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Russian Atrocities Earn Ukraine New Kit

Thursday, December 22nd, 2022

Since Russia has opted to commit war crimes by repeatedly bombing civilian infrastructure with the goal of inflicting mass civilian causalities, the western world has responded by opting to give Ukraine even more advanced military kit.

The U.S., as usual, is leading the way, supplying a Patriot Missile Defense battery and JDAMs.

SENIOR MILITARY OFFICIAL: All right, well, thanks very much for joining us. Today’s background briefers will include (inaudible) and me, (inaudible). For attribution, please refer to (inaudible) as “a senior defense official” and to me as “a senior military official.”

And with that, I will turn it over to our senior defense official for some opening remarks, and then we’ll be happy to take your questions.

SENIOR DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Good afternoon, everyone. I’d like to start by just recognizing where we are in this war. We’re in over 300 days after Russia launched this war to try to stamp out Ukraine’s existence as a free nation. And at this moment, we are welcoming President Zelenskyy to Washington, D.C., a sign of Ukraine’s determination, its spirit, its resolve, and an opportunity for us to be able to reinforce our support for Ukraine during President Zelenskyy’s visit.

So you will hear more from the White House later this afternoon about President Zelenskyy’s visit. In the meantime, what I wanted to do is give you some important details about our new security assistance commitments that President Biden announced today, totaling $1.85 billion.

Now, these — these commitments come in two parts, and we’re announcing both of these together. First, we have a presidential drawdown package that’s valued at $1 billion. This is the 28th such drawdown of equipment from DOD inventories for Ukraine since August of 2021. And then the second is an additional $850 million in commitments under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.

So first, let me talk about the presidential drawdown package, and this package includes for the first time a Patriot air defense battery and munitions. This is another signal of our long-term commitment to Ukraine’s security. As you know, Patriot is one of the world’s most advanced air defense systems, and it will give Ukraine a critical long-range capability to defend its airspace. It is capable of intercepting cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and aircraft.

It’s important to put the Patriot battery in context. For air defense, there is no “silver bullet.” Our goal is to help Ukraine strengthen a layered, integrated approach to air defense. That will include Ukraine’s own legacy capabilities, as well as NATO-standard systems. Patriot will complement a range of medium- and short-range air defense capabilities that we’ve provided and that allies have provided in prior donation packages, and for us, that includes NASAMS and Avenger systems. Patriot does require training, and we expect it will take several months to ensure Ukrainian forces have the training they need to employ it successfully.

Now, in addition to Patriot, this drawdown package includes several other highlights. First, it includes an additional 500 precision-guided 155-millimeter artillery rounds, and it includes several different mortar systems and rounds for those systems. Second, it includes precision aerial munitions, and then third, it includes additional MRAP vehicles and Humvees, and I think important to note, this is 38 MRAP vehicles, but we’ve provided 440 to date, and it’s 120 Humvees, but this comes on top of 1,200 Humvees that we’ve provided to date.

Now for the second part of today’s announcement, the $850 million under USAI, I just want to remind that this is an authority under which we procure capabilities from industry, rather than drawing them down from U.S. stocks. So USAI capabilities typically take longer to deliver. Now under USA — AI, we are committing to provide a range of different non — what we call nonstandard ammunitions. This is what we formerly called Soviet-type ammunition. It includes 152-millimeter artillery rounds, 122-millimeter artillery rounds, and these will be able to help the Ukrainians bring more of its legacy systems, its legacy howitzers back into the fight in greater numbers. We also plan to — to provide 122-millimeter Grad rockets, and this is to support Ukraine’s Grad rocket artillery capability, as well as tank ammunition to help Ukraine sustain operations with its existing tanks. Another capability we’re providing via USAI are satellite communication terminals and services. This will add resilience to Ukraine’s communications infrastructure. And then as always, we have funding from (sic) training, for maintenance and for sustainment in support of the equipment we and our partners have provided.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown in convenient Tweet form:

Europe is supplying other weapons, but is unable to keep up with the furious rate of munition use.

Ukraine’s military fortunes also depend on European countries, such as Germany, that let their defense industry atrophy in peacetime and are struggling to catch up as they focus on securing energy supplies.

Ukraine’s battle against the Russian invasion is consuming ammunition at rates unseen since World War II. Kyiv’s forces have been firing around 6,000 artillery shells a day and are now running out of antiaircraft missiles amid a relentless aerial onslaught by Russia, according to experts and intelligence officials. At the height of the fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas area, Russia was using more ammunition in two days than the entire stock of the British military, according to the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.

No country in NATO other than the U.S. has either a sufficient stock of weapons to fight a major artillery war or the industrial capacity to create such reserves, said Nico Lange, a former top official at the German Defense Ministry. This means that NATO wouldn’t be able to defend its territory against major adversaries if it were to be attacked now, he said.

“Governments have been slashing contracts for decades, so companies shed production lines and employees,” said Mr. Lange, a senior fellow with the Munich Security Conference, a global security forum.

The current shortage of shells and missiles is largely due to a shift in the military doctrines of NATO allies in recent decades: Instead of planning for World War II-style ground battles, they focused on targeted, asymmetric warfare against unsophisticated opponents, said Morten Brandtzæg, chief executive of Nammo AS, one of the world’s largest arms manufacturers.

“We need orders of magnitude more industrial capacity,” said Mr. Brandtzæg, whose company is co-owned by the governments of Norway and Finland.

Ukraine uses up to 40,000 artillery shells of the NATO caliber 155mm each month, while the entire annual production of such projectiles in Europe is around 300,000, according to Michal Strnad, owner of Czechoslovak Group AS, a Czech company that produces around 30% of Europe’s output of such munitions.

