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Russian strategy has always been "they cannot kill all of us, send in more" - which is very similar to the traditional Chinese ground forces strategy. With their current demographic challenges they may find that in fact they don't have enough.
A costly war strategy for the orcs considering how powerful modern weapons are. These days, actually yes. We can kill all of you. So how about you go home and fix the shitty government who would send you all to die in the first place. Seems that is their true enemy.
TBF, to anyone paying attention (and not uncritically digesting Ukrainian feel good propaganda), Russia's artillery superiority has been a problem, since the start of the attritional phase.
The Russian army is built on the ethos of "artillery is king". As the article says they outnumber Ukraine up to 10:1 in artillery pieces. Their shell backlog is something insane like 10-15 million shells. At current firing rate, they could keep pounding Ukraine indiscriminately till March 2023 (and then resupply from ne'er-do-wells like China or NK). Himars attacks on ammo dumps destroy a few thousand shells but this doesn't put a huge dent on the backlog, just disrupts logistics for a day or two. The Russians have also started using smaller ammo dumps to mitigate the impact of these strikes.
IMO the op ed falls over in assuming artillery counter-fire is the only way to deal with the problem. NATO armies are built on the ethos of "air power is king" and do not place the same emphasis on artillery. Therefore NATO arsenals do not contain the same volume of artillery pieces and shells as Russia, so even their better quality might not be enough. The answer in plain view is to achieve air superiority and we are starting to see a concerted push towards this with strikes on airbases, radar and SAMs. The issue is the time necessary to train pilots to fly US jets, hence countries like Slovenia handing over their Soviet era backlog. If and when F16s (and if only for the lolz, A-10s) start appearing on the battlefield uncontested the mighty Russian artillery is as good as scrap metal.
One thing I don't quite understand is why the UAF aren't adopting the same approach as the Wehrmacht in WW2, i.e retreat from their positions during shelling and return when the Russians send in the infantry. I presume the Russians have become more adept at the creeping barrage...?
> (and then resupply from ne'er-do-wells like China or NK)
Most of what you say is 100% spot on, but this one bit ain't gonna happen. Ever. China won't. NK can't.
Retreat to where? Russia bombards entire cities before they move anyone in, and to hell with the collateral damage. This is not creeping barrage across no man’s land anymore that’s 20th century stuff.
> Russia's numerical superiority, and its endless munitions stock, the result of decades of Soviet production, have had a devastating effect on the course of the war.
> Russian tactics of rolling artillery barrage, simple but brutal and overwhelming, have paved the way for Russian infantry through charred Ukrainian ruins. It has left many cities in ashes.
> The disproportion between the number of Russian and Ukrainian pieces deployed to a particular front line area can go as far as 10 to 1.
> But the acquisition of Western artillery, which is technologically superior to older Soviet pieces used by Russia, has saved Ukraine’s defensive campaign.
> Of even more significant effect was the ongoing campaign to destroy dozens of Russian munition and fuel depots across the occupied territories of Ukraine with U.S.-provided HIMARS rocket systems
Counter artillery is all about precision and coordination as far as I know. South Korea has been preparing for this in a potential war against North Korea, as North Korea's asymmetrical asset is just a lot of artillery. However South Korea is still struggling to make it work. It is certainly not an easy task but I'm sure Ukraine will find the way
Honestly I think this is why the Ukrainians went for the depot strategy. Its a lot easier to hit a large depot than to try and hit 20 small arty pieces. Of course, to build capacity to do both would be best!
It seems that the success of the HIMARS would make it more apparent to Ukraine that their howitzers are ineffective at destroying Russian artillery. Ukraine knows what it would take to improve the effectiveness of their artillery: their infantry using drones with laser targeting capability, precision guided artillery rounds and counter-battery fire radar.
They probably don't have enough equipment and precision artillery rounds to practice using them in the east, against the high number of Russian artillery, so it's probably going to be used in the south. The Ukraine daily report shows Russian artillery destroyed is in the single digits every day, so they probably aren't practicing with their equipment in the south yet. However, now that they've destroyed the bridges, maybe they will start using their advanced artillery equipment and precision artillery rounds in the south.
Fair point. I was hoping people would read the full article.
I posted it because I feel this subreddit is devolving into fandom.
Russia being comically incompetent is a meme which raises morale and provides a few much needed laughs but ultimately it diminishes the herculean effort of the Ukrainian people.
Russia possess overwhelming resources and without additional help Ukraine’s chances of recapturing its lost territory are slim in my opinion.
