***Russian - Ukraine War Tactical and Strategic Updates*** [Warning on OP]

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HTownAg98
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Wasn't Cloutier giving a speech in Turkey the day after he was supposedly captured? These idiots forget that linear time is a thing.
Rossticus
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HTownAg98 said:

Wasn't Cloutier giving a speech in Turkey the day after he was supposedly captured? These idiots forget that linear time is a thing.


They just throw crap out there because lots of folks will take it and run with it sans question or consideration.
Rossticus
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Rossticus
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Not a Bot
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News of the capture is certainly surprising to the general himself. Russian propagandists didn't even get his rank or role correct. Tweets are by BBC reporter.

GAC06
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AG
Rossticus said:




Need to get some starstreaks over there
Rossticus
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Bill Summary and text doesn't appear to be published yet. Note the date the sponsor introduced the bill. The house intel committee appears to have already been provided with corroborating Intel in support of the occurrence of war crimes well prior to 3/29. This in itself tells you a lot about our Intel capabilities.

H.R.7276 - Ukraine Invasion War Crimes Deterrence and Accountability Act

Sponsor: Rep. McCaul, Michael T. [R-TX-10] (Introduced 03/29/2022)

Official Title as Introduced
To direct the President to submit to Congress a report on United States Government efforts to collect, analyze, and preserve evidence and information related to war crimes and any other atrocities committed during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 24, 2022, and for other purposes.
JB!98
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Rossticus said:

Speaking of Ukrainian artillery…


Nice.
Today, unfortunately, many Americans have good reason to fear that they will be victimized if they are unable to protect themselves. And today, no less than in 1791, the Second Amendment guarantees their right to do so. - Justice Samuel Alito 2022
Rossticus
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Rossticus
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ABATTBQ11
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Russian armor advantage is gone, IMO. They've lost thousands of pieces of equipment including hundreds of tanks. They've lost maybe 5% of their their total inventory of tanks, and they can't produce more right now because of sanctions. I'd be willing to bet that a not insignificant number of their inventory have also not been maintained and/or stripped for parts, so their total inventory Clint is likely misleading and overstated. They're getting torn to pieces by artillery and ATGMs, so they're going to have to start being judicious at some point or they will find themselves with a real armor shortage.
Waffledynamics
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ABATTBQ11 said:

Russian armor advantage is gone, IMO. They've lost thousands of pieces of equipment including hundreds of tanks. They've lost maybe 5% of their their total inventory of tanks, and they can't produce more right now because of sanctions. I'd be willing to bet that a not insignificant number of their inventory have also not been maintained and/or stripped for parts, so their total inventory Clint is likely misleading and overstated. They're getting torn to pieces by artillery and ATGMs, so they're going to have to start being judicious at some point or they will find themselves with a real armor shortage.
5% lost does this? You're going to need to explain that to me. If that's the case, it seems like every military is massively fragile at such a relatively small amount of losses. Also, how much are you assuming are doomed because of poor maintenance?

It's interesting to see the percentages factored.
samurai_science
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Waffledynamics said:

ABATTBQ11 said:

Russian armor advantage is gone, IMO. They've lost thousands of pieces of equipment including hundreds of tanks. They've lost maybe 5% of their their total inventory of tanks, and they can't produce more right now because of sanctions. I'd be willing to bet that a not insignificant number of their inventory have also not been maintained and/or stripped for parts, so their total inventory Clint is likely misleading and overstated. They're getting torn to pieces by artillery and ATGMs, so they're going to have to start being judicious at some point or they will find themselves with a real armor shortage.
5% lost does this? You're going to need to explain that to me. If that's the case, it seems like every military is massively fragile at such a relatively small amount of losses. Also, how much are you assuming are doomed because of poor maintenance?

It's interesting to see the percentages factored.
Modern militaries are fragile. They dont have massive production like in WWII, with Ford and other companies making planes/tanks/ships.
GAC06
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Production and stockpiles aren't nearly as important as trained crews. On paper Russia has a lot of tanks. They committed a large proportion of their combat capable units and they are getting chewed up.
AgLA06
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GAC06 said:

Production and stockpiles aren't nearly as important as trained crews. On paper Russia has a lot of tanks. They committed a large proportion of their combat capable units and they are getting chewed up.