“European production capacity is grossly inadequate,” Mr. Strnad said. Even if the war were to stop overnight, Europe would need up to 15 years to resupply its stocks at current production rates, he said.

As always, there are rumors that Russia has had to buy artillery shells from north Korea and, as always, these rumors should be treated with several grains of salt. Russia used up huge amounts of its smart munitions early, but early predictions that Russia would quickly run out its own dumb artillery shells have thus far proven to be premature.

The Patriot system may prove to be more symbolic than really useful, if only because Russias has already used up sop much of its medium range missile stocks. JDAMs, on the other hand, could prove to be very effective at targeting Russian military assets.

In any case, it’s now clear that a war Russia thought would be “three days to take Kiev” will now drag on as a war of attrition for a year or more, and a goodly portion of the western world has signed up to supply Ukraine with munitions for as long as it takes.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Military | 8 Comments »

A Look At Chinese Artillery

Sunday, October 23rd, 2022

Here is a moderately in-depth look at China’s current generation of artillery, and how it stacks up to American artillery.

A lot of this is a fairly detailed order-of-battle breakdown of what and how many artillery pieces are assigned to each level of Chinese military organization, which I’m not going to try to summarize here. But here are some of the more interesting takeaways:

  • China’s artillery mix seems to be between Russia’s “more is more” giant units of towed artillery and America’s largely mobile, increasingly high tech approach.
  • There are different mixes of self-propelled artillery deployed to north Chinese units than south Chinese units. The north emphasizes larger systems, while the south features smaller, more mobile systems for more rugged terrain. (Remember, China got its ass kicked in the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979.)
  • Like the U.S., China supports infantry companies and battalions with mortars.
  • Towed artillery is on its way out of the PLA. They’re even using self-propelled artillery in light units that look like six-wheeled technicals, so they can shoot-and-scoot. These look like they could be pretty cost-effective.
  • Like the Russians, China has also gone heavy into unguided rockets.
  • “The Chinese have also adopted a modular pod-based rocket artillery similar to a larger HIMARS, capable of taking different sizes of GPS guided missiles.”
  • U.S. artillery tends to be longer-ranged than equivalent Chinese, especially when it comes to guided shells.
  • Old, big Soviet 152mm and 130mm weapons are being replaced with self-propelled 155mm platforms (PLZ-05, PCL-181).
  • The PHL-03 is an MLRS firing unguided rockets up to 300km.
  • The newer PJL-16 fires unguided 300mm, guided 370mm, and 750mm guided missiles using a pod system. The accuracy range on the guided munitions are reportedly 30m, as opposed to the HIMARS 8m.
  • China has a loading crane system for their advanced MLSR which is better than the Russian system (still loading each tube manually), but not as good as HIMARS self-loading pod system.

    • The high tech Chinese system isn’t as good as the best U.S. systems yet, but they seem to be catching up. However, I wonder how well they can continue to build high tech weapons guidance system under the new semiconductor sanctions. GPS is an old technology, so presumably China build guidance systems in their older fabs guided missiles using their own GPS-like BeiDou system. But the question is whether they can keep even the older fabs running without U.S. support and inputs, and if they can, how high a priority such munitions will be under the new constraints. There are only so many wafer starts to go around…

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    Posted in Crime, Military, video | 1 Comment »

    Ukraine Update for September 14, 2022

    Wednesday, September 14th, 2022

    Russia acknowledges defeat in Kharkiv, ultranationalists start to turn on Putin, Lyman is the new battleground, and unconfirmed reports of Russian troops abandoning Melitopol.

    Let’s dig in.

  • ISW’s takeaways for September 13:
    • The Kremlin has recognized its defeat in Kharkiv Oblast, the first defeat Russia has acknowledged in this war. The Kremlin is deflecting blame from Russian President Vladimir Putin and attributing it instead to his military advisors.
    • The Kremlin is likely seeking to use the defeat in Kharkiv to facilitate crypto mobilization efforts by intensifying patriotic rhetoric and discussions about fuller mobilization while revisiting a Russian State Duma bill allowing the military to send call-ups for the regular semiannual conscription by mail. Nothing in the Duma bill suggests that Putin is preparing to order general mobilization, and it is far from clear that he could do so quickly in any case.
    • The successful Ukrainian counter-offensive around Kharkiv Oblast is prompting Russian servicemen, occupation authorities, and milbloggers to panic.
    • Russia’s military failures in Ukraine are likely continuing to weaken Russia’s leverage in the former Soviet Union as Russia appears unwilling to enforce a violated ceasefire it brokered between Armenia and Azerbaijan or to allow Armenia to invoke provisions of the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization in its defense.
    • Ukrainian troops likely continued ground attacks along the Lyman-Yampil-Bilohorivka line in northern Donetsk Oblast and may be conducting limited ground attacks across the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast.
    • Russian and Ukrainian sources indicated that Ukrainian forces are continuing ground maneuvers in three areas of Kherson Oblast as part of the ongoing southern counter-offensive.
    • Russian troops made incremental gains south of Bakhmut and continued ground attacks throughout Donetsk Oblast.
    • Ukrainian forces provided the first visual evidence of Russian forces using an Iranian-made drone in Ukraine on September 13.
  • Lyman seems to be the new battleground in the east.

    Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskiy, said Ukrainian troops were now trying to retake the Russian-held town of Lyman in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and were eyeing territorial gains in the neighbouring Luhansk region which is under Russian control.

    “There is now an assault on Lyman,” Arestovych said in a video posted on YouTube.

    “And that is what they fear most – that we take Lyman and then advance on Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk,” he said, referring to twin cities in the Luhansk region taken by Russia after fierce fighting in June and July.

  • The Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol said that Russians are evacuating Melitopol, the Zaporizhia Oblast city between Mariupol and Kherson, and heading to Crimea. I treat this report with a fair amount of skepticism, because if true it would essentially mean Game Over for Russia’s southern front.