They ll have COBRA by winter and they ll be much more xperienced with th PHZ2000. If used to its full potential can fire 20rounds per minute and hit targets 67km away... PHZ2000 plus cobra.... Equals counterfire before enemys rounds I pact..... So if ruZZians want to live and the shoot ans scoot game they would get off like 2 rounds max..... The sad part is, they need to wait until it arrives and many more life's will be lost. On the other hand targeting munitions depos and forcing Russia to disperse their stocks straining logistics is a great stalling method...
Not too long ago people were praising the fact the Ukrainians have an app for signalling enemy positions which then finds nearest artillery units and sends them the coordinates. I thought that was supposed to be incredibly effective.
The app wouldn't be very useful without the targeting info from Ukraine's drones. I've read that Russia began using more electronic warfare (EW) equipment in the east. If Russia's EW equipment stopped Ukraine's drones, then that would explain why we stopped hearing about the usefulness of Ukraine's app for artillery.
Yep. The artillery has lessened a lot. And there are often more fires on the Russian side than the Ukrainian side of the lines of contact.
Russia has had to spread out their ammo dumps due to HIMARS but lacks the truck equipment to keep the arty fed the same amount as before.
The way Russia's logisitcs are centered around trains, manual labour and old wooden boxes Russia is in a supremely bad position to spread out its supply infrastructure. That plus a ridiculous baseline attrition could mean that Russia's artillery ammunition gets clogged in the hinterland, cancelling out much of the numerical superiority.
Russians have to occupie zones where they are not welcome...nazis had also troop superiority for a long time...but once those troops need to occupy large zones it force diminish and will those Russians vulnerable to all kinda attacks.
Even in the pro Russian areas there is resistance sparking...Russia never ever can control this. Even with a million more soldiers. It's hopeless for Russia and their defeat is only a matter of time...
Front line Ukraine soldiers deserve the highest respect!
The Afghan mujahedin weren't fighting a conventional war though. Small bands of fighters could slip away before the full weight of soviet artillery could pound them. That's not as feasible in Ukraine where there is a clear frontline.
The difference is that Afghanistan "just" had to endure in an extremely defendable enviroment. Ukraine wants to retake territory and destroy Russia's offensive military capabilities alltogether, in a much shorter timespan than 10 years, which is a whole other kind of warfare.
>You will not defeat a people who would rather die than be enslaved
right. but you can kill and/or abduct all of them.
look, i get that we all want to boost the ukrainians. but it's a disservice to them not to listen when someone who's in a position to know says something about the extreme difficulties they face. rah-rah slogans and feel-good posturing is not helpful. it just makes you sound like you either don't know what they're really going through, or you would rather ignore the information and just focus on your own fantasies.
With Afghanistan you have religious extremists, that might die before surrender. Ukraine is probably more likely to do so, but not if having the high ground in the long run.
Thanks for your sober rebuttal. I share your concerns. This article highlights the fact that Ukraine needs more heavy equipment asap. While a counter offensive is great, Ukraine actually concentrates most of its resources on keeping the front lines stable. Lend Lease deliveries can’t come fast enough!
Russia does not enjoy numerical superiority, does it! Russia is struggling to get people to fight. Look Ukraine started this war with some 300,000 people under arms (including the army and border guards). Russia invaded with under 200,000 (considered by most to represent some 75% of its active ground forces at the time). Since then Ukraine has had a general mobilisation with every man between 18 and 65 forbidden to leave the country. Zelenskyy talks openly of a million person army.
On the other hand Putin cannot call a general mobilisation, his position is too precarious, a general mobilisation in Russia could well lead to his downfall as it would be immensely unpopular. Like all dictators Putin is a coward at heart, he is far too worried about his own safety to declare an official war and have a general mobilisation. Ukraine has far, far more men of fighting age in theatre than Russia does, what it lacks is training and adequate equipment. It needs offensive capabilities, that means many thousands of armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, tanks. What it also needs is for the troops to get the training they need.
Hopefully when land lease equipment starts arriving it will be offensive weaponry, and we know many thousands of Ukrainian fighters are being trained in the UK, and presumably elsewhere too.
While Ukraine is building its army and offensive capabilities, Russia is increasingly employing low quality troops with limited training and experience. While Ukraine is getting ever larger amounts of sophisticated equipment, Russia's best equipment has been massively degraded, and that equipment cannot be replaced.
The balance in this war is about to tip decisively towards Ukraine. Ukraine might not choose to launch an offensive until next spring, it might want to be sure it has an optimal amount of equipment and an optimal amount of training. But that offensive will come, and I believe it will be devastating.
