Outside Topic Way OT: Ukraine - Printable Version

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - BostonCard - 06-09-2022

Dabigv is right; look at any of the articles from today (eg https://nationworldnews.com/how-the-orioles-plan-to-scout-recruit-and-develop-players-left-out-of-short-2020-draft-we-just-showed-them-who-we-are/) and you can see that they use a day/month/year date format.

BC

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - Goose - 06-09-2022

(06-09-2022, 06:35 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  Dabigv is right; look at any of the articles from today (eg https://nationworldnews.com/how-the-orioles-plan-to-scout-recruit-and-develop-players-left-out-of-short-2020-draft-we-just-showed-them-who-we-are/) and you can see that they use a day/month/year date format.

BC

Yes, I know that, but that is the revision date, as confirmed by the "revised 5 days ago" comment next to the date. I am pretty sure Google Search uses the "post date (the date the article was first made available on the net)", which for the original article was in April. Otherwise, it wouldn't have shown up in my search. I believe that because searching the text of a file to determine it's "date" would yield many, many false drops from any date in the article text. Not using the "post date" would also mean any article that contains no date would never match a search containing a date constraint. This is obviously not the case, so...

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - BostonCard - 06-09-2022

There is nothing in that article that states it was updated, and it would be very unusual to update an article two months after it first appeared.  Moreover, the meeting between Stoltenberg and Martin happened on June 3:

[tweet]https://twitter.com/jensstoltenberg/status/1532815988378435586?s=21&t=k6XpevcsIf0Ya-zZtpJ1Ig[/tweet]

My guess is that Google parsed the date wrong.

BC

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interesting, my phone didn’t say it was updated, but when I looked on my iPAD, it says it was updated 6 days ago.  Nation World News is based in India, where it is already the 10th, so it makes sense.  That being said, there is no indication of when the article was originally written, and it really is unusual to update an article months after the fact.  But the clincher is that it refers to recent events.  The meeting with Stoltenberg and Martin happened the day before it was published, and it states that Stoltenberg visited Washington “last week”.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_196095.htm

And he did visit Washington at the beginning of June.  So, even if updated 6 days ago, I don’t think it was written more than 7 days ago, and, as I said, Google parsed the date wrong.

BC

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - Goose - 06-09-2022

(06-09-2022, 09:06 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  

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<snip>

interesting, my phone didn’t say it was updated, but when I looked on my iPAD, it says it was updated 6 days ago.  Nation World News is based in India, where it is already the 10th, so it makes sense.

Good! There for a while I thought I was going off the deep end. I just uploaded an image showing the update when I saw your revision here. Thank goodness!

Quote:That being said, there is no indication of when the article was originally written, and it really is unusual to update an article months after the fact.  But the clincher is that it refers to recent events.  The meeting with Stoltenberg and Martin happened the day before it was published, and it states that Stoltenberg visited Washington “last week”.

Actually not. Lots of the articles on Ukraine get continuously updated, which makes it very confusing. Often the updated article bears little or no resemblance to the original. Ukrayinska Pravda does this frequently. Not sure that is the case here however.

Quote:And he did visit Washington at the beginning of June.  So, even if updated 6 days ago, I don’t think it was written more than 7 days ago, and, as I said, Google parsed the date wrong.





BC

BC, my whole point is that Google doesn't get their dates by parsing the article. Besides the problems of misinterpreting the date in the text (as you hypothesize here), as I pointed out before, what is the date of an article that contains no date? Undefined? That clearly wouldn't work. Date searches could never find it. Also, what about articles that contain multiple dates? Which do you pick? If I post a newspaper article tomorrow written in 1950 that contains the date 1950, what is it's "date"? 1950? Nope.

I am almost certain (after a bit of experimenting) that Google uses the "post date", which is the creation date of the file referenced in the URL. You can get both the creation date and the last modified date for any given url, at least most of the time (I have no counter-examples). These dates are "canonical" in that they do not rely on the external representation of the date, so the question of how the date is "written" does not exist. It is true that these dates may not be literally "correct", in that I may write something a year ago and post it today with a brand new file created today. Still, giving today's date to such a post is arguably correct. So, if Google thinks the url I cited was created in April, it is pretty likely it was. Now, as to what the original article said, I can't say. I can only say it was about Erdogan, Finland and NATO.

