The War in the Ukraine

kokole said:

From another article in the New York Times:

unsustainable rate — especially in places like Bakhmut — under the false assumption that the West’s supply of ordnance is unlimited, said the U.S

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Ah, hubris; military planners good ol' friend. Explains why they are on the run to set up shop for 152mm ammunition as they likely can't keep up delivering 155mm without messing their own stocks nor the capacity to produce them at a rate capable of repleneshing both the Ukranians and their own stocks.

Also the focus on 152mm is that soviet pieces seem more durable than western artillery in this type of conflict and the logistics to keep them working are untenable in the medium term to the point is more practical to find a way to restart 152mm ammo production so the Ukranians stick to their more reliable soviet guns.

Even if they start producing 152mm ammo, what about things like gun barrels? Where are they going to get those?

They still seem to have plenty of towed 152mm artillery and uncertain of how many 2S3 they have left but they aren't spotted as frequently

sheogorath said:

Ah, hubris; military planners good ol' friend. Explains why they are on the run to set up shop for 152mm ammunition as they likely can't keep up delivering 155mm without messing their own stocks nor the capacity to produce them at a rate capable of repleneshing both the Ukranians and their own stocks.

Also the focus on 152mm is that soviet pieces seem more durable than western artillery in this type of conflict and the logistics to keep them working are untenable in the medium term to the point is more practical to find a way to restart 152mm ammo production so the Ukranians stick to their more reliable soviet guns.

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Bit late, the NATO has to use thousand km long supply route, with damaged rail, road network.

At the frontline the Russians enjoy fouel, ammunition and equipment advantage, they have now enought manpower to rotate the troops.


If the Western Ukrainans and NATO units needs ammuntion ever then it is NOW. Not next summer.

Well, this is a first. A Russian drone with what seems to be a grenade launcher attached to it, likely a GP-30.

Not sure what difference does it make from just dropping the grenade other than to make it drift less?


Even some NAFO accounts are worried about the losses in Bakhmut

gelgoog said:

The battlespace in the Gulf War has no comparison whatsoever. That was being fought over tiny Kuwait. A place smaller than Kherson Oblast.

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I don’t get your logic. The smaller the target area, the smaller the need for combat sorties. If anything, Russia should be generating more sorties over Ukraine than the Coalition in the Gulf War. The reason why Russia isn’t is because they don’t have an answer to Ukrainian GBAD. Their hope now is that the strategic bombing campaign will deplete Ukrainian missile reserves and thereby present an opportunity for the VKS to play a more prominent role.

Btw, the “battle space” in the Gulf War included most of Iraq, in addition to Kuwait. The US bombed Iraq back to the pre-industrial era in one of the most disproportionate applications of military power in history. Several times as many civilians were killed in Iraq by coalition bombing than by Saddam’s forces in Kuwait.

Temperature will be -10 over the weekend in Donbas.


If Russia waiting for the weather then the weekend would be the perfect time for any action.

In -10 the life in the trenches would be extremly hard.

As I check the Donetsk weather -8 celsius less than in Verdun during WWI, so it will be interesting to see the effect of frost and snow for this kind of warfare.

memfisa said:

Wow I never visit twitter, but reading the comments posted there, there are people living in two completely different realities. It's so bizzare wow

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If you know in the Ukrainian Telegram channels what a circus it is after Ursula's statement "more than 100,000 victims". Ukrainians are calling for Ursula to be uploaded to the infamous "Peacemaker" website and declared an enemy of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, today the two main Kiev propagandists from Zelensky's entourage, Arestovych and Podolyak, stated and repeated to the Ukrainian public that Ukrainian casualties since the beginning of the war are between 10,000 - 13,000.

According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the enemy's casualties in manpower as of November 29 amounted to 135,000, which somehow matches Ursula's figure of "more than 100,000 casualties."

And another statistic from the Russian authorities on how many people have left Russia since the beginning of the year. Most of those who have left have gone to CIS countries and will most likely return to Russia after the end of hostilities.

545,000 people have left Russia since the beginning of the year, according to updated statistics from Rosstat. Most of those who left - 479,000 - reportedly went to CIS countries, another 65,000 to non-CIS countries. This is less than Western estimates, according to which some 700,000 people have left Russia since the mobilization began alone.

Comparing Russian sorties in Ukraine and American sorties in Iraq or Kuwait is totally unfair for Russian sides since the USAF have like 100 times more aircraft than the VKS

plawolf said:

Please, if the VKS was pulling its weight, Ukraine wouldn’t be an artillery war.

Take away the rocket pod attacks by Su25s and cruise missile strikes by naval warships, land launchers and bombers, what is the rest of the VKS doing?

Helicopters pulling equal weight as fixed wing fastjets is a sign of how badly the VKS is underperforming rather than how much the rotor wing helicopters are over performing.

Even for the helicopters, most of the time they are lobbing rockets from afar rather than using guided munitions due to the prevalence of western MANPADs on the frontlines. That limits the effectiveness of their fires massively. Hence why artillery is doing most of the tactical level heavy lifting. That’s just a fact plain for all to see.

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Not as much as the VKS fault but because Putin wanted to treat his fellow Slavs gently with gloved hands. That changed with Surivikin and that's when you start to begin to see serious aerial strikes on infrastructure.

As far as attack helicopters go, ever heard of the LMUR, aka Project 305? Its an ATGM that's been late to the war but is seen in ever increasing numbers, as featured in videos. The use of this allows attack helicopters to snipe at targets beyond MANPADS range.

Phead128 said:

A proper analysis would account for the active male population necessary for capitulation due to severe economic degradation.

France in WW1 had a comparable population (40M) and lost 10% of active male population (1.3 Million male deaths) and still kept on fighting.
At the current Ukrainian death rate loss of 60-70K per 9 months, and Ukrainian population of 30M, it would take 12.2 Years to match WW1- French-level deaths, and they will keep on fighting.

So in conclusion, any strategy predicated on the aspirational capitulation of Ukraine based on attrition of lives/economic activity alone is a losing strategy, and mathematically doesn't hold up. You are much more likely to be successful if you just conquer the damn country, than to attrite it to surrender via economic collapse.

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Notice what happened to European economy after the war?


MOD EDIT: Merged 2 back to back posts 3 minutes apart.