they simply dont have manpower yet to run the administration if they capture more areas too soon. so it will slow process of population movements but outcome is already baked into it. there is no way anyone can fund a state with 200b to 300b a year with no income.
Ukrainian War Developments
- Thread starter james smith esq
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I am aware that the article was written on the 4th of March prior to writing my review, although I read this article today when it was posted here.
But there are people getting hurt unnecessarily because of my comment. hahahaha
Let's analyze his text.
"On the day of the invasion, an anticipated series of large-scale Russian air operations in the aftermath of initial cruise- ballistic-missiles strikes did not materialise"
I ask myself: And was this supposed to happen? For what reason? How does this fit into Russian strategy in Ukraine?
He goes on to address the unlikely explanations for this, but explains that these reasons do not fully explain the "non-existent" RuAF, which is entirely correct.
After arguing for the modernization of the Russian air force and the assets positioned in the southern and western districts, he states the following:
"There was clearly an intent to at least signal their use, especially in light of the Russian military intervention in Syria since 2015 which has been characterized by heavy use of VKS fixed-wing assets for combat-air patrols and strike missions."
I ask myself: Was there really such signage? For what reason?
The "official and acknowledged" reason would be if Russia were willing to annex all of Ukraine, a fait accompli that this was never Russia's intention, even in the face of abundant evidence of operational and strategic errors by the Russian military.
Then he follows:
"One potential argument is that the VKS fighter fleets are being held in reserve, potentially as a deterrent against direct intervention by NATO forces. This operations is unlikely to be the case. If the VKS is capable of large-scale combat to rapidly establish air. superiority over Ukraine, by not doing so, it is, in fact, weakening its potential deterrent value against NATO forces rather than preserving it."
Two conceptual errors in this statement.
The first is that the VKS since its inception is still clinging to the operational concepts of an air force subordinated to ground forces, a doctrinal model since Soviet times, this is essential because both the VVS and the PVO were defensive air forces, the PVO it acted even more defensively than the VVS, and this is easily proven. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact claimed that their forces were defensive, and indeed, equipment from the East seemed to confirm this position: almost 60% of the aircraft were interceptors, and just over 30% were conventional or nuclear strike devices. Both sides devoted 8% of their air forces to reconnaissance, but NATO used two-thirds of its aircraft for attack and only 1/4 for defense. This entire set of interception-capable aircraft as an air backbone of the Warsaw Pact acted as a great complement to all the integrated air defense, the cooperative engagement capability that the US has today in the US Navy, the Soviets already had since the 1980s, with interceptor fighters and integrated anti-aircraft defense apparatus, we can trace it back to at least the launch of the MiG-31.
That hasn't changed since then. Importantly, Russia's military doctrine is not built on airpower, as one might say as the West employs airpower, but views airpower as subservient to its ground forces. Forbes writer David Axe claims that Russia's air force is primarily used as air artillery. It is an entirely correct statement, but still incomplete. But this may, in fact, be a direct result of NATO's enormous airpower capabilities and the Russian understanding that it could lose air superiority in the event of a full-scale conflict. Instead of trying to win a losing battle, Russian doctrine has shifted to accept the idea that it may not control the airspace it is fighting, i.e. Russian doctrine is not geared towards achieving air superiority, the Russians know well. its limitations and that in an air war between the two sides trying to obtain air superiority turning into a war of attrition, the side that bears the most losses will win, that side is clearly NATO in a totally absolute way. And this also applies to the case of VKS in Ukraine, even though it is comparatively superior in numbers and quality, but still following the doctrinal logic of VKS.
The second misconception is that even if the VKS were able to carry out complex air operations and effectively employ what it has available in the vicinity of Ukraine in an attempt to achieve air supremacy or air superiority, this would not maximize the RuAF's deterrent potential against NATO forces. There is a huge misconception here, you cannot compare what the RuAF potentially has the ability to do in Ukraine with the ability that the RuAF has to do in NATO airspace or even defending itself in Ukrainian airspace against NATO forces if for some reason to intervene in favor of Zelensky, this is an entirely wrong argument. Just re-read the previous two paragraphs and this will certainly make sense, because even if the RuAF were able to successfully carry out the SEAD and completely eliminate the Ukrainian Air Force if it used all its accumulated air power, the RuAF would still be inferior to the air apparatus. of NATO, this would in no way diminish NATO's ability to intervene or the RuAF's being unable to deny airspace, the deterrence here has no real value for restricting VKS airpower or the eventual massive deployment of VKS and the The author himself declares that if Russian air power were used massively, there would be losses, but there would be many losses, even more considering that he himself alleges the factor of poor training of Russian pilots and other deficiencies in complex air operations.
