To quote the 1993 classic Dave, "Do you have any idea how many different kinds of laws we just broke?"
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Ukraine is probably out of Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles, or at least very close to out of them. They've been firing them for months now with very modest success thanks to formidable Russian countermeasures, frequently expending large numbers of missiles for limited results. Moreover they did not get a lot of them to begin with, because there were a very limited amount to give between British and French war stocks.
The plot thickens when we consider the Russian strike on the Starokonstantinov military airfield in Khmelnitsky on the night of August 5th, where Ukraine's small fleet of Su-24s modified to carry Western cruise missiles was based. Despite some online criticism of the strike as ineffective, massive secondary explosions were reported at the time and satellite photos of the aftermath show an enormous crater where the base's ammunition storage bunkers once sat. I believe that it actually hit exactly what it was aimed at: Ukraine's storage depot for its Storm Shadow missiles, placed exactly where they would logically be stored for most convenient use.
Ukraine conducted a large (and largely ineffectual) Storm Shadow strike on the road bridges connecting Crimea and Kherson on August 6th, but this is not inconsistent with the loss of the depot. The Ukrainians had warning of an incoming strike for hours beforehand and have made a practice of launching their aircraft during such attacks to avoid their destruction on the ground. The missiles fired on the 6th had likely been uploaded onto aircraft prior to the attack and were thus saved.
Now for the real tell - the next day, August 7th, the German Bundestag reversed their longstanding position on transferring Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine and authorized the move. This strongly suggests to me that this was done on an emergency basis as the Storm Shadows supplied earlier had been almost entirely destroyed by interdiction strikes such as that in Khmelnitsky or expended in combat. There are very few coincidences in war, and Germany authorizing the transfer of their cruise missiles a matter of hours after the Russians destroyed an ammunition depot at a Ukrainian base hosting cruise missile-equipped strike aircraft is an enormous red flag - presumably, appropriate pressure was brought to bear on the Germans after this disaster and they fell in line as they always have.
Let's actually look at the timeline here:
May 11, 2023 - Britain announces donation, British-model missiles begin to be used in combat
July 11, 2023 - France announces donation, French-model missiles immediately appear on the battlefield
August 5th, 2023 - Russian missile strike on Khmelnitsky
August 6th, 2023 - Ukrainian missile strike on Chongar
August 7th, 2023 - Germany approves transferring Taurus missiles to Ukraine
Expect to see Taurus missiles appear in Ukraine in the immediate future and the Storm Shadow rapidly disappear from the headlines. Unless the Germans modify their missiles to comply with the Missile Technology Control Regime's 300km range limit this will be a significant development - the unmodified Taurus has a 500km range that will bring the Kerch Bridge firmly into missile range from Ukrainian-held territory, and the Germans have hundreds of missiles to transfer. One German lawmaker suggested as many as 450. Although attacks on the Kerch Bridge are largely annoyances in military terms, they make for potent propaganda and as such the Russians would be wise to reinforce air defenses in the area.
The plot thickens when we consider the Russian strike on the Starokonstantinov military airfield in Khmelnitsky on the night of August 5th, where Ukraine's small fleet of Su-24s modified to carry Western cruise missiles was based. Despite some online criticism of the strike as ineffective, massive secondary explosions were reported at the time and satellite photos of the aftermath show an enormous crater where the base's ammunition storage bunkers once sat. I believe that it actually hit exactly what it was aimed at: Ukraine's storage depot for its Storm Shadow missiles, placed exactly where they would logically be stored for most convenient use.
Ukraine conducted a large (and largely ineffectual) Storm Shadow strike on the road bridges connecting Crimea and Kherson on August 6th, but this is not inconsistent with the loss of the depot. The Ukrainians had warning of an incoming strike for hours beforehand and have made a practice of launching their aircraft during such attacks to avoid their destruction on the ground. The missiles fired on the 6th had likely been uploaded onto aircraft prior to the attack and were thus saved.