This. I saw something yesterday that said forget how many rusted and stripped tanks are sitting in storage. They committed everything they could. There are units elsewhere, but they aren't available or they would be bringing them to eastern Ukraine instead of chewed up and ineffective units from the Kiev area. Basically, for Russia there are probably 1,500 to 2000 capable main battle taks and between 35% and 50% have been destroyed or badly damaged.

We would be in complete panic if we lost a third of that.
ATX_AG_08
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Rossticus
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WARNING. GRAPHIC.

"Russians killed a family - 3 adults and 3 children - then ditched their bodies onto the street and burned."

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1511920435373527043.html

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1511782420776988684.html
ABATTBQ11
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Waffledynamics said:

ABATTBQ11 said:

Russian armor advantage is gone, IMO. They've lost thousands of pieces of equipment including hundreds of tanks. They've lost maybe 5% of their their total inventory of tanks, and they can't produce more right now because of sanctions. I'd be willing to bet that a not insignificant number of their inventory have also not been maintained and/or stripped for parts, so their total inventory Clint is likely misleading and overstated. They're getting torn to pieces by artillery and ATGMs, so they're going to have to start being judicious at some point or they will find themselves with a real armor shortage.
5% lost does this? You're going to need to explain that to me. If that's the case, it seems like every military is massively fragile at such a relatively small amount of losses. Also, how much are you assuming are doomed because of poor maintenance?

It's interesting to see the percentages factored.


It's a question of spread. Russia has an enormous amount of tanks, but they can't deploy them all to the same place at the same time. They're also not all working at the same time. Losing 5% of their inventory means they likely have to start thinning out somewhere. Not being able to produce more means that every tank lost is semi-permanently lost, and pretty soon they will find review in a strategically untenable position. Sure they can move things arms to maintain the numbers they need in Ukraine, but that means burning their reserves or exposing themselves somewhere else.

No idea how many are doomed to maintenance, but it's probably not an insignificant number. Look at the state of the rest of their vehicles. Russia has twice the number of tanks we have and plenty of other things, but a fraction of the military budget. Something tells me routine maintenance isn't exactly a high priority.

Also, I've said this a couple of times but it bears repeating, the Russians approach to design, maintenance, and every other aspect of their military is seemingly for looks. It's analogous to the communism that created it in that it looks good on paper when you report up, but in practice it is a pile of ****. 12000 tanks is a lot to maintain unless you're really only proud of the 12000 number and don't care how many are actually maintained. Or, you think no one will ever really need them, so you skim the maintenance money and cannibalize then for parts to maintain a semblance of maintenance. Either way, having a big number of tanks is sexier in Russia than having an adequate number and a robust maintenance program to make sure a majority are always in working order. It's all about how you look on paper.
CondensedFogAggie
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Ulysses90 said:

I disagree with you analysis on the basis that the Russians have no superiority in tanks at this time and they never will again. They spent their advantage in number wastefully with poor tactics and leadership. My observations are only based on the sources that have been posted in this thread but I am seeing something different from what you are seeing.

The Russians can't put together a pincer movement because that requires covering distances quickly and we know form the past six weeks that they cannot move far because their log trains weren't designed to support rapid long distance movement. They cannot move fast because they don't know how to employ combined arms (i.e. maneuver communicating with fire support while on the move). As Trent Telenko explained very well in his Twitter posts, the Russian trucks have no forklifts or MHE to load and unload them. They might begin to form the shape of a pincer but it will calcify and become static for lack of fuel and ammo resupply and the Ukrainians will put an even finer polish on the tactics that they employed in February and March against the initial invasion.

Russian artillery is devastating and they have a lot of it. However, they have employed that devastating capability almost exclusively against fixed infrastructure and not against Ukrainian military forces in the field. Looking back over the past month of reports, the Russian artillery is always aimed at geographic reference points that are picked from a map and not from forward observers with eyes on the Ukrainian military. Thos missions are called by the commander and not by forward observers. If you substract the attacks on civilian targets in the cities from the total of Russian artillery missions, they seem to have left the Ukrainian Army and territorial defense forces mostly unscathed. The Russian infantry operates as if they have never seen an artillery FO team embedded with their units, let alone a forward air controller.