  • Explosions at Taganrog airbase in Russia.

  • Ukrainian forces in newly-liberated Balakliya discovered a Russian torture chamber.

    In the newly-liberated areas, relief and sorrow are intertwined – as accounts emerge of torture and killings during the long months of Russian occupation.

    Artem, who lives in the city of Balakliya in the Kharkiv region, told the BBC he was held by Russians for more than 40 days, and was tortured with electrocution.

    Balakliya was liberated on 8 September after being occupied for more than six months. The epicentre of the brutality was the city’s police station, which Russian forces used as their headquarters.

    Artem said he could hear screams of pain and terror coming from other cells.

    The occupiers made sure the cries could be heard, he said, by turning off the building’s noisy ventilation system.

    “They turned it off so everyone could hear how people scream when they are shocked with electricity,” he told us. “They did this to some of the prisoners every other day… They even did this to the women”.

    And they did it to Artem, though in his case only once.

    “They made me hold two wires,” he said.

    “There was an electric generator. The faster it went, the higher the voltage. They said, ‘if you let it go, you are finished’. Then they started asking questions. They said I was lying, and they started spinning it even more and the voltage increased.”

    Artem told us he was detained because the Russians found a picture of his brother, a soldier, in uniform. Another man from Balakliya was held for 25 days because he had the Ukrainian flag, Artem said.

    A school principal called Tatiana told us she was held in the police station for three days and also heard screams from other cells.

  • The disaster in Kharkiv is so massive and apparent that even some of the pro-war Russian pundits are realizing it.

  • For Putin, losing ultranationalists is much more dangerous than criticism from more liberal segments of Russian society.

    Their criticism is that Putin is not doing enough. That the special military operation is insufficient, and that Putin should declare full mobilization. These ultranationalists are largely represented by those Russian military bloggers that have become quite famous during the war. The most famous one is probably Igor Girkin. These bloggers make sometimes very good military analyses, and they clearly have a network of sources that provide information about the situation on the frontlines. And we also know that their views are shared by many of the soldiers. For example, there have been studies that show that these ultranationalist views are pretty common in spetsnaz units. And these ultranationalist voices are a real challenge for the Putin regime. Because obviously he can’t dismiss them as being unpatriotic or foreign agents or something like that. And what is happening now is that these ultranationalists are turning against Putin. And that is dangerous for him.

    The shift has been from “If you support the troops, you have to support Putin” to “If you support the troops, you have to blame Putin for fucking things up so badly.”

  • Ben Hedges: Ukraine will retake all pre-February 23rd territory this year, and recapture Crimea next year. “It could be quicker.”

  • More scenes of captured equipment in Izyum.

  • Ukrainians issued Russian passports find out they’re worthless to get into Crimea or obtain government services.
  • Ukrainian troops using the Polish-built Krab self-propelled howitzer say it’s like night and day compared to their old Soviet equipment. “It’s like a Porsche vs. a Lada.”

  • Russian politician Dmitry Medvedev reacts well to suggestion the West give Ukraine security guarantees. “The land will be on fire and the concrete will melt.”
  • The Little MRAP Who Couldn’t Even:

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Military, video | 13 Comments »

    Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict Flares Up Again

    Tuesday, September 13th, 2022

    If you’re tired of hearing about two ex-Soviet countries slugging it out with artillery, this story is not for you.

    Armenia and Azerbaijan are at it again.

    Azerbaijani forces shelled Armenia’s territory on Tuesday in a large-scale attack that killed at least 49 Armenian soldiers and fueled fears of even broader hostilities.

    Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a decades-old conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994. Azerbaijan reclaimed broad swaths of Nagorno-Karabakh in a six-week war in 2020 that killed more than 6,600 people and ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal.

    Moscow, which deployed about 2,000 troops to the region to serve as peacekeepers under the deal, moved quickly to broker a cease-fire on Tuesday morning, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether it was holding.

    The hostilities erupted minutes after midnight, with Azerbaijani forces unleashing an artillery barrage and drone attacks in many sections of Armenian territory, according to the Armenian Defense Ministry.

    Azerbaijan charged that its forces returned fire in response to “large-scale provocations” by the Armenian military, claiming that the Armenian troops planted mines and repeatedly fired on Azerbaijani military positions, resulting in unspecified casualties and damage to military infrastructure.

    Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey also placed the blame for the violence on Armenia. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called for Yerevan to halt its “provocations” and Defense Minister Hulusi Akar condemned “Armenia’s aggressive attitude and provocative actions” following talks with their counterparts in Baku.

    Speaking in parliament early Tuesday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that Azerbaijani shelling has killed at least 49 Armenian soldiers.

    He said the Azerbaijani action followed his recent European Union-brokered talks in Brussels with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that revealed what he described as Azerbaijan’s uncompromising stand.

    Christian Armenia has a long, unhappy history with Turkey, including genocide at the hands of Muslim Turks in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. Like the Balkans, the Caucuses are an unstable cauldron of mixed ethno-religious-nationalism, with a side-order of Jihadism thrown in for good measure (the Islamic State – Caucasus Province, the successor to the Caucasus Emirate, has been relatively quit recently, but such groups seldom wither away entirely). Russia still occupies the parts of Georgia it conquered in 2008, but the blooding it’s taken in Ukraine has probably weakened its hand regionally. And coming food and energy security issues (Azerbaijan in energy rich, but Armenia is energy-poor) are likely to exacerbate tensions in the coming months.

    Putin’s Russia may be receiving a well-deserved comeuppance in Ukraine, but its resulting weakness could very well result in interesting times for many ex-Soviet states.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Military, video | 6 Comments »

    Peter Zeihan on The Kherson Counteroffensive

    Thursday, September 1st, 2022

    For those who think I rely too much on Ukraine updates and Peter Zeihan videos, enjoy this Peter Zeihan video update on Ukraine!