Now for the real tell - the next day, August 7th, the German Bundestag reversed their longstanding position on transferring Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine and authorized the move. This strongly suggests to me that this was done on an emergency basis as the Storm Shadows supplied earlier had been almost entirely destroyed by interdiction strikes such as that in Khmelnitsky or expended in combat. There are very few coincidences in war, and Germany authorizing the transfer of their cruise missiles a matter of hours after the Russians destroyed an ammunition depot at a Ukrainian base hosting cruise missile-equipped strike aircraft is an enormous red flag - presumably, appropriate pressure was brought to bear on the Germans after this disaster and they fell in line as they always have.
Let's actually look at the timeline here:
May 11, 2023 - Britain announces donation, British-model missiles begin to be used in combat
July 11, 2023 - France announces donation, French-model missiles immediately appear on the battlefield
August 5th, 2023 - Russian missile strike on Khmelnitsky
August 6th, 2023 - Ukrainian missile strike on Chongar
August 7th, 2023 - Germany approves transferring Taurus missiles to Ukraine
Expect to see Taurus missiles appear in Ukraine in the immediate future and the Storm Shadow rapidly disappear from the headlines. Unless the Germans modify their missiles to comply with the Missile Technology Control Regime's 300km range limit this will be a significant development - the unmodified Taurus has a 500km range that will bring the Kerch Bridge firmly into missile range from Ukrainian-held territory, and the Germans have hundreds of missiles to transfer. One German lawmaker suggested as many as 450. Although attacks on the Kerch Bridge are largely annoyances in military terms, they make for potent propaganda and as such the Russians would be wise to reinforce air defenses in the area.
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By the way this has very serious implications for American war plans vis-a-vis Russia, China and even regional powers like Iran - we only have something like 5000 JASSMs and substantially more limited numbers of longer-ranged Tomahawks, C-ALCMs, etc. Judging by the extremely limited results the Ukrainians have gotten from throwing most of France and Britain's supply of Storm Shadows at Russia (and frankly the far from crippling results of much larger Russian missile raids on Ukraine), it's likely that hundreds of thousands of standoff missiles will be needed for any major war. This isn't a new realization - look at the difference between what war planners thought was an adequate bomber fleet in 1939 versus what was needed in 1944-45 to actually inflict serious damage.
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Forwarded from Slavyangrad (Gleb Bazov)
@PanzerWaffle analyses Ukrainian losses based on the number of amputees and recipients of prosthetic limbs among the Ukrainian fighters. @Slavyangrad has summarized the low and high estimates based on the calculations suggested by the channel in the chart above.
PART I | PART II
Despite all of Kiev's attempts to conceal the true number of military losses, some data still leaks through the filters of censorship. On August 1, 2023, The Wall Street Journal published a story that offered a minimum and a maximum estimate of the number of AFU servicemen who lost one or more limbs.
Importantly, this estimate is based on data obtained from medical institutions, non-governmental organizations and the German company Ottobock, which manufactures prosthetic limbs.
According to WSJ's estimates, the minimum number of amputees among the Ukrainian fighters since the start of the conflict is 20,000 and the maximum is 50,000. The figures are truly horrifying, and the article's author rightly points out that they exceed the scale of the First World War. However, the author emphasizes that these are estimated figures and that the real figures may be even higher.
...continued below...
@Slavyangrad
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Strategy and Analysis, Expert Community
PART I | PART II
Despite all of Kiev's attempts to conceal the true number of military losses, some data still leaks through the filters of censorship. On August 1, 2023, The Wall Street Journal published a story that offered a minimum and a maximum estimate of the number of AFU servicemen who lost one or more limbs.
Importantly, this estimate is based on data obtained from medical institutions, non-governmental organizations and the German company Ottobock, which manufactures prosthetic limbs.
According to WSJ's estimates, the minimum number of amputees among the Ukrainian fighters since the start of the conflict is 20,000 and the maximum is 50,000. The figures are truly horrifying, and the article's author rightly points out that they exceed the scale of the First World War. However, the author emphasizes that these are estimated figures and that the real figures may be even higher.
...continued below...