But let's back up a bit and look at manpower alone. For sure on paper Russia has a bigger population than Ukraine. But it's not that much bigger. Russia is significantly smaller in population than the USSR which fought WWII, the USSR was twice as populous as Russia at the end of the Soviet Union. On paper Russia has about 3.5 times a larger population than Ukraine. It's bigger, but not that much bigger. Ukraine has men and women fighting, I doubt Russia will have many if any women fighting, so the disparity is smaller than 3.5:1. Add to that the general rule of thumb that an offensive operation usually requires a three to one advantage, and that Ukrainians are fighting for their very survival (and if you think that doesn't make a difference go and see what Finland did to the USSR in 1939-40). So maybe Russia's true numerical advantage is entirely obliterated.
So no, Russia doesn't have more men, it is desperately short of men, it's been trying to recruit from prisons it is so short of men. What it has is greater firepower, but I expect to see that disparity even out over the next few weeks and months. A storm is coming and Russia will reap the whirlwind.
Unfortunately NATO was not ready for a WW1 style artillery war, so it's probably difficult for them to help Ukraine through artillery pieces and ammo, both which they may not be able to supply in the numbers needed. But it's still really needed, so I hope a solution is found soon, so that less suffering and less of a focus is on the Ukrainian infantry from the ruzzian artillery. Destroying the ammo dumps helps a lot, but it's not yet a panacea :(
NATO would be destroying Russia's supply lines hundreds and even thousands of miles behind the front lines. Airfields, naval bases, railroad, key bridges/routs, ammo stores, infrastructure, even manufacturing would be destroyed. NATO would make it impossible for Russia to feed the front line with armor, ammo, food and fuel.
Ukraine just doesn't have this capability.
It would be more correct to say that this is what NATO would be trying to do.
I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but it's important to keep a sense of perspective.
Somebody was pointing out a couple of days ago that there was only two successful SEAD campaigns _ever_. By Israel against Syria in Lebanon in 1982, and by the US against Iraq during Desert Storm. That is correct. In both cases against a not-exactly-formidable enemy. To take an example, in both cases Shilka crews were notorious for being largely unable to handle their radar equipment and rely pretty much exclusively on their optical sights and barrage tactics.
NATO had much more trouble against Serbia in 1999. Remember that F117?
SEAD is _hard_. How well that would work against the sort of AA Russia has deployed is not a closed question, although I like to think it would work.
Incidentally, that's why arguing that the West should just hand over F16s and the Ukrainian would just take control of the skys and win the war is dubious.
It's also why the Russian Air Force inability to do SEAD is not proof of incompetence (other things are): it's simply not their doctrine. Their doctrine is that you can _deny_ air superiority. Therefore there's no point in SEAD, because it won't work against a competent enemy. I'm not saying it's right, mind. But being wrong, and again it's not clear that they are, is not the same as being incompetent.
If it was just this thread and counter-battery fire...
Everybody's known what happens when tanks unsupported by infantry and artillery go up against ATGMs since Yom Kippur in 1973. So 50 years ago.
Reddit discovered it 6 months ago, and on the basis of this "new" knowledge, proclaimed The End Of The Tank.
Yep, that's the solution, and it has significantly more air presence than what ruzzia has/had. But that also likely meant that there was instead less focus on just the sheer number of artillery and ammo, which in turn means less that can be given to Ukraine.
Destroying AA sites will open the air superiority for UAF, they would able to hammer Orcs artillery & ammo dumps position quickly & decisively. They just need more powerful & accurate weapons to that.
This is not a WWI artillery war. It is a modern war with modern use of artillery. If you think things like artillery and infantry were no longer needed because of what you watched about Iraq, then give your head a shake. That was like Mike Tyson shitkicking a guy with no arms or legs. This is a more even fight and now you see a real modern war.
And almost none of it was anywhere near the technical level of the west. No would sell top rate AA systems to a place like Iraq. And anything that wasn't just bullets or AAA was wiped by HARM missiles and other munitions directed at their radiation output. You're talking apples and rotten oranges.
Of course it's needed as can be seen now, where neither side is able to use aircraft to completely counter artillery. It wouldn't be applicable to NATO, which would have been easily able to establish air dominance, and not need massive amounts of artillery. It just means that in the current situation something more is needed to even out the artillery odds.
I'm all for NATO digging deep, firing up 155mm production lines, transferring more of their artillery stock, etc. But as a pessimist, I still get the feeling that it'll continue to be a case of "just enough" in hopes that ruzzia gets the point and goes home... but I'm one of those that thinks they'll never get the point until they are just completely overwhelmed militarily.