    Takeaways:

  • “Everything that the Russians were bad at before (propaganda, logistics, precision, training, maintenance, equipment), everything they were bad at before, they’re worse at now.”
  • Ukraine has moved from trying to stop the Russian advance with shoulder-mounted weaponry to longer-range heavy artillery, allowing them to hit ammo dumps, logistical hubs and high-value officers.
  • “The degree to which the Ukrainians are able to put targeting information, either from their own human network or signal intelligence that is provided by the Americans, and put it to use has been very impressive, and it has snarled the entirety of the Russian advance in both the east and the south.”
  • “Russia may be running out of ammunition.”
  • Russian doctrine calls for slow advances prepared by massive artillery barrages.
  • “They faced a massive industrial collapse in the 1990s that they never really covered recovered from.”

  • They have fought three artillery intensive wars since the Soviet collapse: two in Chechnya and then one in Syria. So now the Russians are attempting to advance over a front that’s a thousand miles long with a burn rate for their artillery in excess of 40,000 shells a day. Going through a relatively small by Soviet standards arsenal that has been acquired since the Soviet collapse, when the industrial system collapses. Well, any equipment any shells that they’re going to use that are not from that stack are things that were built before 1989, meaning that they’re in excess of 30 years old. We’ve seen reports several a year in Russia going back 30 years that, every once in a while, one of these shells [just] cooks off and the entire ammo dump goes up. It’s entirely possible that some of the explosions were seeing in places like Belograd or Western Russia are not actually being caused by the Ukrainians, but by the Russians manhandling of their own equipment. But regardless, that burn rate 40,000 a day is not something that anyone could maintain at length.

  • Thus Russia has been shooting at big static targets like train stations and malls. “They have the feel of being a little bit more than the Russians shooting at things to demonstrate to the world that the Russians can still shoot at things. Tanks and infantry are not following up on any of these attacks.”
  • “Kherson was the only major city that Ukrainians ever lost to the Russians, the only regional capital.”
  • “All the normal things that plague offensives are appropriate to think about here. They trigger higher casualties among the attackers than the defenders. They require more troops, They require better logistics. They’re more vulnerable to disruption. All of that stands. Also, you have to consider that this isn’t simply Ukraine’s first significant offensive in the war, but this is Ukraine’s first significant offensive ever.”
  • “The Ukrainians have continually surprised to the upside, and the Russians have continually surprised at the downside. So what should have been a wildly unbalanced war that should have been over four months ago all of a sudden, if not a conflict among equals, is suddenly looking like a little bit more of a fair-ish fight.”
  • Summary of the Kherson situation so far, including damage to the bridges, covered here and here.
  • No guarantee that the Ukrainians will win in Kherson, but it obviously offers them the best chance.
  • “If it proves that the Ukrainians are successful [Russian] forces are going to have to evacuate on foot, they are going to have to leave all of their gear behind…this would be the single biggest military transfer to Ukraine of the post-war environment, and certainly of this war…all of a sudden, the Ukrainians might actually have what they need.” Sometimes Zeihan has a tendency to overstate things, and I think he does that here. Yes, they’ll probably capture some usable heavy equipment, but the estimates I hear are some 20,000 Russian troops in Kherson, and I’m not sure how many functional military vehicles will be left in usable condition after such heavy fighting. They might well pick up significant quantities of towed artillery.
  • He talks about the importance of taking Nova Kakhkovka, and controlling the irrigation gates for the canals that feed occupied Crimea.
  • If Ukraine retakes Kherson, they might theoretically be able to take out the Kerch Strait Bridge. (Note that this is only true if they actually have the ATACMS missiles for their HIMARS that the Biden Administration says we haven’t given them yet, as I calculate a distance of roughly 179 miles from Nova Kakhkovka to the bridge.) “Crimea goes from being an incredibly strategically valuable platform that the Russians can use to launch into Ukraine proper, into the most significant military vulnerability that post-war Russia has ever had.” Eh, I think I have to go with the Atomic Bomb between 1945 and August of 1949.
  • “If Ukraine is going to win this war, this is how it’s going to start.”

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 3 Comments »

    Kherson Counteroffensive: Day Two

    Tuesday, August 30th, 2022

    Ukraine’s Kherson counteroffensive appears to be making significant headway. The Institute for the Study of War has some summary goodness.

    Ukrainian military officials announced the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson Oblast on August 29. Ukrainian officials reported that Ukrainian forces have broken through the first line of defenses in unspecified areas of Kherson Oblast and are seeking to take advantage of the disruption of Russian ground lines of communication caused by Ukrainian HIMARS strikes over many weeks. Ukrainian officials did not confirm liberating any settlements, but some Russian milbloggers and unnamed sources speaking with Western outlets stated that Ukrainian forces liberated several settlements west and northwest of Kherson City, near the Ukrainian bridgehead over the Inhulets River, and south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border. The Russian Defense Ministry (MoD), Russian proxies, and some Russian milbloggers denounced the Ukrainian announcement of the counteroffensive as “propaganda.”

    Many Russian milbloggers nevertheless reported a wide variety of Ukrainian attacks along the entire line of contact, and the information space will likely become confused for a time due to panic among Russian sources. Russian outlets have also vaguely mentioned evacuations of civilians from Kherson Oblast, but then noted that occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast are calling on residents to seek shelter rather than flee. ISW will report on the Ukrainian counteroffensive in a new section below.

    Let’s snip to that.

