Ukraine 2021(?)

[blazejos]

Finally found descriptions table on Russian vehicles

[MarkSheppard]

Revised my original scenario.

Changes:

1.) Victory locations now on map.

2.) Ukrainian ATGM teams standardized around 35 Experience, 65 morale -- remember that this is Day 1 of the war -- they haven't had experience in firing lots of ATGMs...yet (rare, and expensive for Ukraine before war.).

3.) Pre-programmed timed Russian barrages collapsed to a single pre-game preparatory bombardment, after which the complete artillery setup is available for Russian player.

4.) Tinkered a bit with Ukrainian reinforcement timing.

5.) revised scenario name and text below:

Saint Javelin, Feb 2022*
*
Russia Assault*
_____vs.*
Ukraine Defend*
*
Date: February 24, 2022*
Location: Ovruch, Ukraine*
Type: Semi-Hypothetical*
*
Novices should pick the Ukrainian side.*
Experienced players may enjoy the tactical challenges the 155th NIB is facing.*
*
===========================*
*
Following the declaration of a "Special Military Operation" by Vladimir Putin, Russian forces along the Ukrainian border attacked on the heels of ballistic and cruise missile strikes on key Ukrainian installations.*
*
This semi-hypothetical scenario is set several hours into the "Special Military Operation." The Russian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade, having pushed past Ukrainian Border Guards several hours earlier, reaches the first lines of major Ukrainian resistance just as the sun begins to rise.*
*
Here, the Russian Marines' motto of "There, Where We Go, There is Victory!" would be tested.*
*
DESIGNER'S NOTES:*
*
1.) If you're playing as the Russians: Dismount your infantry early and often and fire at everything, even if you only have a 4 percent chance of a hit -- the suppression will eventually build up.*
*
2.) I originally released an early version of this scenario as a "what-if" on 3 February 2022 with the following pretext:*
*
"With the closing of the Beijing Winter Olympics on 20 February 2022, there was no longer any reason for Russia to maintain the pretexts behind their buildup along the border with Ukraine. Accordingly, at midnight on 22 February 2022, Operation Polina was launched."*
*
Little did I know that per captured Russian documents recovered by the Ukrainians that the Russians had finalized their plans and transmitted them on 18 February 2022. The original invasion date was 22 February 2022 and the "Special Military Operation" was to last 15 days, ending 6 March.

[MarkSheppard]

The seeming Russian incompetence in this war may be due to a simple factor:

Corruption + Conscripts.

Almost all of the Russian logistics forces are conscripts, due to the proscription of using conscripts in "active" front line positions due to "Soldier's Mothers'" Groups.

This means that the logistics guys for the last four months have been selling stuff in the assumption it was an exercise.

(before the invasion, there were stories of Russian troops selling diesel fuel, etc to local villagers)

According to Russian plans captured by the Ukrainians, many Russian staff officers found out about this being an invasion on February 18th, with the target date being February 22nd.

That's not a lot of time to fix fuel (and spare parts) stocks depleted over 4 months of buildup by ill paid conscripts doing conscript things.

Additionally, many of their wheeled vehicles may be suffering from tire rot:

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/sta...64245250002944

This is a thread that will explain the implied poor Russian Army truck maintenance practices based on this photo of a Pantsir-S1 wheeled gun-missile system's right rear pair of tires below & the operational implications during the Ukrainian mud season.

For the sin of being the new guy, I was the DCMA quality auditor in charge of the US Army's FMTV "vehicle exercise program" at the contractor manufacturing them from the Mid-1990's to the mid-2000's Then we got more new guys.

Short form: Military trucks need to be turned over and moved once a month for preventative maintenance reasons.

In particular you want to exercise the central tire air inflation system (CTIS) to see if lines have leaks or had insect/vermin nests blocking the system.

One of the biggest reasons for the repositioning, per TACOM logistic Representatives, was that direct sunlight ages truck tires.

The repositioning of Trucks in close parking prevents a lot of this sun rotting and cycling the CTIS keeps the tire sidewalls supple.

When you leave military truck tires in one place for months on end. The side walls get rotted/brittle such that using low tire pressure setting for any appreciable distance will cause the tires to fail catastrophically via rips.

(video)

Now look at the same Pantsir-S1 tire sidewalls after the Ukrainians tried to tow or drive it out of the mud.

The right rear tire fell apart because the rips in it were too big for the CTIS to keep aired up.

No one exercised that vehicle for 1 year.

There is a huge operational level implication in this. If the Russian Army was too corrupt to exercise a Pantsir-S1. They were too corrupt to exercise the trucks & wheeled AFV's now in Ukraine.

The Russians simply cannot risk them off road during the Rasputitsa/Mud season.

And there is photographic evidence of this.

There are 60(+) Russian army trucks crowded & parked on this raised road bed to avoid the fate of the mud-bogged Pantsir-S1.

Given the demonstrated levels of corruption in truck maintenance. There is no way in h--l that there are enough tires in the Russian army logistical system.

So their wheeled AFV/truck park is as road bound as Russian Army columns were in the 1st Russo-Finnish War.

What that means is that as long as and where ever the Spring Rasputitsa is happening. The Russian Army attack front is three wheeled AFV's wide.

When the Ukrainians can block the road with ATGM destroyed vehicles. They can move down either side of the road like Fins in 1939 destroying Russian truck columns.

The Crimea is a desert and the South Ukrainian coastal areas are dryer. So we are not seeing this there.

But elsewhere the Russians have a huge problem for the next 4-to-6 weeks.

https://twitter.com/KarlMuth/status/1499185800172474371

Bit of a tire expert here. Those aren't Soviet-era heavy truck radials. Chinese military tires, and I believe specifically the Yellow Sea YS20. This is a tire I first encountered in Somalia and Sudan; it's a bad Chinese copy of the excellent Michelin XZL military tire design.

