auslander wrote:
First rounds in to the red roof buildings, structures ID'd as Staff right Sector. Second round of his is another Staff HQ for 'regular' orc unit.
Some thoughts on artilleryI am not professional artillerist, just a history buff who has learned a little about the subject. But I find it the video striking (pun intended)
About those buildings, it says in the caption "position in Peski", most of the village is in ruins, at least the buildings near the frontline in the airport. Finding the red roof building was easy as there are only two houses with red tiles in Peski.
The house is (was) here
48°04'14.1"N 37°39'36.7"E
48.070585, 37.660203
at the most western part of Peski. I imagine the ukros felt safe there, in a not shelled portion of the village, and far from observation. I took a meter and measured across the screen the distance to the nearest Novorussian position, about 4.000 meters. Still within range of a 120mm heavy mortar, though I think is more likely the hits are from artillery, 122mm caliber, wich packs a hefty punch compared to the wimpy 105mm artillery rounds of NATO armies, with almost 4 kilos of TNT filler, double that of the 105 round. (though a 120mm mortar round in some cases has as much HE), so the explosions could be from mortars as well. I think this pinpoint accuracy makes it more likely to be cannon shells, though.
http://ww2data.blogspot.com.es/2015/06/soviet-explosive-ordance-120mm-mortar.html
The videos are a collection of "the greatest hits" (pun), meaning they took the most cool looking shots (pun again) but still, they are surprising, even to a untrained observer like me.
First of all, the target is hit with only a few rounds, striking in succession and hitting all of them nearly in the same spot, this means low dispersal and good accuracy. Second, for the first target of the video, assuming there is no editing of the video cutting out pieces to fast forward, and from the plumes of smoke it seems to happen without interruption, six rounds hit in 30 seconds. That's a very fast rate of fire, so I am thinking now some editing was done to compress the sequence.
I cannot ascertain from where the shells are coming but I think from the south.
I am impressed by the accuraccy, all six shells hit within a circle of 20 meters of radius centered on the big house. It seems the fire was done by a single gun, rapid fire. I know enough from my readings to know that each gun has its unique ballistic characteristics and that small dispersal is consistent with a single gun, instead of several.
Same can be said about the rest of the video shoots. Not battery salvos, more than one gun firing at the same target, wich would result in simultaneous or nearly so group strikes, but a succesion of rounds fired by the same gun.
Again, I stress that is not what I would expect from a typical artillery shoot of the world wars. This is impressive accuracy with minimal ammunition expenditure. The lack of collateral damage, that is shell holes all around the targets, and the fact that the drone is not observing for fire, there are no ranging shots to bracket the target and then fire for effect. I can see that the gunners are using predicted fire.
I mean they have measured and know the ballistic properties of their gun and ammo, they have good maps as they know precisely the distance between the gun and the target, and therefore they can hit any known point with great accuracy, instead of having to do trial and error adjustments, known in artillery as "registering" or "corrections". The drone is not observing the fall of shot so the observer sends corrections to the artillery crews. It seems is just spotting for targets, that is, finding something to shoot at, and filming the effect.
With a simple calculator, or even better, a dedicated ballistic software running on a laptop computer, or even better, an app on a smartphone, you can guarantee that if you know where the target is, you will hit it with a shell, without the need of corrections. But you will only know if you hit something at the point the shell arrived, if you have observation from somewhere, or from the air as in this case.
The Novorussian artillery, thanks to modern technology is much more accurate than what we expect from the experiences of the world wars. This also explains something that disquieted me. One would be expected that frontline villages like Peski, after four years of war, would have been razed and reduced to rubble, and the fields all near the frontline would be a moonscape of shell craters, and the trees reduced to stumps and matchwood.
Surpringsily, most of Peski seems to be intact, from Google photos, wich are not reliable as they are censored to hide Ukrop positions, and are years outdated in order to hide the destruction and that by seeing where the craters are, the intensity of the shelling and who is to blame.
So only the houses that were fought over during the 2014-2015 winter and those in line of sight of the airport have been hit by direct fire small arms, heavy weapons and of course artillery and mortars. It shows that the Novorussian artillery restrains from indiscriminate shelling of places where the enemy may be hiding, or from blind harassing fire at roads and junctions. Doing so would be destroying their own territory, houses, and shelling their own people, of course, and would be a waste of ammunition.
Instead they rely on accurate aimed fire. This is so different from the mass saturation bombardments of world wars I still have to digest it and its implications. It's like back in 1991 in the Gulf War, having been raised on history of mass carpet bombing from the air, it was something out of science fiction come true to see smart bombs and guided missiles achieving what would have recquired hundreds of tons of unguided bombs.
Though google map satellite photos lack high enough resolution to see the impact craters, I was looking around Zaitsevo, near Gorlovka and found evidence that on the other side, the Ukrops fire many more shells but they land all over the place. Only the largest craters from 152mm artillery are clearly visible, and the hits from 122mm guns and 120mm mortars are visible only as specks, but seeing the impact marks, also from the video of a shot down Ukrainian drone, and some other footage, it can safely be stated that Ukrainian artillery is less precise. Their guns are worn down and have more dispersal, and though they have the same technical tools at their disposal to predict where their shells will land, they are firing blind, when they do not have observatories. It really does not concern them, they fire by map, aiming at some known building, and let the shells fall at random, enough to terrorize civilians and damage housing and infraestructure, not good enough for firing at Novorussian positions.
More importantly, the Novorussians have the advantage in aerial observation. The drones in this video compilation are insolently flying beyond the frontline trenches. At least the location is known for the first video. The ukrops felt safe in that building in a part of the village that had never been shelled, 5 km from the frontline. The fact that a drone can venture that deep into the enemy rear means the ukrops are unable to jam their signals. On the contrary, the ukrainian drones are shot down or jammed when they try to observe for their artillery on the frontline.
That's all I can think of for now after watching the video a couple times and it's late at night. In general, except for the first shelling, wich was unexpected, I can see from all the digging that the Ukrops have reason to take cover from artillery shelling, I see lots of communication trenches, firing pits and earthworks for vehicles. The fact that the T-64 tank shelled was under a camo net shows they have reason to hide from aerial observation.
If I were an Ukrainian soldier, I would be nervous when I saw a drone overhead. But these are small and hard to see, and most likely have electric motors so they don't make noise. I am guessing the drones used in filming are small tactical drones for close reconnaissance with a ceiling of 5.000 meters max and a 10 km range.
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