This seems to be the clear path forward. If Ukraine ends up attacking into Crimea, they'll have to do it through the Melitopol path. Unless Ukraine has some magical way of instantly transporting huge numbers of Ukrainian soldiers across the Dnipro, it seems like that part of the front is going to become static for now. I imagine this will open up a number of forces on both sides however as it will be easier for both sides to defend the Dnipro with fewer troops. I don't see Ukraine making much headway in the south anytime soon as it gets reinforced with all of these soldiers from Kherson, but there might be a path up in the north.

That would be good, but any UAF attacking force would have a long, exposed flank and the Dnipro bisecting their MSR (we've seen how that impeded Russian resupply operations during the successful Ukrainian counter-offensive); the Russians, meanwhile, would have the interior lines of supply.

This seems the most likely next phase.

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The Ukrainians of course are already on the Eastern side of the Dnipro, since Russia never took the North of Zaporizhia oblast (including Zaporizhia itself) or indeed the Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Hence, the Ukrainian forces are now in the comfortable position to either shift their forces in Kherson to Donbas or cross the Dnipro at Kherson, which is risky, because it's a wide river and the enemy is entrenched. However the enemy is also on the run and his forces consist mainly of untrained and inexperienced mobilized men.

A third option would be, to move through Zaporizhia oblast and cut into Melitopol in the South, where partisans have been fighting the Russians for months now. This would cut of southern Kherson and Crimea from Donbas and Southern Russia (Rostov-on-Don). Since the Kerch bridge will likely be down for month to come, that would necessitate to supply Crimea by sea, which likely means that support in any meaningful way is out of the question.

Personally, I think that the Ukrainians will want to pressure the Russians on as many fronts as possible at the same time, keeping them guessing on what happens next. If the Russians don't rally their troops soon in southern Kherson, their entrenchments will be useless and the Ukrainians can cross the river to establish a bridge head either at Nova Kakhovka or across from Nikopol.

Either way, the Russians are screwed and have been for a long time now. But the Kremlin has no way out. Basically, I think the Kremlin power circles will keep throwing their male population under the bus for as long as the current power structure remains in place.

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories...de641cf64bd375

The Russians have few good troops left and even less equipment to reequip these forces. Melitopol seems the way to go for the Ukrainians I think, unless they assess the situation of the Russians on the other side of the Dnipro as so dire that crossing the river seems viable. I lack information on that, obviously.

But taking Melitopol would cut of southern Kherson and Crimea from the rest of Russian GLOCs and put the UAF in a position to encircle Russian forces or hit them in the rear (again) as they flee into Crimea. By then, Crimea would be yet another dead end, however, since the Kerch bridge remains out of operation. Also, taking Melitopol would allow Ukrainian forces to strengthen it's forces in Donbas.

This winter will bring a lot of action and as far as I read it, the Russians don't have enough winter equipment for their forces. Oh, the irony.

I don't disagree at all, but targeting Melitopol is such an obvious move right now that I have to imagine Russia is reinforcing that direction as we speak, likely with troops from the Kherson Oblast (there and in the east near Bakhmut).

Some other observations -

• This is the first time in the war that the front has become just a static line without the Dnipro cutting it in half. and it's also reduced the length of the front line significantly. Any movement from either side at this point is going to be taxing that side's supply lines heavily while the other side will be free to respond largely without impediment.
• Ukraine is likely suffering more losses than any of us actually know. Paired with them having a far smaller military than Russia at the start of the invasion means that they have to play it much more conservatively with any attacks.
• Attacking Melitopol or pushing south will be a really hard campaign. Russia has had months to reinforce the direction, add mines and defensive fortifications, etc. Ukraine would need to have a resounding opportunity there to try for it since it would be such a big risk to their own units getting surrounded/cut off.
• Russia moving forces from Kherson east is going to increase pressure on their already taxed logistics hubs, and reduce the number of targets for HIMARs, which will only help Ukraine.
• Totally agreed that Russia is in big trouble with regard to winter approaching. If the rumors are true about their lack of cold weather gear, the first cold storm of the season is going to see Russians getting frostbite and taken out of action. This could definitely open some opportunities for Ukraine, especially once the ground freezes.