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - BostonCard - 06-09-2022

Ironically, you can Google “how does Google know the date of an article” and it will tell you :

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/03/help-google-search-know-best-date-for

Quote:Google determines a date using a variety of factors, including but not limited to: any prominent date listed on the page itself or dates provided by the publisher through structured markup.

I wonder which one it gives more prominence to, if they conflict. Maybe once I’m on my computer, I’ll have a look at the code.

BC

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - Goose - 06-09-2022

(06-09-2022, 10:29 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  Ironically, you can Google “how does Google know the date of an article” and it will tell you :

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/03/help-google-search-know-best-date-for

Quote:Google determines a date using a variety of factors, including but not limited to: any prominent date listed on the page itself or dates provided by the publisher through structured markup.

I wonder which one it gives more prominence to, if they conflict.  Maybe once I’m on my computer, I’ll have a look at the code.

BC

You are correct. It is more complicated than it looks. https://cects.com/created-published-modified/ has a bit to say about it that I think makes it clear there are lots of ways this process can go off the rails. I was looking at last modified dates in HTTP headers ("structured markup)". They are not always there, although my quick look didn't find that issue. Tomorrow I will attempt to take a look at what I can get from the url in question, but it may well be that the dates in the text are all there is available. I would expect Google could always fall back to their cache and get the first time a page showed up with some resolution, but maybe they don't cross check things that way.

Update:
The HTML of the page contains
"name":"NATO Chief Tries To Stop Erdogan's Resistance To Finland, Sweden Joining Alliance","datePublished":"2022-06-04T11:20:24-04:00","dateModified":"2022-06-04T11:20:24-04:00",
Those cannonical dates indicate it was indeed published on June 4.  However, if you ask Google to determine the date of the site with
inurl:https://nationworldnews.com/nato-chief-tries-to-stop-erdogans-resistance-to-finland-sweden-joining-alliance/
you get

NATO Chief Tries To Stop Erdogan's Resistance To Finland ...
https://nationworldnews.com › nato-chief-tries-to-stop-e...

Apr 6, 2022 — Russia's war in Ukraine prompted the Nordic countries to apply to join NATO, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Sweden and ...

So it would appear Google is indeed using the "wrong date", even though the publish date is canonically present  in the HTML.

For what it's worth, CarbonDate (https://carbondate.cs.odu.edu/) fails to date this file at all. However, ATM it can't even date itself, so I assume there are not enough resources available.

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - TrumpCard - 06-10-2022

Especially considering this is a highly pro-Ukrainian source, this is a negative sounding update:  https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-10.  I get the distinct impression that Ukraine thinks it's going to lose control of the whole Donbas region.  The tone here may be overly negative so as to motivate the West to provide more MLRS, artillery, and ammunition ASAP, but I don't see how we can interpret this update as anything other than bad.

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - Goose - 06-10-2022

(06-10-2022, 02:15 PM)TrumpCard Wrote:  Especially considering this is a highly pro-Ukrainian source, this is a negative sounding update:  https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-10.  I get the distinct impression that Ukraine thinks it's going to lose control of the whole Donbas region.  The tone here may be overly negative so as to motivate the West to provide more MLRS, artillery, and ammunition ASAP, but I don't see how we can interpret this update as anything other than bad.

I agree that the updates are bad, but not surprising. I had previously estimated that the Ukraine was probably operating at a 5:1 disadvantage in artillery. The 10-15 they are citing probably is a) a bit overstated, and b) caused by running out of Soviet-era ammunition. Running out of this ammunition was completely predictable, but it has undoubtedly occurred much faster than anticipated because the fighting has degenerated into an artillery duel. The West needs to move fast to be sure Ukraine has ammunition for the weapons we have supplied them and will probably need to supply more weapons. It is also probable that we will need to supply 81 mm mortar ammunition. The Soviet era M-37 can use that directly. Ukraine, having fewer firing platforms, should never be allowed to run low on ammunition. That is one way to level the playing field a bit. Of course, the West also has to be able to supply such usage. Not clear we can for very long. We have a lot of 155 mm DPICM available, but I think there is concern about using it.

