Russian-manufactured armored vehicle vulnerability in urban combat (1997)
man.fas.org
man.fas.org
This is really interesting to think about. The first thing that comes to mind is this method from WW2:
"Another method used by the British Home Guard in 1940 was to place dynamite or some other high explosive in a thick sock and cover the lower part with axle grease and then place the grease covered part in a suitable size tin can. The antitank sock was pulled out, the fuse lit and the sock thrown against the side of the tank turret in the hope it would stick until the explosion. If successful, it caused internal spalling of the armor plate, killing or injuring the tank crew inside" [1]
An adaptation of that method, if it could be applicable, seems more amenable to differing means of propulsion, possibly solving the issues: low-signature, multi-shot, recoil, and light-weight.
A greasy-sock-gatling-cannon? Something else? One never knows, but it's pretty intriguing to see a general specification for the next evolution of anti-tank.
1. https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Anti-tank_grenade
dynamite stick at a
vulnerable spot
Edit: spacing
You mean like what we saw in Iraq against US armor, etc.?
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Page 36: https://setav.org/en/assets/uploads/2017/08/Report88.pdf
You wanna kill a modern tank, plant an IED in the street and wait.
It sounds like a good ol pitfall trap is all you need, which apparently can be made by just removing road signs, so that the tank might drive into a poorly supported road, collapsing into the sewer under the street.
RPG 7 piezodetonator normally needs 30G-40G acceleration to arm. https://www.armedconflicts.com/attachments/11561/14_-_Pancie...
Just...reach...a...little...closer (shields important parts of body)
I'd assumed it would be a timer.
So to get one to detonate manually, you're going to have to simulate the 40-ish Gs of a launch, the delay of flight to allow the safety to disengage (but not so long that the self-destruct happens), and be far enough away to not get injured by the explosion. That's a challenge.
the hardest part of applying anti-tank munitions to a tank is getting close to the tank. so, they're generally projectile weapons.
man-portable devices have size and recoil limits that immediately rule out kinetic penetrators.
shaped charges work at lower velocity, but are massive and conical, so they mostly have to be rockets fired from a recoilless launcher.
there has probably been some work trying to deliver shaped charges via drone to reduce launch signature, but that would be much slower, more costly, vulnerable to active defenses, and vulnerable to electronic countermeasures.
eventually if your drone is small and fast enough, it's a missile, and if it's big enough to launch from out of reach, you just launch it from an airfield, and we already do both of those.
The Russians lost a bunch of tanks in Budapest.
Amusingly, kids in Moscow, and central parts of Russia don't have it in their programme.
Putin isn't crazy enough to use strategic nuclear weapons. He's absolutely enough of a sociopath to use tactical nukes, particularly to avoid a potentially brutal urban assault on kyiv. I hope I'm wrong. But when you consider Belarus and Russia just completed nuclear drills in the past month and they're using a lot of conscripts in their first wave, it can't be ruled out.
Afghanistan was the USSR’s Vietnam, so I don't know why you'd say this isn’t Afghanistan in this context.
Ironically that train of thought is what is hampering Russia now, since their actions seem to communicate an expectation that they would have been able to just walk into Kyiv like they did for Crimea, and didn't expect the actual resistance of an army fighting for their home
Would be nice if the West supplied Ukraine with all this technology before the war began in the 8 years prior - their airforce and Air defence are tiny and dated.
So far the rich nations of the west mostly left Ukraine to the wolves - supplying only short-ranged squad level weapons and dated equipment.
Any links?
The only way to prove a war crime (like killing civilians), is documented evidence and/or testimony from fellow troops.
Hopefully there’s AI analysis of video too to make sure it’s not manipulated.
Sometimes the only defense is to shoot back however you can
Why it that the thing you worry about? The Russians have demonstrated they'll blatantly lie to justify their actions, no connection to reality needed.
Russia doesn't want to take areas it doesn't have popular support in. It just wants to do exactly what it did to Georgia, punish its opponents and annex the friendly bits.
Everyone's doom-mongering, but Russia has a clear strategy.
Putin is invading a country that nearly unanimously opposes him with troops that thought that they were just there for an exercise and don't really want to invade their brother country.
