Posts Tagged ‘logistics’

Ukraine Switching To A War Of Attrition Against Russia?

Sunday, February 4th, 2024

Two videos on increasing Russian logistics difficulties in the Russo-Ukrainian War. First up: A video that suggests Ukraine has switched from a territory recapture strategy to an attrition strategy.

  • “Russia is burning whether it’s oil terminals on the Baltic and the Black Sea, factories in far-flung Siberia, or military bases in Crimea, it seems almost every day something bursts into flames in Putin’s backyard. And Ukraine is thought to be the one behind it.” It’s an open question whether structure hits in places like Siberia are Ukrainian “werewolf” teams operating behind enemy lines, or native anti-Putin/anti-war (or even anti-Russian) partisans, but the effect seems the same: Russia now has to worry about attacks to its military, transport, energy, and manufacturing infrastructure far from the frontlines in Ukraine.
  • Zelensky warned Putin that if Russia attacked Ukrainian cities with indiscriminate missile attacks again, Ukraine would hit back. When it did, “Ukraine struck back a fire at the electrical substation outside Moscow, plunged three districts of the capital into darkness. Water pipes also burst, leaving people freezing in their homes. The plague of accidents soon spread to the cities of Omsk and Novosibirsk, deep in Siberia, which were left without heating as temperatures fell below -2.” Actually, Omsk and Novosibirsk aren’t “deep” in Siberia, because the place is so vast there another five time zones east of there.
  • “Soon after attacks began on critical infrastructure, including oil refineries upon which Putin’s economy relies. To date, three refineries have been blown up or set on fire, including two which were hit by long-range Ukrainian drones. One of those the Ust-Luga oil refinery near St. Petersburg, is almost 600 miles from Ukraine.”
  • “Railways and factories have also been blown up or burned down at the same time the Ukrainians have stepped up their campaign against Crimea.” Naval successes we’ve covered here already skipped.
  • At this point the video argues that Ukraine’s strategy was to liberate Ukrainian territory, no matter the strategic value. I don’t think that was the case.
  • Following the “failure” of the summer offensive (I would say “limited gains”), “Ukraine is digging in and refocusing liberation of territory is no longer the main goal hitting Russia where it hurts most.”
  • “Ukraine knows that victory in a long war depends on two things above all else: The will of people to keep fighting, and the ability of the country to provide weapons for them to fight with, and that’s where these drone missile and sabotage attacks come in.”
  • It then argues (as many others have) that Crimea is Putin’s main weakness, and that losing it will cripple his prestige and ability to stay in power and continue the war.
  • I think there has been a shift in Ukrainian strategy, but that shift has mainly been driven by the development and availability of longer-ranged weapons Ukraine lacked earlier in the war, combined with the effects of a long-term campaign to degrade Russia air power, naval assets and SAM systems, opening up avenues for longer range strikes. Ukraine focused on attacking Russia’s logistics systems right after the Battle of Kiev was won, but now they have the capability to hit much deeper into Russia’s logistics infrastructure.

    Actually, I’m surprised there haven’t been any reported attacks on the Trans-Siberian Railway, given what a long, slender link that is. A few medium-to-long range drone teams inserted into northern Kazakhstan or Mongolia could wreck real havoc on trains, lines, bridges, etc.

    Next, a video from Kanal 13 (very much a pro-Ukrainian source) suggests that the war and sanctions are cratering Russia’s military industrial complex.

  • “The Russian military industrial complex is being destroyed because of the war against Ukraine.”
  • Dimitri Fidive, CEO of the Muram Machine Building Plant, wrote in an email intercepted by the activists, that inflation and the shortcomings of Russia’s bureaucratic approach prevents plants that form the country’s military industrial complex from fulfilling government orders.”
  • “Plants are forced to sell their goods at prices set in 2019, but are at the same time expected to purchase details at market prices and in advance.”
  • “The money received from the government was not enough to cover the interest on the credit that his firm would need to take out to pay its suppliers.”
  • “Money is tied up until the completion of the government contracts, which normally last 3 to 5 years, meaning during this time the money is effectively frozen.”
  • “There is a shortage of staff at the plants due to both mass mobilization and a lack of accommodation [housing] in the area.”
  • Hell of a way to run a railroad. One wonders how extensive these problems are with other companies in Russia’s military industrial complex

    Ukraine’s strategy has shifted more in relation to the way the war developed, and the changing availability of western weapons, than any fundamental shift in strategy. It became apparent that this was going to be a war of attrition in the first year, and the question of which would break first: The west’s willingness to send Ukraine weapons, or Russia’s economy and ability to wage it’s illegal war of territorial aggression?

    Nothing about that strategy has changed, only Ukraine’s greater reach to affect the latter.

    Busting F-35 Myths

    Saturday, January 13th, 2024

    Lockheed Martin just assembled the 1,000th F-35, making it one of the most widely produced and successful modern fighters ever. Here’s a pretty good video busting various myths about the F-35.