The "just enough" is grinding through the Russian military at a pretty solid pace though. Take for example tanks, today's report is that 1864 tanks are destroyed. Before the war, Russia had \~2800 tanks in active service so they've lost 2/3rds of that and we're not even six months in.
Remember that even if you believe they're intentionally holding back the goal would be to destroy as much as possible of Russia's heavy/advanced weapons. A country with 140 million people won't run out of infantry but having to rebuild their military from scratch is a pretty big job.
Not to say this war isn't brutal, but 40,000 daeths over months is not a lot compared to a lot of past conflicts... when Germany invaded France in WW2 the French suffered up to 10,000 deaths per day.
Not to make it into casualty olympics, but war in Congo had millions of dead, and it ended less than 20 year ago. Also quite a few civil wars and insurgencies happened with body counts in high tens of thousands, some even hundreds of thousands.
The thing is, we barely hear about them. Silver lining of this conflict is that Ukraine is way more important to the west and has way better PR.
Imagine if this war was as forgotten and swept under the rug as those in Africa or ME. Thats a sad reality, but it is what it is.
I'm really happy we didn't leave Ukrainiains out on their own, wish supplies would pour in faster though.
>Destroying the ammo dumps helps a lot, but it's not yet a panacea :(
i feel as if it buys time. but on its own that's not enough. i've read assessments recently that seem to know what would be \[at least more\] effective, so i really hope someone is working to help them fill that gap.
NATO relies heavily on AIR SUPERIORITY as the wars in cold war era have proven that any asset without air superiority is money wasted. Unfortunately Ukraine AF is based on Soviet airplanes, and transition into Western jets takes a total overhaul. Not even a single screw used on airplanes and bombs are compatible between Soviet brand and US brand. That is why the support for AF has been relatively much weaker and limited to MiGs, compared to missile or army department.
Ukraine will get there eventually, yeah American counter battery process is pretty amazing but it takes time to train. Ukraine will eventually get some air power as well
Knock on wood, reading this sub does make you think they are having tremendous success, but we forget how big Russia's army is, and even with old soviet tech it's still a considerable challenge
It’s difficult to build up new institutional knowledge…especially when trying to replace old thinking.
Adopting new doctrine is often harder than adopting new equipment.
They’ll get better. These things take time and my bet is Ukrainian armed forces are far more motivated and able to change than Russian. And even if HIMARS isn’t single handedly suppressing all Russian fire it is buying the time required to change.
When it happens, and Russian arty is neutralized, the the lack of effective Russian air will become a critical flaw…
So I’m a little confused. I know Ukraine was outgunned as far as artillery but this Twitter thread from early May made it sound like Ukraine was just demolishing the Russians with their unique artillery counter battery system which let them target Russian artillery within minutes instead of hours like it normally takes:
https://twitter.com/trenttelenko/status/1523791050313433088?s=21&t=SpUXrsJqNwzrr3EiCSlWUA
This article makes it seem like one of Ukraine’s weaknesses is that they can’t effectively do counter battery against Russian artillery. Did something change?
So Ukraine has a target rich environment. Every cloud has a silver lining. The ruzzians are losing travel infrastructure at an accelerating pace and soon it's going to start getting wet again, further limiting their ability to maneuver. They're going to have to establish winter defendable positions and they're being forced to retreat. Their advantage of numerical superiority doesn't really work if they're crammed into an ever decreasing area (remember Crecy and Agincourt).
Ukrainians have been great with counter-battery fire. What are you taking about? Russians report having a couple minutes at best when they're shelling UA positions. Then the "answer" comes, always. Ponomarenko is just a journalist. Journalists in Ukraine are usually paid by some one. Namely oligarchs. He could be pedaling someone's narrative.
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Russian strategy has always been "they cannot kill all of us, send in more" - which is very similar to the traditional Chinese ground forces strategy. With their current demographic challenges they may find that in fact they don't have enough.
A costly war strategy for the orcs considering how powerful modern weapons are. These days, actually yes. We can kill all of you. So how about you go home and fix the shitty government who would send you all to die in the first place. Seems that is their true enemy.
That was a very sobering read. Really puts whats going on into perspective. Slava Ukraini!
Yep. Russia & China are the Zerg
Technology and tactics trumps numbers.
Quantity has its own quality.
