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Russia/Ukraine conflict

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I know many read the ISW posts but this one is quite interesting. Russia is preparing for Ukraine to successfully cross the lower Dnipro. The nature of the defense is really eye opening. Enjoy
 

I know many read the ISW posts but this one is quite interesting. Russia is preparing for Ukraine to successfully cross the lower Dnipro. The nature of the defense is really eye opening. Enjoy
Any thoughts on off-road travel conditions in the winter south of Kherson? If the ground is frozen, can some/many of those defences just be driven around?
 
Exclusive: U.S. weighs sending 100-mile strike weapon to Ukraine | Reuters

Boeing's proposed system, dubbed Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), is one of about a half-dozen plans for getting new munitions into production for Ukraine and America's Eastern European allies, industry sources said.
GLSDB could be delivered as early as spring 2023, according to a document reviewed by Reuters and three people familiar with the plan. It combines the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) with the M26 rocket motor, both of which are common in U.S. inventories.

160 km range for this new weapon puts Crimea within striking distance of Kherson, and enables deep targets in the logistics train heading into the Donbas battle zone.
 
Any thoughts on off-road travel conditions in the winter south of Kherson? If the ground is frozen, can some/many of those defences just be driven around?
It can be iffy and Crimea really doesn’t freeze. It seems mind boggling to create a stationary fort in today’s world. Now Russia is great at mining and there could be an extensive mine-field that you can’t see.

The implication that Ukraine will be invading and they can’t stop them is interesting.
 
strewth

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I think the 75 cruise missiles is an error.
I've seen the same lists with zero additional cruise missiles lost which is surely incorrect. Ukraine claims to have shot down 51 of 67 cruise missiles last Wednesday. There were reports of 18 cruise missiles being launched on another day. Maybe the real number should be 85.


@mongo: cruise missiles are single-use so all cruise missiles fired should be included in the total.
 

I know many read the ISW posts but this one is quite interesting. Russia is preparing for Ukraine to successfully cross the lower Dnipro. The nature of the defense is really eye opening. Enjoy

This thread by Mark Hertling describes how difficult it is to break through well planned defenses
Thread by @MarkHertling on Thread Reader App

The video linked the in the article is particularly interesting. If the Ukrainians have to breach well prepared defensive lines one after another to get to Crimea, it's going to be a slow slog. Same thing in the Donbas. They do now have some of the engineering vehicles needed to breach these lines, which they lacked when they were fighting in the Donbas from 2014 to 2022. NATO needs to provide more of these vehicles. If nothing else some will certainly be lost in these operations.

I do find it mind boggling that the Russians appear to be ceding the left bank of the Dnipro to the Ukrainians. Defending a shoreline from an amphibious assault is much easier than defending open terrain, even with trenches.

Attriting over 4K soldiers per week……recruitment aside, that cannot be sustainable for effective fighting by the Russians.

I think the +75 cruise missiles was a typo. The official numbers from the Ukrainian MoD shows 0 cruise missiles for today and 0 for yesterday
https://www.mil.gov.ua/en/news/2022/11/28/the-total-combat-losses-of-the-enemy-from-24-02-to-28-11/

Losses on the order of 400-600 troops a day when there are only 100k-150K in theater. If they have 100K in theater and are losing 500 dead a day, that's 1/2% per day and 3.5% a week! That doesn't count the wounded. Even with the horrible Russian battlefield medicine the wounded are probably another 3.5% a week.

The Russian military is more tolerant of losses than western militaries. They basically don't care what morale is as long as the troops are in rebellion. But just from a force capability standpoint losing around 7% of your force a week is a hemorrhage rate. Even the Japanese forces of the 1940s could not sustain those levels of losses for very long.
 
I think it's just a mistake as the total is the same as yesterday's and 75 is a big number in one day without any reports of massive strikes happening.
You're right. I had ASSumed the blue numbers were weekly increments, not daily. Losing 600 troops a day is a lot. It is nearly twice the rate for the entire war and amounts to losing over 200K per year.

I wonder what is going on. Maybe it's due to the poorly trained Mobiks (Russian conscript invaders) and repeated Russian assaults in the Bakhmut area.
 
You're right. I had ASSumed the blue numbers were weekly increments, not daily. Losing 600 troops a day is a lot. It is nearly twice the rate for the entire war and amounts to losing over 200K per year.

I wonder what is going on. Maybe it's due to the poorly trained Mobiks (Russian conscript invaders) and repeated Russian assaults in the Bakhmut area.

They are daily numbers. They change every day, sometimes more, sometimes less. The Russians really are losing a lot of troops.

But if this is mobiks being slaughtered, does it really affect Russia's ability to fight?

They are throwing mobiks at the Ukrainians because they really don't have much else left. Before the mobilization there were many intercepted calls in which people were complaining about how their unit was gutted and only had 10-20% of full strength. At those low personnel levels the unit is very marginal for defense and completely useless for offense. A unit with 50% casualties is going to be having problems with unit cohesion. Drop below that and the unit begins to become very ineffective.

Very elite units can usually take more casualties and hold together because they have been trained to extremes. The Russians have very few of these types. Their supposed elite units have poor training regimes compared to average units in western armies.
 
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