All along, Ukraine needed to inflict considerable attrition on the Russian artillery to reduce the imbalance. That is difficult to do with counter battery when you are heavily outnumbered. The geometry forces you to operate your artillery much further forward than you would like in order to reach most of the Russian artillery. That of course puts your guns well in range of lots of Russian guns. That is why the longer range MLRS systems are so necessary, because they can engage the Russian guns from greater depth that the Russian guns can't reach. We delayed and delayed, so here we are. It also may be that Ukraine hasn't done enough to kill Russian artillery, but if that is the case, we should have pushed them on that. The good thing about destroying enemy artillery is that it takes time to replace it, even if they have the pieces available. During that time, you have a window of opportunity where you can attack without fearing steel rain.

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - BostonCard - 06-11-2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/10/ukraine-ammunition-donbas-russia/

Basically reiterated what others have said: Russians are making (slow) progress, Ukraine is running out of ammunition and the current conditions suit Russia much more.

BC

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - TrumpCard - 06-11-2022

This is a well-sourced article with lots of good quotes. A lot of what I’ve seen in western media is simply derived from ISW, but this article is not.

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - GK3 - 06-12-2022

(06-11-2022, 10:33 AM)TrumpCard Wrote:  This is a well-sourced article with lots of good quotes. A lot of what I’ve seen in western media is simply derived from ISW, but this article is not.

Would the AGM 154 be a viable stand off weapon for the Ukrainian air force? The anti armor variant might be good against artillery emplacements.  Ammunition issue should have been foreseen and planned for I would think.

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - Goose - 06-12-2022

(06-12-2022, 08:56 AM)GK3 Wrote:  

(06-11-2022, 10:33 AM)TrumpCard Wrote:  This is a well-sourced article with lots of good quotes. A lot of what I’ve seen in western media is simply derived from ISW, but this article is not.

Would the AGM 154 be a viable stand off weapon for the Ukrainian air force? The anti armor variant might be good against artillery emplacements.

No, because their Migs/Sukhois do not use "NATO Standard"  hardpoints and even more importantly do not have the wiring to use such weapons. Furthermore, the weapon/airframe combination would need to be evaluated by test flying to make sure nothing "real bad" happened to the airplane or the weapon and that the weapon still "worked". AFAIK, no NATO nation even attempted to make their Soviet airframes carry NATO weapons. While it may be theoretically possible, it is costly and very time consuming (year or so) best case.

Quote:Ammunition issue should have been foreseen and planned for I would think.

I would think so too, but then not everybody believed this war would evolve the way it did towards an artillery duel. The US performance in this situation has been our typically uneven process. This time, our intelligence folks got it right and predicted Russia would invade. This was good. However, we pretty much expected that Ukraine would be overrun. They weren't. We didn't really have a ready response for that event, so it took us a little while to respond with lots of ATGMs and the like. We didn't do too bad here, but what didn't happen (as with the US it often doesn't) was the "How does this end?" conversations and contingency planning.

By the middle of March it was absolutely clear that for Ukraine to win they were going to need lots and lots of heavy firepower from the West. We knew Ukraine was badly out-gunned by Russian artillery in the first place. We also knew Ukraine has limited Soviet era ammunition and we knew we couldn't easily replace it. We could always hope Russia would keep doing dumb things and not figure it out, but relying on that was a bad idea. At that point, we either needed to do everything we could to make Ukraine able to "stand up" to the Russians in the "inevitable" artillery war or tell them to negotiate for what they could.

We did neither. We eventually got them about 100 M777s and enough ammunition for maybe a month of "normal" usage. It was already clear that Ukraine needed MLRS/HIMARS to have a way to "whittle down" the Russian artillery superiority. Ukraine knew this and repeatedly ask us to supply it. We did not supply it. I can fully understand having reservations about our involvement in Ukraine, but if we were not willing in March to do the things that appeared probably required for Ukraine to have a chance at winning, we should have just told them that. Instead, we gave them enough to lose slowly at great cost in infantry lives. They still do not have operational HIMARS and are running low on NATO munitions. It appears they are virtually out of Soviet era ammunition. Yes, fighting a WW I style battle can consume ammunition at a prodigious rate. Did the US and NATO appreciate this when they sent the weapons? Appears they didn't. Is there enough ammunition available in NATO/US stocks? For a few months, yes, if we are willing to run it down to zero. Have we let contracts to build lots more? Not that I am aware of. We actually had lots of 155 mm DPICM (3 million rounds I believe) but they reached EOL and were not replaced. So yes, it was foreseeable as at least a potential problem. Are we ready and willing to actually solve it? Based on our speed of action, I would say it is highly probable the answer is effectively no.