    Ukrainian military officials announced that Ukrainian forces began a counteroffensive operation in Kherson Oblast on August 29 after severely disrupting Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) for weeks. Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Nataliya Gumenyuk stated that Ukrainian forces “began counteroffensive actions in many directions” and have broken through the first line of defense in an unspecified area. The Ukrainian operational group “Kakhovka” stated that Ukrainian forces have cut Russian GLOCs across the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast and called the situation a “brilliant chance to return [Ukrainian] territories.” The “Kakhovka” group also reported that the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) 109th Regiment and Russian airborne troops have left their positions in an unspecified area of Kherson Oblast, and Ukrainian wires claimed that these elements withdrew from their positions around Kherson City. The DNR 109th Regiment had previously published an appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin in late June identifying itself as a forcibly mobilized unit, complaining that it had not been rotated away from the front line for rest, and decrying poor conditions on the frontlines. Ukrainian military officials also released a DNR document dated July 24 that ordered the redeployment of the 109th, 113th, and 125th DNR regiments to Arkhanhelske, Vysokopillya, Zolota Balka, and Davydiv Brid in northwestern Kherson Oblast. “Kakhovka” also shared footage reportedly of a Russian serviceman seeking shelter on the ground amidst heavy artillery shelling while saying that Ukrainian forces have broken the first line of defense on August 29. Ukrainian officials did not discuss the directionality of Ukrainian counteroffensives.

    Ukrainian and Russian officials called for civilians to evacuate or seek shelter in western Kherson Oblast on August 28-29. Ukrainian Kherson Oblast officials called on civilians to leave Kherson Oblast to get out of the way of Ukrainian forces and directed those choosing to stay in Kherson Oblast to seek shelter away from Russian military equipment. Occupation authorities of Nova Kakhkovka, where Ukrainian forces have frequently targeted Russian military infrastructure and GLOCS, called on civilians to seek shelter due to extensive Ukrainian strikes on August 28-29. Russian sources reported that Nova Kakhova occupation authorities do not plan to issue evacuation orders. Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov stated that Russian forces evacuated their military hospital in Melitopol on August 29, indicating further fear of intensified Ukrainian activity even in rear occupied areas.

    Paragraph of Russian “counteroffensive failed, everything is fine, nothing to see here, return to your homes” blather snipped.

    Russian and Western sources claimed that Ukrainian forces liberated five settlements during the first day of the counteroffensive, but Ukrainian sources have not announced the liberation of any settlements at the time of this publication. An unnamed military official of an unspecified country told CNN that Ukrainian forces liberated Pravdyne (approximately 34km northwest of Kherson City), Novodmytrivka, and Tomyna Balka (both about 23km due west of Kherson City). The official also stated that Ukrainian forces liberated Arkhanhelske on the eastern bank of Inhulets River and south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border. ISW cannot independently verify CNN’s report and will update its maps if and when more sources confirm the report. The Ukrainian official report about the withdrawal of the 109th regiment that operates in northwestern Kherson Oblast may suggest that Ukrainians have crossed the Inhulets River into Arkhanhelske. Several Russian milbloggers amplified a report from the Telegram-based milblogger Grey Zone (about 276,000 followers) that Ukrainian forces advanced 6km from their bridgehead over the Inhulets River and seized the Sukhyi Stavok settlement (approximately 7km west of Russian GLOCs along the T2207 highway). Ukrainian Former Head of Foreign Intelligence Service Mykola Malomuzh made similar remarks about the liberation of Sukhyi Stavok.

    Ukrainian forces also continued to conduct missile strikes on Russian ammunition depots, GLOCs, and strongholds on August 28 and August 29. Beryslav Raion Military Administration Head Volodymyr Litvinov reported that Ukrainian forces struck Russian manpower and equipment concentration point at the Beryslav Machine-Building Plant, resulting in a large fire at the plant. Odesa Oblast Military Administration Spokesperson Serhiy Bratchuk also reported that Ukrainian forces struck a Russian command post near the North Crimean Canal just east of Nova Kakhovka, a Russian river crossing in Lvove (west of Nova Kakhovka along the Dnipro River), and an ammunition depot in Havrylivka (approximately 33km south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border). Ukrainian Telegram channels also published footage reportedly showing a strike on the Antonivsky Bridge and a nearby barge. Social media users published footage of reportedly Ukrainian strikes on a Russian ammunition depot in Nova Kakhovka. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command noted that Ukrainian forces launched eight airstrikes at Russian strongholds and manpower and equipment concentration points along the line of contact on August 28.

    Russian forces are continuing efforts to restore their damaged GLOCs over the Dnipro River. Satellite imagery shows that Russian forces are attempting to build a pontoon crossing near the Antonivsky Bridge, which appeared to be halfway finished as of August 27. Geolocated satellite imagery also showed that the Kakhovka Bridge is still out of service with strike holes on the critical junctures of the bridge. Satellite imagery indicated that Russian forces are continuing to move military equipment mostly north toward Kherson City via the pontoon ferry. Satellite imagery showed the movement of 100 Russian military vehicles as of August 25, with few moving south. Such transfer of equipment via ferries is inefficient and vulnerable to further Ukrainian strikes. Russian forces reportedly continue to experience difficulties maintaining other GLOCs to southern Ukraine. Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushchenko stated that Russian logistics efforts relying on Mariupol rail transit will likely falter in the following days due to lack of electricity, damage to station cranes, and flooding that hinders rail operation in Mariupol.

