Russian special military operation in Ukraine #41

OH DEAR GOD ISOS, RUSSIA HAS THE PINTO!!!!

Could there be any chance ukr offensive to begin this week. Some tg channels have hinted it.

It would be great if it did start

Russias offensive could get started already

Anyone have information on Ugledar? It looks like Russia lost the battle of Ugledar.

Anyone have information on Ugledar? It looks like Russia lost the battle of Ugledar.

This is outdated info from 4 weeks ago, looks like Russia lost the battle of Moscow and Putin has been overthrown

Ah jeez, not Ugledar again? I hear that Rzhev fell to the Ukronazis again.

My guess is that they might take parts of it, say the much larger gun and stick it on a t 90 and maybe some of the armor packages and electronics but the black eagle itself? Same as T-14, except we might see the T-14 in combat if this thing lasts long enough.

The Black Eagle was a concept tank that never actually worked because the Russian Army don't like tanks with ammo in the turret bustle... never have...

The T-90AM has 10 rounds in the turret bustle but it is isolated from the turret... you open a hatch on top and reach in and grab the rounds and then pass them in through the turret hatches to load into the autoloader...

The Black Eagle based on the T-80 was rejected before they did any real work on getting it to work, and the T-72 Rogota I think it was called that also had a turret bustle autoloader was also rejected as an upgrade path for the T-72s for the very same reason.

Both vehicles only ever had 125mm guns planned for them... there was and there is no need for anything bigger.

This is a good accomplishment. But maybe there should be a refferendum in Russia about how to proceed with the war. Take a bigger economy penalty and fight with more force and get this done sooner. Or keep going like this. The Kremlin thinks ppl will opt for the former but I doubt it.

Democracy is useless in war time... do you think the average voter has enough knowledge and experience in fighting a war to make such decisions?

It's better to let the dollar die, let US arrest trump and cause internal destabilization, and bleed the remaining industrial capacity of the west -

The rest they can do themselves

There will be race riots there next as the 1% struggle to deflect public opinion from their real problems...

God i wish Maryana Naumova remain safe. Since Ukrainians seems to consider journalist or anyone they consider pro-Russia a fair game, i worried about those who do combat reporting from Russian line like Patrick Lancaster and Maryana Naumova..

I don't think he cares too much about image... he is tasked with getting a job done and he and his military experts are privy to all sorts of information the man on the street has no idea about.

Lets not worry about image... Putin can make mistakes, the point is that he is no sellout and has Russias interests first and foremost in his mind and his decisions... something the rest of the world needs in their politicians but seriously lacks.

Lots of people think changing one thing or another thing would completely change the results... lots of people think changing one decision during WWII might have completely changed it in a particular way but reality is much more complex.

You could say going harder will be quicker and more effective... I would say that is the tactic the west has applied to Russia and look at how that has backfired and had completely the opposite effect that was intended.

Do you think Germany being even more nasty to the Soviet people would have changed the results of the war.

In fact it could be argued that if what jewish people say now that Nazi Germany was all about exterminating the jews and no one else was true and they treated the Soviet people with a bit of respect they might have changed sides and worked together with Germany against the western allies with which they had very little in common except when Germany was their mutual enemy.

I would think Hitlers best chance of winning the war would have been to make a deal with Stalin and in return for importing oil and steel and food from the Soviet Union Hitler could leave the Soviet Union alone and just take out Britain.

Germany could have gotten the Soviet Union to build their tanks... in fact up until 1933 when Adolph took power they were working together on tanks so the collaboration could have continued... they might have skipped the first model T-34 and gone for one with a bigger three man turret that worked like German tanks of the time with German optics companies moved to the safety of the Soviet Union...

They didn't have the ship landing force to attack Britain in 1939, but neither did the west until they built that up and had it ready by 1944... except without losing two thirds of its soldiers on the eastern front and having the Soviets perhaps supplying tanks and aircraft there would be no need to attack north africa... the soviet union could supply everything the Germans needed.

Europe would be German.... and the US would have to negotiate, and of course if Germany cooperated with the Soviet Union then Japan could do the same and get all the oil and materials it needed that US and UK ships blockaded them from getting which caused the war in the Pacific.

Of course that doesn't work, you can't just change the things you like and expect everything else to be the same.... everything they did was based on what had happened so changing things will change what they did too... you might make things much worse.

You can't fight a war through democracy because to make good choices you would need complete information which of course cannot be made public for obvious reasons.

I'm no democrat. But I think that Putin thinks the people don't want to be bothered by the war. It would just be nice to know if that were actually true. I suspect that it isn't. Putin probably stands to lose more political support by not devoting enough to the war than the other way around. wrote:

That is a series of incoherent statements Of course Putin wants people to be invested in this war. He has been clear it is an existential war for Russia. Without their support its much more difficult for him to devote the nation to the winning the war. Regardless if you believe what Putin says or not, he places great value in the support of the Russian nation. He has made great efforts in explaining Russia will not waste the lives of its men. The Gen Staff believes there is enough troops dedicated to win the war. We can only speculate what their plan for an end game is, other then there is one. Is there enough run rate ammo production to sustain a massive assault? Are they stockpiling for such an assault, or waiting production ramps ups? Are they waiting for firm ground? New weapons, men to complete training. Probably several of those. Most likely waiting for the next Ukraine offensive where they plan to obliterate it and then press the initiative when it degenerates into a shambles.

Fuel tankers for the logistics of the upcoming Ukrainian offensive.

GarryB wrote:They didn't have the ship landing force to attack Britain in 1939, but neither did the west until they built that up and had it ready by 1944... except without losing two thirds of its soldiers on the eastern front and having the Soviets perhaps supplying tanks and aircraft there would be no need to attack north africa... the soviet union could supply everything the Germans needed.

