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Where are the machineguns? I saw a few photos of heavy (and ancient) machineguns in field fortifications, but other than that - crickets. Machineguns shooting down quadcopters? Haven't seen that.
Are mortars proving themselves or not? I have read a bit about Russian mortar teams, but those may have been the weird Russian long-barrelled mortar-guns rather than normal mortars. I've also seen footage of mortar bombs being delivered by motorcycle, that's all. I suspect the short range makes resupply too troublesome by now, but what did mortars do in 2022-2024?
What about artillery radars? I understand they wouldn't last this long far enough forward to be of use now, but what about 2022/23? NATO expected WW3 to include lots of artillery duels based on artillery locating radars. Sure, modern navigation did lead to individual gun placement rather than battery placement, but I saw some photos of Russian batteries, so they did exist. Were they hit with help of radars or not? What about the battlefield surveillance radars?
What altitude do Russian cruise missiles cruise at? I saw video that seemed to suggest rather 60...100 m than 30 m (Russians don't use ft. Terrain-following radars of the 70's were capable of ~60 m autopiloted flight, ~30 m is reasonable for less than 45 minutes with manual flight with good visibility).
Did the Iskander cruise missiles turn out to exceed the INF treaty limit of 500 km or not?
Did the Iskander quasiballistic missiles turn out to exceed the INF treaty limit of 500 km or not?
Why are the Russians unable to procure heavy payload multicopters in quantity when they're supposed to be backed by China?
Did Nozh ERA work well or not?
I have seen almost no footage of MBT vs. MBT actions. Were they common in the first weeks?
What's better to destroy the Crimea Bridge; Mephisto warhead of Taurus into the foundations or continuous rod warheads against the suspension part's cable bundles?
Why are TM-62 anti-tank mines used so widely for demolition work? It should be easily possible to provide demolition charges for demolition jobs, even civilian companies have those for demolition work.
Are anti-tank mines still important or is the stopping power now vested in battlefield interdiction based on drones?
Does Russia use satellites for GPS jamming or not? (Satellites could not be countered by phased directional antennas.)
Was the WW2 data about infantrymen getting near-useless after a certain quantity (IIRC 130) of combat days confirmed?
Did any Russian tanks with Arena or Drozd hard kill defences show up in combat?
Did the trade show-grade BMP-3s with lots of heavy ERA show up in combat?
Are tethered drones in use?
Why aren't the Russians able to regularly find & hit Ukrainian air defence radars or combat aircraft on the ground?
Related to the previous question: How useful is Russian satellite reconnaissance for battlefield uses?
How quickly can Russian artillery and mortars react to calls (I understand this is going to be a huge range of response times, so a distribution would be interesting)?
Why can't the Russian navy reliably kill off simple motorboats? Even WW2 radars were already able to detect a periscope!
Why can't the Russians stop Ukrainian very low level air attacks despite having missiles such as R-37M and 9M96E2?
S O
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-Machine guns are in use for infantry fighting, especially for holding positions, but as infantry fighting is rare nowadays, especially outside of trenches and dugouts, you will not see them in most footage.
ReplyDelete-Mortars are ubiquitous on both sides. The vast majority of artillery fire - especially drone corrected artillery fire - hitting the frontline is done by mortars. Both sides also employ "wandering mortars": small teams of 2 or 3 men carrying around a light mortar, hitting a position with 2-4 shots and then moving on further down the line to do the same there; those wandering mortars have become rarer.
-Not entirely sure, but from what I've seen, artillery radars are reserved for a few dedicated counterbattery units and often a priority target for drones. Their usefulness has generally decreased as heavy artillery on both sides has been placed ever further back to avoid enemy fire and drones however.
-Depends on the cruise missile in question, but 30m is best case scenario over water or flat desert, in areas with trees, highrises, electricity poles etc. it is not realistic.
-Very obviously.
-Probably, the Russians certainly act like it does, even if they don't directly say so.
-They are. I don't know what gave you the idea they aren't. They are used mostly to supply cut off troops and advanced positions. Somewhat recently the Russians also started copying the Ukrainian drone mothership concept for them.
-Dunno, probably. Not like there are many tank duels to test it against APFSDS.
-Define common. They certainly happened a few times, especially around Kyiv and Mykolaiv, but after that there weren't all that many opportunities where they even could happen with how tanks are used rn.
-There aren't practical continuous rod warheads for such a purpose, it probably requires inordinate accuracy to work and is likely a relatively easy fix, so definitely Taurus and MEPHISTO.
-Civilian explosives have different explosion properties to military ones that make them generally unuseable for demolition purposes without prior preperation of the target - e.g. boring holes etc. The TM-62 carries a large amount of explosive mass in a preprepared container, is armour (and concrete) piercing and directed, is readily available and comes with its own fuze. Not to mention that many soldiers are trained in its use.
-Their importance is directly proportional to the amount of vehicles the enemy attacks with.