Overall, I see the war as being like a boxing match - an old heavyweight champ against a spry young fighter. The younger boxer took a couple of mean hits in the beginning of the fight, but has since been guarding, trying to wear the older fighter out. He's patient and smart - jabbing to the stomach, and then baiting the older fighter with feints and ducking in with heavy hits anytime the champ makes a mistake. This preserves his own energy while sapping the older boxer's energy. The young fighter's already won on points at this stage of the fight, but the older champ is still holding out hope for a stray knockout.

In this analogy, I don't see things changing a whole lot in the immediate future. Zelensky has done a really admirable job of restraining his own desires to push harder and risk his own forces on unnecessary assaults. I think Ukraine continues to hold for now and keeps hitting Russian logistics nodes while keeping its defenses tight, and then strikes hard when Russia makes mistakes. In short, anyone hoping for a big sudden push from Ukraine anytime in the near future is probably in for a disappointment. But once winter hits and parts of the Russian front begin to fall apart from lack of morale/winter clothing/supplies, we might see some great movement. Since Russia seems most intent in the east (that's where they claim they're making the most gains) they'll probably continue to reinforce the east to the detriment of the other directions -> future Ukrainian pushes will likely be up in the north near Svatove, or like you say, down near Melitopol. Personally I think we'll see a hard drive for Svatove first, but I'd be happy to be wrong if its in the south.

Between regular military units and the Territorial Defense Forces, Ukraine is pretty rapidly approaching a million uniformed personnel. That's at least in the ballpark of what Russia can mobilize without a formal declaration of war, and might well exceed what Russia can actually deploy to Ukraine, even if neither can completely ignore their other neighbors. The TDFs are light motorized infantry, which aren't really suited for offensive operations without significant regular army support, but they can hold territory to free up other units for offensives.

They did have a far smaller military at the start of the war, but they also had a lot of veterans with recent experience because of their policy of rotating units in and out of the Donbas. There were reports that recruiters were being bribed to take people into units that had already met their recruiting quotas, the opposite of Russia where large numbers of conscription-aged men are fleeing the country to avoid service.

Russia does have a vast number of untapped reservists, but given how they've been scraping the bottom of the barrel to re-equip from recent losses and how they've re-formed training units into front-line forces to replace manpower losses, how they would train and equip those reservists would be a mystery even if they had the political will to declare war to make them eligible for call-up. Last week Ukraine captured a T-62 Obr.1967, which is pretty much as old as the name suggests (the Obr.1972 was the next model). No fittings for ERA (1983), no active protection system (1983), too old to have a laser rangefinder (1975) or even a pintle-mounted gun for air defense (1972). By this point I half-expect the next set of replacements to show up with Berdan rifles and tachankas with Maxims because they've already issued everything newer that wasn't looted for parts to sell on the black market.

Russia's still dangerous, to be sure, but their infantry and armor are showing severe shortfalls in capability, with the dangers coming from artillery (both tube and rocket/missile) and air support (both drone and crewed). If those can be suppressed through anti-air and counterbattery provisioning, I think it will largely mitigate Russia's advantages and allow Ukraine to exploit their advantages in having forces with better training and better morale.

One, maybe two stray missiles landing in Poland... not good. If it turns out they were fired by Russia, it'll be largely irrelevant that they were off-target. If they were Ukrainian ADA munitions, much of the world will still make the point that Ukraine wouldn't need to fire anti-missile missiles if they weren't being attacked by Russia.

Hello, Article 4. With Article 5 waiting quietly nearby.

Even beside the recent news that the missiles were likely Ukrainian in origin (which I'm only half convinced is true in any case), I don't think NATO has any interest in escalation over what was, in all likelihood, an accident.

I saw an interesting analysis last night that the GPS coordinates of the explosion in Poland, when reversed, would target a train junction near Lviv, which could also be a potential explanation for what took place. If it happens again on the other hand, well let's just hope it doesn't happen again.

Which way does the wind blow?
 