  • “There are more F-35s in the world today than there are all other stealth aircraft ever built by all nations combined.”
  • “There are more F-35s on the deck of the USS Tripoli in this single picture than there are stealth fighters in all of Russia.” Eh, supposedly Russia has managed to finally get 20 Su-57s into service, which matches the 20 plane test deployment of the F-35Bs to the Tripoli. But it’s Russia, so several shakers of salt are in order.
  • “The F-35 lightning II is the seventh most widely operated fighter on the planet. This program began with nine nations involved in its development, but today its list of buyers has stretched all the way to 17.”
  • “In the past last few years, F-35s have accumulated some 773,000 hours in the sky spread out across 469,000 sorties.”
  • The F-35 had a troubled development cycle, but pilots love the finished product.
  • They “make older fourth generation fighters significantly more capable just by flying nearby, thanks to their incredible degree of sensor fusion and the data they can securely transmit to other aircraft flying in the vicinity.”
  • Myth #1: “All they do is crash.” “This is an excellent example of a combination of recency and availability biases. F-35s seem as though they crash often because there are so many of them in the sky on on any given day.”
  • “The truth is, the F-35 is actually the safest modern fighter ever developed. If you go back and look at the crash data of the F-35 during its first 12 years of service, as compared to the A-10, F-15, F-16 or F-22, you’ll find that the F-35 has a significantly better track record.”
  • “By this point in the A-10 service life, 9% of its airframes had already been lost in accidents. By this point in the F-16’s, that number was 13%. But today, the F-35’s loss rate is about 1%.”
  • Myth #2: “The F-35 is too expensive top operate.” “There really used to be something to this. As recently as 2016, it was reported that F-35s cost an average average of about $67,000 per hour to operate.”
  • The Air Force and Lockheed Martin have been driving this number down. By “2023, that operating cost had been reduced by more than 80%, down to right around $28,000 per hour. That’s only a little bit more than an F-15.”
  • Myth #3: “The F-35 can’t dogfight.” “First of all it probably shouldn’t. It was designed to operate like a sniper.”
  • “Most of the claims that say it can’t dogfight stem from a 2015 report published by War is Boring about an F-35a squaring off in a duel against a block 40 F-16d, and in that fight the F-16 definitely came out on top.” The problem is, the F-35 in that match was literally the second F-35 ever built.
  • “It didn’t have the vast majority of combat systems F-35s fly with today, including the helmet and electro-optical targeting system that allows F-35 pilots to target enemy aircraft without having to point the nose of the jet directly at them, as well as the F-35’s radar absorbance skin that would limit the F-16’s ability to get a radar lock on its opponent.”
  • “And to make matters even worse, that particular F-35 was flying with software restrictions on board that prevented the pilot from pushing the airframe too hard, limiting it to under 7g maneuvers, a restriction the F-16 obviously didn’t have.”
  • “The F-35 was forced to fly with both wings tied behind its back and it ended up losing against one of the most prolific dogfighters in history.”
  • “Most pilots say they’d still rather avoid that by taking out the enemy before they ever even know it’s.”
  • Myth #4: “The U.S. has already spent more than $1.7 trillion on the F-35.” That’s only the projected cost over the entire lifetime of the program.
  • Myth #5: “The F-35 has abysmal readiness rates.” There’s some truth to this, as readiness rates sit at 55%. But a big reason is the F-35 repair depot infrastructure hasn’t been fully built out yet. That’s supposed to be finished in 2027. “At which point the F-35’s readiness rates are expected to jump across the force to just about comparable with the F-15 and F-16.”
  • It’s not all roses: The F-35 has significant delays and cost overruns for the Tech Refresh 3 upgrade. “That will provide a 37-fold increase in onboard computing power 20 times the onboard data storage, and new double redundant display processors with five times the power to give the pilots far more situational awareness than ever before.”
  • “And Tech Refresh 3 is really just an appetizer that will lead to the Block 4 upgrade, which will be such a massive massive increase in capability that I have long argued the Block 4 F-35 deserves its own designation.”
  • “This new version of the F-35 will have a newer, even more advanced onboard radar that’s rumored to use Gallium Nitride transmit and receive modules that will dethrone the F-35’s current AN/AGP-81 radar as the most advanced and powerful radar ever affixed to a fighter.”
  • Plus new weapons and a bump from four to six internal weapons slots.
  • “Air Force secretary Frank Kendall has already stated plainly that in the future Block 4 F-35s will be flying with their own AI enabled drone wingmen, just like the sixth generation fighters in development today, Meaning the F-35 really will be a bridge to the sixth generation of fighter.” As in everything related to AI, the devil is in the details.
  • Like other modern fighter development programs, the F-35 has had its teething problems, but there’s no nation in the world that wants to face one in combat…

    Tank News Roundup For October 18, 2023

    Wednesday, October 18th, 2023

    A fair amount of tank news has built up in the hopper over the last month or so (some, but not all, related to the Russo-Ukraine War), so let’s do a roundup.

    The U.S. Army has announced that it’s not doing an M1A2SEPv4, and instead will produced the M1E3.

    The U.S. Army is scrapping its current upgrade plans for the Abrams main battle tank and pursuing a more significant modernization effort to increase its mobility and survivability on the battlefield, the service announced in a statement Wednesday.

    The Army will end its M1A2 System Enhancement Package version 4 program, and instead develop the M1E3 Abrams focused on challenges the tank is likely to face on the battlefield of 2040 and beyond, the service said. The service was supposed to receive the M1A2 SEPv4 version this past spring.

    The SEPv4 will not go into production as planned, Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo told Defense News in a Sept. 6 interview at the Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “We’re essentially going to invest those resources into the [research and] development on this new upgraded Abrams,” he said. “[I]t’s really threat-based, it’s everything that we’re seeing right now, even recently in Ukraine in terms of a native active protection system, lighter weight, more survivability, and of course reduced logistical burdens as well for the Army.”

    The Abrams tank “can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight, and we need to reduce its logistical footprint,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in the statement. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protections for soldiers, built from within instead of adding on.”

    Ukraine’s military will have the chance to put the M1 Abrams to the test when it receives the tanks later this month. The country is fighting off a Russian invasion that began nearly two years ago.

    The M1E3 Abrams will “include the best features” of the M1A2 SEPv4 and will be compliant with modular open-systems architecture standards, according to the statement, which will allow for faster and more efficient technology upgrades. “This will enable the Army and its commercial partners to design a more survivable, lighter tank that will be more effective on the battlefield at initial fielding and more easy to upgrade in the future.”

