The War in the Ukraine

Temstar said:

I saw in HistoryLegends's video he quoted an interesting number: Russians are firing 400,000 to 600,000 artillery rounds A DAY in Ukraine (including mortar and rocket artillery I would guess). Wonder if anyone else have seen a source for this number.

From a difference source I hear the production of guided shells like krasnopol are being bottle necked, however production of conventional shells have already been ramped up and there's no shortage of those.

In comparison, US intends to send 200,000 rounds for M777 as part of their aid. Is that correct? Russians are firing that number of rounds at Ukrainian positions before breakfast each day?

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FriedButter said:

I doubt there is 400,000 to 600,000 being fire per day. The majority of the firing is in the Donbas Area and it’s not exactly a large area. Firing that many shells per day would have changed the landscape which the Western Media would be circlejerking those satellite images if they existed.

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Temstar said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1529445033816072192

Errr okay, that's an odd thing to say. What happened the to 700,000 strong troops recently mobilized.

I remember a while ago when Popasna breakout was first starting I said the Russians are doing a 围点打援 to counter Ukraine's own attempt at 围点打援 with the Kharkiv counteroffensive and it seems true. Ukraine has continuously thrown troops into the Severodonetsk pocket to try to hold it up, including pulling some of the best units away from Kharkiv. Hence why the counterattack fizzled out.

Now with potentially 16,000 men stuck inside the pocket (Russians now control Bilohorivka and have cut the T1302 highway into Severodonetsk) we are increasingly looking at Mariupol 2.0 and it seems Ukrainian government may be setting up another heroic defeat narrative.

I had a theory at the time but I'm more sure now that Russians deliberately withdraw from around Kharkiv - the calculation is that the ground around Kharkiv holds no strategic value at this time as all the attention is in Donbas. It's much better to give up land and preserve manpower and equipment and let Ukrainians expand time and supplies holding that land. It's also why I didn't think there was any counterattack coming for Kharkiv in the near future - regaining that land for the sake of it makes no sense. If there are spare resources better off moving them to around Izyum or invest them into attacking Lyman and force Ukrainians in the pocket to rush from place to place firefighting.

If Kharkiv and area around it needs to be taken they can always be taken again at a future date.

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FairAndUnbiased said:

maybe airburst shells don't affect the ground that much vs. ground burst shells.

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FriedButter said:

Against heavy fortifications? TASS reported in 2015, that Ukraine built 600km of fortifications and 12000 concrete structures with plans to dig 1500km of trenches and entrenchment for 8000 heavy weapons along the Donbas region. Airburst shells are not gonna crack open that nut and would probably be a huge waste of shells against trenches.

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FairAndUnbiased said:

that's a ton of fortifications. I wonder how effective fixed fortifications are against modern weapons.

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FriedButter said:

Didn’t someone or a tweet mention that small drones have turned artillery into snipers? Making artillery fire more accurate would also mean less ammo is getting wasted.

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tank3487 said:

Small drones are MVPs of this war. While large ones like TB2s are easy to shotdown. Small ones are pain to deal with and they are cheap and easy to replace. I had read reports that stingers struggle to lock on Orlans for example.

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