Actually, the blue areas turned out a majority vote for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_Platform_%E2%80%94_...
There are definitely some pro Russian electoral districts.
Here is the map that shows the support for the pro Russian party.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/%D0%95%D...
There are very few districts, that have more than 50% support for the pro-Russian party. You also can't assume that the voters that voted for a pro Russian party want to be part of Russia and support the invasion.
Russia's strategy thus far has been to walk around and ignore the east, and instead attack big cities like Kyiv or Kharkhiv.
Russia's biggest gains have been their amphibious assaults from the south / Crimea.
But all attacks from the north and east have been lackluster this far. And bypassing the fortified line means that Ukraine has the ability to attack those overextended units in the rear.
Russia seems like they are rushing this. I think a slower, more deliberate advance would help the Russians here, they really shouldn't be trying to take cities yet just 3 or 4 days into the conflict. The Russians should have tried for air superiority and strengthened supply lines for a more drawn out assault.
Of course, I don't know the Russian supply situation. It could be that these units know they don't have enough supplied for a drawn out battle and are rushing because they need a quick victory?
The other theory is that Russia is doing the Cannon fodder strategy, purposefully sacrificing weaker troops to the enemy to eat up Ukraine's ammunition (javalin missiles or whatnot).
I know that the Shia majority did not support Saddam Hussein, but does this directly translate to them supporting a US invasion?
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/02/da...
> Ukraine is not only bigger but some 50 percent more populous than Iraq, and the Iraqi population included many millions—Kurds, Christians, Yezidis, Shabak, and many of the Shia—who broadly supported the coalition forces throughout our time there. Only a minority of the Iraqi population comprised or supported the Sunni extremists and insurgents and Iranian-supported Shia militia. Though they did, to be sure, prove to be very formidable enemies.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/10...
> "Iraq, today, 10 years on from the war, from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, is not what the Iraqi people hoped for and expected. We hoped for an inclusive democracy, an Iraq that is at peace with itself and at peace with its neighbors," Salih said. "To be blunt, we are far from that."
> "But," he added, "it's important to understand where we started from. ... Literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were sent to mass graves. Ten years on from the demise of Saddam Hussein, we're still discovering mass graves across Iraq. And Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein—the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein."
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/19/797722034/what-young-iraqis-w...
"Plan A", this was not. That would have been motorized transport, which was effectively interdicted.
That North Vietnamese logistics was able to smuggle sufficient tonnage to supply even a limited insurgency in the South wasn't inevitable. And probably couldn't have been duplicated by most other military forces.
Realistically, in a conflict, anyone who cannot materially contribute to the conflict is a liability.
Every single military, the world over, is heavily trained to ignore civilian casualties.
As long as it's not a militarily significant asset, their training is to not care about it.
Handing out AK-47s increases the number of military assets. The cost doesn't show up on the military asset balance sheet.
This sounds extremely implausible.
"Mr. Miroshnichenko [the head of international affairs for the Territorial Defense Force of Ukraine] turned aside any concerns over arming a civilian population in the capital’s streets, saying that each weapon’s serial number was attached to a passport."[0]
While your concern about training remains, they definitely recorded who got weapons. And also keep in mind that Ukraine, the entire time, had mandatory conscription of all males, where they definitely learned the basics of handling a firearm.
And plus, I am sorry, but there are certain situations when concern over proper training takes a backseat, and this feels like one of them.
0. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/25/world/russia-ukraine...
In this video he literally says that weapons are given without any documents whatsoever.
And regardless, that specific point isn't really a concern (to me personally) when it comes to literally having to defend livelihood of your family and the city against an invading force.
Or, I guess, the lessons of the Eastern Front of WW2.
They have learned a form of that lesson, which is why part of their domestic propaganda is about how “Ukraine” is fake country unjustly erected by Lenin and Stalin from Russian territory that has no justification to exist, but is naturally part of Russia, as well as that the current government of Ukraine is a Nazi regime. Putin wants the people fighting his war to see themselves as fighting in and for their homeland against NATO-backed Nazis intent on destroying Russia.