-You cannot jam GPS via satellite without placing your own sattelite directly behind or infront of the actual GPS satellite relative to the receiver which is practically impossible to do consistently without just parking directly next to the actual satellite which would in effect result in smashing into said satellite. You'd also need dedicated equipment on you own satellite. Even if you pulled it off, it would also result in jamming not just Ukraine but everyone else as well.
-That depends on the scenario. Since infantry doesn't fight other infantry much anymore, data vis-a-vis that is not very useful. Also because both sides forces are very heterogeneous in quality.
-The Russians lost their T-80UM2 in March 2022, that's about it.
-Yes. There are about 3 visually confirmed destroyed on Oryx.
-If by "tethered" you mean fibre optic cable steered drones, then yes, lots. With the Russians more so than the Ukrainians but thousands on both sides regardless.
Delete-For one, they are - they took out multiple MiG-29s and Su-27s on the ground with drones and Iskander (same for RADARs), and for another, because the Ukrainians keep moving them around.
-Depends on the recency of the information. The Russians don't have the amount and track density of satellites needed for effective surveilance of most areas and their orbits are known. In the past they also had issues with the kill chain, but that has been improved by now.
-Depends on who is calling mostly. Many mortars work with direct and dedicated drone observation, so really as fast as the target location can be identified and the parameters computed. Taking rotation by car as an example, probably sub 5 minutes from the car first getting spotted to the first shot being fired.
-Because those naval drones sit significantly lower in the water than any motorboat, are significantly smaller than most motorboats, are very fast and built mostly from non-ferrous material. Apart from that, WW2 RADAR was able to see periscopes, yes, but that doesn't mean it was able to do so clearly or reliably.
-Because said low level air attacks are very hard to spot and even harder to engage kinematically, especially for systems that sit 100km behind the frontline.
No, tethered drones have a power cable dangling down instead of a big battery.
Deleteexample: https://www.skysapience.com/products/
I don't see the kinematic difficulty with targeting very low altitude M0.9 aircraft. Especially not with Mi-17s that are super slow and have no radar warner. A very distant high altitude fighter may have insufficient look down radar range, but rather not if it has a lead where to focus the search.
"example: https://www.skysapience.com/products/"
DeleteProbably unlikely to be worth it. Battery capacity and weight is not really a problem for any kind of FPV drone and probably proves more hassle than it's worth for anything that isn't one.
"I don't see the kinematic difficulty with targeting very low altitude M0.9 aircraft. Especially not with Mi-17s that are super slow and have no radar warner. A very distant high altitude fighter may have insufficient look down radar range, but rather not if it has a lead where to focus the search."
The ground halves the potential manouvering space for the missile which massively impacts its flight path for one. Given the ranges and altitudes involved, the missile has to hit the target essentially from directly above, meaning that the relative flight profiles are the worst possible matchup for the missile. Not only is the target essentially notching by default, its flightpath also maximizes the impact of any deviation/error in the missile's intercept trajectory.
Furthermore, the missile's RADAR only becomes active in the terminal phase, until then it might as well just be a semi-active missile, so the attacker has to keep their RADAR poinmted at the enemy until the missile is in range, thereby exposing themselves to potential danger via enemy SAMs.
Lastly, it is actually pretty easy to defeat any air to air missile if you are at range and can go fully defensive: Since the missile has to aim for where the target will be, instead of where the target is, small course adjustments by the target require substantially larger ones by the missile, which can and will rapidly drain the missile's energy.
The Russians have some more weird guidances, but Western active radar missiles use inertial navigation and autopilot as well as updates by datalinks to get close enough to their target for their own active radar. This permits staying high up in thin air for long, or even flying a quasiballistic trajectory. Both is good for extending range if the target doesn't move at high speed in an unanticipated direction.
DeleteRegarding tethered drones; they have advantages.
- not detectable with doppler filters if the rotors are ducted
- extreme endurance (could be weeks)
- ensured and secure communication with base (fibreoptic may be used along the mechanical strength line and the power cables)
- easy to use, flying requires no operator
- precisely known position
- orientation can also be tracked precisely (important for triangulations)
- needs less components than normal drones
I have questions too, Sven. If you shoot a human in the neck with .30-06, will it leave an exit wound or not? You can safely write off the United States as a failed state at this point. No sign of intelligent life in there. 😮💨
ReplyDeleteThere would be an exit wound unless a wooden training projectile was used or the distance was too great (more than a couple hundred metres for sure).
DeleteException would be a too weakly reloaded cartridge.
DeleteSubsonic cartridges would stop causing an exit wound at shorter distances.
That's the point. Did you see Charlie Kirk's assassination? Skepticals wondered about a ricochet from body armor, but the sheriff said he was not wearing any. Funny, eh? Europeans could hold this over The Orange Clown. *wink* *wink *nudge* *nudge*
DeleteHard body armour is thick and would be visible.
DeleteSoft body armour does not produce ricochets at such angles.
Indeed. Also I changed my mind, Sven: Just declare US a quarantine zone. This dementia might be contagious!
Deletehttps://x.com/AndrewKolvet/status/1969551427648569633