don’t know can get us into trouble. The attitude that WW3 will be short if Putin doesn’t nuke is the same attitude Russians went into Ukraine with. Avoid it, delete it, because I know many more lives will be lost in WW3 scenario than what we’re seeing now. Some warhawks here will disagree, but that’s ok. My purpose is to bring attention to the potential lost life. It’s easy for some armchair quarter backs to say it’ll be a short war, especially when they’re not doing the fighting or live next door to the Russians.

In a war with NATO, they would probably have a problem delivering them to NATO targets, even if they do have a delivery system. Their small strategic bomber force will be very vulnerable.



From what I read that class of cruiser was designed with the main magazine in the middle of the ship rather that forward and astern like most surface ships. And missiles like the Neptune are programed to aim for the center of the ship. If the ship was maneuvering the first hit may have been somewhere else, but the second one probably hit amidship which most likely penetrated the magazine.

The reports said the cruiser took on a heavy list almost immediately and sank fairly quickly. It's possible it broke up and one portion remained afloat and on fire for a bit.

An interesting bit of trivia, one of Moskva's sisters is abandoned in Mykolaiv The four built cruisers of the class were built there and the fourth one hadn't been completed when the USSR broke up. The Ukrainians said it would be sold for scrap in 2021, but that hasn't happened yet.



Published Russian nuclear doctrine calls for a first strike if conventional ground forces enter Russia and pose any threat to major Russian population centers. I strongly doubt that any war plan involves NATO or anybody else entering Russia. Reducing their military assets to a point where they have no conventional capability to harm any neighbors would be just fine for all their potential enemies.

You are talking about a scenario the Russians are paranoid about, but nobody is contemplating.



One of Russia's stated goals in this war was to weaken NATO's influence. It's strengthened NATO's bonds, caused Germany to up its defense budget and start rearming, and it's going to get Sweden and Finland into NATO. Both countries have good professional militaries and Finland in NATO is a nightmare for Russia, it puts NATO right next door to St Petersburg and forces Russia to defend a new very long border.

I’m going to say this: Biden is the best thing to happen to NATO in a long time. I would love to see both Finland and Sweden join, it’s about time they stop neutrality. The timing for them to join is almost as perfect as you can get. As for what the Russians are capable and incapable of, I can’t work with assumptions under a duress situation like a world war, but I can say this, as war between Ukraine and Russia drags on, the Russians will be forced to show their cards. The deeper Putin gets his military into to this campaign, we’ll get to see their capabilities and what they are incapable of doing. This in some ways is a gift to the US/NATO, and it will make China blink if the Russians don’t have what we are afraid they might have.

There is a running joke: if Ukraine survives Russia, it will be NATO applying for Ukrainian membership at the end of this war, not the other way around.

 

[Sandor]

It seems that the Russians managed to save Moskva...

US assesses Russian warship still battling fire, but cannot confirm cause, defense official says

The US and EU have pledged a combined $1.3 billion more in military aid for Ukraine as Russia prepares to launch an eastern offensive.

www.cnn.com

Badly damaged but still floating and moving towards Sevastopol. Certainly at least mission-kill; this puppy aint gonna be a factor anymore anytime soon (years likely)

or not. Official from the Russians

Крейсер "Москва" затонул при буксировке во время шторма

Ракетный крейсер "Москва", получивший повреждения из-за детонации боезапаса, затонул во время буксировки, сообщили в Минобороны."При буксировке крейсера... РИА Новости, 15.04.2022

ria.ru

In English via Google Translate

Крейсер "Москва" затонул при буксировке во время шторма

Ракетный крейсер "Москва", получивший повреждения из-за детонации боезапаса, затонул во время буксировки, сообщили в Минобороны."При буксировке крейсера... РИА Новости, 15.04.2022

ria-ru.translate.goog

I guess they'll inform Putin of the good news soon: "Comrade Putin, Russian Navy has a new submarine operating in the Black Sea now"

 

[MontyFloyd]

I guess they'll inform Putin of the good news soon: "Comrade Putin, Russian Navy has a new submarine operating in the Black Sea now"

Yes, sunk.