@Slavyangrad
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Forwarded from Slavyangrad (Gleb Bazov)
@PanzerWaffle analyses Ukrainian losses based on the number of amputees and recipients of prosthetic limbs among the Ukrainian fighters. @Slavyangrad has summarized the numbers based on the calculations suggests by the channel in the chart above.
PART I | PART II
► Why is this important?
Over the past century and a half, humanity has accumulated and tabulated a huge amount of data on losses in the two World Wars and in dozens of smaller conflicts. The number of soldiers with amputated limbs is an indicator which allows one to estimate the losses of the AFU as a whole.
For France in World War I, for example, this figure was about 2-2.5 percent of the total number of wounded. There is also more recent data. For example, the U.S. lost 7,076 servicemen killed (KIA) and 53,337 wounded (WIA) during the 20 years of the "war on terrorism" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Between 2001 and 2011, 2,037 US troops lost one or more limbs in combat. The total results in a killed-to-wounded ratio of 1 to 7.5 and an amputation rate of 4 percent.
The ratio has increased because the medical evacuation system and field medicine in general have evolved greatly over the last century. A significant number of those wounded in the battles of World War I did not survive to evacuation or hospitalization.
Among the first things that the AFU sought to change to approximate Western standards was the medical evacuation system. So the American figures can be used as a base for the calculations, with the caveat that the conflict in Ukraine is heavily dominated by the artillery, which is reflected in the number of casualties and the nature of injuries.
If we assume that the WSJ's lower estimate of 20,000 amputees represents 4% of all wounded, then 100% of the wounded will be 500,000 people. Applying the traditional one-to-three casualty ratio to the resulting data—since that is what would be typical for an artillery war in the style of WWI and WWII—we get 150-160 thousand killed AFU servicemen.
Thus, the sanitary and irrecoverable losses of Ukrainian armed formations can range from 550 thousand to 650 thousand people, using just the minimum estimated figures.
► Is this estimate realistic?
Quite. It is supported by the number of Ukrainian cemeteries that have grown over the past 17 months (and by their rampant growth), the desperate permanent mobilization in Ukraine, and the noticeably decreased quality of the military personnel. Mobilized men aged 45-50—without a military specialty but with a long list of chronic diseases—have become the norm over the past two months.
The last two criteria—age and quality—are clear indicators of the depletion of mobilization reserves, as well as one of the signs of the growth of another problem—the depletion of the reserve of specialists, without whom modern industrial warfare cannot be conducted.
@Slavyangrad
Join💜 💜 💜 🔺 Intelligence Briefings,
Strategy and Analysis, Expert Community
PART I | PART II
► Why is this important?
Over the past century and a half, humanity has accumulated and tabulated a huge amount of data on losses in the two World Wars and in dozens of smaller conflicts. The number of soldiers with amputated limbs is an indicator which allows one to estimate the losses of the AFU as a whole.
For France in World War I, for example, this figure was about 2-2.5 percent of the total number of wounded. There is also more recent data. For example, the U.S. lost 7,076 servicemen killed (KIA) and 53,337 wounded (WIA) during the 20 years of the "war on terrorism" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Between 2001 and 2011, 2,037 US troops lost one or more limbs in combat. The total results in a killed-to-wounded ratio of 1 to 7.5 and an amputation rate of 4 percent.
The ratio has increased because the medical evacuation system and field medicine in general have evolved greatly over the last century. A significant number of those wounded in the battles of World War I did not survive to evacuation or hospitalization.
Among the first things that the AFU sought to change to approximate Western standards was the medical evacuation system. So the American figures can be used as a base for the calculations, with the caveat that the conflict in Ukraine is heavily dominated by the artillery, which is reflected in the number of casualties and the nature of injuries.
If we assume that the WSJ's lower estimate of 20,000 amputees represents 4% of all wounded, then 100% of the wounded will be 500,000 people. Applying the traditional one-to-three casualty ratio to the resulting data—since that is what would be typical for an artillery war in the style of WWI and WWII—we get 150-160 thousand killed AFU servicemen.