I wonder what this [errant?] strike on Polish soil- regardless of who launched the offending missiles- will do to Poland's resolve to continue its support of Ukraine. It could go either way. This incident could either strengthen Poland's resolve (now we're really in this together!) or it could weaken it (why continue to support a combatant next door if it's leading to collateral damage here at home?). The Polish government is putting on a brave face, ATM. In a democracy, however, popular sentiment usually prevails in the end.

Does anyone have a sense of popular opinion in Poland re the war?

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I know nothing about what the people of Poland currently think of the war next door, but I do know that Poles in general remain DEEPLY p*ssed off regarding their treatment by the Soviet Union since 1939. And successive Polish governments in recent times seem to take military readiness pretty seriously.

It looks like the UK is sending more air defense aid to Ukraine in addition to another US military aid package. While neither side can control the air the additional assets make it more risky for Ivan to fly anything other than cruise missiles over Ukraine.

And hopefully neuter Russia's cruise missiles at the same time. Ukraine will be much better off if Russia can't keep terrorizing civilians with cruise missiles.

I'm curious what the 100+ anti-aircraft guns will end up being, since I think the last new piece of AAA adopted by the British Army was the QF 5.25-inch Mark II in 1942. There were a few prototypes of systems after that, but they introduced missiles for land-based air defense in the late 1950s and never looked back.

AAA
 

I can't imagine what AAA would be either unless the UK is purchasing guns from a third party to ship to Ukraine-a run of Swiss or Swedish Oerlikons? Surely nothing captured from Argentina would still be held.

Wonder if quantities of Blowpipe missiles are still in inventory that could be reconditioned and fitted with new batteries? The Blowpipe had a questionable reputation in Afghanistan but seemed perfectly good elsewhere.

Ma Deuce?? (L111A1 in UK)

If that particular term "anti-aircraft" was used by anyone in politics or media rather than the military, I could see it.

This may be of interest to you

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...inians-history

Trickle of Tanks
 

Thanks for that piece, Rainbow. That's reassuring. I was worried that Poland's far right would be sympathetic to Putin's brand of populist authoritarianism.

As I watched yet another video clip of UAF ATGM teams engaging in a game of Russian tank turret toss, it struck me that I've only seen one or two videos- and those from early in the war- of more than a couple of Russian tanks operating together- it's almost always singletons or pairs. Also, in said clips (I've watched at least 100 by now, I'm sure), Russian armor is never supported by dismounted infantry.

Both are big tactical errors, and are assuredly big contributors to Russian AFV losses. I keep wondering why the Russians continue to deploy their armor piecemeal. Perhaps all those [Cold War] years of imagining masses of Soviet tanks and IFVs swarming across the fields of the Fulda Gap have conditioned me resulting in cognitive dissonance.

By the same token, in the terminal phases of the Twilight War, armor would nearly always be tactically deployed in very small numbers, so that's helpful.

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As I understand it Russian BTGs are very light on actual infantry, some 200 per BTG. If we assume they've got an offensive frontage a few km wide the density of infantry is super low even at full strength.

It seems to me (I'm no expert) that even modest combat losses to a BTG's infantry means they don't have enough men to cover their frontage and spare some to maneuver with the tanks. So tanks might have dismounted infantry in a well coordinated push but most of the time the tanks end up by themselves.

My understanding could of course be way off.

Jack Watling of RUTI isn't sure it's even worthwhile to discuss BTGs any more, that Russia's level of effective unit coordination has devolved down to the company level. If that's accurate, then in addition to the general infantry shortages, there's going to be relatively little sharing of assets of different types, since AFAIK Russia still generally has the old Soviet 3:1 ratio where armor units have 3 of an armored unit size to 1 infantry unit of the same size, and infantry is vice versa.

Assuming they can still do their usual split of the smaller unit, that means a company of tanks might be assigned a platoon of infantry or a company of infantry might get a platoon of tanks, but those platoons still report up to their company leader, not the company leader they're being loaned to. Russia's very hierarchical command structure and lack of promoting initiative among junior officers makes coordination slower and more difficult.