Chances are it sank last night, not want to admit it went down like brick, was a "heroic and gallant crew trying to save Moscow! Did not give up without a fight!"

Hopefully hear from the survivors how quickly she sank.

 

[UkNorthampton]

Yes, sunk.

Chances are it sank last night, not want to admit it went down like brick, was a "heroic and gallant crew trying to save Moscow! Did not give up without a fight!"

Hopefully hear from the survivors how quickly she sank.

First Moscow battle lost. Second one might be lost to the mob or more likely former Putin allies

 

[Tiger]

The Russian historic knowledge seems to be evaporating (maybe sublimating) by the hour. One word they need to re-learn before threatening stupid stuff like this: Talvisota

They got their collective ass given to them first time, with only a reticent Nazi Germany support for Finland. Pretty sure that this time the support would be way wider in scale...

It's perhaps the misleading proportions of the Mercator projection that makes Nordic countries seem so easy to meddle with.

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

Russian authorities have accused Ukrainian forces of launching air strikes on the Russian region of Bryansk which borders with Ukraine, the latest in a series of allegations of cross-border attacks by Kyiv on Russian territory.

Russia’s Investigative Committee alleged that two Ukrainian military helicopters entered Russia’s air space Thursday and, “moving at low altitude, acting deliberately, they carried out at least six air strikes on residential buildings in the village of Klimovo,” about 11 kilometers away from the Russian border.

It said at least six houses in the village were damaged and seven people, including a toddler, sustained injuries. The Investigative Committee has launched a probe into the attack.

Earlier on Thursday, Russia’s state security service, or the FSB, also accused Ukrainian forces of firing mortars at a border post in the Bryansk region on Wednesday.

The reports could not be independently verified. Earlier this month, Ukraine’s top security officials denied that Kyiv was behind an air strike on an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod, 35 miles from the border. [My underline.]

Source:

Live Updates | Russia-Ukraine War

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told Ukrainians they should be proud of having survived 50 days under Russian attack when the Russians gave them “a maximum of five.”

apnews.com

--> I wonder about Putin's motive behind this one...

 

[bkp_duke]

Source:

Live Updates | Russia-Ukraine War

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told Ukrainians they should be proud of having survived 50 days under Russian attack when the Russians gave them “a maximum of five.”

apnews.com

I wonder about the Putin's motive behind this one...

Warms my heart and puts a smile on my face.

That's an EXPENSIVE piece of gear to go down.

Western media outlets are saying Russia has taken notice, and moved all of their Black Sea fleet remaining further away from the Ukraine coast.

 

[bkp_duke]

I know this was posted by someone earlier in the thread, but it's been a while and "meat and potato" news of the war has been a bit hard to find, so I'm reposting it here (I have no affiliation with the site).

Institute for the Study of War

www.understandingwar.org

I've been reading their summaries daily and found them very helpful and insightful to keep tabs on what is the latest state of the war in Ukraine.

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

"The End of Putin's Era? Former Russian PM's War Analysis | Amanpour and Company​

Mikhail Kasyanov was once Vladimir Putin's prime minister and now is a leading political opponent. He spoke to Christiane about the unique threat Putin represents. Originally aired on April 14, 2022."

tl;dr: It seems Putin will stay in power until he has lost in Ukraine. Then he might lose power somehow.

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

--> Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis (Retired) on MSNBC advocating for sending Fighter Jets to Ukraine at 02:29 into the clip:

"
Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis join Andrea Mitchell to discuss the significant damage done to a major Russian warship by a Ukrainian missile strike. “This is a big important ship,” says Stavridis. “They’re a very capable class of ship, about 15,000 guns. This is a real blow to the Russian navy and to their military’s morale.”
"

 

[wdolson]

Source:

Live Updates | Russia-Ukraine War

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told Ukrainians they should be proud of having survived 50 days under Russian attack when the Russians gave them “a maximum of five.”

apnews.com

--> I wonder about Putin's motive behind this one...

Even totalitarians have to admit losses when it will be impossible to cover it up. The weather over the Black Sea is stormy right now, but Maxar will be taking lots of pictures of Crimea and every Black Sea port after the weather clears and if the Moskva can't be found, the Russians will be caught in a lie. They admit the truth so they can spin it to be as minimally damaging as possible.