Thus, the sanitary and irrecoverable losses of Ukrainian armed formations can range from 550 thousand to 650 thousand people, using just the minimum estimated figures.
► Is this estimate realistic?
Quite. It is supported by the number of Ukrainian cemeteries that have grown over the past 17 months (and by their rampant growth), the desperate permanent mobilization in Ukraine, and the noticeably decreased quality of the military personnel. Mobilized men aged 45-50—without a military specialty but with a long list of chronic diseases—have become the norm over the past two months.
The last two criteria—age and quality—are clear indicators of the depletion of mobilization reserves, as well as one of the signs of the growth of another problem—the depletion of the reserve of specialists, without whom modern industrial warfare cannot be conducted.
@Slavyangrad
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Slavyangrad
@PanzerWaffle analyses Ukrainian losses based on the number of amputees and recipients of prosthetic limbs among the Ukrainian fighters. @Slavyangrad has summarized the low and high estimates based on the calculations suggested by the channel in the chart…
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So let's look at the data points we have showing Ukrainian KIA in the 200-400,000 range.
- Population surveys
- Obituary counts on social media
- Cemetery construction
- Amputation disclosures
- Older, inadvertent official disclosures
- Endless conscription but no army growth
It's all completely internally consistent, pointing to the same approximate number of casualties in the 2-400k range. This is exactly what you would expect if that was in fact the case - all these secondary indicators are consistent with each other and there is no countervailing data besides the obvious lies of Ukrainian officials.
Given that Mediazona's count of Russian KIA in the 30,000 range has recently been validated by another inadvertent disclosure on their side (of some 8,500 WIA returned to duty, total, in the entire VDV for the entire SMO) this also points to an absolutely brutal fact: for every Russian soldier killed in this war, somewhere between seven and thirteen Ukrainian soldiers die. That's apocalyptic for the Ukrainian Army and a disgrace for their Western advisors.
This also, by the way, aligns perfectly with the Ukrainian MoD's claims for -Russian- casualties. This suggests strongly that the Ukrainian MoD's infamously implausibly running count of Russian losses is, astonishingly, actually an accurate report of their own losses.
- Population surveys
- Obituary counts on social media
- Cemetery construction
- Amputation disclosures
- Older, inadvertent official disclosures
- Endless conscription but no army growth
It's all completely internally consistent, pointing to the same approximate number of casualties in the 2-400k range. This is exactly what you would expect if that was in fact the case - all these secondary indicators are consistent with each other and there is no countervailing data besides the obvious lies of Ukrainian officials.
Given that Mediazona's count of Russian KIA in the 30,000 range has recently been validated by another inadvertent disclosure on their side (of some 8,500 WIA returned to duty, total, in the entire VDV for the entire SMO) this also points to an absolutely brutal fact: for every Russian soldier killed in this war, somewhere between seven and thirteen Ukrainian soldiers die. That's apocalyptic for the Ukrainian Army and a disgrace for their Western advisors.
This also, by the way, aligns perfectly with the Ukrainian MoD's claims for -Russian- casualties. This suggests strongly that the Ukrainian MoD's infamously implausibly running count of Russian losses is, astonishingly, actually an accurate report of their own losses.
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Forwarded from Cyberspec News (Veles)
Regarding the Russian advance in the Kupyansk direction, I'm hearing that the Russian Force is mainly infantry with Artillery and Aviation support but not many Tanks apparently....so perhaps it's not a full blown offensive
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I wrote a Twitter thread on the "empty battlefield" a while ago that I think is relevant here. Given the conditions of modern war, with persistent aerial surveillance and ubiquitous precision weapons, the army that is less visible on the battlefield and which can bring combat power to bear in a stealthier manner is generally going to be more successful.
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Forwarded from Slavyangrad (Gleb Georgevich Gerasimov)
US supplied cluster munitions are already being used against civilian targets in Donbass, and already failing to detonate.
The man in this video holds a shaped charge variant of the “DPICM” submunition included in the payload.
