Thanks for the correction. Diving down the rabbit hole of tank munitions it appears the issue is forwards compatibility rather than backwards. That is the oldest tanks can’t use the very newest munitions often due to loader limitations, but the newest tanks can use anything. Even the new gun on the barely-in-existence T-14 was designed to be backwards compatible and was ultimately chosen for that reason over a competing design. As the newer stuff is more expensive and was laid up in smaller quantities than the old Soviet rounds, it seems (or is plausibly claimed at any rate) that Russia has burned through a lot of their most modern tank ordnance already. So this logistic problem is likely steadily decreasing at the cost of also decreasing the combat power of their most modern tanks.
Generally but not always.
Looks like Russia has no realistic non-nuclear path to victory at this point. Can anyone come up with one?
Their current strategy does appear to be “Destroy infrastructure and let winter weaken Ukraine”, but even that makes no sense if they’re also planning to send lots of Russian troops in ahead of the same winter into the same areas without power or supplies.
For values of victory? If, and it’s by no means a given, they do go full WW1 (see some of the images in the main/breaking news thread) and just dig in in their more heavily controlled southern/western sections and pour in the conscripts while training in place, they could just keep holding on to most of their currently controlled territories unless NATO gives enough air cover to assert dominance, which I don’t think they will.
Just set up a bloody-minded wall of dirt, bodies and tell the Ukraine they’re happy to go for something a lot closer to a 1-to-1 loss ratio where skills and maneuver count for far less. And then hope/expect that after months or years of doing so, Ukraine settles for keeping what it has and has retaken, while Russia still has ‘won’ substantial territory and keeps Crimea.
It’ll leave Russia as a pariah, and they’ll still have lost in that Finland, etc, will not be the last joining NATO after this fiasco, but in the narrow sense of having more territory (if unacknowledged by the international community). And I suspect that the loss of nearly all western trade and the vastly (!) increased costs to maintain this military infrastructure will cripple them again in the medium to long term, but it’s probably enough to last our Putin’s lifetime (falling out window or 17 stab wounds in the back notwithstanding).
The only path I can see is if Putin provokes an invasion of Russia proper to energize the patriotic zeal of its citizens and gain the home field advantage.
I think Putin’s best hope is that the west, especially Europe, decide that the pain from decreased supplies of gas, oil, and ongoing inflation causes the collective leadership to decide to put pressure on Ukraine to negotiate. Maybe the Republicans take control of Congress and shut the purse strings on the weapons flowing to Ukraine. Maybe the German / French / Slovakian / Polish public find out they really don’t like a lack of heat in the winter and put pressure on their leaders to force Ukraine to negotiate. Maybe Erdogan jumps on that bus as well, and with his control of the Bosporus straits and supply of Turkish drones that Ukraine is dependent on, his pressuring Ukraine might also force them to the table.
Ukraine will win if Putin holds off on nukes and they keep getting support from the west. But will that support last long enough to kick Russia out of all of Ukraine? That’s the question.
Russia has no path to victory.
At the point where your options are becoming North Korea or successfully damning yourself and a larger group of people into becoming North Korea, you’ve lost. The only thing at play is how many people are going to be punished for Putin’s choices, and for how long.
The closest thing to a winning move is to let Putin suffer his choices by himself. Adding more people to it doesn’t somehow make it more victorious.
Agree. Victory for Russia and victory for Putin are at opposite points. Russia’s path to victory is to rid itself of Putin.
russian doctrine:
first we solve the first problem and then we solve the second problem …
If Putin was sane, he’d start negotiations. Demand Crimea. Ask for some of the other occupied land but be prepared to concede. Get an Ukraine agreement not to join NATO for X years.
Is there any world leader that stupid, though?
If Putin were truly sane and well informed, he wouldn’t have invaded in the first place. He could have sat on the 2014 borders for a generation. At least in that case he’d die without losing the land he had conquered. As far as I can tell, the myth ship of Putin being well informed, clever and sane has tried to sail and then sank in the harbor.
If he was sane and well informed in the present day, he’d realize he can’t demand Crimea. He’d be trying to figure out how to give Crimea back and make it look like a win. He could make it a goodwill gesture, if he likes. Any escalation he’s made so far seems to have been countered pretty well by Ukraine with assistance by the West. He doesn’t seem to have any path forward but down. Might as well try to make it seem like he planned it that way.
This is how the invasion has been sold to the Russian public from the beginning; ask granny babushka from Omsk (link is to one of the lastest street interviews by 1420, Do rural Russians know why their kids are sent to Ukraine? Part 1) why the war is being fought and it’s because the fascists in Ukraine would have attacked Russia if Russia hadn’t done it first, their enemies are Nazis and it’s the Great Patriotic War all over again. The Nazis have been killing Russians in the Donbas for the past 8 years, don’t cha know?