Warms my heart and puts a smile on my face.

That's an EXPENSIVE piece of gear to go down.

Western media outlets are saying Russia has taken notice, and moved all of their Black Sea fleet remaining further away from the Ukraine coast.

And the remaining fleet is much less capable. I believe they moved in a few more ships before the Turks closed the Bosporus, but the combat capability of the Black Sea fleet was this cruiser, 5 frigates, and some corvettes (which are essentially anti-submarine ships). The loss of their flagship is going to be very bad for them.

I know this was posted by someone earlier in the thread, but it's been a while and "meat and potato" news of the war has been a bit hard to find, so I'm reposting it here (I have no affiliation with the site).

Institute for the Study of War

www.understandingwar.org

I've been reading their summaries daily and found them very helpful and insightful to keep tabs on what is the latest state of the war in Ukraine.

I don't read them every day, but that is a good source for a big picture of what's going on.

--> Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis (Retired) on MSNBC advocating for sending Fighter Jets to Ukraine at 02:29 into the clip:

"
Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis join Andrea Mitchell to discuss the significant damage done to a major Russian warship by a Ukrainian missile strike. “This is a big important ship,” says Stavridis. “They’re a very capable class of ship, about 15,000 guns. This is a real blow to the Russian navy and to their military’s morale.”
"

I don't understand the 15,000 guns part of it. Did they mean 15,000 tons? The Moskva was about 12,500 tons, its war load may have pushed it close to 15K tons. 15K guns on a ship would be pretty much impossible to do. The Moskva was about 25% more tonnage than a modern USN destroyer.

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

I don't understand the 15,000 guns part of it. Did they mean 15,000 tons? The Moskva was about 12,500 tons, its war load may have pushed it close to 15K tons. 15K guns on a ship would be pretty much impossible to do. The Moskva was about 25% more tonnage than a modern USN destroyer.

I quoted MSNBC. It's an error on their part. When I saw it I could no longer edit my post...

 

[Surfer of Life]

Interesting video about oligarchs and how the West enables autocracies

 

[SwedishAdvocate]

Even totalitarians have to admit losses when it will be impossible to cover it up. The weather over the Black Sea is stormy right now, but Maxar will be taking lots of pictures of Crimea and every Black Sea port after the weather clears and if the Moskva can't be found, the Russians will be caught in a lie. They admit the truth so they can spin it to be as minimally damaging as possible. /...

The news-segment I wanted to post was about an attack that the Russians claimed was carried out inside Russia by Ukraine.

Since it's from an AP-page (Associated Press) with several news-segments the URL got the headline about the sunken ship instead...

Here's the text again. And this time I managed to paste it without the forum software adding that pesky un-edit-able qoute-formatting...

Here:

"Russian authorities have accused Ukrainian forces of launching air strikes on the Russian region of Bryansk which borders with Ukraine, the latest in a series of allegations of cross-border attacks by Kyiv on Russian territory.

Russia’s Investigative Committee alleged that two Ukrainian military helicopters entered Russia’s air space Thursday and, “moving at low altitude, acting deliberately, they carried out at least six air strikes on residential buildings in the village of Klimovo,” about 11 kilometers away from the Russian border.

It said at least six houses in the village were damaged and seven people, including a toddler, sustained injuries. The Investigative Committee has launched a probe into the attack.

Earlier on Thursday, Russia’s state security service, or the FSB, also accused Ukrainian forces of firing mortars at a border post in the Bryansk region on Wednesday.

The reports could not be independently verified. Earlier this month, Ukraine’s top security officials denied that Kyiv was behind an air strike on an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod, 35 miles from the border. [My underline.]"

 

[madodel]

Oil rises on news EU may phase in a ban on Russian oil imports

The New York Times reported that the European Union was moving toward adopting a phased-in ban of Russian oil, to give Germany and other countries time to arrange alternative suppliers.​

​

A phased-in ban would force European buyers "to seek alternative sources, some of which in the near term is being met by Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases, but in the future, more supplies coming out of the ground will be required," Andrew Lipow of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston said.​