[Roosta]

[QUOTE=Rfneimad;7706409]https://www.facebook.com/stefan.korshakNovember 3 - Day 251 – Wagnerian scale, Fortress Kherson, Body counts


Good info !

[Rfneimad]

https://www.facebook.com/stefan.korshak
November 5 - Day 255 – Kherson planning, Arms bonanza, Supply worries
Hi FB:
It’s rare that I lead things off with a newspaper clipping but today there was a good one: a comparison between what Vladimir Putin said about the state of mobilized soldiers in a speech yesterday, and what Sergei Shoigu said about mobilized soldiers five days previously. The difference is 33,000 men. Is this poor accounting? Or is this a tea leaf indicator of possibly high casualties in recently-mobilized troops?
Speaking of which, the lead video is another view of what we saw a couple of days ago, a bunch of mobilized soldiers in Kazan irate about equipment quality and housing standards. In the attached video, pay attention to the guy in the fur cap. That is a Russian army colonel and by the rules a person all those soldiers must respect and take orders from.
Training might fix it, but this right now is not a window onto a unit that will fight well. It is however, a window onto a unit that will fail at most battle missions.
Also reference less than ideal Russian army discipline, video attached, a top-of-the-line Russian T-90 tank, better than anything the Ukrainains have, abandoned in excellent condition. Any army can lose a tank, but in bad armies, lost tanks are abandoned to the enemy...
Kharkiv
I’ve seen reports of UAF probes taking losses here, more in manpower than equipment. I get the impression the line has stabilized around Sviatove and the Ukrainians are in “aggressive patrol” mode, looking for targets to hit with long-range weapons, but at least sometimes they are paying the price of doing the looking. Areas where the Russians have claimed they stopped Ukrainian reconnaissance included Berestovy, Kuzemivka, Ploshchanki, and Chervonopopovka.
A factor may be the weather: it’s generally gray, wet and above freezing, with a lot of fog and a lot of moisture in the air, to wit, it’s a rotten time to fly drones.
Donbass
The battles around Bakhmut are still in progress, with the Russians mostly attacking and the Ukrainians generally defending. Pavlikva remains in UAF hands and according to some reports the UAF advanced about three km east, expanding the lines. The Russians reportedly have concentrated a lot of artillery in this area, per multiple sources here the weight of guns is on the Russian side. However, even the pro-RF sites are reported offensive efforts are halted. I have no hard evidence but a logical explanation would be the Wagner corporation has run through its last batch of reinforcements.
Attached is a video from the Akhtamar Hotel on the Mariupol-Donetsk highway. I can see at least two rooms I stayed in, on the second floor, at one time or another. Reportedly, it was Chechens in the building and at least two HIMARS hit them.
Kherson
More details have come in about what the Russians have deployed to hold Kherson; for all intents and purposes it is what remains of the regular Russian army that invaded Ukraine. Overall this force is called 22nd Corps under the command of a Major General Name Marzoev. Reportedly (Yury Butusov) units present include battalion tactical groups formed from: 11th, 31st and 83rd Assault brigades; 45th Spetznaz Brigade; 90th Tank Division; 19th Motor Rifle Division; 126th Coastal Defense Brigade; 810th Marine Infantry Brigade; 37th Motor Rifle Brigade, 10th Spetsnaz Brigade; and (roughly) five battalion tactical groups of paratroopers. So a fighting force, perhaps, of 15 BTG or 5,000-8,000 men actually fighting capable, plus some number of militia and recently-mobilized. Plus probably that many more rear service and support troops. I’ve seen estimates of as many as 30,000 Russians in the Kherson bridgehead but that seems high to me.
As Butusov points out, this is not a force that is going to crumple if poked with a stick. It will be deployed in the now-traditional three-layer defense with a forward line of observation posts, a second main battle line with major entrenchments and heavy weapons, and a third line with mobile reserves. The idea will be to use the space around the city of Kherson to absorb Ukrainian attempts to break into the defensive belt and then destroy the UAF attackers with artillery and counterattacks. It is possible to capture a section of the covering line easily enough but holding it is another matter.
There are two ways to overcome it: either a major assault that overwhelms the whole defense with saturated strikes, demolition of the Russians’ command and control, and big numbers of fast-moving UAF tank and armored infantry units that swamp the RF defenses and the RF commanders’ ability to cope with a worsening crisis. The risk is the Russians handle the attack and kill a lot of Ukrainians.
The other way, is simply to stand off at distance, identify targets and pick away at the stationary Russians with precision-guided weapons, be they Switchblade drones, Stugna missles, or HIMARS rockets. This is slower but far less likely to cause big UAF casualties. By slow, it could be, months.
Bombardment
In occupied Melitopol something exploded and reports are it was some kind of headquarters and vehicle park. Ten vehicles destroyed, 80 (!) damaged and 50 soldiers and officers injured. This strike is noteworthy I think for two reasons, first because once again the Ukrainians have blasted something so far behind Russian lines, there is no weapon in the Ukrainian inventory that we know of that could have done it, and second, this is more evidence that UAF long range strikes are shifting away from ammunition dumps and towards troop concentrations.
In Uglegorsk, a contract hit-type attack was carried out against “supreme court justice” Aleksander Nikulin (image), who became well-known internationally as the court official who signed the death sentences of captured British soldiers Sean Pinner and Andrew Hill, and Moroccan soldier Saadun Bragimov. It appears he survived. No details on what kind of attack it was, yet.
Stuff for Ukraine
The last 48 hours delivered a whole lot of stuff, most of it from the Americans.
The latest White House/Pentagon statement on arms deliveries ($450 million total this round) included: MQ-9 Reaper drones, Mark 82 guided bombs, MIM-23 Hawk anti-aircraft missile systems, 1,100 Phoenix Ghost suicide drones, “armored cutters (boats), 45 (according to some reports 90) T-72 tanks refurbished in the US, Netherlands and the Czech Republic, and 250 M117 armored personnel carriers.
