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May 17, 2023
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-117
Comments
@ Down South 18
We have a counter question, what Erdogan promised Putin for this risky case, which hurts the image of Russia.
It’s rather simple. The Kremlin would prefer Erdogan the Sultan to be re-elected because the alternative, the CHP leader, has said he would take Turkiye back to submission under the Empire.
It may not seem like Erdogan is doing any favors to Russia, what with selling Kiev its Baktyar drones and NATO-standard 155mm artillery shells, but there are strategic benefits for Russia. In no particular order, they are: 1. The Montreaux Treaty stays in effect, so Russian ships can pass through but not many NATO warships. IIRC, Russian cargo planes fly over Turkiye to Syria and elsewhere, 2. Turkiye is a very important hub for Russian trade in gas to southern Europe, those nations which may first break out of the EU prison, 3. Turkiye has economic ties to Russia, tourists going south and fruit/vegetables going north, 4. Turkish cooperation is important for achieving peace and prosperity in Syria and northern Iraq, 5. Turkiye helps restore Iran’s relations in the greater M.E. and, 6. Arab leaders are watching to see how Russia handles The Sultan because that shows how they can expect to be treated by Russia and China. For now, they like what they see.
Russia only extended this rotten grain deal for two months, which happens to be barely long enough for Turkiye’s run-off elections. So the purpose is clear, especially because the UN has made zero progress in removing the EU obstacles. Not even any worthless promises were made. Over on Zerohedge, a choice between Erdogan and the CHP would be called “the least dirty shirt.”
It’s simply 2-D chess, played by a grandmaster team.
Posted by: JessDTruth | May 18 2023 16:35 utc | 301
Posted by: Virgile | May 18 2023 15:33 utc | 303
***The africans will offer zelinski asylum as he won’t be safe anywhere in the world anymore.***
Doubt they’d take him, even with the $billion he’s stolen.
Yankland won’t want him either — too far past his “use-by” date.
Having a UK passport (thanks to Boris) the Kiev cokehead will maybe end up in London with other exiled criminal Oligarchs. Whereupon he will be able to star in such premier television shows as “Strictly Come Dancing” and “I’m a War Criminal Don’t Get Me Out of Here”.
But if he gets bored, there’s always his parents’ luxury villa in Israel, next door to Kolomoisky.
Posted by: Cynic | May 18 2023 16:58 utc | 302
Posted by: whirlX | May 18 2023 16:01 utc | 306
*** RF knows it must finish the job. TINA.***
The USA must be returned to pre 1775 borders.
Posted by: Cynic | May 18 2023 17:03 utc | 303
John Marks | May 18 2023 17:18 utc | 312
*** With Alaska returning to Russia? ***
Of course.
But with the threat of US corporate imperialism removed, Alaska might be suitable for non-profit joint management — perhaps largely as a nature reserve — with a de-nazified free Canada.
Posted by: Cynic | May 18 2023 17:37 utc | 305
Posted by: oldhippie | May 18 2023 16:08 utc | 308
No worries, it’s a good article but they are only aiming for guidance kits that are low cost by western standards. Grad rockets are about $1000 apiece, the same price for a guidance kit would be nice.
RF is getting a lot of mileage out of Lancet but that type of weapon takes a while to fly out to the target after something has been spotted by a surveillance drone. Rockets can get there quickly and are much harder to jam / intercept.
I’ve been looking into this particular subject because I thought at the time that RF would have stopped UA’s Kharkiv counteroffensive by spotting them with surveillance drones and then blasting the hell out of them with rocket artillery.
It turned out that RF just didn’t have guided weapons in sufficient quantity to do that and what it did have was too expensive to be used economically against dispersed forces. Even Grad is uneconomical in this scenario because, as you note, it is low precision, unsuited to engaging individual targets, even though its warhead options, range, speed and price are very well suited to that role.
If this view is correct, a cheap laser-seeker upgrade for Grad missiles might close that gap.
Posted by: anon2020 | May 18 2023 17:54 utc | 306
In response to anon2020@299,
The way I see it, there’s a hard physical speed limit on any indicators given off when firing a system, with seismic and acoustic signals competing with the munition itself for which will arrive first. That’s a time-buffer which cannot be eliminated without some sort of pre-cognitive sci-fi setup that hears the shot before it’s fired.
Then, there’s about as much of a time-buffer allotted by the flight-time of the counter battery munition. Those two factors alone should always be enough to give the system that’s firing with initiative to beat the responding system, presuming of course a more or less equal playing field in terms of technology.
In between there’s of course the matter of detecting the enemy system activation, triangulating its position and readying your system in response and, on the other side, readying the system for departure and moving away from the recently occupied firing position — in other words, the response time. This is the segment where there’s a time variable, thus always room for both mishaps and improvement and, subsequently, a field ripe for competition.
But the crucial point is that even when we improve our response time to the point of absurdity that is 0 seconds, there’s still always the hard time buffer left for the target system to operate within. That’s already enough to make big expensive guns viable, provided that they are also sufficiently mobile and use time-saving automation.