    Deutches Welle has a meaty segment on the conflict:

    Some takeaways:

  • Ukraine seem to have three main prongs for their counterattack:
    • West of Kherson
    • The land bridge that collects it to Mykolaiv
    • “Further north, near the Kakhovka dam.” (For certain values of “near.”)
  • Still shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. (Lots of time spent on this.)
  • Germany is sending Ukraine Vulcano (though the DW announcers pronounce it “volcano”) high precision artillery shells.
  • Ukrainian commander Yurii Bereza says that HIMARS and precision howitzer munitions have been a great equalizer.
  • More than 90 billion Euros pledged to Ukraine. Biggest donors are 1. U.S. (far and away the biggest), 2. UK, 3. EU, 4. Poland, 5. Germany. (Yeah, I know the last two are in the EU.)
  • There’s a lot of talk over Germany going soft due to gas shortages, but German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sounds pretty hardline here, talking about “Russia’s brutal war of aggression.”
  • Private foreign donors have also allowed Ukraine to buy millions in drones.
  • Concerns over rapid depletion of EU weapons supplies. (Also a concern in the US.)
  • Ben Hedges, former commander of U.S. forces in Europe, thinks Ukraine has done a good job of shaping the battlespace and building up forces for the counteroffensive.
  • “The Russians have not yet fixed the many problems [that] were on display back in February and March. Especially their command and control framework …It’s still a mess.”
  • “The logistical system is fragile, it’s exhausted, it’s gotten weaker by the week.”
  • On Putin announcing a 10% increase in troop levels: “I’d bet a large sum of money that there’s not 137,000 Russians willing to step up and join the military.”
  • “There’s a history in Russia of serious inflation in numbers. They’ve never had what they said they had. This is a classic means of corruption, to claim a certain number to draw salaries, when in fact you’re only paying half to three-quarters of that.”
  • “It’s an unhealthy population decreasing in size.”
  • Even if Putin gets the additional troops he wants, it will be months before they show up with equipment.

    • Not only was the Antonivsky Bridge hit again, but the in-progress pontoon bridge was also hit, as was a ferry.

    Ukraine says that all the bridges across the Dnipro River near Kherson are “unusable.” They do appear to have been badly damaged, but I’d take “unusable” with a grain of salt.

    Ukraine also reportedly hit the Russian military headquarters in Kherson. Given Russia’s rigid top-down command structure, that’s potentially a huge blow.

    In-cockpit combat aircraft footage from a Ukrainian Mig-29 in Kherson theater:

    Some tweets:

    As always, the fog of war/grains of salt caveats apply…

    Edited To Update: Here’s a Ukrainian map guy covering the various thrusts of Ukrainian attacks in more detail.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 2 Comments »

    Ukraine Artillery Gets A GPS Boost

    Wednesday, May 11th, 2022

    The U.S. and other countries are sending M777 155mm howitzers to Ukraine.

    American M777 howitzers could prove a major factor in turning the tide against Russian forces in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine thanks to their precision and power.

    The howitzers are field artillery pieces that Ukrainian forces are already using to shell the Russians and represent an improvement on the equipment that the country’s military previously had.

    The U.S. has begun sending 90 M777 Howitzers, while Australia is sending six and Canada is providing four. The M777s are the towed howitzers currently used by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. They have a maximum range of 15 miles and require a crew of eight to 10 people.

    Illia Ponomarenko, a defense reporter with The Kyiv Independent, tweeted on Tuesday: “M777s are already in Donbas, engaging Russian lines – confirmed!”

    Snip.

    The M777 Howitzers generally fire precision-guided Excalibur rounds that use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to home in on targets and it is expected that Ukraine will have been provided with these rounds. Canada was reportedly providing Excalibur shells, according to an AFP report on April 25.

    Here’s more background on the M777:

    A few brief takeaways:

  • Using aluminum and titanium, they weigh half what the M198 they’re replacing weighed. This means they’re fare more air-portable (at least for the U.S., slung from an Osprey).
  • Each costs about $4 million.
  • Contrary to the article above, the video asserts they only need a crew of five.
  • Fires seven rounds a minute.
  • Excalibur shells cost about $70,000 each. Pricey, but way cheaper than a Tomahawk cruise missile.

    • Here’s a “heavy on dramatic music but light on details” video of an Excalibur round hitting a target 65 klicks away.

    Did Ukraine use their new American-gifted, GPS-guided howitzer shell to take out a Russian general? Peter Zeihan (yep, him again) makes this case in this short video:

    Some of Zeihan’s analysis seems a little bit out there, but this one seems right on the cutting edge of plausibility, as we’re now able to do with artillery shells what once took guided missiles or smart bombs. But I don’t think Americans necessarily had to be involved in the targeting. It’s entirely possible that good signals intelligence pinpointed his location, or even just honed in a promising Russian communication cluster and hit General Valery Gerasimov as a stroke of good luck. Also, I should point out that Gerasimov’s death has not yet been confirmed.

    But yes, it’s quite plausible that we and/or Ukraine can pinpoint the locations of Russian generals in theater and drop precision munitions on their heads from 25 miles away…

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | 1 Comment »

    Extended Range Cannon Artillery: Going Boom 43 Miles Away

    Saturday, April 17th, 2021

    Here’s some videos of BAE’s new M1299 self-propelled Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) firing Raytheon’s precision-guided M982 Excalibur artillery round. The round itself isn’t new, it’s been around for over a decade, but using the ERCA, they recently extended the effective range of the shell out to 43 miles:

    “That blew up real good!”

    Here’s a longer video that shows more detail, but also has one of those annoying computer voice-over tracks:

    I suspect the ability to fire and scoot from such long ranges will be useful on future battlefields. They’re also working an integrating an autoloader into the ERCA.

    Reach out and touch someone…

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    Posted in Military, video | 1 Comment »

    LinkSwarm for December 25, 2020

    Friday, December 25th, 2020

    Welcome to a special Christmas day LinkSwarm! And by “special,” I mean “because Christmas falls on Friday.”