This could wind up being the case, there’s currently no sign that the war is going to end any time soon either militarily or diplomatically. The war could very well still be ongoing a year from now, and no way to know with any certainty what it’ll be looking like then. Right now, Ukraine has the advantage in numbers, and is planning to form 10-20 new brigades during the winter from the troops that it has mobilized and has been training. Properly kitting them out is going to depend on the West continuing to supply weapons, and really properly kitting them out is going to depend on the West supplying Western made MBTs. Right now, the Russian mobilization is a complete shit-show, but some of the problems they are having are the same ones Ukraine was facing when they declared full mobilization at the beginning of the war. The Ukrainians still have a six-month head start on mobilization over the Russians in their favor, and there are a lot of problems the Russia is facing with mobilization that Ukraine didn’t have (Russia cannibalized a lot of its training establishment during the shadow mobilization over the past six months while Ukraine has enjoyed training provided by foreign nations outside of the warzone for example), but a year from now the Russians may have gotten their act together and closed the mobilization gap with Ukraine and might still be holding all or most of the pre-Feb 24 borders.
Perun touched on a number of these things in his latest video, and interviewed US General Ben Hodges (Ret.) with a lot of really good and informative questions. I honestly can’t recommend Perun enough for keeping up with the situation in Ukraine; the guy is really sharp and puts out hour or so long videos every week or two. Hodges has been doing the media circuit lately, but it says a lot about the quality of Perun’s content that he went from a tiny gaming channel with a couple of thousand subs to interviewing a former SACEUR since the invasion of Ukraine.
This is really the bottom line and the stupidest thing from a Russian POV. Putin won in 2014 and did so handily. He had been winning all along - Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea. He could have sat pat and nobody would have done shit about it. Only Ukraine had the motivation to try and the risk would have been enormous and the likelihood of success slight as the West would not have been showering them with arms and money for an aggressive war, however justified.
Putin threw decades of winning into a dumpster, poured gasoline on it and set it ablaze. His place in history is going to be a very different thing than it would have been if he hadn’t made this last, fatal toss of the dice.
Even if a particular model of tank is not fit for tank warfare. It can still be quite effective as mobile artillery. If you have enough of them, you can bring them and support forces in under full long range artillery. Then use them temporally as shorter range artillery, while you move up the big guns closer. Repeat in steps.
Not sure if that is a viable, used, tactic on a larger front. But I think it is used here and there.
Depends on the forces mix you are trying to advance on.
Vasa is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship sank after sailing roughly 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628.
[She] was dangerously unstable, with too much weight in the upper structure of the hull. Despite this lack of stability, she was ordered to sea and foundered only a few minutes after encountering a wind stronger than a breeze.
Thanks to inflation and crime fears, Republicans win big in next month’s elections. They start making noises about impeachment (not going to happen) and a government shutdown unless wasteful expenditures to support Ukraine militarily are curtailed.
Europe has a cold winter. The economic pain index across the Eurozone skyrockets with methane in short supply. Opposition parties, sensing blood in the water, start calling for no-confidence votes all over the EU. They are being bankrolled and assisted in the social media components of their campaigns by Russian intelligence. Hungary calls for reopening pipelines from Russia.
Ukraine starts rationing its remaining stocks of HIMARS missiles. Kevin McCarthy puts lower Ukraine aid as the price for elevating the debt ceiling. China, with Xi Jingping newly elected to a third five-year term, begins training PLA units in amphibious assault tactics. AfD does well in German state-level elections, showing gains that - if replicated at the federal level - would put it into the driver’s seat for forming the next German government.
I don’t think it’s all going to happen, at least not that way - but this type of scenario is what Putin is expecting will happen. He thinks that Europe and the US will tire of the pain that sustaining the war requires before Russia will, and that he will come out ahead in the long run. And as long as he thinks that, he’s not going to let up.
It’s the Jason Mendoza method of problem-solving:
sure, every weapon is better than no weapon … but …
you seem to focus only on the benefits of the weapons, not it associated cost (cost in the wider sense) … e.g. dedicated supply chain that frays your already “too complex for russian military” supply chain, more frequent breakdowns that necessitate rescues, and abandoning assaults, specific training for troops, etc…
but it seems russia uses this doctrine, to try to impress (both the enemy and domestically) - as can be seen by the fact that they brought tanks into the theater that would not be able to fire, etc…
AS LONG AS ITS BIG, LOUD AND SMOKE IS COMING OUT OF IT… send it to the front … its still better for morale than the inflatable stuff ;o)
will it change the course of history? NO, it wont