    “We appreciate that future battlefields pose new challenges to the tank as we study recent and ongoing conflicts,” said Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Norman, director of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team. “We must optimize the Abrams’ mobility and survivability to allow the tank to continue to close with and destroy the enemy as the apex predator on future battlefields.”

    Norman, who took over the team last fall, spent seven months prior to his current job in Poland with the 1st Infantry Division. He told Defense News last year that the division worked with Poles, Lithuanians and other European partners on the eastern flank to observe happenings in Ukraine.

    Weight is a major inhibitor of mobility, Norman said last fall. “We are consistently looking at ways to drive down the main battle tank’s weight to increase our operational mobility and ensure we can present multiple dilemmas to the adversary by being unpredictable in where we can go and how we can get there.”

    General Dynamic Land Systems, which manufactures the Abrams tank, brought what it called AbramsX to the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in October 2022. AbramsX is a technology demonstrator with reduced weight and the same range as the current tank with 50% less fuel consumption, the American firm told Defense News ahead of the show.

    The AbramsX has a hybrid power pack that enables a silent watch capability and “some silent mobility,” which means it can run certain systems on the vehicle without running loud engines.

    The tank also has an embedded artificial intelligence capability that enables “lethality, survivability, mobility and manned/unmanned teaming,” GDLS said.

    The Army did not detail what the new version might include, but GDLS is using AbramsX to define what is possible in terms of weight reduction, improved survivability and a more efficient logistics tail.

    The Army awarded GDLS a contract in August 2017 to develop the SEPv4 version of the tank with a plan then to make a production decision in fiscal 2023, followed by fielding to the first brigade in fiscal 2025.

    The keystone technology of the SEPv4 version consisted of a third-generation forward-looking infrared camera and a full-sight upgrade including improved target discrimination.

    “I think the investment in subsystem technologies in the v4 will actually carry over into the upgraded ECP [Engineering Change Proposal] program for Abrams,” Camarillo said. “However, the plan is to have robust competition at the subsystem level for a lot of what the new ECP will call for, so we’re going to look for best-of-breed tech in a lot of different areas,” such as active protection systems and lighter weight materials.

    For instance, the Army has kitted out the tank with Trophy active protection systems as an interim solution to increase survivability. The Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems develops the Trophy. But since the system is not integrated into the design of the vehicle, it adds significant weight, sacrificing mobility.

    The Army plans to produce the M1A2 SEPv3 at a reduced rate until it can transition the M1E3 into production.

    Which looks to be 2030.

    Nicholas Moran looks at what this might or might not mean in practical terms, with an emphasis on what it doesn’t say:

  • “We have about 10 years that the SEPv3 is the latest and greatest.”
  • “They are actually going to backfill some of the v4 modernizations to the v3.”
  • “‘The Abrams tank can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight and we need to reduce its logistical footprint.’…There’s two parts to that one sentence that have a lot of digging into.”
  • “The Abrams started at 55 tons…now the v3 is 72 1/2 tons. If you add the Trophy APS, that’s an additional two and a half tons on its own. Then you put the reactive armor tiles on the side. Oh! Let’s put a mine plow on the front. Now your M1 is breaking 83 tons.”
  • One way to shed weight is with a smaller turret, like the Abrams X.
  • “What it doesn’t say in here, and what they’re not saying, is just how much weight are they trying to shed. Because if you’re trying to shed five to ten tons, that’s one thing. If you’re trying to shed 20 to 30 tons, then that’s something else entirely.”
  • The Abrams is essentially an analog tank which has had digital systems bolted onto it. “the upgrades that we have paid for our tanks have not been integrated upgrades from basically the ground up.” We’ve bolted on integrations modules, each of which adds weight.
  • “You can probably shave a few tons without touching the form factor of the M1A2 one bit.”
  • “Rip out the guts. Rip out all the electrics, all the electronics, and replace it from something that is designed and programmed from the ground up to be completely integrated.”
  • Replace the M256 cannon with the XM360, “which, as far as I know, does work. You install that you’ve shaved a ton off already.”
  • Replace the turret hydraulics with electrics.
  • Swap out copper wiring for fiber optics.
  • “So getting it from this current 73 tons down to, oh, let’s say 65 tons, probably isn’t all that hard.”
  • “If you want to take off more weight, you’re gonna have to look at a more radical redesign.” Like an unmanned turret.
  • Reduced logistics could go a lot of ways, some outside the tank. 80 ton tanks require beefy bridges, like the Joint Assault Bridge. (I include this because of my readers’ passionate opinions on proper battlefield bridging techniques.)
  • If you mean fuel efficiency, you can pull out the current gas turbine engine and replace it, either a more efficient turbine or something else.
  • “The Army has spent a lot of money paying Cummins to develop the Advanced Combat Engine. This is an opposed module, opposed piston modular engine, and it can be configured for 750 horsepower. I believe it’s just a six cylinder version to the 12 cylinder or piston version, which is a 1500 horsepower, the same as a turbine the same as modern MTU. It would make some sense that the Army is going to look very hard at this.” The AEC is a bit funky, with two pistons per cylinder working together to compress the gas. They claim it offers about 25% fuel economy and a similar reduction in waste heat.
  • They might also look at a hybrid power train.
  • You can also save logistical weight in spare parts. “If you were to rip the guts out of the tank and start from scratch, you can probably come up with a maintenance and logistics system for maintenance which is much more refined and efficient.”
  • “‘The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protection from soldiers built from within instead of adding on.'”
  • “This has apparently been in the works for the better part of three years now. In 2020, the director of operational test and evaluation put out his annual report, and when it gets to the M1A2v3 section, it basically says ‘Guys, this is getting a little bit out of hand. The tank is a tad heavy.'”
  • “The Army understands that they’re pretty much at the limit.”
  • All this is being done now because Ukraine finally made them pay attention to things that had already been identified as problems but not addressed. “Something like the Ukraine conflict is a little bit of a kick in the pants, and it’s probably going to attract somebody’s attention and say ‘OK, yeah, this is what we need to do it.”
  • Trophy adds so much weight because you need to balance the turret. Redesigning the turret from the ground up solves that issue.
  • Modular open systems architecture standards: “The backbone, the central nervous system of these things, is a new version that’s compatible across vehicles.”
  • Chris Copson of The Tank Museum offers up an assessment of the use of tanks in Ukraine’s summer offensive (posted September 29).