By comparison, the Ukrainians have mauled the RF forces with artillery using both ground observers and drones. I would expect the Russians to continue using artillery as a siege weapons to destroy infrastructure because they can't grow a fast and efficient kill chain from observer to firing unit overnight.

The RF army had almost no unit cohesion from the very beginning and they will have less going forward. Units cobbled together with a newly assigned officer to take charge of exhausted and combat traumatized veterans thrown together with conscripts or grafted onto the remnants of another unit are not going to perform well and may dissolve entirely in combat. The units pulled out of combat in the Kyiv region will be put back into the fight with the same beat to hell equipment that they have been using since February.

I see no evidence that the RF forces will perform any better in the future against Ukrainian forces that they have thus far. On the other hand, I see no evidence that their artillery will not continue to flatten the cities and kill thousands of Ukrainian civilians and where the Russian infantry occupies populated areas, the atrocities will continue and probably increase. We are in agreement that it will get bloodier.

The biggest risk for the Ukrainian military is that they will over extend themselves while trying to relieve the suffering of the civilians and the Russians can exploit that. The Ukrainian army is heroic and the Russians will bait them into attempting heroic acts on pre-planned targets. That's a horrible dilemma especially as they are holding the families of Ukrainian soldiers hostage in the east for this very purpose.
Thank you for the summary.

How will you think the change of terrain to Southeast Ukraine will affect future battles? With its flat and wide open areas?
Rossticus
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Rossticus
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Thatsssss… bad.

Rossticus
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Rossticus
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Rossticus
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CondensedFogAggie
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Good. Send them asap.
CondensedFogAggie
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Ulysses90
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AG
Waffledynamics said:

ABATTBQ11 said:

Russian armor advantage is gone, IMO. They've lost thousands of pieces of equipment including hundreds of tanks. They've lost maybe 5% of their their total inventory of tanks, and they can't produce more right now because of sanctions. I'd be willing to bet that a not insignificant number of their inventory have also not been maintained and/or stripped for parts, so their total inventory Clint is likely misleading and overstated. They're getting torn to pieces by artillery and ATGMs, so they're going to have to start being judicious at some point or they will find themselves with a real armor shortage.
5% lost does this? You're going to need to explain that to me. If that's the case, it seems like every military is massively fragile at such a relatively small amount of losses. Also, how much are you assuming are doomed because of poor maintenance?

It's interesting to see the percentages factored.


Much of the Russian tank force is not really usable. They have about as much chance of mobilizing it as the USAF does of flying a Wing og F-4 Phantoms out of Davis Monthan AFB.

The US has 3,000 mothballed M1A1 Abrams tanks but nobody would count those as an asset that is deployable. I would also venture that the 3000 mothballed Abrams are in a better condition to be reactivated than the thousands of tanks counted among Russia's resources.

Most of these tanks have no crew except the conscripts being inducted in the seniannual draft. Large number of them are old variant T72s or T64s. They were supposed to be sold to Soviet client states before the fall of the USSR but the export market of the 1950s through the 1980s evaporated when the vulnerabilities of Soviet armor was exposed to the world by Desert Storm. Nobody wanted to be the next Saddam.

Because there is no Russian word for the concept of recycling or reclamation, they keep them on the books with the order of battle for the RF army. A battalion of obsolete tanks justifies a commander and staff and continuous funding to keep them ready. It makes Vlad happy to see all of these "ready and capable " tank battalions scattered across the map of his empire but they are really just a paper tiger. He never inspets them and Shoigu knows better than to ever suggest that they be put on parade

Setting aside everything above about the horrible state of the equipment and lack of crews, the Russian ghost-army of tanks is scattered across hundreds of thousands of square miles. They would have to be loaded on trains at rail heads from Siberia to Kazakhstan to the Baltics to bring them to the Ukrainian front. The Russians just don't have the ability to do this. That would require a unified effort by Russian Generals to admit their past corrupt practices o begin repairing the old tanks, foregoing all of the money they would normally get from skimming the resources to move this tank fleet, and inserting a tank car filled with diesel every fifth car in the train just to give each tank a fill-up as it was offloadedfrom the train and sent to combat.
HTownAg98
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Rossticus said:

Bill Summary and text doesn't appear to be published yet. Note the date the sponsor introduced the bill. The house intel committee appears to have already been provided with corroborating Intel in support of the occurrence of war crimes well prior to 3/29. This in itself tells you a lot about our Intel capabilities.