As we have previously documented on this channel, this type of submunition composes a small portion of the payload - the majority is made up of fragmentation munitions.
A personal note - I strongly believe that the supply of these munitions to Ukraine is proof positive that both Ukraine and their backers have run short on munitions
That said, given that Ukraine continues to use these newly provided shells even now against civilian targets implies three things.
- There are enough of these shells to, at least on paper, sustain the war effort to a degree which allows wasting them on civilian targets (to diminished efficancy against military targets)
-Ukraine is desperate enough to continue these terror attacks despite being short on munitions.
-Despite the collosal amount of death so far, the National Guard and “Territorial Defense” corpus currently remains intact, either at a functional level or merely a command staff level.
I suspect the latter, but it is quite interesting that men with green arm bands started popping up in almost all videos around the liberation of Artemovsk, and we now hear much updates of TB units in combat over the last few weeks.
To suffice: three symptoms implying the professional and several conscript armies are destroyed, leaving now the national guard remnants to actually fight alongside conscripts instead of purely hiding behind them as a shield.
Terror attacks are almost certain to escalate in frequency as this final barrier cracks apart.
#source
—
@Slavyangrad
Join SLG 🔺 Intelligence Briefings, Strategy and Analysis, Expert Community
The man in this video holds a shaped charge variant of the “DPICM” submunition included in the payload.
As we have previously documented on this channel, this type of submunition composes a small portion of the payload - the majority is made up of fragmentation munitions.
A personal note - I strongly believe that the supply of these munitions to Ukraine is proof positive that both Ukraine and their backers have run short on munitions
That said, given that Ukraine continues to use these newly provided shells even now against civilian targets implies three things.
- There are enough of these shells to, at least on paper, sustain the war effort to a degree which allows wasting them on civilian targets (to diminished efficancy against military targets)
-Ukraine is desperate enough to continue these terror attacks despite being short on munitions.
-Despite the collosal amount of death so far, the National Guard and “Territorial Defense” corpus currently remains intact, either at a functional level or merely a command staff level.
I suspect the latter, but it is quite interesting that men with green arm bands started popping up in almost all videos around the liberation of Artemovsk, and we now hear much updates of TB units in combat over the last few weeks.
To suffice: three symptoms implying the professional and several conscript armies are destroyed, leaving now the national guard remnants to actually fight alongside conscripts instead of purely hiding behind them as a shield.
Terror attacks are almost certain to escalate in frequency as this final barrier cracks apart.
#source
—
@Slavyangrad
Join SLG 🔺 Intelligence Briefings, Strategy and Analysis, Expert Community
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That's definitely an M42 submunition from a US-design DPICM artillery shell, either M483 or M864. Noteworthy the Turks apparently supplied some M483 shells on top of the M864s donated by the US.
UXO seems to have been recovered from the vicinity of a school, because of course.
UXO seems to have been recovered from the vicinity of a school, because of course.
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"All those decolonized Russia maps coming from Western think tankers are just a joke bro! They're not official! We're not planning to destroy Russia!"
Well, Putin doesn't seem to be taking it that way. What's that the postmodernists always say? "Perception is reality?"
Well, Putin doesn't seem to be taking it that way. What's that the postmodernists always say? "Perception is reality?"
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Why was the UN using a hotel frequented by foreign fighters and Ukrainian military personnel? Were they providing aid and advice to the Ukrainian military or were they being used as human shields? Why did they never report on or object to this inappropriate activity?
And while we're at it, what civilians were being evacuated from Azovstal in May 2022? Was the United Nations coordinating or liaising with the Azov Regiment at the time? What "humanitarian aid" organizations is this UN humanitarian coordinator talking about and what is their overlap in membership with the Ukrainian Foreign Legion?
And while we're at it, what civilians were being evacuated from Azovstal in May 2022? Was the United Nations coordinating or liaising with the Azov Regiment at the time? What "humanitarian aid" organizations is this UN humanitarian coordinator talking about and what is their overlap in membership with the Ukrainian Foreign Legion?
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