  • “One commentator has been dubbing it ‘Schrodinger’s summer offensive.’ Is it or isn’t it, and it appears to be currently tentative at best.”
  • “We’re also seeing the tank struggling to assert influence in what has increasingly become a slog dominated by artillery.”
  • “Putin’s special military operation saw the Russian army fought to a standstill, and they’d suffered huge losses in men and material. But they’re still in possession a swathe of Ukrainian territory running through the Eastern Donbas right the way down to the coast of the Black Sea.”
  • “Russian forces have fallen back into a defensive posture behind layered defenses minefields, anti-tank obstacles and barbed wire.”
  • “Ukrainian response has been probing attacks in greater or lesser strength, and they’re starting to use some of their Western supplied military equipment to attempt to break through before the Autumn rains, and the rasputitsa, the roadless time, puts an end to the campaigning season.”
  • “Zelensky fought for supplies of modern Western military material, and, after quite a bit of hesitancy, it’s begun to arrive.”
  • “So far there’s been enough, we think, to equip up to 15 Ukrainian brigades, and each of those is going to be around about 3,000 personnel and about 200 vehicles of all types.”
  • He covers the trickle of Challenger 2s, Leopard 2s, Abrams, etc., and the capabilities of each, which we’ve already covered here.
  • “In the early stages of the invasion, February and March 2022, Russian tank losses have been estimated at anything from between 460 and 680 from a total inventory around about 2,700 in BTs. Both of those figures are estimates from Western or Ukrainian sources and they’re now putting the figure well over a thousand.”
  • “An awful lot of these losses seem to be in tanks and AFVs either stuck bellied out through poor driving, or run out of fuel. That’s just poor logistics.”
  • Russian tank units lack enough infantry support to protect their armored columns from Ukrainian anti-tank units.
  • “We’re starting to see images of Ukrainian Leopard 2s and Bradleys knocked out by mines or artillery in attempts to breach Russian layered defenses.”
  • Ukraine’s western tanks have much higher repairability than T-72s. “Western MBTs [are] designed so that an ammunition or propellant explosion actually vents to the outside, and this tends to maintain damaged vehicle’s integrity and make it repairable, as well as increasing the likelihood of crew survival.”
  • Damaged Leopard 2s are already being repaired.
  • “Because Russian industry is under the cosh, a shortage of chips and high-tech components, and that is because of the western embargo. The solution their general staff has come up with is to pull tanks out of storage, and this includes some very elderly models indeed. Some of the estimated 2,800 T-55s which comes into service.” Cold War designs.
  • “Commissioning tanks after decades in store is a huge undertaking. It’s not just a question of charge in the batteries, it’s more like a total rebuild.”
  • “They’re not likely to be in peak condition,” but might be OK in static defensive roles.
  • “There is evidence that at least one has been used as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.”
  • “Against tanks like Challenger, Leopard or Abrams in an open country tank engagement, it’s fairly obvious they wouldn’t make the grade.”
  • Keeping all the different western tanks supplied and running is going to be a huge challenge to Ukraine. “A range of different and very unfamiliar, in some cases artillery pieces, trucks, logistic vehicles. Now the range is huge. Finding trained mechanics and procuring a huge range of spares. It’s going to be a colossal headache.”
  • “Artillery is really of central importance to the Russian, and before that the Soviet, way of war. And it’s the primary lethality in deep and close battles. Now perhaps 70% percent of Ukrainian casualties so far are being caused by Russian artillery.”
  • “At present a [Russian] brigade grouping is assigned a brigade artillery group, BRAG, and that’s two battalions of self-propelled howitzers and a battalion of multi-barreled rocket launchers. Use is made of forward observers, unmanned aerial vehicles and artillery location radars to identify targets.”
  • “At its most effective this uses the Strelets reconnaissance fire system to pair tactical intelligence and reconnaissance assets with precision strike artillery, and that gives you real-time targeting [Reckify?] uses the 2K25 Krasnapol 152mm laser guided round, which is able to inflict accurate strikes.” But it doesn’t work so well with cloud cover.
  • “We’ve also heard quite a lot about the Lancet range of loitering munitions for precision targeting. The Lancet-3 drone has a 40 minute flight time and it counts a 3kg warhead.” Oryx credits over 100 kills to Lancets. “These mostly have been self-propelled artillery, but also tanks.”
  • “With the constant presence of surveillance drones and satellite intel, it is getting just about impossible to hide anything on the modern battlefield.”
  • “The main take-home from the current conflict, and this might be stating the blindingly obvious, is that the battlefield is a very open place these days, and tank tactics have to evolve to take this into account.”
  • One thing we haven’t seen much of recently: Russian air power.
  • “There seems to be some progress around Robotyne, and the Challenger 2, Maurder and Stryker IFVs of the 82nd Air Landing brigade have been deployed to bolster 47th Brigade. And there seems to be some penetration of the Russian air defenses. Ukrainian offensive has broken through the first of three defensive lines, but the progress is really slow, because you’ve got minefields, dragon’s teeth and anti-tank ditches, and the Russian forces are very well dug in.”
  • Finally, we have a report that Russia is resuming the long-halted production of T-80s.