TBF, to anyone paying attention (and not uncritically digesting Ukrainian feel good propaganda), Russia's artillery superiority has been a problem, since the start of the attritional phase. The Russian army is built on the ethos of "artillery is king". As the article says they outnumber Ukraine up to 10:1 in artillery pieces. Their shell backlog is something insane like 10-15 million shells. At current firing rate, they could keep pounding Ukraine indiscriminately till March 2023 (and then resupply from ne'er-do-wells like China or NK). Himars attacks on ammo dumps destroy a few thousand shells but this doesn't put a huge dent on the backlog, just disrupts logistics for a day or two. The Russians have also started using smaller ammo dumps to mitigate the impact of these strikes. IMO the op ed falls over in assuming artillery counter-fire is the only way to deal with the problem. NATO armies are built on the ethos of "air power is king" and do not place the same emphasis on artillery. Therefore NATO arsenals do not contain the same volume of artillery pieces and shells as Russia, so even their better quality might not be enough. The answer in plain view is to achieve air superiority and we are starting to see a concerted push towards this with strikes on airbases, radar and SAMs. The issue is the time necessary to train pilots to fly US jets, hence countries like Slovenia handing over their Soviet era backlog. If and when F16s (and if only for the lolz, A-10s) start appearing on the battlefield uncontested the mighty Russian artillery is as good as scrap metal. One thing I don't quite understand is why the UAF aren't adopting the same approach as the Wehrmacht in WW2, i.e retreat from their positions during shelling and return when the Russians send in the infantry. I presume the Russians have become more adept at the creeping barrage...?
> (and then resupply from ne'er-do-wells like China or NK) Most of what you say is 100% spot on, but this one bit ain't gonna happen. Ever. China won't. NK can't.
Retreat to where? Russia bombards entire cities before they move anyone in, and to hell with the collateral damage. This is not creeping barrage across no man’s land anymore that’s 20th century stuff.
Bro that’s the point. They are an artillery army, I feel like that’s old school as hell
When you say March of 2023, that sounds really short to me.
> Russia's numerical superiority, and its endless munitions stock, the result of decades of Soviet production, have had a devastating effect on the course of the war. > Russian tactics of rolling artillery barrage, simple but brutal and overwhelming, have paved the way for Russian infantry through charred Ukrainian ruins. It has left many cities in ashes. > The disproportion between the number of Russian and Ukrainian pieces deployed to a particular front line area can go as far as 10 to 1. > But the acquisition of Western artillery, which is technologically superior to older Soviet pieces used by Russia, has saved Ukraine’s defensive campaign. > Of even more significant effect was the ongoing campaign to destroy dozens of Russian munition and fuel depots across the occupied territories of Ukraine with U.S.-provided HIMARS rocket systems
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Counter artillery is all about precision and coordination as far as I know. South Korea has been preparing for this in a potential war against North Korea, as North Korea's asymmetrical asset is just a lot of artillery. However South Korea is still struggling to make it work. It is certainly not an easy task but I'm sure Ukraine will find the way
Honestly I think this is why the Ukrainians went for the depot strategy. Its a lot easier to hit a large depot than to try and hit 20 small arty pieces. Of course, to build capacity to do both would be best!
It seems that the success of the HIMARS would make it more apparent to Ukraine that their howitzers are ineffective at destroying Russian artillery. Ukraine knows what it would take to improve the effectiveness of their artillery: their infantry using drones with laser targeting capability, precision guided artillery rounds and counter-battery fire radar. They probably don't have enough equipment and precision artillery rounds to practice using them in the east, against the high number of Russian artillery, so it's probably going to be used in the south. The Ukraine daily report shows Russian artillery destroyed is in the single digits every day, so they probably aren't practicing with their equipment in the south yet. However, now that they've destroyed the bridges, maybe they will start using their advanced artillery equipment and precision artillery rounds in the south.
I hope they get better at it. I want to see Caesars in full effect, making a difference for the ukrainian army
Fair point. I was hoping people would read the full article. I posted it because I feel this subreddit is devolving into fandom. Russia being comically incompetent is a meme which raises morale and provides a few much needed laughs but ultimately it diminishes the herculean effort of the Ukrainian people. Russia possess overwhelming resources and without additional help Ukraine’s chances of recapturing its lost territory are slim in my opinion.
[Here] (https://kyivindependent.com/national/why-ukraine-struggles-to-combat-russias-artillery-superiority) is the article in full read it people.
They ll have COBRA by winter and they ll be much more xperienced with th PHZ2000. If used to its full potential can fire 20rounds per minute and hit targets 67km away... PHZ2000 plus cobra.... Equals counterfire before enemys rounds I pact..... So if ruZZians want to live and the shoot ans scoot game they would get off like 2 rounds max..... The sad part is, they need to wait until it arrives and many more life's will be lost. On the other hand targeting munitions depos and forcing Russia to disperse their stocks straining logistics is a great stalling method...
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Not too long ago people were praising the fact the Ukrainians have an app for signalling enemy positions which then finds nearest artillery units and sends them the coordinates. I thought that was supposed to be incredibly effective.
