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Ukraine War in Ukraine

I don't think any of us in the thread know for certain what's actually happening.

The best information is that agreed by both sides- e.g. there's still fighting in Mariupol, there aren't any Russians left north of Kiev, Kherson is closer to the front lines than a few weeks ago, etc.

Relative force losses, true capabilities, future plans- every armchair general here has their own opinion. Some seem reasonable, others a decade or two out of date.

I'm not sure there's much point arguing about "I believe/you believe" when we can't quickly prove which article of faith is correct.

I think the common ground is that most here want Russia to lose, and to do so as quickly as possible, at enough cost to dissuade them from trying this expedition again for many many years.
I agree with you that most here want Russia to lose. But we should not fool ourselves into thinking everyone in The West agrees. Anecdotal Evidence: I live in rural East Texas (think Deliverance) I had a conversation with a local coot at the gas station. He interestingly said “I think differently than most folks, I think we should stand up to Russia.” Thus, in the corn pone circles In which he runs, folks must not support standing up to Russia. Also, my step daughters husband, a stout East Texan, today sounded like KGB; “It is the Ukrainians who are killing civilians and blaming it on the Russians.” And looking forward to the destruction of the troops holding out in the Azovstal plant. Basically for this guy, Russia is in the right & Ukraine must be crushed. So, there is, on the far right here in the US, lots of sympathy for Putin & the invasion.
 
M777 have on board FCS so they can fire from dispersed firing positions. More vulnerable than SPGs but they shouldn’t be operating in the linear firing positions that make such appealing targets. As to SPGs, they are sending them but they require a lot of logistical support.

As to gun life, it depends.


How often do modern artillery pieces need to change their barrels?
Some very good answers in the link, and thanks for the info about the M777.

How many people here think the Russians are measuring their Effective Full Charge data and sending it up the logistic chain?

Luckily for them (sadly) they have thousands of MLRS type launchers which don't suffer from barrel wear, but I wonder how much ammunition they have left for these.
 
Ah, a classisist. We were taught f not a or in this case g.

But applying this to long range snipping and counter battery fire, how long after firing will the radar detect the incoming? How long after that for counter fire? Finally what is the flight time from the masked battery?
We were taught both. One in Physics, other in Maths.
 
Stanley Kubrick would have a field day with that thought.

How the fvck has that shift happened in my lifetime?

People that bought into the conspiracy theories that the Russian troll farms were peddling over the last few years and now get all their news from those same sources.

Check the comments under any of Patrick Lancaster or Graham Phillip's videos and you will see a lot of English speaking people who completely buy into the idea that Russia is saving the World from the evil Ukrainian Nazis.
 
I agree with you that most here want Russia to lose. But we should not fool ourselves into thinking everyone in The West agrees. Anecdotal Evidence: I live in rural East Texas (think Deliverance) I had a conversation with a local coot at the gas station. He interestingly said “I think differently than most folks, I think we should stand up to Russia.” Thus, in the corn pone circles In which he runs, folks must not support standing up to Russia. Also, my step daughters husband, a stout East Texan, today sounded like KGB; “It is the Ukrainians who are killing civilians and blaming it on the Russians.” And looking forward to the destruction of the troops holding out in the Azovstal plant. Basically for this guy, Russia is in the right & Ukraine must be crushed. So, there is, on the far right here in the US, lots of sympathy for Putin & the invasion.
The Ukrainians may be winning the information war in the West, (apart from East Texas), but is that a concern for Putin ? As long as the domestic audience is accepting of the Kremlin version of the war's progress why should he care what the wider world thinks ? He could recall his forces tomorrow, announce a glorious victory on the 9th and the mushrooms that are the Russian populace will accept it; sanctions will wither and die, and in a few years we will be back here again.
 
Some posters talk about Ukraine pursuing and winning a war of attrition. Methinks they may have been seduced too much by pictures of tractors pulling tanks and chosen to ignore demographics and stockpiles. Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition. Moscow still has hundreds of thousands of troops to call upon and millions of reservists - but, for domestic political reasons, is choosing not to use them. What does Ukraine have left?

They may well be able to win a war of attrition, or perhaps more accurately a battle of endurance. Much depends on the Russian will and ability to keep on waging a war of aggression that yields few tangible gains.