    The Uralvagonzavod factory in Omsk, in Siberia, hasn’t manufactured a new T-80 hull since 1991. And work on the T-80’s GTD-1250 turbine, at the Kaluga plant, likewise has idled in the decades since the Soviet Union’s collapse.

    No, for nearly 30 years the Russian army has replenished its T-80 fleet with old, refurbished hulls and engines. Those hulls and engines obviously are beginning to run out as Russian tank losses in Ukraine exceed 2,000. For context, there were only around 3,000 active tanks in the entire Russian armed forces when Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022.

    Uralvagonzavod produces just a few dozen new T-72B3s and T-90Ms every month: far too few to make good monthly tank losses averaging a hundred or more. That’s why, in the summer of 2022, the Kremlin began pulling out of storage hundreds of 1960s-vintage T-62s and ‘50s-vintage T-54s and T-55s.

    But the T-62s and T-54/55s, as well as only slightly less ancient war-reserve T-72 Urals and T-80Bs, are a stopgap. Some get fresh optics and add-on armor; many don’t. To sustain the war effort into year three, year four or year five, the Russian armed forces need new tanks. Lots of them.

    Thus it was unsurprising when, two weeks ago, Alexander Potapov, CEO of Uralvagonzavod, announced his firm would resume producing 46-ton, three-person T-80s “from scratch.”

    It’s a huge undertaking. While the Omsk factory still has the main T-80 tooling lying around somewhere, it must also reactive hundreds of suppliers in order to produce the tens of thousands of components it takes to assemble a T-80. That includes the gas-turbine engine.

    During the T-80’s initial production run between 1975 and 2001, Kaluga built thousands of 1,000-horsepower GTD-1000 and 1,250-horsepower GTD-1250s for the type. A thousand or more horses is a lot of power for a 46-ton tank: a Ukrainian-made T-64BV weighs 42 tons but has a comparatively anemic 850-horsepower diesel engine.

    The T-80’s excess power explains its high speed—44 miles per hour—and commensurately high fuel consumption, which limits its range to no more than 300 miles. Why then would Kaluga bother with a new 1,500-horsepower turbine?

    As long as certain Russian forces—airborne and marine regiments, for example—value speed over fuel-efficiency, it makes sense they’d want even more power for their new-build T-80s. A 1,500-horsepower engine also would give a next-generation T-80 lots of growth potential. Uralvagonzavod could pile on tons of additional armor without weighing down the tank.

    A few quick thoughts:

  • This hardly expresses confidence in the future of the T-14 Armata, does it now? (Speaking of which, they withdraw it from service in Ukraine, evidently without engaging any enemy tanks in anything but an indirect fire role (assuming they weren’t lying about that as well.))
  • If they’re struggling to produce just a few new T-72B3s and T-90Ms, why would producing T80s be any easier?
  • Russia announces a whole lot of things that never come to pass. In many ways its their default mode when announcing MilTech Wunderaffen.
  • Restarting a production line that’s been idle 30 years isn’t just difficult, it’s damn near impossible. At lot of the people who had the knowledge of how to actually build the things have probably died, and Soviet-era schematics are not an adequate substitute.
  • I’m pretty sure they have the capabilities to build the heavy equipment parts. The modern electronics? Not so much.
  • Like a lot of Russian announcements since the beginning of Vlad’s Big Adventure, this is probably a bluff to overall the gullible. I’m sure the Russians intend to restart production of T-80s, but I wouldn’t count on doing it very soon, or producing terribly many.
  • Texas Helps Solve Ukraine’s Shell Problem

    Tuesday, September 19th, 2023

    Many observers have been shocked at the furious rate of ordinance expenditure seen in Russia’s illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine. Much attention has been focused on smart munitions like Stingers and HIMARS, but plain old dumb artillery shells are also being used up at a furious rate.

  • “Recently, the COO of Lockheed Martin said that Ukraine consumes a year’s worth of production for some munitions in just one month.”
  • “In March 2023, the Ukrainian minister of Defence Oleksiy Reznikov said that Ukraine uses on average 110,000 units of 155mm caliber shells per month. But he stressed that Ukraine can fire 594,000 shells per month, if the ammunition was available.”
  • “This discrepancy between what is actually fired and what could be fired means that over 300 western artillery systems that Ukraine has are sitting unused 80% of the time. That’s why Ukraine wants 250,000 artillery shells per month from the European Union alone.”
  • “According to the Ukrainians, in order to achieve their battlefield objectives, they need at least 60% of the full ammunition set, or 356,000 shells per month. If the EU were to provide 250,000 shells, the other 106,000 would have to be supplied by other western partners, primarily the United States.”
  • “But there’s a problem. The United States is currently producing only 24,000 155mm artillery shells which is up from 16,000 shells produced in February 2022, prior to the Russian invasion.”
  • America isn’t into grinding artillery duels, we’re into speed, precision munitions and air superiority.
  • “The unguided shells have been the cornerstone of the 18-month old conflict, since each day, thousands of shells are fired from both sides.”
  • “Since the Russian invasion began, the Pentagon has invested billions of dollars to produce record levels of artillery shells, not seen since the Korean War in the early 1950s. By 2024, the United States wants to produce 80,000 shells per month. That would be a 500% increase from prior to the invasion.”
  • Part of the solution to that problem is coming from Mesquite, Texas. (For those outside Texas, Mesquite is part of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, and is east of Dallas and south of Garland.)

    Earlier this year, the Mesquite City Council approved the construction of a manufacturing facility for military manufacturer General Dynamics and Tactical Systems.

    The 240,011-square-foot building is expected to employ 50 salaried and 75 to 100 hourly employees after the city approved the new $60 million industrial campus in 2021.

    “This unique opportunity is a direct result of our strong partnership with the U.S. Army and a very responsive and collaborative Mesquite, Texas, community,” said Steven Black, vice president and general manager at General Dynamics. “We are very excited to grow our company in this region.”

