The War in the Ukraine

tankphobia said:

This whole war is really showcasing Russian military not being as good as advertised, they really should've spent some of that frozen reserves pre-war buying more modern equipment for it's armed forces instead of keeping it in the west only to get frozen.

A Russian armed forces that was even $50 billion more well equipped would not have such trouble in this war. Imagine instead of sending in upgraded t-72s the initial spear head were all t-14s, instead of 150 odd ka-52 and some mi-8s as CAS there are hundreds more. Instead of saturation bombardment every artillery shot is satellite guided. Suicide drone swarms to hunt western arm supplies in the rear instead of buying from Iran 6 months after the war beginning.

the loss of valuable crews and manpower due to old equipment used in this war cannot be understated.

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Ukraine's commander in chief assumes some DPR locals, chechens and some prisoners in a mercenary group is considered a professional army thats what he thinks he has been fighting as professionals.

Came in ukraine with 200k troops left 80k there, shogui states 5,937 russian troops died, send 300k reservists instead for training.

1 million active duty which is now going to be 1,150,000 million active duty troops by 2023, troops that have actually been trained for war longer than reserves because its their jobs

Even if I was to pretend that the reservists will make absolutely no progress with the doomers there would still be another mobilization whom actually are considered a professional army. Or maybe ukraine is not even worth using a professional army for? From the looks of it Russia tried to de-escalate the conflict with every step possible. step 1. dont damage water facities, gas storage supplies, dont damage power grids to see if they will surrender. step 2 send reservists, damage everything that was listed on step 1 before winter comes to see if they will surrender. step 3 send modern equipment with people that were actually trained to kill as their jobs to ukraine. step 4. nuke the place if steps 1 to 3 dont work.

I dont know where Ukraine stands at in terms of strongest armies excluding US, China and Russia but equipment, training and the amount fighting suggest they are somewhere up there with the UK, Turkey or France. But Russia fighting them with one hand tied behind their back(not sending trained active duty personel) suggests their military is as good as advertised. From the looks of it they tried to conduct this war in the most humane way possible if we are to compare other conflicts.

Dragon of War said:

Another theory is they could be saving them for another large offensive, tanks are valuable to the Ukraine side, Russia have a means of producing them domestically. Ukraine doesn't have this luxury so must fight more reservedly, sparing what little of the goods they can and saving them for major offensives to push the Russians back. We've seen them tow plenty of Russian armor with tractors and surrounding discarded equipment from fleeing Russian soldiers.

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Not so sure about that. A few months algo there was an article by western media that was posted here where a captured T-80BVM was the personal ride of some unit commander in Kharkov.

You don't do that if You were trying to save the equipment for some offensive

How many drones did Iran have/can quickly produce? With the intensity of this conflict and rate of consumption could they be unable to keep supplying Russia soon?

plawolf said:

Yeah, I won’t call something ‘intact’ just because it’s not a smoking ruin. The Russians didn’t just all decide to go hiking and leave perfectly good equipment for the Ukrainians to wonder up can claim.

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Well, the Russian retreat from Kyiv early in the war, and a lot of Kharkiv rout pictures and footage appear to do just that, perfectly good equipment left for Ukrainians to claim because of minor failure/crappy logistics like a thrown track/out of gas. That's neither an orderly nor a successful withdrawal.

plawolf said:

Most of the captured Russian equipment would need some sort of repairs to bring back to functionality and/or replacement munitions. Whether Ukraine can effect those repairs and rearmed them are a massive question mark, and I would suggest not in most cases or they wouldn’t need to be begging for more and more obsolete NATO hand-me-downs if everyone shown as being captured could be put back into use.

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Well, the Ukrainians definitely are fixing them to be functional enough with the help of generous Russian "donations" and help from Central & Eastern Europe (Poland, Czech rep., Bulgaria, etc.).

is now full of Russian T-80 variants because they captured so many from the Russian Kyiv retreat. That's definitely not the hallmark of a "successful" or "planned" retreat/withdrawal/repositioning.

And yes, Ukrainians want all the heavy equipment they can get their hands on because some heavy equipment is better than no heavy equipment. Why do they need those? because they're determined to kick Russia out of their land.

Do they care if it's obsolete NATO hand-me-downs? They'll definitely want something better, but in war, you take whatever you can get.

According to an article in Military Watch Magazine, Western countries are almost out of T-72 tanks, so they have to transfer T-55 based combat vehicles to Ukraine.