The Mark 82 guided bomb is another one of those nifty NATO/US inventions: you take a “dumb” WW2-technology bomb and put a guidance kit on it, and hey presto precision-guided munition. In Ukrainian hands it could be a useful tool in prying open Russian defensive positions which, at best, are built to resist 155mm howitzer shells, with an explosive charge of say 10 kilos, but built to resist an aerial bomb, which typically contains 80-90 kilos of explosives. Boom image attached.
Bombs are only dropped by aircraft, meaning, the Americans have decided either the Ukrainian air force is going to live long enough to drop bombs with the planes it has, or, the Americans believe somehow the Ukrainians are going to get more planes capable of dropping bombs,
Time for some sound bites:
- Remember, by American standards this is nothing extraordinary, just the sixth in a series of arms shipments that are sure to continue for some time.
- Russia right now is scrambling to get arms and ammunition from Belarus, Iran and North Korea.
- As I have said before, the last time a major conflict of material and conventional warfare was lost by the side with the United States as a participant, was never.
In this sense Putin’s strategic failure is extraordinary even by the very low bar standards of Russian history: Russia is fighting a full-scale war wherein the Russian military must overcome American capital and military manufacturing, without a single American soldier risking even so much as a paper cut. There was a news item yesterday from Washington: Biden will meet with the leaders of major US defense firms because, eight months into the war, maybe the US needs to think a little more systematically about cranking up arms manufacturing.
All of this is not mentiong the European arms manufacturers whose collective capacity roughly matches the Americans’.
M117 image attached. The vehicle is rated to carry five passengers. How many Ukrainians do you think they can cram inside and on top?
In a probably but not proved related incident, the Ukrainian arms conglomerate Ukroboronprom announced that it has overcome manufacturing bottlenecks and now is manufacturing 122mm and 152mm howitzer shells and 120mm mortar shells. This is the bread and butter ammunition for the Ukrainian army. I assume this success is down to western support in the form of manufacturing equipment and probably some raw materials, but the point is, if ever there were conveyer lines the Ukrainians will operate 24/7, it is for this. Production line image attached, but frankly, I don’t know that it’s in Ukraine.
Can you spell escalation?
Finally, a Bulgarian journal (link below) just reported Poland is going to help the Ukrainians figure out a way to arm their planes with a cruise missile called “the Storm Shadow air-launched long-range, (a) conventionally armed, deep-strike missile, known by its acronym SCALP. The missile is designed by the French company MBDA.” Image of the missile attached, but you can read about it at this link:
https://bulgarianmilitary.com/.../storm-shadow-deep.../...
If this report is accurate - and that’s a big “if” - then one fielded SCALP missiles in the hands of the UAF would basically give the Ukrainians the reach to hit all of Crimea, now, and all across Russian provinces bordering Ukraine, with a precision-guided weapon carrying 1.3 tons of high explosive. That’s almost three times as powerful as weapons currently being chucked around, by either side, in the war so far.
This would, immediately, make it close to impossible for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to remain based in Sevastopol, it would mean the Ukrainians could drop the Kerch bridge at will, and it would allow the UAF to retaliate directly against Russia’s power grid. Supposedly Ukrainian Su-24 bombers will be modified to carry the missile.
Kerch Bridge
Speaking of critical Russian infrastructure, yesterday Putin made another long speech, mostly dross, but there was some information about the Kerch Bridge. As it turns out, the Russians are going to have to replace the road surface and span connectors on both directions of the road lanes, but they are going to have to switch out a portion of the railroad bridge as well. Four road sections need to be replaced, one roadway (two lanes) supposedly will be done by December20, and the other roadway by March 30. Right now only one rail track is usable, or according to some reports the line is just cut because the bridge won’t take the weight of a train. Ultimately, two spans will need replacing. This will be done by September 15.
This places a serious qualification on the section above about Kherson, to wit, ultimately all supply to Russian forces in the Kherson bridgehead, already, cannot rely on supply sent from Russia via Crimea. That link is for all intents and purposes broken. The supply route for the Kherson bridgehead must come down the M14 highway via Novoazovsk and Mariupol (places well known to some readers of this review), and then get across the Dnipro River, either by ferry or barge near Kherson, or by the hydroelectric dam by Nova Kakhovka.
You don’t have to be Napoleon to realize that is a very sketchy supply route to deliver food and ammunition to 15-30,000 men on the far side of a river the size of the Mississippi or the Rhine.

[WhiskeyOutpost]

From Chuck Pfarrer

https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer

[Rfneimad]

[Rfneimad]

[SinisterNm]

In case anybody was wondering how they modify a SPG-9 HEAT warhead for indirect fire. ya know, in case Russian n' stuff.
(self-destruct feature removed)

[WonderMomma]

The footage shows American equipment in Bulgaria near the border with Romania.

[WonderMomma]

1. "Sweden will provide Ukraine with a batch of modern weapons, namely, RBS 70 MANPADS and Archer self-propelled guns, the country's defense minister told reporters."

2. "The Poles are building barriers on the border with the Kaliningrad region of Russia."

[WonderMomma]

"The Ukrainian military managed to liberate half of the territories occupied after February 24. This is 37% of the territory of Ukraine captured by the Russians since 2014, said OSInt analyst Defmon"

[WonderMomma]

1-6. "The 93rd Brigade showed how its mortars work in new positions near Bakhmut."

7. "110 OMBr named after Corporal General Mark Bezruchka and "Hot" autumn."