To make things worse, we have rations on Russian vehicles that expired in ... 2015.

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/st...21431079735297

This is my theory.

A significant fraction of the vehicles used in the invasion were pulled from supply depots, similar to US REFORGER exercises.

When those vehicles were placed into the depots sometime around 2010-2011; they were stocked with a full equipment/MTOE loadout, which included food rations.

At some point, those rations expired; which isn't a bad thing -- they do that; and a rational supply depot clerk would make it part of the "checklist" to check the rations every year.

Either that, or when the vehicles were pulled out for the "exercise", the expired rations should have been replaced with fresh ones.

This...didn't happen.

Another issue is flat out corruption.

I've seen it claimed that out of $1T spent on military modernization in Russia, about $120-200M actually made it to their intended targets.

That's an outlandish claim, but not so much afterr reports of Russian troops using unencrypted commercial radios in the Ukraine.

The best explanations for why the Russians would be insane enough to use unencrypted commercial Baofeng radios in a major military operation are two:

1.) The money for the good tactical comms was diverted away over the years at various command elements.

2.) A lot of the troops being used are from the Far Eastern Republics (aka Mongolians), with obsolete equipment such as T-72As and T-72Bs.

All theories end up at the same place:

When the higher ups were told that yes, this "Exercise" on the Ukrainian border is actually an invasion, they had to hurriedly order commercial radios to bring all their units up to (or close to) full TO&E levels, since there was no time (and insufficient warstocks) to equip everyone with the latest encrypted radios that are standard issue for top line units.

[Karagin]

Or the Russians are using this to test out tactics and junior officers, along with cleaning out older equipment.

The Russians like to play games, they know no one really takes them seriously, and they know that given their performance in other conflicts since the 90s, NO ONE TAKES THEM SERIOUSLY. So all we keep seeing are these glowing reports of the Ukrainians doing well, but all we see on the flip side is reports of idiotic Russian moves or their tanks being stolen or this or that. Never do we see anything that shows them in another light or viewpoint.

So I don't buy the propaganda coming out of the area from either side. Recall no army does everything right all the time, and given how easy it is to sit on the sidelines and judge we are all seeing things from a point of view of not being there.

I prefer facts, so far very little of that has come out of the region, and given that the American media and political parties are playing their own spin and games with things, I doubt we will ever get the facts.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Karagin

''''''''''given that the American media and political parties are playing their own spin and games with things, I doubt we will ever get the facts.

I can only imagine the laughter in the Kremlin when they watched Condoleezza Rice condemn Russia for invading a sovereign nation.

The irony is pretty thick

As for spin, I have watched one MSNBC "commentator" blame Trump for everything going on when it was Trump that put Sanctions on Nord Stream 2 in 2019 and it was Biden who removed them in May 2021.



"The first casualty of war is truth"

[DRG]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ukr...rces-1.6372259

Escalating fodder for the propaganda industry on both sides

"Brave Foreign Volunteers!!" <<>>" Murderous Foreign contract killers!!"

Potato-Potatoe

I will give the guy credit for putting it all on the line. First against ISIS and now in Ukraine

Don

[Karagin]

Originally Posted by DRG

I can only imagine the laughter in the Kremlin when they watched Condoleezza Rice condemn Russia for invading a sovereign nation.

The irony is pretty thick

As for spin, I have watched one MSNBC "commentator" blame Trump for everything going on when it was Trump that put Sanctions on Nord Stream 2 in 2019 and it was Biden who removed them in May 2021.



"The first casualty of war is truth"

Didn't Biden back the 2014 coup in Ukraine?

Yes, truth is always lost in a war.

Try explaining to folks how infrastructure like powerplants and such are legitimate targets and you will get branded all kinds of names. I was recently kicked out of a history group for citing the Laws of Land Warfare on how structures lose any special protection IF one side or the other uses them as part of a defense or to house military equipment.

[DRG]

Hows this for going from the sublime to the rediculous

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ed-on-tax-form

Ukraine authorities say seized Russian tanks don’t need to be declared on tax form
Corruption-fighting body urges citizens to ‘continue to defend the motherland’ while easing any concerns about ‘significant changes in the property status’

[Pibwl]

Originally Posted by Pibwl

Add Polish Piorun MANPADS of course. Poland also gave 60 mm mortars, but it's not much improvement to OOB.

(Edit: some sources say Grom MANPADS. There is no clear confirmation so far. Piorun is a development of Grom, also known as Grom-M)

Piorun is confirmed - here is YT tutorial (Ukrainian only, though) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW5TISE8_w0
A point of interest is attached ID key corresponding to missile's number, and a keyboard with modes:
(upper row) aircraft/helicopter, UAV, rocket,
(middle row) clear weather, clouds, night.

And here is a result of probably Piorun's action: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1354173825098926

Ukraine authorities say seized Russian tanks don’t need to be declared on tax form

With tanks I think it's a joke, and authorities appeal to report tanks in order to recover and rehaul them. There are already photos of GAZ Tigr in some repair plant. But I guess Kamaz truck might be more luring

BTW, I recalled a dialogue: The Russians stopped with a fuel truck by our shop to rob food. While they were inside, we stole their truck

[Karagin]

Seems that Germany sent a bunch of duds to Ukraine, many of the MPADs are not working, thing is they sent old Igla MPADs, 700 of which have failed to fire. Along with moldy ammo for AKs and other WP weapons. I guess they didn't sell off all that old East German stock of weapons and ammo. But hey it's the thought that counts...