There are a lot of variables, such as the functionality of Russia's battle groups, and the troops' willingness to fight. It's also an open question whether the Russians can recall and equip reservists, what their ammo and POL state is - their arms industry appears to be in serious trouble. Add to that growing economic woes, rumours of Kremlin plots, Ukrainian integration of NATO weapons systems etc.

The Ukrainians appear to be hanging in there and trusting to the Russians to lose the war.

Lots of words trying to spin a positive but offering absolutely nothing of substance and ignoring the reality on the ground and the real world.

Based upon your positively spun speculation, ie due to the things you wrote in your second paragraph, let's say Putin does a remarkable u-turn tonight where he decides to shelve all his original war aims and decides he's seen enough bloodshed so decides to agree to an immediate ceasefire.

What do you think comes next?

The Russians have gobbled up large tracts of land in the last two months, do you think they will just hand them back? Do you think Moscow is going to push the separatists under the bus and hand Crimea back? Yes, they pulled out from the territory around Kyiv and Chernhiv, but that was an operational decision to allow them to push on elsewhere.

How are the Ukrainians going to get the Russians out?
 
As the Ukrainians retire and the Russians advance would it be possible to leave behind a dump of adulterated diesel i.e. contaminated with water or something more effective for the orcs to fill up as they are short on fuel so they then come to a grinding halt?
 
The individual who made the statement giving numbers, is (a) British, fighting for his adopted homeland (Ukraine) (b) talking in English to a friend (not me) on Face Book.

How do you know that the UKr are exaggerating Rus losses? Oryx doesn't see/report everything.

So can I suggest that you shove your assumptions where the sun doesn't shine?
Hold on mo. I'm not in anyway saying that the bloke at the sharp end isn't telling the truth. I believe him wholeheartedly. Sadly.

We know the Ukr authorities are exaggerating some Russian material losses, because they are unrealistic. e.g: the number of Russian aircraft lost.

Having said that, lets go back to when the Ukr authorities where saying 18k Russian troops were KIA. At the time I didn't think that was a realistic figure. Subsequently, NATO and other sources were quoting a figure between 7k and 15k. A large spread.

Later on we saw what were supposedly leaks from Russian sources which correlated well with Ukr estimates of Russian KIA. We also were told that some 8,500 Russian dead were clogging up Ukrainian morgues and how this was a real problem for them.

We know the Ukr are retrieving Russian bodies and processing them - I've watched video of them doing just that, so I expect that 8,500 figure to be true. We also know about the hospitals and morgues in Belarus being inundated and unable to cope during the early phase of the war.

Couple that with the all the other evidence we've seen then I'd say that the Ukrainian estimates of Russian dead are likely to be close to the truth.

As for Oryx - that's a minima as far as the data is concerned. We can only go on what we see and you're right in that he doesn't see everything, but that shouldn't mean we should automatically believe sources who give a number far, far greater than what Oryx has verified.

I hope that clears things up, with respect.
 
Update from Zak

Good morning buddy, it’s been a crazy few days to say the least, our sister battalion has lost over 450 KIA over the last 10 days, they are situated to our left flank facing east, so had to pull in reserve troops and get them placed in and get the other battalion out of there.

Repelled 2 Russian BTG’s they also took horrendous casualties and lost 16 tanks over the last 4 days, countless of other vehicles also, another 2 BTG’s that are now not combat effective, they must be down to 30-20% CE so that’s the only good news really, more cruise missile attacks on the city, few KIA civilians

Yeah, seen the posts by the lads, hopefully will get here soon, it will go to Lviv first then be sent by the post to me or my friend here in the city, depending if I am here or not, George wood , mutual friend is also sending over lots of first aid stuff, will be extremely useful as we are running seriously low on IFAK’s.

Asked if had any int on how Russian Forces were ref reserves etc

Reply

The orcs are much of worse than we are buddy, like I said we destroyed two BTG’s in the last few days, estimates is that they have lost up to 33% of their full invasion force
The other BTG’s keep on getting thrown together ad hoc and launched back into the fray, they are only using people from the far flung districts of Russia, not seen any from the Moscow and St Petersburg districts as the death toll there would sway public opinion.
That’s just in our area, Ukrainian forces are relieving and pushing the orcs out of Kharkiv district and are doing well.

Best of luck to all of them.
 
Ukrainian MoD have stated that today's attack on Azovstal has failed.
Mixed emotions here.

Want the RUS to bleed madly for every centimetre they advance.

Simultaneously want the unarmed civilians there to be out of harm's way.

Can't envisage an outcome in which the latter can happen.
 
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