H.R.7276 - Ukraine Invasion War Crimes Deterrence and Accountability Act

Sponsor: Rep. McCaul, Michael T. [R-TX-10] (Introduced 03/29/2022)

Official Title as Introduced
To direct the President to submit to Congress a report on United States Government efforts to collect, analyze, and preserve evidence and information related to war crimes and any other atrocities committed during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 24, 2022, and for other purposes.


The list of people that voted against this is not surprising.
No Spin Ag
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CondensedFoggyAggie said:


Good. Send them asap.
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the later ignorance. Hippocrates
No Spin Ag
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HTownAg98 said:

Rossticus said:

Bill Summary and text doesn't appear to be published yet. Note the date the sponsor introduced the bill. The house intel committee appears to have already been provided with corroborating Intel in support of the occurrence of war crimes well prior to 3/29. This in itself tells you a lot about our Intel capabilities.

H.R.7276 - Ukraine Invasion War Crimes Deterrence and Accountability Act

Sponsor: Rep. McCaul, Michael T. [R-TX-10] (Introduced 03/29/2022)

Official Title as Introduced
To direct the President to submit to Congress a report on United States Government efforts to collect, analyze, and preserve evidence and information related to war crimes and any other atrocities committed during the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 24, 2022, and for other purposes.


The list of people that voted against this is not surprising.



Why is it not surprising that they voted against it? Have they been known to be pro Putin, or anti Ukraine for an understandable reason before?
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the later ignorance. Hippocrates
G Martin 87
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Ulysses90 said:

Waffledynamics said:

ABATTBQ11 said:

Russian armor advantage is gone, IMO. They've lost thousands of pieces of equipment including hundreds of tanks. They've lost maybe 5% of their their total inventory of tanks, and they can't produce more right now because of sanctions. I'd be willing to bet that a not insignificant number of their inventory have also not been maintained and/or stripped for parts, so their total inventory Clint is likely misleading and overstated. They're getting torn to pieces by artillery and ATGMs, so they're going to have to start being judicious at some point or they will find themselves with a real armor shortage.
5% lost does this? You're going to need to explain that to me. If that's the case, it seems like every military is massively fragile at such a relatively small amount of losses. Also, how much are you assuming are doomed because of poor maintenance?

It's interesting to see the percentages factored.


Much of the Russian tank force is not really usable. They have about as much chance of mobilizing it as the USAF does of flying a Wing og F-4 Phantoms out of Davis Monthan AFB.

The US has 3,000 mothballed M1A1 Abrams tanks but nobody would count those as an asset that is deployable. I would also venture that the 3000 mothballed Abrams are in a better condition to be reactivated than the thousands of tanks counted among Russia's resources.

Most of these tanks have no crew except the conscripts being inducted in the seniannual draft. Large number of them are old variant T72s or T64s. They were supposed to be sold to Soviet client states before the fall of the USSR but the export market of the 1950s through the 1980s evaporated when the vulnerabilities of Soviet armor was exposed to the world by Desert Storm. Nobody wanted to be the next Saddam.

Because there is no Russian word for the concept of recycling or reclamation, they keep them on the books with the order of battle for the RF army. A battalion of obsolete tanks justifies a commander and staff and continuous funding to keep them ready. It makes Vlad happy to see all of these "ready and capable " tank battalions scattered across the map of his empire but they are really just a paper tiger. He never inspets them and Shoigu knows better than to ever suggest that they be put on parade