And there are likely still infantry shortages in general, since the small(ish) professional core of the Russian military tends to emphasize more technical roles, and there are probably still motorized rifle platoons where you've got 3 BMPs and only enough men to have 4-5 dismounts when accounting for the fact that the infantry platoon provides the IFV crews. So you might end up with a tank company of 10 tanks having their loaned platoon of infantry being 3 BMPs with their crews and a half dozen guys who actually fight on foot.

Going Solo
 

sThanks. That helps explain the lack of infantry support.

I'm still baffled why Russian armor so often operates in such small groups. This video, assuming it's real, is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status...C8zb_UsaAsAAAA

That Russian tank is completely on its own. What was it's crew, and unit commander, thinking?

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The thrashing elite Russian airborne units received in Chechnya seems to be all but forgotten. Indeed the Russian high command seems not to have remembered anything since 1943 with regard to planning and logistics. The one consistently Russian "thing" throughout the conflict is flinging artillery hard and heavy at Ukraine.
If supplies are so low Russia is buying ordnance from North Korea things must be incredibly bad. Suppose the plutocrats Putin placed in charge of defense industries supplied a few tens of thousands of shells and pocketed the rest. Wonder how many of the plutocrats and kleptocrats will have unfortunate "accidents"?

An article from the Washington Post about the shellacking one Russian regular brigade has received.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...mated-ukraine/

The Ukraine war is exposing how bad the Soviet/Russian model of war is against forces that are a generation or two ahead in only a few critical areas.

When Russia initially invaded in 2014, they pretty much wiped the floor with the Ukrainians, especially once the active Russian military units got involved.

Of course, Ukraine didn't have much of a military at that point, and the military it had was in disarray due to the Orange Revolution, and it was, at that point, still operating on the old ex-Soviet model.

Post Crimea/Donbas invasion, the US and the UK, among others, sent in quite a lot of technical and training assistance, and, apparently, unlike what happened in Afghanistan and the troops we tried to train there, the Ukrainians took to it seriously.

They also apparently were watching and learning from the Armenia-Azerbaijan war in 2021, where in the previous instance Armenia had pretty decisively defeated Azerbaijan, and then in 2021, with the acquisition of Turkish drones by Azerbaijan, the tables were turned and Armenia lost about 1/3 of it's tanks and artillery in a very short amount of time. This conflict was a real eye opener to the risk and deadliness of drone warfare and the utility of suicide drones.

Russia, on the other hand, wasn't apparently paying attention to anything except for how much vodka they could drink and how much stuff they could steal.

Logistically, they ran out of gas 100 km in (which, anecdotally, was one of my friend's experience with Russian peacekeepers in the former Yugoslavia - they were always running out of gas and having to be rescued). Apparently their plan was for their Spetsnaz teams to take out Zelensky, their armored columns would roll down the highway on a Sunday stroll and refuel at gas stations along the way, and that would be that. And there was no plan B.

When that failed abjectly, and unable to assemble overwhelming force against Ukraine like they did in Georgia, they resorted to the tried and true tactic they used sort of successfully in Syria - flatten everything with air strikes and artillery. Except Ukraine air defense was still effective, and Russian SEAD not so much, and so things devolved into artillery duels and standoff strikes with cruise missiles and - when those ran low - S300s re-programmed for ground attack.

It was reported that Russian artillery expenditure was/is such that they were using in 2 days the equivalent of the entirety of UK's munition stocks...the war has been going on for 10 months. Sort of puts an exclamation point on how all of NATO except for the US was not capable of sustained high tempo warfare even before letting their militaries rot after the end of the Cold War (this point was further proved in the NATO action against Libya, when a multi-nation NATO coalition was dependent on US munitions to attack a third-rate North African military involved in a civil war).

Based on real world Russian performance, I made the comment a while back to some friends that Russia would have trouble dealing with a single US National Guard division. Certainly the NG division would be trained better and equipped better than even the most elite divisional equivalent in Russia. I do believe that Poland would be able to decisively defeat Russia today (and once Poland takes delivery of all the advanced Korean tanks and HIMARS equivalents, they'll be the most powerful non-nuclear land force in Europe).

The Ukraine war has proven pretty decisively that the modern Russian military kinda sucks.