  • Explosion rocks downtown Nashville. “Around 6:30 a.m., police received a call for a suspicious RV with no tags parked across from the Davidson County courthouse. As officers arrived, the RV exploded, blowing out the windows of nearby buildings and leaving extensive damage.” They’re calling it an “intentional act.” Maybe, especially across the street from a courthouse. But it could still be a meth lab cooking off. As always, remember that much of the early reporting around such events are usually wrong.

    Update: Assuming the message in this video is real, it does appear to be a premeditated act of which authorities were warned:

  • The UK and the EU have reached a Brexit deal:

    The deal comes in just eight days short of the hard-Brexit deadline. Rather than erecting trade barriers to which some had resigned themselves, the two sides are looking toward a more cooperative than contentious relationship, reports the Wall Street Journal:

    Under the terms of the accord, both sides will continue to trade free of tariffs but there will be significant new bureaucracy for importers and exporters. The free flow of workers between the two economies will end and trade in services will be much reduced. London’s vast financial center will no longer have guaranteed access to European markets.

    The deal gives Britain significant freedom to depart from EU regulations and sign free-trade deals with countries like the U.S. But as the price for securing a deal without tariffs, the U.K. agreed that it wouldn’t seriously undercut EU standards on issues such as labor and the environment and would maintain similar constraints on the subsidizing of private industry.

    The agreement must formally be ratified by the European and U.K. parliaments and signed off by EU leaders before the end of the year. Capitals have insisted they need proper time to comb through the text before approving it. Though their approval is likely, France has warned it could veto a deal if some of its key concerns, including access to British waters for its fishing fleet, aren’t met.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • President Donald Trump is right to call the $900 billion stimulus package a disgrace.

    Here’s the short version: One main problem is that the 5,500-plus page legislative package was drafted behind closed doors by party leaders, then quickly unveiled hours before a vote.

    As voices as disparate as Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash have pointed out, this meant that most members of Congress had to vote for or against the package before actually getting to read the legislation.

    That’s right: Trillions of taxpayer dollars were doled out, and the members of Congress who voted for it don’t even know where much of it is going.

    This bill pours hundreds of billions of dollars into preexisting stimulus programs that were rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, without meaningfully addressing any of the problems. You can expect more stimulus checks sent to dead people and more runaway fraud to plague the expanded unemployment benefits.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “Tables Turned: Detroit Sues Black Lives Matter Group for ‘Civil Conspiracy’ to Riot and Attack Police.” The group in question is Black Lives Matter umbrella group Detroit Will Breathe. Discovery should be extremely interesting… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Andrew Cuomo hates ordinary people and non-bankrupt restaurants so much that he’s barred patrons of outdoor dining from using a restaurants restroom. Who does he think he is, Werner Erhard?
  • Andrew Yang is running for mayor of New York City. It would be very difficult indeed for Yang not to be a vast improvement over the burning Porta-Potty stuffed with dead clowns that is the De Blasio administration. As a moderate Democrat, I would expect Yang to be a better mayor than de Blasio or David Dinkins, but not as good as Rudy Giuliani or Ed Koch. I would expect a Yang mayoralty to be about on par with Bloomberg’s, with maybe more upside if he’s willing to shake up the corrupt status quo and not push his disasterous pet guaranteed income idea.
  • Another thing President Trump disrupted: stale, self-serving conventional wisdom about peace in the Middle East:

    In an address to the UN Security Council on Monday during a monthly session on the Middle East, US Ambassador Kelly Craft asserted that President Donald Trump’s policies had “overturned” long-held views about diplomacy in the region.

    “For decades, the prevailing assumption was that the world would only see normalized international relations with Israel following a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute,” Craft told the virtual meeting. “But we have proven this assumption wrong.”

    She touted the Trump administration’s pursuit of “economic and cultural ties” between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which has led to normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Similar deals with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Oman, among others, could also be in the offing.

    “All of us here should think long and hard about what else we may have missed or misinterpreted over the years.”

  • “UK: Muslim rape gang ringleader released back onto the streets 8 years into his 26-year term.”
  • “Demanding Silicon Valley Suppress ‘Hyper-Partisan Sites’ in Favor of ‘Mainstream News’ (The NYT) is a Fraud:

    The most prolific activism demanding more Silicon Valley censorship is found in the nation’s largest news outlets: the media reporters of CNN, the “disinformation” unit of NBC News, and especially the tech reporters of The New York Times. That is where the most aggressive and sustained pro-internet-censorship campaigns are waged.

    Due in part to a self-interested desire to re-establish their monopoly on discourse by crushing any independent or dissenting voices, and in part by a censorious and arrogant mindset which convinces them that only those of their worldview and pedigree have a right to be heard, they largely devote themselves to complaining that Facebook, Google and Twitter are not suppressing enough speech. It is hall-monitor tattletale whining masquerading as journalism: petulantly complaining that tech platforms are permitting speech that, in their view, ought instead be silenced.

    Snip.

    The conceit that outlets like The New York Times, CNN and NPR are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is one you would be eager to believe, or at least want to induce others to believe, if you were a tech reporter at The New York Times, furious and hurt that millions upon millions of people would rather hear other voices than your own, and simply do not trust what you tell them. Inducing Facebook to manipulate the algorithmic underbelly of social media to artificially force your content down the throats of citizens who prefer to avoid it, while rendering your critics’ speech invisible — all in the name of reducing “hyper-partisanship,” “divisiveness,” and “misinformation” — is of course a highly desirable outcome for mainstream outlets like the NYT.

    The problem with this claim is that it’s a complete and utter fraud, one that is easily demonstrated as such. There are few sites more “hyper-partisan” than the three outlets which the NYT applauded Facebook for promoting. In the 2020 election, over 70 million Americans — close to half of the voting population — voted for Donald Trump, yet not one of them is employed by the op-ed page of the “non-partisan” New York Times and are almost never heard on NPR or CNN. That’s because those news outlets, by design, are pro-Democratic-Party organs, who speak overwhelmingly to Democratic readers and viewers.