However, what I’ve painted is also the most ideal theoretical situation, where you have all the right equipment in the right place at the right time and aren’t being directly engaged yourself, whereas in reality, and especially on an extended front like in Ukraine, mobile artillery gets to harass positions unopposed, until and unless it is destroyed in transit or in storage, which is how most of them tend to go.
Responding with a rocket barrage to cover a large area is good in theory, but there’s a catch or two.
For one, the system has to be in a good position to respond and reserved for counter battery duty, meaning permanently stationed within potential range of enemy artillery, thus vulnerable, and not being utilized in supporting active combat operations. Obviously, your opponent will want to use his systems outside of the effective range of your systems, so you’ll want to fully saturate the front-line with silent guns, which is a big and risky commitment.
For two, if the idea is to catch the fleeing mobile artillery in a football field-sized area of destruction, you risk inadvertently destroying a lot more than enemy artillery. At least the Russians aren’t willing to blind-fire in situations like that and have area-dependent restrictions where and under what conditions certain systems can be used.
Ukrainian radicals constantly make use of these restrictions, positioning themselves in areas where the use of more indiscriminate munitions either needs special permission or is strictly forbidden, but one can imagine this situation applying more broadly and for other conflicts. Destruction of a single system, particularly one that is no longer engaged in combat, calls for proportional force. What the Russians often do is pick up a visual of the system as it is disengaging, follow it back to wherever it’s being hidden and take it out with a drone or some other precise long-range weapon at their convenience.
I don’t see what sort of stealth capabilities Jihad-mobiles are supposed to have — as far as I know, they’re just as visible as any other vehicle, military or otherwise. Same with mobility; most of them are road-mobile at best. Meanwhile, size dictates caliber and range.
Are 100 guys with pea-shooters supposed to be more effective than 1 guy with an AK? Well, even if they manage to take him out, by some fluke presumably, how many of them survive the engagement? Are there even records of Ukrainian Jihad-mobiles conducting any effective operations at all? All I’ve seen on that topic treats them as novelty items, not as actual weapons systems.
Posted by: Skiffer | May 18 2023 20:41 utc | 307
ostro | May 18 2023 9:25 utc | 231
Some 81 million ‘merican fools voted in an old senile man in 2020 to make the world a worse place. Why vote in a practically dead man…?!
You know, I don’t think they did…
And they won’t again…
Posted by: Sarlat La Canède | May 18 2023 21:09 utc | 308
Posted by: PM | May 17 2023 21:24 utc | 95
I was able to figure out that a little “extra” had inadvertently been added to the url (a common error, one I’ve made), and after pruning it the link now works. Thank you for posting it!
https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=RUB
USD to RUB Chart
+23.74%
(1Y)
But unfortunately it shows the dollar being up, year over year.
If we look at a five year chart, things look more or less unchanged. Given that everything, including the kitchen sink, has been thrown at Russia so as to weaken its economy, including the ruble, that’s pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, good. And of course if the debt limit negotiations in the US don’t get positive results very soon, the dollar will weaken across the board.
The five year graphic: https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=RUB&view=5Y
The five year graphic for the Euro looks even better for Russia than the five year one for the dollar. As Europe ends up holding up the bag, and bearing the burden, for the sanctions war against Russia, America reaps benefits as companies and cash flee to its shores.
https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=RUB&view=5Y
Not bad for being in a war with a West determined to destroy its economy.
Posted by: Babel-17 | May 18 2023 22:47 utc | 309
Sussex, his neighbor will be that Nigerian coup officer, hope he like sweaty black men. Seriously
Posted by: Miguel | May 18 2023 23:25 utc | 310
May 18 0755 UTC Unimperator
0855 UTC Uncle Tungsten
Thanks for that, and yes, it could simply have been good old-fashioned human intelligence/spycraft.
Posted by: Boy | May 19 2023 6:53 utc | 311
Posted by: Skiffer | May 18 2023 20:41 utc | 316
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I started writing a long response but think it would be sufficient for me to say that the points you make are all valid to different extents and under different assumptions but there is no getting away from the fact that there is absolutely nothing critical that an expensive, lumbering gun can do that a vastly cheaper, more mobile and thus more survivable rocket launching platform cannot.
Coupled with the unavoidable and easily detected audio signature of big guns, it is a given they will gradually be forced into ever smaller operational niches where they can still be operated economically, but this should really be about getting good value out of existing inventory, existing training and existing production capacity.
Ramping up development and production of a lot of new big guns now, in light of their unit cost and vastly increased / increasing battlefield surveillance, is faintly illogical, especially given that it would be cheaper and just as easy to scale up production of rocket artillery systems,
By all means, smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em but there is no reason to overlook the fact that artillery guns are far more conspicuous, higher cost and less mobile than equivalent caliber rocket artillery launchers and what that means for the economic arguments that justify their existence.
Posted by: anon2020 | May 19 2023 9:00 utc | 312
In response to anon2020@321,
We’ll just have to agree to disagree and leave it to time and necessity to resolve our argument. I think these systems are complimentary and have different strengths and weaknesses, and that success on the battlefield isn’t about finding the best one-size fits all solution, but about having a good range of specialized tools and options available.
Posted by: Skiffer | May 19 2023 13:42 utc | 313