It seems that every time the Russians attempt a "Thunder Run" type, "precision", go-for-the-jugular offensive, they fail miserably. Whenever they try to be like US military of 1991-2003, they just can't pull it off. Poor training, poor command structure, poor leadership, poor logistics, and piss poor operational planning and tactics. When the Russians employ Soviet era (1941-1989) brute force tactics (setting aside their COIN war in Afghanistan), they tend to do fairly well. When they stray from what they know- the old tried and true- they tend to struggle mightily. They make a much better nail-studded club than scalpel.

That said, I'd be careful about drawing conclusions about the Cold War Soviet military based on the current conflict in Ukraine. That would be like comparing the Dallas Cowboys of the 2000s with the Cowboys of the early-to-mid 1990s. Same ownership, but too many other variables in play for it to be true apples-to-apples. I still think a strong case can be made for significantly better Soviet performance in WWIII. So as not to drag this thread OT, I'll leave this here for those who wish to continue a discussion of the hypothetical.

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=897

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Nice recap of the Ukraine debacle in today's Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...-ukraine.html?

There's a ton of caveats in everything ;-).

First off, my comments aren't intended as criticism for the T2K background. After all, it was written in the mid to late 80s, for the most part, and that was really just when the US started pulling away from the USSR in land warfare capabilities (naval and air power, of course, were always probably clearly in the US ledger).

Secondly, some of Russia's current problems are demographic. Russia has 144 million people to the US's 330 million people in 2022. But in 1988, the USSR actually had 2 million more people than the USA did...

Additionally, 2022 Russia has the economic profile of a developing country (exports natural resources, imports manufactured and high tech goods), whereas in the late 80s, it had the economic profile of an industrial economy (importing raw materials like food, exported manufactured goods).

And an obvious difference between today and 30-40 years ago is sheer throw weight and the numbers of men and equipment the USSR could throw at a problem.

But in the real world, their logistical and planning incompetence suggests that they never really had much in the way of non-nuclear offensive capability. I was personally shocked when the Russians did as bad as they did in Ukraine. I thought the Russians had a strong enough military to conventionally defeat the Ukrainians, but didn't think they mobilized enough forces to successfully occupy the country. I was right about the 2nd part, and very, very wrong on the first part.

I wasn't addressing your comments specifically. It was more of a general admonition and excuse to link to another thread. ;)

I think Russia's military failings in Ukraine are largely the result of an overly sanguine Plan A, with no apparent Plan B in place when Plan A failed miserably. By the time the Russians pivoted, they'd lost nearly every advantage other than numerical superiority.

In a late Cold War era land war in Europe scenario (ie T2k), I imagine that the Soviets would have multiple contingency plans in place, all of which had been war-gamed out ahead of time. Likewise, I think their logistics would be a lot more squared away as well. They'd probably still be expecting a rather brief war, but this one on a massive scale, so they'd be prepared to move large quantities of men, fuel, and ammunition over long distances on a fairly broad front from day 1. In the Ukraine War, the Russian thinking was that they'd be in Kiev in less than a week and that, as they say, would be the end of that.

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The reason why I said the USSR probably would have struggled on the offensive...and forgive me, I forget where I read it, but there was some analysis that the USSR and Russia is hugely dependent on rail for their supplies, and they have _aways_ had insufficient truck transport at the divisional and corps level to supply offensive operations very far from an intact railhead (and by very far, I mean more than a hundred km). Interdict a rail supply line, and they logistics basically unravels in a hurry.

Additionally, overall truck capacity is something the USSR didn't have enough of (nor does Russia), which is why they resorted to stealing vehicles very early on in Ukraine and pulling civilian vehicles into military service for supply.

This logistical constraint is something that gets worse the more troops, tanks, and artillery you throw at an opponent. I think this is the fundamental problem holding back a Russian general mobilization right now. More troops doesn't fix their original core problem, which is insufficient logistical support to actually conquer Ukraine (of course, now that they have lost 100k of their best troops dead, and most of their modern AFVs, they have other problems).