    Mesquite City Manager Cliff Keheley echoed similar sentiments, saying he is “excited” to have Mesquite become a “robust commercial center” so that residents “no longer have to leave” the city to work.

    “Once the installation is complete, the manufacturing facility will effectively produce 20,000 units per month for the Department of Defense, which will contribute to the inherently necessary defense capabilities of the United States and our allies abroad,” General Dynamics said in a letter to the city.

    According to The New York Times, those “20,000 units” refer to 155-millimeter artillery shells for howitzers. The U.S. government is planning to increase its production of 155-millimeter shells from 15,000 to 90,000 per month to keep up with the need in Ukraine.

    “We don’t want to say we’re profiting off of a conflict like that — we’re not feeling any of the effects of war,” Mesquite City Manager Cliff Keheley told the Times regarding the war in Ukraine. “But at the same time, it’s a global scale of the economy, and that generates a need.”

    My guess is that the shells manufactured in Mesquite will be used to backfill U.S. shell stock sent to Ukraine.

    It’s not complete solution to Ukraine’s shell problem, but it’s a start. But Ukraine is going to need a lot more help than that to supercharge its current grinding counteroffensive.

    Ukrainian Naval Drones Hit A Tanker, Gives Russia Another Dilemma

    Saturday, August 5th, 2023

    Ukraine is stepping up it’s naval drone game, as they just hit a Russian tanker.

    A Ukrainian sea drone full of explosives struck a Russian fuel tanker overnight near a bridge linking Russia to annexed Crimea, the second such attack in 24 hours, both sides said on Saturday.

    No one was hurt, but the Crimean Bridge and ferry transport were suspended for several hours, according to Russian-installed officials in Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.

    A Ukrainian intelligence source told Reuters that the drone with 450 kg of explosives hit the SIG vessel as it transported fuel for the Russian military in Ukrainian territorial waters.

    “The tanker was well loaded with fuel, so the ‘fireworks’ were seen from afar,” the source said, of the joint operation by Ukraine’s navy and security service.

    Kyiv says destroying Russia’s military infrastructure inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine is crucial to its counteroffensive after the February 2022 invasion.

    Another sea drone attack on Russia’s navy base at Novorossiysk damaged a warship on Friday, the first time the Ukrainian navy had projected its power so far from its shores.

    Suchomimus has two separate videos up about the attack, the second of which includes footage of the strike itself:

    To me one of the interesting things in that video is not about the attack itself, but the sat pic 25 seconds in that shows over a dozen ships anchored some 20km south of the Kerch Strait Bridge. I don’t know why they’re doing that (Escorting them one at a time through the strait? Port capacity?), but an anchorage area like that offers a target-rich environment now that we know Ukraine has the capability to hit it.

    That video shows a guided rather than pre-programmed drone, as it corrects course to hit the tanker.

    In the second video, Suchomimus also covers the various Black Sea naval assets Russia might have to employ to defend against naval drone attacks. The choices are limited, and some of the ships they have available seem unsuited to the task. And a few that are suitable will have to be taken off duty firing Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

    Crimean Bridge Hit Again

    Monday, July 17th, 2023

    The Kerch Bridge connecting Russia with occupied Crimea has been hit again.

    Two people have died after an “attack” on the bridge linking the occupied Crimean peninsula to Russia.

    Moscow has blamed Ukraine for the incident, alleging US and UK involvement, but Kyiv has not officially said it was responsible.

    The Kerch bridge was opened in 2018 and enables road and rail travel between Russia and Crimea – Ukrainian territory occupied by Moscow’s forces since 2014.

    Russia’s transport ministry said the bridge’s supports were not damaged.

    The ministry said investigations were continuing, but unconfirmed reports said explosions were heard early on Monday.

    It is the second major incident on the Kerch bridge in the past year. In October 2022, the bridge – which is an important supply route – was partially closed following a major explosion. It was fully reopened in February.

    Ukraine had previously hit the Kerch Strait Bridge back in October of 2022.

    Suchomimus has a video showing the damage. One of the road spans has been dropped by the attack, but not completely. It took several months to repair the road span damage from the last attack.

    He says that a sea drone appears to be responsible.

    With Russia’s supply lines in Zaporizhzhia under increasing pressure due to the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive there, even partially disabling the bridge is going to put more pressure on Russia’s logistics network to keep their troops supplied, not to mention encouraging even more Russians to get out of Crimea while the getting is good.

    Now if Ukraine can just hit the rail span again…

    Fire In The Night

    Saturday, April 29th, 2023

    Busy Saturday, so enjoy a couple of Suchomimus videos about a Crimean oil refinery that Ukrainian drones made blow up real good.

    Here’s footage of the refinery burning bright in the forests of the night:

  • “This video is showing a burning oil refinery in Depot at Kozaka Bay near Sevastopol Harbor in Crimea.”
  • “This took place at 4:30 AM, and it was said to be a UAV. Given the size of a blaze I would say it seems that multiple UAVs were used here.” Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that refined petroleum products are naturally very sploady and Russian safety standards and precautions suck harder than Kamala Harris.
  • And follow-up footage of the fire mostly controlled, but showing two oil storage tanks totally destroyed and several others damaged:

    “This oil storage facility is one which supplied the Black Sea Fleet, so we’re going to have to wait and see if it’s loss will have an impact on operations from there.”

    It remains an open question how much Russia has actually used its Black Sea Fleet since the sinking of Moskva over a year ago. Maybe I just haven’t been paying attention, or maybe not much news leaks out, but we don’t hear a lot about the black Sea Fleet playing a significant role in the conflict beyond occasionally participating in the missile wave attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

    Also, one wonders how much gasoline and diesel is flowing into Crimea without the Kerch Strait Bridge back at full rail capacity. I see only one other oil refinery in all of Crimea, a tiny one near Voinka Boihka that could just be a storage facility. And given the lack of visible cars and trucks in Google map images, it may not even be active.