Actually, if they didn't attacked URSS Germans wouldn't either have needed to send anymore troops of their own in Northern Africa, just the italian ones that were send in Russia instead (where they performed well, until the final catastrophe) would have been more than sufficient to reach the Nile.
Well, maybe with a little lease of tanks and above all trucks, the only ones thing we act still sorely lacked in 1942.

The problem for Hitler is that if he didn't attack the Soviets and decided to fight the UK instead Stalin likely would have waited to see who was going to win and then enter the fight and crush the Germans after the UK and US forces wasted 10 million dead soldiers in the fight instead of the 11 million soldiers the Soviets lost dealing with the Germans.

The point I was trying to make is that going all hard out and killing everyone doesn't work any better than what they are doing now... it would simply not be possible for Russia to exterminate all the Ukrainians and then carry on afterwards like nothing happened... even if they could kill them all and they can't.

The western allies sent thousand bomber raids on German cities and only killed a very small fraction of the number of people there each time... it would take hundreds of years and enormous volumes of ordinance and even then they could kill them all.

Air power is simply not as effective as most people think despite it being the cornerstone of HATO military power.

Democracy is war by other means , and war is democracy by other means . Democracy does reduce social pain , and war increases social pain . But in the long run , all Roads lead to Rome . Well at least before Rome collapsed , or the Dinosaurs became extinct . The votes are being counted in the bullet-box , instead of the ballot-box !

Another M113, this time after meeting an ATGM. Unfair. Russians should only use shovels.

Neither are - to some extent - armored vehicles.

Going to make a bold statement, but the US has never fought a real opponent, ever. They only faced opponents that were significantly less equipped.

They got away rather easily in Iraq because they had basically no proper army or defenses to counter the US. Their only concern were IED's. The local population did not have access to air defense equipment / manpads or armor piercing warheads. They didn't dig trenches or concrete fortifications. They didn't had modern surveillance equipment, battle management systems. They also had pretty clear view of sight; the houses made of cow poop and straw weren't exactly a major risk either.

I noticed someone boasting about how little losses they had on the Abrams; and immediately thought, well put the same vehicles in a Ukraine warzone and they all get slaughtered. And the same will happen with any modern aircraft.

They still believe the F22 / F35 are stealth miracles that cannot be detected or tracked by radar and missiles. I can't wait till the first F22 is downed by air defense or air combat (or outmaneuvered by a SU-35) and that entire stealth argument is thrown overboard.

A bit more detail. The first is Presidential Drawdown Authority PDA so ex US stocks available fairly quickly, the second is DoD’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative USAI so subject to new orders so could be months or longer.

There may be double counting with earlier USAI included, like 155mm ammo, in the PDA package.

Capabilities in the $500 million PDA package, the 35th such drawdown, include:

Additional munitions for Patriot air defense systems;
Additional ammunition for M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);
155mm and 105mm artillery rounds;
120mm mortar rounds;
120mm and 105mm tank ammunition;
25mm ammunition;
Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles;
Approximately 400 grenade launchers and 200,000 rounds of ammunition;
11 tactical vehicles to recover equipment;
61 heavy fuel tankers;
10 trucks and 10 trailers to transport heavy equipment;
Testing and diagnostic equipment to support vehicle maintenance and repair;
Spare parts and other field equipment.

Under USAI, the DoD will provide Ukraine with:

Additional munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS);
Nine counter-Unmanned Aerial System 30mm gun trucks;
10 mobile c-UAS laser-guided rocket systems;
Three air surveillance radars;
30mm and 23mm anti-aircraft ammunition;
130mm and 122mm artillery rounds;
122mm GRAD rockets;
Rocket launchers and ammunition;
120mm and 81mm mortar systems;
120mm, 81mm, and 60mm mortar rounds;
120mm tank ammunition;
Javelin anti-armor systems;
Anti-armor rockets;
Precision aerial munitions;
Approximately 3,600 small arms and more than 23,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition;
Seven tactical vehicles to recover equipment;
Eight heavy fuel tankers and 105 fuel trailers;
Armored bridging systems;
Four logistics support vehicles;
Trucks and ten trailers to transport heavy equipment;
Secure communications equipment;
SATCOM terminals and services;
Funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment.

They did not specify how many of each type of ammunition, let alone if its readily available, on the backlog or still requires the factory to be build. Contrary to earlier statements and this tells you all about availability.

They also provide tactical vehicles to recover equipment; which in their current state probably requires a metal detector to pick out the small pieces scattered on the battlefield. Also good that they provide the exact number of fuel tankers; those will be high priority targets for UCAVs to remove any logistical potential for any future assault. Just put out the fire by removing any source of fuel.

It's just one big laundry operation but interesting to see that there is no medical equipment, ambulances, coffins or prosthetic arms and legs being shipped.

the US has never fought a real opponent, ever. They only faced opponents that were significantly less equippe wrote:

A real opponent was Vietnam.

Not sure which thread the discussion on this went into.

Here is a short discussion on the ICC/Putin case and the biased report that the claim was based on. The same article is at both links.

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/03/31/iccs-putin-arrest-state-dept-report/

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iccs-putin-arrest-warrant-based-state-dept-funded-report-debunked-itself

@Arrow. You are right, I forgot that the US and their allies actually faced anti air there as they lost more than 12.000 aircraft. Overall they received heavy losses in people, material both on the ground and in the air. But still they were fighting troop volume completely in tune with their environment, not technology. I believe their opponent only lost around 200 aircraft - they didn't had more either.

North Vietnam also suffered heavy losses. They lost many more soldiers.