Their current strategy of press-ganging men off the streets, handing them a gun and 1,000 rounds of ammunition and having them shoot for a day as their mobilization training is something you would expect to see in Berlin near the Fuhrer bunker at the tail end of the Nazi regime in terms of desperation.

The absurd thing is that this has been known to be their limit for ages. The Soviet army was as much dependent on railways as the Russian is now. Of course, they had more trucks, but in the end, this has been their Achilles heel since Word War Two.

What's new, or let's say: what's more extreme than during the 1980s, is the rampant corruption and the mistrust Putin and his Kremlin junta have in the armed forces. Apparently, the WaPo article above reiterates that well, front line troops were made believe they went into their attack positions for an exercise. As is common in the armed forces of Russia, this meant, they sold off every drip of extra fuel and all extra supplies they were handed on the black market. Then, when they got the order to invade, which only happened on the day of the invasion (!!!) or the night before, they were already tight on fuel, food and spare parts.

Let's not kid ourselves: This alone makes such an endeavor impossible. Even the US and their coalition forces would have had much more difficulties beating Iraq in 2003 (or 1991 for that matter) had they gone in with - let's say - 50 percent POL, food and spare parts than 100 percent or 125 percent. Now, add to that all other Russian problems, logistical limits to around 100 km off the last railhead, bad leadership, unprepared troops, faulty tires from cheap Chinese suppliers and of course: a determined defender, and this absolutely has to end in a disaster.

Also, Russia had - as mentioned - not cared to develop a Plan B. Going into a country of 40 million people with less than 200.000 troops can only work, if you manage that decapitation strike. Otherwise, countries of that size and population, especially concentrated into huge cities, need millions of troops, not hundreds of thousands. The German Wehrmacht went for Kyiv with 544,000 men in 1941 and that attack was separate from the thrust along the coastline of the Black Sea, which was largely conducted y 14 Romanian divisions and supported by the German 11th Army (Operation München) for a further total of more than 325,000 men. And still the Axis forces lost upwards of 100,000 men between late June (start of Operation Barbarossa) and late September.

This is what it boils down to. And that in an invasion, where the enemy - aka the Ukrainian defenders - can be counted on prepping bridges for demolition, plotting artillery strikes on them in advance and have a history of partisan warfare.

Russia never had enough trucks, not even during the 1980s in it's USSR-incarnation. The military system was always rotten, corrupt and ridden by false reports of readiness. These problems just enhanced by orders of magnitude during Putin's kleptocracy, which - unfortunately for the Russian soldiers - came after the complete and total collapse of the Yeltsin era, that already saw new orders of magnitude in corruption.

This is now way to win a war and we saw that already during World War Two. Western and Russian WW2-enthusiasts like to forget the sheer amount of logistical supply the USSR got from the US, UK and Canada. It's not so much the tanks and planes that saved their collectivist butts back then - though these helped a great deal - but the sheer amount of general supply items and especially trucks (which is exactly, what Russia lacks today!). Take this official list: https://ru.usembassy.gov/world-war-i...ion-1941-1945/

• 400,000 jeeps & trucks
• 14,000 airplanes
• 8,000 tractors
• 13,000 tanks
• 1.5 million blankets
• 15 million pairs of army boots
• 107,000 tons of cotton
• 2.7 million tons of petrol products
• 4.5 million tons of food

The British delivered a further:

• 3,000+ Hurricane aircraft
• 4,000+ other aircraft
• 27 naval vessels
• 5,218 tanks (including 1,380 Valentines from Canada)
• 5,000+ anti-tank guns
• 4,020 ambulances and trucks
• 323 machinery trucks (mobile vehicle workshops equipped with generators and all the welding and power tools required to perform heavy servicing)
• 1,212 Universal Carriers and Loyd Carriers (with another 1,348 from Canada)
• 1,721 motorcycles
• £1.15bn ($1.55bn) worth of aircraft engines
• 1,474 radar sets
• 4,338 radio sets
• 600 naval radar and sonar sets
• Hundreds of naval guns
• 15*million pairs of boots

That's 30 million pairs of boots and over 404,000 trucks and ambulances no Soviet factory had to produce. The Soviet Army literally walked and drove to victory with Western help alone.

