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Russia-Ukraine War - News and Developments PART 2

If this moves war to closer one more step I am glad about a strategic town lost and the morale boost to the victors (and depletion to the losers).

Now what happened to the 'Iran is so supreme that Ukraine will go to its knees when its without power' mindset.

Ukraine without power, Kherson taken, Ukraine's not shuddering about moped drone attacks (and managed to project operations). Ukraine's no more neutered with Iranian greatness any more than Israelis have been. Iran is just good at getting one set of muslims killed against another. Thats what they excel it (other than beating their own teenagers to submission).

Or may be the people took my suggestion and did start another thread and I need to join that.

Those drones only terrorize Ukrainian civilians.
 
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The only way to tackle HIMARs was to have better intelligence on when HIMARs was used, to pointpoint those lunach locations and then send the Russian Airforce on a seek and destroy within a defined area - and to also accept losses in achieving the destruction of HIMARS. However, Russia was not prepared to put at risk its airforce anymore than it did and that has turned the tide of the war.

NATO/USAF/RAF did this so perfectly in Gulf War 1 - when going after scud launchers in the 1990's - but 30 years laters - Russia still cannot do the same thing !!!!! Shocking ...
The only way to target HIMARS is like any other competent military would do, hunt them in the air, as they are too mobile for any ground unit to counter, and they are too long range for any artillery. But to do that, you need to suppress your enemy air and air defence, and then you need to blind your enemy own intelligence. That mean you will need air superiority, which is something the Russian never has,

Maybe Russia didn't think HIMARS is going to make such an impact? On paper, they should have the stuff to take care of HIMARS, that's why when the US first sent them in, the US themselves are quite sceptical as for what they can achieve. And I did wrote back in June that Russia need to hunt the HIIMARS down in the air but even back then you can see their air power is more or less neutralised at that point, which I believe they never even tried to hunt them down.

This is a giant daisy chain actually, RuAF failed to gain Air Superiority, it leads to them failing to take care of Ukrainian Air Defence, then lead to Ukrainian manage to send up Air Recon asset, either drone or gunship, and leads to rampant HIMARS strike and that leads to their Fix Wing and Chopper cannot fly CAP mission for their ground troop, that ultimately leads to HIMARS strike, rinse and repeat. That's got them losing this war.
 
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The only way to target HIMARS is like any other competent military would do, hunt them in the air, as they are too mobile for any ground unit to counter, and they are too long range for any artillery. But to do that, you need to suppress your enemy air and air defence, and then you need to blind your enemy own intelligence. That mean you will need air superiority, which is something the Russian never has,

Maybe Russia didn't think HIMARS is going to make such an impact? On paper, they should have the stuff to take care of HIMARS, that's why when the US first sent them in, the US themselves are quite sceptical as for what they can achieve. And I did wrote back in June that Russia need to hunt the HIIMARS down in the air but even back then you can see their air power is more or less neutralised at that point, which I believe they never even tried to hunt them down.

This is a giant daisy chain actually, RuAF failed to gain Air Superiority, it leads to them failing to take care of Ukrainian Air Defence, then lead to Ukrainian manage to send up Air Recon asset, either drone or gunship, and leads to rampant HIMARS strike and that leads to their Fix Wing and Chopper cannot fly CAP mission for their ground troop, that ultimately leads to HIMARS strike, rinse and repeat. That's got them losing this war.

BTW, ATACMS cannot be precisely detected by CB radar because it executes a zigzag maneuver to fool them. I wonder if the GMLRS does the same.
 
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the Battle of Bakhmut proved one thing, Ukrainians are very tough fighters and Russian threw everything they had at them, cluster bombs and phosphors bombs everything but nukes

they never managed to break the Bakhmut-Soledar-Siversk line it held against deadly Russian attacks

had they broke through they would have taken Kramatrosk and Slovansk

then the entire Northern area was open to Russian counter attack and no way Ukraine could swing South to Kherson

I think Battle of Bakhmiut reminded the Russian that even on land and with everything they could not defeat Ukraine, this is disheartening for Russia

Ukraine avenged the deaths of so many poor unarmed Syrians who were abandoned by the World and were left to the mercy of the Russians

Ukrainians and Afghans taught Russian a lesson they will never forget
Bakhmut ceased to be a problem for the Ukrainian when the Ukrainian countered in Izyum, because they took back all the land between Lyman and Siversky in one single stroke, and that was late September. You can't assault Bakhmut head on from Popasna Direction, you need either a northern hook or a southern hook to cover both road. Russia never had that, they pressed as far as Siversky, and that's it, they now try to pass on from Paviika and Opytne in the South, but fat chance they are going to do it.

What the Ukrainian do is, they rotate 3 Brigade in the area, and keep grinding the Russian all in the while they know they can't lose it. Russia lost a lot of men and equipment in Bakhmut, yes so did Ukrainian, but Ukrainian would just redeploy unit from other front and keep rotating the 3 Brigades to wind down the Russian, on the other hand, Russian have no rotation, they can feed new troop in the already decimated unit and keep fighting, which is what they did essentially. That's not going to work.