    All the more reason to believe that a counterattack taking Melitopol would make Russian resupply of troops in Crimea exceptionally difficult…

    The Tank Isn’t Obsolete, Russia Is Just Using Them Stupidly

    Sunday, February 26th, 2023

    Here’s a video from Samir Puri and the Imperial War Museum that echoes something Nicholas Moran said ten months ago, namely that the tank is not obsolete on the modern battlefield, it’s just that the Russians are using them wrong.

    Takeaways:

  • Russia, despite a century of data, isn’t using tanks properly in combined arms operations in concert with infantry, artillery and close air support.
  • Ukraine is, though much of their close air support has taken the form of drones. “These unmanned aerial vehicles have proved very effective especially against slow-moving Russian armored convoys.”
  • “We don’t really see this kind of tight combined arms operations being mounted by the Russians. They really struggled to do this. Instead, what we saw were quite disconnected Russian elements, and that meant that often the Russians were moving into positions it was still very well defended that hadn’t been softened. Which is why as the war has moved on sixth, seventh, eighth month [this video came out two months ago], the Russians have changed tack very much to I guess quite brutal indiscriminate bombardment of the cities they want to take.”
  • “There are no massed tank battles for which the Cold War T-72 was designed. In fact, engagements in Ukraine are on a much smaller scale with platoons and companies clashing together rather than divisions and corps.”
  • “There has also been an absence of close air support, a crucial tool for supporting tanks as part of combined arms operations. There was a lot of aerial activity, there was a lot of dog fighting as well, early on in the in the invasion. But the aerial defense systems that both sides have gotten and can deploy to cover their their more fixed positions are effective enough that the attrition rate amongst combat aircraft has risen. And the Russians interestingly appear to be husbanding the resources of their air force.”
  • “In the early months of the war, Russia had little infantry with which to protect its tanks, particularly in urban settings. That that allowed small groups of Ukrainians to mount what almost seemed like guerrilla operations. Getting in close to Russian armor and taking them out with anti-tank guided missiles before they knew what was happening.”
  • “Russia has now launched a much larger mobilization of manpower to try and fix this problem, but with many of its best troops and equipment already expended, there are questions about the quality, supply, and morale of these new soldiers.”
  • “The fact that the Ukrainians are actually able to capture intact or largely intact T-72s is a testament to the Russian logistics. Meaning that you find in captured Russian equipment low supplies, some Russian PWOs complaining of a lack of lack of proper support from their headquarters and have simply given up or run away.”
  • Drone warfare has also made it much harder for Russia to use tanks in a traditional defensive role in static positions on systems of defensive trenches.
  • Though Russia’s forces have shown some small signs of increasing technical competence in various areas, the fact that they lost so much armor attacking Vuhledar shows that they still have a long way to go when it comes to staging competent combined arms operations.

    Joe Rogan Interviews Peter Zeihan (Part 1: Russo-Ukrainian War)

    Monday, January 9th, 2023

    “Joe Rogan interviews Peter Zeihan” is obviously irresistible catnip for me, as any regular readers recognize. It’s like Rogan is reading my blog! (Joe, you should totally interview me! I’m a great speaker, I’m local, I can bring my dogs over to play with Marshall, and I can tell you what doing standup comedy was like in Houston in the 80s…)

    I don’t have the entire interview, because Spotify, but there are some big, interesting chunks I found on YouTube. Many cover ground familiar to BattleSwarm readers.

    First up: Zeihan explains his theory on why the Russo-Ukrainian War was inevitable because they had to get across Ukraine to plug defensive gaps, and that Russia had to do it in advance of a demographic death spiral.

    Caveat: I’m not sure the “plugging the gaps” theory explains the invasion any better than old fashioned Russian chauvinism; how dare those lowly Ukrainians resist being incorporated into glorious Russia?

    Next up: Will Russia use nukes? Zeihan thinks it unlikely.

  • “We’re not just providing the Ukrainians with the weaponry and the ammo, we’re providing them with the intelligence and most of the steps of the kill chain. Without that, the weapons are of limited usefulness, especially at long range, and the Ukrainians have no desire to rupture that relationship.”
  • “The Russians are relatively casualty immune. They fight in an area where they fight with numbers. They’ve never been technologically advanced versus their peers, they’ve always just thrown bodies at it. So there has never been a conflict in Russian history where they have backed out without first losing a half a million men. We’re at about a hundred thousand now. We have a long way to go before the Russian military breaks.” (I think he’s forgetting the Russo-Japanese War, where they got their asses kicked but lost a whole lot less than half a million men. Maybe he implied European war, and ignored a lot of minor ones following the Russian revolution, and ignored anything before the Russian Empire…)
  • We don’t how many Ukrainian civilians the Russians have slaughtered; maybe 250,000. “If you think of things like Bucha and Izyum, German radio intercepts told us as far back as May that there were at least 70 places behind Russian lines that had suffered massacres [like] Bucha, and when we’ve had additional liberations since then, it corroborates that general assessment.”
  • “The Russians are fighting so badly, they’re doing much worse than the Iraqis did in 1992.”
  • “Russia has always been poorly managed and authoritarian, but under Putin it’s taken a much darker turn because of the nature of the end of the Cold War.” Yeah, no. Putin is not a “darker” authoritarian than Stalin.
  • On Putin’s paranoia, isolation, and possible illness. Plus a bit about gay demons.