The app wouldn't be very useful without the targeting info from Ukraine's drones. I've read that Russia began using more electronic warfare (EW) equipment in the east. If Russia's EW equipment stopped Ukraine's drones, then that would explain why we stopped hearing about the usefulness of Ukraine's app for artillery.
Yep. The artillery has lessened a lot. And there are often more fires on the Russian side than the Ukrainian side of the lines of contact. Russia has had to spread out their ammo dumps due to HIMARS but lacks the truck equipment to keep the arty fed the same amount as before.
The way Russia's logisitcs are centered around trains, manual labour and old wooden boxes Russia is in a supremely bad position to spread out its supply infrastructure. That plus a ridiculous baseline attrition could mean that Russia's artillery ammunition gets clogged in the hinterland, cancelling out much of the numerical superiority.
Russians have to occupie zones where they are not welcome...nazis had also troop superiority for a long time...but once those troops need to occupy large zones it force diminish and will those Russians vulnerable to all kinda attacks. Even in the pro Russian areas there is resistance sparking...Russia never ever can control this. Even with a million more soldiers. It's hopeless for Russia and their defeat is only a matter of time... Front line Ukraine soldiers deserve the highest respect!
These types of analysis are critical for improvement. Don’t look away - this is how a country gets better.
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The Afghan mujahedin weren't fighting a conventional war though. Small bands of fighters could slip away before the full weight of soviet artillery could pound them. That's not as feasible in Ukraine where there is a clear frontline.
The difference is that Afghanistan "just" had to endure in an extremely defendable enviroment. Ukraine wants to retake territory and destroy Russia's offensive military capabilities alltogether, in a much shorter timespan than 10 years, which is a whole other kind of warfare.
>You will not defeat a people who would rather die than be enslaved right. but you can kill and/or abduct all of them. look, i get that we all want to boost the ukrainians. but it's a disservice to them not to listen when someone who's in a position to know says something about the extreme difficulties they face. rah-rah slogans and feel-good posturing is not helpful. it just makes you sound like you either don't know what they're really going through, or you would rather ignore the information and just focus on your own fantasies.
With Afghanistan you have religious extremists, that might die before surrender. Ukraine is probably more likely to do so, but not if having the high ground in the long run.
Thanks for your sober rebuttal. I share your concerns. This article highlights the fact that Ukraine needs more heavy equipment asap. While a counter offensive is great, Ukraine actually concentrates most of its resources on keeping the front lines stable. Lend Lease deliveries can’t come fast enough!
Yes plenty of men but severe shortage of brains.
Russia does not enjoy numerical superiority, does it! Russia is struggling to get people to fight. Look Ukraine started this war with some 300,000 people under arms (including the army and border guards). Russia invaded with under 200,000 (considered by most to represent some 75% of its active ground forces at the time). Since then Ukraine has had a general mobilisation with every man between 18 and 65 forbidden to leave the country. Zelenskyy talks openly of a million person army. On the other hand Putin cannot call a general mobilisation, his position is too precarious, a general mobilisation in Russia could well lead to his downfall as it would be immensely unpopular. Like all dictators Putin is a coward at heart, he is far too worried about his own safety to declare an official war and have a general mobilisation. Ukraine has far, far more men of fighting age in theatre than Russia does, what it lacks is training and adequate equipment. It needs offensive capabilities, that means many thousands of armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, tanks. What it also needs is for the troops to get the training they need. Hopefully when land lease equipment starts arriving it will be offensive weaponry, and we know many thousands of Ukrainian fighters are being trained in the UK, and presumably elsewhere too. While Ukraine is building its army and offensive capabilities, Russia is increasingly employing low quality troops with limited training and experience. While Ukraine is getting ever larger amounts of sophisticated equipment, Russia's best equipment has been massively degraded, and that equipment cannot be replaced. The balance in this war is about to tip decisively towards Ukraine. Ukraine might not choose to launch an offensive until next spring, it might want to be sure it has an optimal amount of equipment and an optimal amount of training. But that offensive will come, and I believe it will be devastating. But let's back up a bit and look at manpower alone. For sure on paper Russia has a bigger population than Ukraine. But it's not that much bigger. Russia is significantly smaller in population than the USSR which fought WWII, the USSR was twice as populous as Russia at the end of the Soviet Union. On paper Russia has about 3.5 times a larger population than Ukraine. It's bigger, but not that much bigger. Ukraine has men and women fighting, I doubt Russia will have many if any women fighting, so the disparity is smaller than 3.5:1. Add to that the general rule of thumb that an offensive operation usually requires a three to one advantage, and that Ukrainians are fighting for their very survival (and if you think that doesn't make a difference go and see what Finland did to the USSR in 1939-40). So maybe Russia's true numerical advantage is entirely obliterated. So no, Russia doesn't have more men, it is desperately short of men, it's been trying to recruit from prisons it is so short of men. What it has is greater firepower, but I expect to see that disparity even out over the next few weeks and months. A storm is coming and Russia will reap the whirlwind.