Many analysts believe the Withdraw from Kherson is to pull those 20,000 troops in Kherson north into Bakhmut to make a difference. The problem is, while Russia can pull 20,000 exhausted troop from Kherson, depends on how Ukraine wants to tackle south of Dnieper. They can take half the force out (Which would be 8 Brigade) or all but 2 brigade, which will leave 14 brigade free to move East. 14 Brigade is about 60,000 men...as each Brigade are aroudn 4500 men. Or they can just move unit from Odessa and Kryvyi Rih and redploy the entire line toward the East.

Kherson OSINT Map.jpg


This is OSINT map on Kherson DIrection as of Nov 10, each unit with a "X" marked above is a Brigade, this show 15 Brigade in the Kherson immediate area. But then again this is OSINT, this will not show everything, most likely the reserve force hidden somewhere.

BTW, ATACMS cannot be precisely detected by CB radar because it executes a zigzag maneuver to fool them. I wonder if the GMLRS does the same.
Think it's the same, they have a "choatic" mid-course which mean you cannot estimate where that GMLRS come from.
 
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the Russian superiority was in its artillery and artillery only

for artillery they need huge logistics and warehouses to store the millions of rounds of ammunition and these have to be brought right up to the front line

I dont think Russia would have ever ran out of the 122mm rounds they have way too many shells

however the HIMARS devastated the warehouses and ammo dumps holding these rounds, I believe Ukraine has hit over 150 Russian ammo dumps and basically that put the Russian artillery out of action and they basically lost their entire stock of shells

  1. Yes, people now believe Russians started preparing to leave when they understood that their last firebases are about to be taken out.
  2. They lost their last few firebases to massive HiMARS strike 4 days ago.
  3. They certainly had few 300 mm, and 8 8 inch guns left, but no longer enough to stave off assaults
  4. Their small calibre artillery was no good. Their small artillery was only trained for fire support on sub-regimental level
  5. And yes, Russians have ran out of their 122mm stocks, and they cannot replenish now, as original Soviet 122mm factory was in Ukraine
 
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HiMARSes sent 18 rockets on it yesterday. We will see the results once the ground dries up.

This is what took out their last firebases.

I only noticed now that they launched HiMARS in broad daylight then. That' something I never seen before them doing.

They must have been acting on a very short notice once they got intel of their positions.
 
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Russia has some very good generals and they are competent

Russian are not stupid people they are very tough people and brave fighters you dont become the largest nation on earth by giving up land these guys know how to take and hold land

but Ukrainians are schooled in the same subject, Ukraine is fighting their own brothers here, they know what Russia will do next

plus the Ukrainians have one thing Russia does not have, REAL TIME INTELLIGENCE

as soon as a Russian convoy leaves its barracks the AWACS and Surveillance rely this info to the Ukrainians on the ground and with weapons like HIMARS the results are devastating

the amount of intel flights flying around Ukraine is insane, Sweden and UK have flown non-stop since Feb add to that NATO AWACS and USAF brings in more flight hours then whole of Europe combined they know exactly where each BTG where it is moving and what is in each ground

Russian are a 1980s army using brute force, the jets like Su35 and Su34 dont even have targeting pods to try high altitude bombing they still fly Mig31 over Belarus to hit inside Ukraine and the Mig31 is not a joke

T90 and Terminators running into forest with no infantry

backward tactics by local commanders
Ukraine is in some way like Vietnam. Much smaller and weaker, but culturally we are the same people. As Putin puts it: Russia and Ukraine people share the same cultural space. we know how the China thinking, believing, doing and based on that we predict their actions. We don’t beat them by brute force but intelligent.
As for Putin that’s biggest strategic mistake ever in full invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine will beat Russia to dust. There is no way out for Putin.
 
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@jhungary i thought about your strategic idea to level kherson earlier.

I think ukraine has showing incredible restraint not targeting city/village centres.
From moral perspective this is ofcourse great (and make sense cause they want to liberate not level them) but this also meant that Russia could hardly really push their their “dombass genocide” “nazi killing our russian civilians” lies. Even to internal audience.
 
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@jhungary i thought about your strategic idea to level kherson earlier.

I think ukraine has showing incredible restraint not targeting city/village centres.
From moral perspective this is ofcourse great (and make sense cause they want to liberate not level them) but this also meant that Russia could hardly really push their their “dombass genocide” “nazi killing our russian civilians” lies. Even to internal audience.
I will say, it has been Russian aim to garner domestic support to continue on with this war, not the Ukrainian. Not saying the Ukrainian can get away with more destruction on their own city, but there are "Allowed" to devastate their own city in a way that it will not get their own population riled up. So if they need to quickly move into a place, they can afford to level it and move in, they can't do it many times but there are leeway there.

Russian on the other hand, needs every support they can get to keep this war going, it's one thing they are attacking and they can shield their civilian from the horror of war but they can't cover the fact that their soldier is not coming home, family member are going to know and they can't really suffer 50k death a year, which mean if the war drag on, the propaganda side in Russia is a lot more concerning than the Ukrainian.

Russia would therefore need to focus on how this war is clean, doing humanitarian works, things that justify the number of losses to a point, what Ukrainian did to their own don't really sell to the Russian people, it has less of a value to domestic propaganda. Ukrainian on the other hand, can spin what happen on their own soil to whatever they want, they were attacked, Ukrainian want the Russian gone, want the war to end, and how it ends does not really concern Ukrainian that much, plus I don't think Ukrainian would digest Russian propaganda that much anyway.
 
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