  • “We’re now in an environment that between the terminal demographic structureof the Soviet/Russian system, and Putin’s personal paranoia. So he’s gone through and purged what was left of the KGB, FSB, of anyone who has personal ambitions to succeed him. We’re left with an entire political elite of only about 130 people, and Putin has removed anyone who has leadership ambitions.”
  • “Any sort of leadership talent has left, or been killed.”
  • “When it came to the Kherson offensive, and it became clear that there was more going on than just NATO weapons, the Ukrainians actually knew what they were doing, they changed the the line from that these are all Nazis to these are actually gay demons.” (Rogan: “What???”)
  • “This is the official line right now that ‘We have homosexual demons fighting us in Ukraine.'” (I’m going to guess that it’s not the line, but just the latest in a firehose stream of ever-more-risible excuses for failure that no one pays any serious attention to, just like whatever Baghdad Bob spit out in 2003.
  • “The guy who’s in charge of the Orthodox Church is a Putin crony.”
  • “We’ve got a Jewish Nazi gay demon.”
  • On Putin having cancer and/or Parkinson’s: “He’s clearly on steroids, but that could mean a whole lot of things…He looks very, not just flushed, but puffy, and that’s that’s kind of a classic too many steroids in your system issue.”
  • “There was this great piece that came out that I saw last week, where it was all the propaganda shots that he’s taken with, like, the soldiers mothers, and on the front, and with the tech people, and in the, intelligence and it was like the same twelve people were in every single shot, just in different outfits and even with those people he’s wearing his ballistic vest.”
  • “He’s clearly unhealthy.”
  • “He’s got the shakes, that’s one of the reasons [for the] Parkinson’s analysis.”
  • “The Ukrainian propaganda guy has been saying that there’s a coup underway since March…I wouldn’t put too much into that.”
  • Rogan: “What a fucked-up situation.” Zeihan: “For the Europeans who have been dealing with the Russians for three centuries, this is kind of par for the course.”
  • I’ve got at least four more videos to go, so let’s break this post into two parts.

    Ukraine Update for November 15, 2022: Dnipro Crossed?

    Tuesday, November 15th, 2022

    Right after Kherson city was liberated and spans on the Antonivsky and Nova Kakhkovka bridges blown, a whole lot of commenters went “Well, Ukraine obviously isn’t going to try to cross the Dnipro there, it’s too wide.”

    Looks like that assumption might have been in error, as there are already reports that Ukraine has landed on the other side.

    The Kinburn Spit is a narrow finger of sand and scrub, barely three miles long, that juts from the wider Kinburn Peninsula into the Black Sea at the mouth of the Dnipro River south of Kherson. It and the adjacent peninsula also are the last parts of Ukraine’s Mykolaiv Oblast that remain under Russian occupation.

    Don’t expect that to last. The Kremlin on Wednesday ordered its battered forces on the right bank of the Dnipro to retreat to the river’s opposite bank.

    The order came six months after Ukrainian brigades, re-armed with European howitzers and American rocket-launchers, began bombarding Russian supply lines in the south—and two months after those same brigades launched a counteroffensive aimed at liberating Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts.

    The Ukrainians have the Kinburn Spit in their sights. They’ve got the troops, the equipment … and a plan.

    Russian troops seized the Kinburn Spit in mid-June as Russian advances in the south—having already overwhelmed Kherson city—ran into stiff resistance a few miles south of Mykolaiv city. Capturing the spit would turn out to be one of the Russian army’s last victories in the south. The four-month Ukrainian counterlogistics campaign that preceded Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive already was underway.

    Kinburn matters. Russian control of the sandy strip “will allow them to exert further control of the Black Sea coast,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. explained in June. For the Ukrainians, Kinburn is a back door—a way to get forces onto the left bank of the Dnipro without crossing the river, likely while under fire.

    As far back as April, U.K. intelligence agents were advising their government to support Ukrainian forces in any future attempt to “conduct beach reconnaissance” on the Kinburn Spit. The recon could “Identify good landing locations for a larger assault force for a future counterattack,” the agents explained in a presentation that later leaked to the press.

    It’s possible Ukrainian special operations forces riding in rigid-hull inflatable boats began reconnoitering the spit as early as September. In October, video circulated online reportedly depicting the Ukrainian navy’s last remaining big ship, the 240-foot amphibious vessel Yuri Olefirenko, apparently firing rockets at Russian forces on or near the spit.

    The Ukrainian military’s southern command on Saturday announced its intention to liberate Kinburn. Within a day, there were videos online possibly depicting Ukrainian commandos riding toward the spit in their small boats.

    Here’s a video of Ukrainian forces doing just that:

    Looks more like a commando raid or a reconnaissance in force. And here’s a video analyzing Russia defensive position on the Spit:

    There are unconfirmed reports of other river crossing zones. I’d take those with several grains of salt. But it seems possible. Indeed, there are reports confirming that Russia has indeed bugged out from towns in Kherson south of the Dnipro, like this video of apparently abandoned posts in Oleshky, directly south of the Antonovsky Bridge:

    The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has evidently confirmed Russia’s pullout from the banks of the Dnipro as well:

    Russia is preparing defensive positions in Crimea:

    Three areas they’ve prepared defensive lines are on the isthmus just south of Perekop, just south of the Chongar Strait, and even on the Arabat Spit, that tiny bit we talked about having a tiny dirt road here. Says Suchomimus: “It’s a bit of preparedness and foresight we haven’t seen from them so far.”

    Peter Zeihan thinks that Crimea is so hard to supply that Russia would be better off abandoning it:

    I suspect Putin would rather die that give up Crimea voluntarily.

    if all that weren’t enough. there’s the tiny little matter that a Russian missile reportedly strayed into Poland, killing two people.

    Pooty Poot certainly knows how to make friends and influence people…

    Update: Current thinking seems to be that the Polish missile strike was a Ukrainian ground to air missile that went astray trying to intercept a Russian missile.