I guess Ukraine is far less alien to a Russian than Afghanistan was (or Afghanistan or Iraq were to an American), so it could plausibly work. Most (if not all) Ukrainians also speak Russian.
And your point explains his speech emphasising the Kievan Rus as the origin of the Russian people, and and the often fluid borders of Ukraine.
And of course, the Kievan Rus as the point of Christianization of the Russian peoples. And in something that feels like it comes from a Paradox grand strategy game, in 2018, the FSB was trying to prevent people from switching from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church controlled by the Moscow Patriarchate to the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Putin really is playing the long game of "Ukraine was Russia, all along!"
Although I ponder how you could defend against RPGs launched from a skyscraper or high rise.
Tanks, and apcs went near highrises in Kiyv, and all predictably got ambushed, and destroyed by roof shots from regular RPGs, not even nLAWs.
The video of MTLB with strelas escaping in panic is from that time. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-russ...
Kiyv is a modern megapolis with hundreds of highrises, and skyscrapers forming urban canyons.
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Russia deployed 60 BTGs to frontlines with 40 being held back behind lines.
Their losses now are 3-4 BTGs in 2 days. Some more were routed, or damaged, and may return.
At 3.5 BTGs per day, Ukraine needs to hold for 2 more weeks to make succesful Russian invasion with takeover of the whole country impossible.
Loss of half of invading force means retreat to any sane general.
My fear now is that they are mostly using conscripts now, not the professional units, and new hardware. It may be that they are using cannon fodder to expend defender resources before pushing in witch crack troops.
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Excerpt on RPG 7:
"In December 1994, the Russian Army entered the break-away Republic of Chechnya and attempted to seize the Chechen capital of Grozny from the march. After this attempt failed, the Russian Army spent two months in deliberate house-to-house fighting before finally capturing the city.(18) During the fighting, the Russian conscript force was badly mauled by the moremature, dedicated Chechen force. During the first month of the conflict, Russian forces wrote off 225 armored vehicles as nonrepairable battle losses. This represents 10.23% of the armored vehicles initially committed to the campaign.(19) The bulk of these losses were due to shoulderfired antitank weapons and antitank grenades.
The Chechen forces were armed with Soviet and Russian-produced weapons and most Chechen fighters had served in the Soviet Armed Forces. The Chechen lower-level combat group consisted of 15 to 20 personnel subdivided into three or four-man fighting cells. These cells had an antitank gunner (normally armed with the RPG-7 or RPG-18 shoulder-fired antitank rocket launcher), a machine gunner and a sniper.(20) Additional personnel served as ammunition bearers and assistant gunners. Chechen combat groups deployed these cells as anti-armor hunter-killer teams. The sniper and machine gunner would pin down the supporting infantry while the antitank gunner would engage the armored target. Teams deployed at ground level, in second and third stories, and in basements of buildings. Normally five or six hunter-killer teams simultaneously attacked a single armored vehicle. Kill shots were generally made against the top, rear and sides of vehicles. (See diagram 1) Chechens also dropped bottles filled with gasoline or jellied fuel on top of vehicles.(21) The Chechen hunter-killer teams tried to trap vehicle columns in city streets where destruction of the first and last vehicles will trap the column and allow its total destruction.
The elevation and depression angles of the Russian tank barrels were incapable of dealing with hunter-killer teams fighting from basements and second or third-story positions and the simultaneous attack from five or six teams negated the effectiveness of the tanks' machine guns. The Russians attached ZSU 23-4 and 2S6 track-mounted antiaircraft guns to armored columns to respond to these difficult-to-engage hunter-killer teams.(22)"
I believe this is the video, there are also some more videos floating around from different angles.
The article made me wonder what exactly their different state might be. Certainly they learned from Chechnya, at the time. But at the same time, I remember watching Motorola goofing around and then getting blown up from way back in 2014 and thinking, "this is not someone who's learning others' lessons." Yet it's also somebody RUS put in charge of significant combat elements. These people were doing so much improvisation.
So I wonder, what updated, material structures are there that are in use in RUS tactics since that time; can any of them be pointed out? What evidence do we have? etc.
That's true of nearly any military threat, but the question is, does Ukraine have that equipment and if not, can they receive and be trained on it quickly enough for it to be useful?