The author's argument to avoid damage to critical infrastructure is entirely correct. I will jump.
Following:
"Another theory is that Russian commanders are less willing to risk suffering heavy losses to their expensive and prestigious fast jets, and so have held back the VKS due to low risk tolerance. This also does not make sense. Russian ground forces have lost hundreds of modern tanks, armored personnel carriers, short- and medium-range air-defence systems and thousands of troops including a disproportionate number of elite paratroopers (VDV) and special forces in a week."
That also doesn't make any sense. The article was posted on March 4th, still in the second week of the war, it was still unlikely that he had the knowledge we have today, but that argument made no sense at the time he posted it. Russia when it was losing some combat helicopters by MANPADS began to employ at night, and not restricted to helicopters, but also fixed-wing aircraft. Between the first week of the war and the second week of the war, the Russians were losing many logistical and support vehicles, we saw a reorientation of the use of air power towards the CAS, from Su-25s to helicopters escorting the convoys. Russian Assault Forces were ordered to not have CAS because of the MANPADS threat, he even posted this at the beginning of his article text as a fait accompli because it was a fait accompli. If the Russians had prioritized assault forces applying CAS they would have lost even more aircraft than they lost, an aircraft is much more valuable than armored vehicles, tanks and logistic vehicles, the replacement cost is totally disproportionate for aircraft than for ground vehicles . Using air power for CAS in an attempt to relieve the assault forces that were in Ukraine could result in the downing of many aircraft, and this could change something tactically, but strategically the Russians would still continue to lose ground vehicles and if the aircraft were shot down, the scenario would be even worse for the Russians who would have to rely only on mobile air defense resources.
Now the "plausible" explanation he claims:
"While the early VKS failure to establish air superiority could be explained by lack of early warning, coordination capacity and sufficient planning time, the continued pattern of activity suggests a more significant conclusion: that the VKS lacks the institutional capacity to plan, brief and fly complex air operations at scale. There is significant circumstantial evidence to support this, admittedly tentative, explanation."
Let's start with the fact of agreement here. VKS has huge shortcomings in applying complex air operations, I never doubted that. So, that part I'm going to skip to finally do the disagreement analysis.
Did the VKS really fail to gain Russian air superiority over Ukraine?
The Russian MoD claimed on the 28th of February that it obtained total air superiority, on the 5th day of the war the Russians claimed that they had achieved this achievement, the West disputes this claim to this day, so imagine that on the 4th of March, no one believed that the Russians had not conquered.
Do you know what happened on February 28th (the day of the Russian announcement of total air superiority)?
Maxar first spotted the massive 65km Russian convoy in satellite images exactly on the 28th of February 2022, I myself posted some pictures here on the forum about this convoy. The column moved south towards Kiev on March 7, it was just 30 km from the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
30 km from Kiev. Do you have any idea of this distance? Artillery strikes could have been employed to attack the convoy, stand-in missiles could have been employed, drones could have been employed to attack the convoy, we saw some footage of the TB2 Bayraktar attacking Russian positions with air defense, but the 65 km convoy itself was not attacked. No army dispatches a convoy of that size if it had not gained air superiority in the theater of operations, not even if it were to attract attention, the convoy was close enough to be attacked.
On February 25, the S-400 shot down a Su-27 fighter from Ukraine at 150 km reaching a world record, the S-400 was positioned in Belarus, the fighter was shot down near Kiev, the fighter was piloted by the colonel of Ukrainian Air Force Alexander Oksanchenko, according to US reports. Other Su-27s and MiG-29s were lost in air battles with Russian Su-35S fighters over Zhytomyr (western Ukraine) on 5 March and three more fighters on 6 March.
This is what we can see as fait accompli based on concrete evidence in ground-to-air and air-to-air kills from the Ukraine war in the first two weeks of the war. Some facts of these kills were before the publication of the text, others were after the publication, but there is enough evidence to verify that the RuAF actually achieved some degree of air superiority between the 28th and 4th of March.
We have some other evidence for this, although it was after the article was published.
The Pentagon said on March 11 that it believes Russia is carrying out around 200 sorties every day, although many never enter Ukrainian airspace. You can't really know this if we don't get the public data of such a claim, the problem is that if Russian aircraft were not entering Ukrainian airspace, it would mean that the stockpile of guided munitions was not at its historic low, a claim which has been taking place since the first week of the war. The Pentagon only went to affirm this claim of low PGM stockpiles on March 21, Pentagon officials said that Russia has started to rely on more “stupid bombs” rather than precision-guided munitions, which they say may be happening. because Russia may be short on precision-guided weaponry, the claim came nearly a month after the war began.