Setting aside everything above about the horrible state of the equipment and lack of crews, the Russian ghost-army of tanks is scattered across hundreds of thousands of square miles. They would have to be loaded on trains at rail heads from Siberia to Kazakhstan to the Baltics to bring them to the Ukrainian front. The Russians just don't have the ability to do this. That would require a unified effort by Russian Generals to admit their past corrupt practices o begin repairing the old tanks, foregoing all of the money they would normally get from skimming the resources to move this tank fleet, and inserting a tank car filled with diesel every fifth car in the train just to give each tank a fill-up as it was offloadedfrom the train and sent to combat.
This is spot-on. Moreover, Russia's tactics against Ukraine further amplify the problem and will constrain their armor operations going forward. Russia has been fighting this war as if they were trying to clean out isolated nests of terrorists and not a Western trained and equipped army. The Ukes are not a bandit insurgency force (although they've proven to be effective in small unit actions.) Russia is losing its ability to maneuver and project force rapidly just when they need it.
No Spin Ag
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G Martin 87 said:

Ulysses90 said:

Waffledynamics said:

ABATTBQ11 said:

Russian armor advantage is gone, IMO. They've lost thousands of pieces of equipment including hundreds of tanks. They've lost maybe 5% of their their total inventory of tanks, and they can't produce more right now because of sanctions. I'd be willing to bet that a not insignificant number of their inventory have also not been maintained and/or stripped for parts, so their total inventory Clint is likely misleading and overstated. They're getting torn to pieces by artillery and ATGMs, so they're going to have to start being judicious at some point or they will find themselves with a real armor shortage.
5% lost does this? You're going to need to explain that to me. If that's the case, it seems like every military is massively fragile at such a relatively small amount of losses. Also, how much are you assuming are doomed because of poor maintenance?

It's interesting to see the percentages factored.


Much of the Russian tank force is not really usable. They have about as much chance of mobilizing it as the USAF does of flying a Wing og F-4 Phantoms out of Davis Monthan AFB.

The US has 3,000 mothballed M1A1 Abrams tanks but nobody would count those as an asset that is deployable. I would also venture that the 3000 mothballed Abrams are in a better condition to be reactivated than the thousands of tanks counted among Russia's resources.

Most of these tanks have no crew except the conscripts being inducted in the seniannual draft. Large number of them are old variant T72s or T64s. They were supposed to be sold to Soviet client states before the fall of the USSR but the export market of the 1950s through the 1980s evaporated when the vulnerabilities of Soviet armor was exposed to the world by Desert Storm. Nobody wanted to be the next Saddam.

Because there is no Russian word for the concept of recycling or reclamation, they keep them on the books with the order of battle for the RF army. A battalion of obsolete tanks justifies a commander and staff and continuous funding to keep them ready. It makes Vlad happy to see all of these "ready and capable " tank battalions scattered across the map of his empire but they are really just a paper tiger. He never inspets them and Shoigu knows better than to ever suggest that they be put on parade

Setting aside everything above about the horrible state of the equipment and lack of crews, the Russian ghost-army of tanks is scattered across hundreds of thousands of square miles. They would have to be loaded on trains at rail heads from Siberia to Kazakhstan to the Baltics to bring them to the Ukrainian front. The Russians just don't have the ability to do this. That would require a unified effort by Russian Generals to admit their past corrupt practices o begin repairing the old tanks, foregoing all of the money they would normally get from skimming the resources to move this tank fleet, and inserting a tank car filled with diesel every fifth car in the train just to give each tank a fill-up as it was offloadedfrom the train and sent to combat.
This is spot-on. Moreover, Russia's tactics against Ukraine further amplify the problem and will constrain their armor operations going forward. Russia has been fighting this war as if they were trying to clean out isolated nests of terrorists and not a Western trained and equipped army. The Ukes are not a bandit insurgency force (although they've proven to be effective in small unit actions.) Russia is losing its ability to maneuver and project force rapidly just when they need it.


I wasn't aware, until this war, the we and other western countries had trained them. Now it makes sense why they've been so effective.

I can only imagine what they would do to Russia ln forces is we have them aircraft and tanks.
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the later ignorance. Hippocrates
Blackbeard94
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JB!98 said:

Rossticus said:

Speaking of Ukrainian artillery…


Nice.


This is cool! Does a forward observer or drine have to illuminate the target with a laser to guide the munition and in?
MeatDr
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MeatDr
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