    It is hard to get more partisan than the news outlets which the NYT tech reporters, and apparently Facebook, consider to be the alternatives to “hyper-partisan” discourse. In April, Pew Research asked Americans which outlet is their primary source of news, and the polling firm found that the audiences of NPR, CNN and especially The New York Times are overwhelmingly Democrats, in some cases almost entirely so.

    As Pew put it: “about nine-in-ten of those who name The New York Times (91%) and NPR (87%) as their main political news source identify as Democrats, with CNN at about eight-in-ten (79%).” These outlets speak to Democrats, are built for Democrats, and produce news content designed to be pleasing and affirming to Democrats — so they keep watching and buying. One can say many things about these news outlets, but the idea that they are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is the exact opposite of the truth: it is difficult to find more hyper-partisan organs than these.

  • Kurt Schlichter on our stupid establishment:

    The Establishment decided that instead of having a vigorous debate and discussion over the safety and efficacy of these prophylactic potions, they would just short circuit the whole messy truth determination process that Western civilization has relied upon for a millennium – argument, debate, and eventually consensus after everything is fully and freely hashed-out – and move right to the Official Truth. All the smart set decided that the Official Truth would be that these vaccines were all perfect and necessary and that we needed to stamp out any hint of dissent lest people pause and think for themselves and thereby disrupt the plan by raising unapproved notions. And the tech overlords would do their part by ensuring that any info, ideas, or interplay that was not inline with the narrative would be suppressed.

    It’s so much more efficient, you know, to tell people what they think than to take the time to convince them and refute counter-arguments.

    Not everyone was foolish. It was very smart and good leadership for Mike Pence to take the shot in public in front of cameras. That a couple of tentacles didn’t sprout out of his clavicles was reassuring. That’s leadership, and that’s what our leaders should be doing. But most of our ruling class instead thinks that if they lie to us and suppress our debates and call us stupid enough, we’ll fall into line.

    When has that worked for long?

  • A roundup of climate predictions for 2020 that were horribly wrong. Remember how snowfall would be a thing of the past?
  • Israel hits Syria again.
  • “US Army Hits Target 43 Miles Away With Long-Range Cannon.”
  • Rush Limbaugh signs off, possibly for the last time.
  • Austin restaurants and bars under Stage 5 Wuhan coronavirus restrictions again. Thanks a lot, China. And Mayor Adler.
  • Rand Paul presents the airing of the Festivus grievances:

    Among Paul’s instances of waste were several health studies, including more than $36 million spent on studying why stress makes hair turn gray, more than $1 million spent studying whether people will eat ground-up bugs, and more than $3 million spent interviewing San Franciscans about their edible cannabis use.

    As far as taxpayer dollars spent aiding other countries, $8.62 billion was spent in Afghanistan on counternarcotics efforts, more than $37 million was spent helping deal with truant Filipino youth, and more than $3 million was spent on sending Russians to American community colleges for a “gap year.”

    Among funds spent on the environment, energy, and scientific research, more than $1 million was spent walking lizards on a treadmill, nearly $200,000 was spent studying how people cooperate while playing e-sport video games, and more than $2 million on developing a wearable headset to track eating behaviors.

    The military had several particularly high expenditures this year that Paul listed as waste, including repurposing $1 billion in coronavirus response funds for unrelated acquisitions, more than $ 715 million in lost equipment designated for Syrians fighting ISIS, and $174 million on drones that were lost over Afghanistan.

    Other eyebrow-raising expenses included more than $4 million spent on spraying alcoholic rats with bobcat urine, more than $10 million spent on would-be coronavirus test tubes that turned up as used soda bottles, and nearly $6 million spent building three bicycle storage facilities at Washington, D.C. Metro stations.

  • Titania McGrath, prophet of our times.
  • Man of the year: Jeffrey Toobin. “Toobin’s grip on the media was relentless. In 2002 he joined CNN and became the network’s chief legal analyst, a cocksure critic of Republicans…” (Hat tip: HashtagGriswold.)
  • Good idea:

  • Heh:

  • “Can I interest you in some propane? Or some propane explosions?”
  • How badly do you want a drink?
  • Oh the weather outside is frightful:

  • Christmas with the Sex Pistols.

    • Merry Christmas, everyone!

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    Posted in Austin, Budget, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 2 Comments »

    The History of Firearms Development Part 1

    Saturday, May 2nd, 2020

    This Borepatch post got me thinking about the history of firearms development, and all the mistakes and blind alleys along the way. Plus I wanted to put up videos (where available) of how some of the weird firearms Borepatch described actually worked.

    But before I did that, I realized I needed to delve into the basics of gunpowder and early firearms development, to set out things in chronological order.

    Here’s a short one covering the invention of gunpowder in China, featuring primitive proto-firearms like the firelance, up through early European cannons, the hand-canon and the arquebus.

    Here’s a video of someone testing a home-built recreation firelance using bamboo. The first attempt does not go well, so they reinforced the bamboo on the second with electrical tape.

    A longer look at the development of early gunpowder weapons in Europe up through the early Napoleonic War:

    Highlights: the difficulty of getting saltpeter means Europeans needed to make it by boiling down animal waste, how “corning” vastly increased the power of gunpowder, how they made cannon bodies out of strips of metal bound with iron hoops (why they’re still know today as bun barrels), and how the Pumhart von Steyr is the largest siege cannon still existent, firing stones that weighed 1,533 pounds. Also, Henry Knox, George Washington’s master of artillery, was by profession a bookseller of military history. And the exploding shell was invented by British Lieutenant Henry Shrapnel.

    A short look at gun development from the hand-cannon to the musket:

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    Posted in Guns, Military, video | 1 Comment »

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