In the same period, the claim was that Ukraine was carrying out around 5 to 10 sorties daily, although there was no evidence for this, the confirmation only materialized at the end of March, when a pilot from Ukraine confirmed, and ironically claimed what the author claims about the RuAF to use the aircraft in limited missions in the Ukrainian airspace, always at low altitudes and sometimes at night to minimize losses, this was already true since the beginning of the war, when more than 70 aircraft were grounded by the precision missile attacks, apart from the air-to-air and surface-to-air kills, the air strikes on Zhytomyr and across western Ukraine with impunity.
What I mean?
The definition of air superiority is "the degree of control of the air by a force that permits the conduct of its operations, at a given time and place, without prohibitive air interference and missile threats". Note that the concept is linked to air control in order to avoid prohibitive interference in operations. That is, the concept refers to an effect and not to the means, tactics or doctrine to be used to obtain it. It does not speak of total or partial destruction of aeronautical infrastructure, air and anti-aircraft assets of opponents. And even less that this destruction must be carried out by aircraft, bombs and missiles. Therefore, and by deduction from the concept itself, due to quantitative and qualitative asymmetries between the contenders' means, they can be used in various ways to obtain the desired effect.
RuAF achieved air superiority without carrying out complex air operations and this was plausible evidence as early as early March when the article was written.
The briefing's primary page was deleted due to Western censorship.
The alternative is:
Or the most complete:
colonel-general-sergei-rudskoy/
Ukrainian War Developments
Footage of the air assault on Gostomel on the first day of the war. I think I might have seen this footage before because I felt amazed by the scale and the balls on VDV, good that the footage surfaced again. Still brave though it may be, it's still best if you do SEAD properly rather than...
www.sinodefenceforum.com
Another future territory of the Russian Federation I see. Biden is right in a way.
Russia at this rate will go back to the borders it had in the XIXth century.
The Finns seem to lack a proper understanding of their own history.
As is, If I was Russia I would probably already have issued an ultimatum for the Finns to remove their air launched cruise missiles from service.
The chances russia would be able to seize a NATO member country is zero, and in all likelihood that chances will keep getting smaller for the foreseeable future. Russia is not returning to her czarist borders over any time horizon over which reasonable predictions can be made. Don’t let emotionalism cloud the fact that Russia was seen as a weak country in terms of capability and potential before the war, and revealed itself to be weaker in those respects than it seemed by the war. The fact that it didn’t knuckled under, and may yet destroy Ukraine to keep it out of NATO does not make its capabilities greater or stronger. It merely averted a extremely bad potential outcome at great cost. It still started the war weaker than it seemed, and will still emerge weaker than it started.
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I think they're getting higher. Americans won't all die in a nuclear war for Poland or Lithuanians, no matter how much they tell you they would.
No need to seize it. Russia can just transform it to a radioactive wasteland so that later Russian generations can research how radioactivity affects local ecosystems and human activity...
If they nuke west of them... Russian will receive most of the fallout because of dominant wind. Not sure if it's wise. Maybe a couple of low yield or neutron bomb to decimate troops concentrations but not more. If the Russians start to be desperate with the loss, it's a risk in Ukraine too, the granary of the world turning even more radioactive... That war is a freaking mess and it could turn a lot worst.
Filling a train with ammonium nitrate and letting him go exploding near a target could be a thing. A cargo ship near the beach of Odessa with 20 000 tons of Ammonium nitrate would rinse Odessa oblast in one shot more or less. Thing can turn really ugly.
Or maybe not responding at all.
Like historically, has there been any concern inside Russia about Finland ?
Like historically, has there been any concern inside Russia about Finland ?
That is the kind of attitude that is really dangerous to have. The Finns seem to have drank the kool-aid.
Why do you think the Russians did not send their whole army into Ukraine? Their military actually went into this conflict with the notion they might have to fight NATO too.
Stalin started the Winter War because he wanted Finland to give up part of its territory next to the Soviet border so St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) got out of the range of Finnish artillery. Before the war started he tried to negotiate land swaps. When those failed the war started. Yet today, what do you see? Finland gets air launched cruise missiles with 500km range and wants to join NATO. Good luck.
The Finns forget they had a military garrison in their territory for over a decade to ensure compliance after the Continuation War. But if the Russians went in this time I doubt they would just settle for neutrality.
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