It's also worth noting that Lend-Lease locomotive supplies were a major factor in the USSR being able to switch its locomotive factories to tank production. The USSR built 354 locomotives in 1941. For the entire rest of the war, they produced 92. Lend-Lease delivered 1,911 locomotives to the USSR. Without those, their needs for rail logistics would have required them to keep locomotive factories building locomotives instead of tanks.

On the modern end of things, I think the return of trench warfare has been mildly surprising but makes sense. Both sides have large forces with significant differences in level of training within their forces, so lesser-trained soldiers can hold ground within fortifications to discourage opportunistic attempts to break through them, requiring more significant resource investment that is more likely to be spotted in advance. A TDF or a group of mobiks still might not be able to completely stop a determined attack on their own, but they can slow it down enough for units with more training and equipment to reinforce the position.

I think the US has done better with anticipating drones than Russia, but there are still some things that were missed. The low-end attack drones, like TB2 or Shahed or Orlan, are things that were mostly ignored on the US side in favor of more capable systems. But those drones have an additional effect in that a lot of the air-defense systems capable of taking them down use missiles that are more expensive than the drone. If it costs more to destroy a drone than to build a drone, over time the economics favor the cheap drone. I think the eventual counter to this will be smarter cannon rounds for air defense artillery, like some of the 30, 35, and 40mm rounds that have started entering service but (AFAIK) have not been provided to Ukraine. I also think we may see more SHORAD platforms that have a combined gun and missile armament like Tunguska and Pantsir (although hopefully more effective than Pantsir, which seems to have performed atrociously in this conflict). Something mounting a 30mm or 35mm autocannon with modern flak rounds and a 4 or 6 of whatever IR-guided missile replaces Stinger would be about what I'm thinking we may see around the end of the decade. SHORAD has been oriented towards taking down fast jets for the last few decades, and will need something extra to handle cheap, slow drones that cost less than a missile.

Give it an all-weather target acquisition and tracking system while also integrating it in to the upper echelon air defense network, and Bob's your uncle. Fires ready available ammo, uses off the shelf components, requires minimal training, and can be mounted to a myriad of platforms. Instead, we'll probably wait ten years for Son of DIVAD. :)

Does the US still have cluster munitions for the MLRS/HIMARS?

When I am hearing stories of an upcoming force of 300k coming over the Belorussian border, I am remembering T2k talking about Assault Breaker system (precursor to the MGM-140_ATACMS) ripping up the Soviet units rolling into Chinese Territory.

I know the US , Ukraine, and Russia all have not signed the CCM and Russia used them early in the invasion.

I get why the world is against them, but this seems like a perfect opportunity for their use.

The M26 cluster MLRS rockets were removed from service in June 2009 per an order signed in July 2008 by George W. Bush. The current Alternative Warhead rounds (M30A1 and M30A2) use tungsten fragments to get a similar effect without the risk of unexploded ordnance. There might be some that survived destruction by the time Donald Trump revoked Bush's order in 2017, but since the last of them were manufactured in 2001 and the shelf life for the rocket is 25 years, any survivors are getting pretty close to end-of-life.

The cluster ATACMS have all had their warheads replaced with unitary high explosive warheads. The older ones also had GPS added (M39A1 already had GPS, M39 did not, they're all now M57E1 standard).

More likely might be getting Korean KM26A2 rockets, which were license-built until 2011 (when the license expired and wasn't renewed, possibly because of the standing order from former President Bush).

Would be nice if that license was (possibly secretly) renewed. Know it will take some time to spool up but it would allow the Koreans to spare more of their current stocks (I have read that 288 were going to Poland early next year.)

Thanks for the info. Our denizens never disappoint me when I am looking for details on these types of subjects.

Congress killed the last renewal attempt in 2015, I believe because of the desire to remain in line with the international community regarding cluster munitions even if we wouldn't ratify the actual treaty about them.