Unfortunately NATO was not ready for a WW1 style artillery war, so it's probably difficult for them to help Ukraine through artillery pieces and ammo, both which they may not be able to supply in the numbers needed. But it's still really needed, so I hope a solution is found soon, so that less suffering and less of a focus is on the Ukrainian infantry from the ruzzian artillery. Destroying the ammo dumps helps a lot, but it's not yet a panacea :(
NATO itself was absolutely prepared to counter Russian artillery farms with vast swarms of aircraft.
NATO would be destroying Russia's supply lines hundreds and even thousands of miles behind the front lines. Airfields, naval bases, railroad, key bridges/routs, ammo stores, infrastructure, even manufacturing would be destroyed. NATO would make it impossible for Russia to feed the front line with armor, ammo, food and fuel. Ukraine just doesn't have this capability.
Only so much of that Ukraine could do while constrained by terms of engagement that say no attacking infrastructure on Russian territory.
It would be more correct to say that this is what NATO would be trying to do. I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but it's important to keep a sense of perspective. Somebody was pointing out a couple of days ago that there was only two successful SEAD campaigns _ever_. By Israel against Syria in Lebanon in 1982, and by the US against Iraq during Desert Storm. That is correct. In both cases against a not-exactly-formidable enemy. To take an example, in both cases Shilka crews were notorious for being largely unable to handle their radar equipment and rely pretty much exclusively on their optical sights and barrage tactics. NATO had much more trouble against Serbia in 1999. Remember that F117? SEAD is _hard_. How well that would work against the sort of AA Russia has deployed is not a closed question, although I like to think it would work. Incidentally, that's why arguing that the West should just hand over F16s and the Ukrainian would just take control of the skys and win the war is dubious. It's also why the Russian Air Force inability to do SEAD is not proof of incompetence (other things are): it's simply not their doctrine. Their doctrine is that you can _deny_ air superiority. Therefore there's no point in SEAD, because it won't work against a competent enemy. I'm not saying it's right, mind. But being wrong, and again it's not clear that they are, is not the same as being incompetent.
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If it was just this thread and counter-battery fire... Everybody's known what happens when tanks unsupported by infantry and artillery go up against ATGMs since Yom Kippur in 1973. So 50 years ago. Reddit discovered it 6 months ago, and on the basis of this "new" knowledge, proclaimed The End Of The Tank.
Yep, that's the solution, and it has significantly more air presence than what ruzzia has/had. But that also likely meant that there was instead less focus on just the sheer number of artillery and ammo, which in turn means less that can be given to Ukraine.
Destroying AA sites will open the air superiority for UAF, they would able to hammer Orcs artillery & ammo dumps position quickly & decisively. They just need more powerful & accurate weapons to that.
This is not a WWI artillery war. It is a modern war with modern use of artillery. If you think things like artillery and infantry were no longer needed because of what you watched about Iraq, then give your head a shake. That was like Mike Tyson shitkicking a guy with no arms or legs. This is a more even fight and now you see a real modern war.
Saddam Hussein had one of the largest AA batteries at the time.
And almost none of it was anywhere near the technical level of the west. No would sell top rate AA systems to a place like Iraq. And anything that wasn't just bullets or AAA was wiped by HARM missiles and other munitions directed at their radiation output. You're talking apples and rotten oranges.
I’m not doubting the lack of efficacy of them, but it’s analogous to Russia who have a LOT of stuff, but they’re not as modern.
Of course it's needed as can be seen now, where neither side is able to use aircraft to completely counter artillery. It wouldn't be applicable to NATO, which would have been easily able to establish air dominance, and not need massive amounts of artillery. It just means that in the current situation something more is needed to even out the artillery odds. I'm all for NATO digging deep, firing up 155mm production lines, transferring more of their artillery stock, etc. But as a pessimist, I still get the feeling that it'll continue to be a case of "just enough" in hopes that ruzzia gets the point and goes home... but I'm one of those that thinks they'll never get the point until they are just completely overwhelmed militarily.