Before the war Ukraine had the most tanks in Europe, during the war hundreds more tanks were transferred, but Ukraine still has a shortage of tanks. Add to that the supposedly many captured Russian tanks, why does the Ukrainian army have this constant shortage of tanks!?

Is NATO Running Out of T-72s to Donate to Ukraine? It Is Now Sending T-54/55s From Slovenia

Germany and Slovenia have agreed on a deal to transfer Slovenian Army M-55 tanks, a derivative of the Soviet T-54/55, to support Ukrainian government forces as aid. Slovenia will be compensated with German military transports and wheeled lorries. The transfer comes as NATO countries’ supplies of T-72 tanks have worn thin, with former Warsaw Pact states and many Yugoslav successor states all having send the bulk of their units to the Ukrainian Army, which before February fielded the largest tank force in Europe. The T-54/55 first entered service in the Soviet Army in the 1940s, with the M-55 variant that forms the backbone of Slovenian armoured units benefitting from a NATO standard 105mm main gun, superior armour protection and an improved powerplant. The usefulness of the M-55 to Ukraine remains somewhat questionable due to the calibre of its main gun, as it will not be compatible with the munition types in the country other than those delivered with the vehicles themselves. Delivery of the vehicles will leave Slovenia without any tanks in its armed forces, with no replacement expected as the country’s small armed forces transition to operate free of main battle tanks.

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kokole said:

... why does the Ukrainian army have this constant shortage of tanks!?

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Soviet-made tanks can only travel a few thousand kilometers before they wear out.

kokole said:

According to an article in Military Watch Magazine, Western countries are almost out of T-72 tanks, so they have to transfer T-55 based combat vehicles to Ukraine.

Before the war Ukraine had the most tanks in Europe, during the war hundreds more tanks were transferred, but Ukraine still has a shortage of tanks. Add to that the supposedly many captured Russian tanks, why does the Ukrainian army have this constant shortage of tanks!?

Is NATO Running Out of T-72s to Donate to Ukraine? It Is Now Sending T-54/55s From Slovenia

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I mean can you ever have 'enough' tanks? Seeing as most eastern front battles in WW2 involved hundreds of tanks with extremely high attrition rates. Granted modern tanks are a lot more capable and expensive, but Ukraine will run out of tanks long before it runs out of people. Additionally it'll take a lot more heavy equipment to match Russian numbers, so it's not unreasonable to keep asking for aid.

Zichan said:

I think some of those drones were able to defeat Russian radars either by taking advantage of low speed doppler filtering or by hiding in clutter. Small, slow moving and low flying drones are particularly challenging and require modern radar techniques like micro-doppler to discriminate and target.

I assume that radar wasn’t really radiating in the video. The guy was awful close to remain safe and the target below minimal range anyway.

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You need a targeting antenna on the drone , that needs to be big .

It needs a phased away antenna actually. That is not a small drone , but a slow HARM.

And a if it is cheap then the antenna will glow.

tankphobia said:

This whole war is really showcasing Russian military not being as good as advertised, they really should've spent some of that frozen reserves pre-war buying more modern equipment for it's armed forces instead of keeping it in the west only to get frozen.

A Russian armed forces that was even $50 billion more well equipped would not have such trouble in this war. Imagine instead of sending in upgraded t-72s the initial spear head were all t-14s, instead of 150 odd ka-52 and some mi-8s as CAS there are hundreds more. Instead of saturation bombardment every artillery shot is satellite guided. Suicide drone swarms to hunt western arm supplies in the rear instead of buying from Iran 6 months after the war beginning.

the loss of valuable crews and manpower due to old equipment used in this war cannot be understated.

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not even $50 billion, just ~$10 billion additional investment would've got them:

500 T-14s ($2.5 billion, 500x)
150 Su-57s ($6 billion, 150x)
100 Wing Loong 2 ($1.5 billion, 100x)

Just the Su-57s alone would've splashed the entire Ukrainian air force including their TB-2s on day 1, not to mention the snowball effects of having T-14s and Wing Loong 2s. Just the T-14s and Wing Loongs would've obliterated the bunkers in Donbass.

With another $10 billion investment they could've upgraded 50% of their artillery to Krasnopol standards, bought 1000 Orlan tactical recon drones, bought at least 10 Wing Loong-10s for strategic recon, hired 10k more infantry...

Hopefully this serves as a resource allocation wakeup call.

With Dmitry Bulgakov fired I guess the level of corruption and incompetence regarding logistics and supplies can't be ignored any longer. But the options to improve the situation are quite limited.