The 288 systems being sold to Poland are K239 Chunmoo launchers for delivery between 2023 and 2027. They're a heavy truck-based launcher with 2 rocket pods, so think an M270-sized HIMARS. Each pod can carry one of a set of payloads:
20x131mm rocket (unguided, 36km range)
6xKM26A2 (unguided, 45km range)
6x239mm rocket (guided, 80km range)
Also in development are a 2x400mm rocket pod (guided, 200+ km range) and a single tactical ballistic missile pod (guided, 290km range). Both of these were publicly announced this year as development projects, but I don't know how far along they are (e.g. was development work done before they were announced?). Poland is buying the 239mm rockets and the tactical ballistic missiles, with total numbers across the two ammunition types being reported as 23,000. I haven't seen it split out into how many of each type are being acquired. The Polish Chunmoo will be on a locally-manufactured truck chassis, a Jelcz 8x8, so they're getting at least some local industrial production out of the purchase.

There's not a whole lot of niche space for KM26A2 in that set of pods. The 131mm rockets have 80% of the range and enough numbers that they can saturate a target at least as well as the KM26A2, while the 239mm rocket has as much ammunition, nearly double the range, and is guided like GMLRS, as well as being in current production.

Not to beat a dead horse, but there certainly were some other major differences between the Soviets in the 80s and the Russians of today, beyond what has already been mentioned.

Namely, that the equipment they were using at the time was far newer and NATO gear hadn't had 40 years to be purposefully designed to counter it. There was also far more of that equipment still in working order instead of thousands of systems rotting and rusting in empty fields. Plus, while the kleptocracy still existed, it's entirely possible that the other nations of the USSR would have supplemented additional organizational and logistical capacity beyond what we're seeing today in Ukraine. The Ukrainians themselves, for example.

Finally, IMO the T2k scenarios always depended pretty heavily on the idea of full mobilizations - millions of Soviets going into the field of battle, rather than the 300-400k the Russians have put into Ukraine thus far.

All in all, the T2k versions are all a bit far fetched, but it doesn't seem like an entirely fair comparison running the Soviets of the 80s up against the Russians of today.

US M2s to Ukraine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=313DBV2knwQ (First 2/3rds its probably stuff everyone here knows M2 History etc)

This video suggests that if the US sends M2s to Ukraine, It will send the 89 M2A2 (ODS) versions which are scheduled to be sent to Croatia this year. In the authors opinion, these particular units should be used not as IFVs but as artillery spotting vehicles. Due to the fact that with their GPS/Laser RF systems can instantly transmit target data to allied high precision artillery.

I will admit I did not think of this application, but it seems like a very good use.

What are your expectations if the US starts to send M2s to Ukraine?

Added link about Croatia sale
https://militaryleak.com/2022/01/28/...ting-vehicles/

Bradley FV's
 

Either as FV's or for FO vehicles, once they complete familiarization, the Armed Forces of the Ukraine are certainly capable of operating them.

Less than one hundred will not be enough to dramatically shift the battlefield calculus although it might be enough to tip a crucial small sector here or there.

From a logistics standpoint, Ukraine is slowly becoming a logisticians nightmare. Not completely WP nor NATO, not complete West nor East but a hodgepodge. France is apparently sending wheeled AMX 10's soon-another platform to support. Even with western/NATO technical help or contractors this is eventually going to be a challenge at least in my view.

Motley Motor Pool
 

This piece offers a couple of different perspectives.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...ght-in-ukraine

I'm really curious as to how the AMX-10, a fairly unique late Cold War system (not many wheeled, gun-armed AT platforms out there), performs against Russian MBTs. To add to your point about logistical issues, TO, the AMX-10 isn't fitted with the NATO-standard L7 105mm gun (like Ukraine's new Slovenian upgraded T-55s is). Apparently, it uses "proprietary ammunition" instead of NATO standard.

I also read a piece fairly recently claiming that hundreds of captured Russian AFVs are sitting in Ukrainian warehouses because the Ukrainians don't have the spare parts to return them to operational status- and that's for PACT stuff that both countries have long operated! With its motley, polyglot collection of cast-off Western AFVs, I imagine that when one breaks down, it stays broken down for lack of spare parts (or until such time as another example can be cannibalized to provide said). I imagine that THIS would be a very common issue during the Twilight War.

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