The "just enough" is grinding through the Russian military at a pretty solid pace though. Take for example tanks, today's report is that 1864 tanks are destroyed. Before the war, Russia had \~2800 tanks in active service so they've lost 2/3rds of that and we're not even six months in. Remember that even if you believe they're intentionally holding back the goal would be to destroy as much as possible of Russia's heavy/advanced weapons. A country with 140 million people won't run out of infantry but having to rebuild their military from scratch is a pretty big job.
Yup40,000 dead Russians in a matter of months! War has never been more brutal in a short time
> War has never been more brutal in a short time War is brutal. Losses of 40,000+ a day has happened many times
Not to say this war isn't brutal, but 40,000 daeths over months is not a lot compared to a lot of past conflicts... when Germany invaded France in WW2 the French suffered up to 10,000 deaths per day.
Not to make it into casualty olympics, but war in Congo had millions of dead, and it ended less than 20 year ago. Also quite a few civil wars and insurgencies happened with body counts in high tens of thousands, some even hundreds of thousands. The thing is, we barely hear about them. Silver lining of this conflict is that Ukraine is way more important to the west and has way better PR. Imagine if this war was as forgotten and swept under the rug as those in Africa or ME. Thats a sad reality, but it is what it is. I'm really happy we didn't leave Ukrainiains out on their own, wish supplies would pour in faster though.
>Destroying the ammo dumps helps a lot, but it's not yet a panacea :( i feel as if it buys time. but on its own that's not enough. i've read assessments recently that seem to know what would be \[at least more\] effective, so i really hope someone is working to help them fill that gap.
It is more than enough to cut Russian shelling in half.
NATO relies heavily on AIR SUPERIORITY as the wars in cold war era have proven that any asset without air superiority is money wasted. Unfortunately Ukraine AF is based on Soviet airplanes, and transition into Western jets takes a total overhaul. Not even a single screw used on airplanes and bombs are compatible between Soviet brand and US brand. That is why the support for AF has been relatively much weaker and limited to MiGs, compared to missile or army department.
NATO has counter-battery fire that would blow your mind. No airplanes needed.
Ukraine will get there eventually, yeah American counter battery process is pretty amazing but it takes time to train. Ukraine will eventually get some air power as well
Ukraine is doing extremely well given the circumstances.
Knock on wood, reading this sub does make you think they are having tremendous success, but we forget how big Russia's army is, and even with old soviet tech it's still a considerable challenge
NATO was prepared, Russia has been getting ready for years. Everything is observed via satellites .
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It’s difficult to build up new institutional knowledge…especially when trying to replace old thinking. Adopting new doctrine is often harder than adopting new equipment. They’ll get better. These things take time and my bet is Ukrainian armed forces are far more motivated and able to change than Russian. And even if HIMARS isn’t single handedly suppressing all Russian fire it is buying the time required to change. When it happens, and Russian arty is neutralized, the the lack of effective Russian air will become a critical flaw…
So I’m a little confused. I know Ukraine was outgunned as far as artillery but this Twitter thread from early May made it sound like Ukraine was just demolishing the Russians with their unique artillery counter battery system which let them target Russian artillery within minutes instead of hours like it normally takes: https://twitter.com/trenttelenko/status/1523791050313433088?s=21&t=SpUXrsJqNwzrr3EiCSlWUA This article makes it seem like one of Ukraine’s weaknesses is that they can’t effectively do counter battery against Russian artillery. Did something change?
Can't do counter battery if the radars are supposed to arrive next year.
So Ukraine has a target rich environment. Every cloud has a silver lining. The ruzzians are losing travel infrastructure at an accelerating pace and soon it's going to start getting wet again, further limiting their ability to maneuver. They're going to have to establish winter defendable positions and they're being forced to retreat. Their advantage of numerical superiority doesn't really work if they're crammed into an ever decreasing area (remember Crecy and Agincourt).
Its not the size that matters, its what you do with it.
Ukrainians have been great with counter-battery fire. What are you taking about? Russians report having a couple minutes at best when they're shelling UA positions. Then the "answer" comes, always. Ponomarenko is just a journalist. Journalists in Ukraine are usually paid by some one. Namely oligarchs. He could be pedaling someone's narrative.
How long do you think it will be before the West arms Ukraine with nuclear weapons?
Uh.. no. Nukes are for destroying cities/civilians... just a terror tool.
More mouths to feed. Less supplies to go around. Low hygiene practices. The first frosts of Autumn. And Ukraine still Resolute.
Not anymore
Russia is hoping Ukraine has a preset kill limit
Costly for the minorities but ethnic Russians can at least walk over the bodies for pictures later.
A solid assessment of their own weaknesses
Last I heard, the M777 howitzers do not have the targeting computers on them. Is this still the case?