One of the things the US touts as our specialty against countries that outnumber us is the ability to get inside the enemy's decision cycle and force him to react to strategies we have already transcended. He will be behind us in the decision cycle and we will run rings around him. The Ukraine war has descended into a "slow motion" battle and yet we are still way behind in our decide/act rate. Doesn't make one very confident in the outcome. In this case, the "speed of war" is slow and yet we can't even match that.

https://www.fieldartillery.org/news/army-to-cut-155-mm-artillery-spending-citing-budget-pressure give some insight to what we intended to do in the last year. https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1516822930931527681 gives some data that is interesting but somewhat contradictory and with no sources cited. It is clear from the first Ukraine was using more ammo that the US expected and there was concern.

What Ukraine is up against: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44579/this-is-russias-much-feared-artillery-arsenal-that-could-wreak-havoc-on-ukraine

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - Goose - 06-12-2022

This is the current state of play regarding the Turkish opposition to Finland and Sweden. https://www.yahoo.com/news/nato-chief-stoltenberg-says-turkeys-133651271.html. I think it is very good that the head of NATO is taking this seriously, as that is the only way we stand any chance of making this happen. At best, it will take a while. Hopefully Sweden and Finland can offer some concessions to Turkey that are not too unpalatable to their governments at public and yet are enough for Turkey to claim a victory.

Another minor storm brewing for NATO. Countries on the Eastern flank met to strategize on how to get increased troop basing in their countries. This is going to be an ongoing issue that also can't just be blown off. These countries need to become aware of what NATO's strategy is and how they fit into it. This may require some "adjustments", but it is important NATO strategy not be governed by peoples anxieties. Been there did that, and fortunately we never had to find out what would have happened.

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - BostonCard - 06-12-2022

The troops are, of course, very symbolic.  A determined Russian attack *should* be able to wipe them out in short order (though after Ukraine, maybe not).  But troops there highlights Article V.  For the same reason that the US/NATO refuse to put troops or planes into Ukraine, as it runs the risk of direct confrontation, the more troops are in Eastern Europe, the greater the chance that a Russian invasion kills Western European/American troops leaving those countries no choice but to come to an article V invocation.  That, in turn, reduces the chances of an invasion in the first place.  The flip side is that it increases the chance that Eastern European countries act recklessly or underinvest in their own security, which is what happened with Germany partly due to the number of American troops there.

BC

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - BostonCard - 06-12-2022

I’m wondering if someone can make sense of this tweet thread:

[tweet]https://twitter.com/tedgnuchev/status/1536040853206179842?s=21&t=Gg3B0FpANpfwSZHme-4Qyw[/tweet]

Am I right to understand that the Russians tried to cross the Siverskyi Donets nine times, failing a bunch, then for an inexplicable reason ceded ground when they succeeded… even though they could have just waited until the water levels dropped?

If that is true, what is going on? Seems exceedingly callous to sacrifice 80 tanks and 400 men in a live war just to practice. ???

BC

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - Goose - 06-13-2022

(06-12-2022, 11:43 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  If that is true, what is going on?  Seems exceedingly callous to sacrifice 80 tanks and 400 men in a live war just to practice.  ???


BC

BC, I obviously don't know what happened, but I doubt it was just for practice. The synthesis I believe happened is as follows. Short answer is the unit that got across the river suffered heavy casualties and was in no position to exploit reaching the West bank of the river. Probably there was a follow-on force that was supposed to subsequently cross into the bridgehead and exploit Southwest like mad, but that force never showed up. It could be that it was one of those units who refused to fight. It could be they got lost or ran out of fuel. It could be some staff officer screwed up and the orders were never issued, or due to communications problems never reached the follow-on unit. It also could be, given this is the Russians, the follow-on unit never existed but everybody was afraid to tell "the boss" that and so the river crossing went in anyway. It could also be that since the other crossings failed the high command figured this one would too and didn't bother with the exploitation force.

At the end of the day a badly cut up force found itself in enemy territory with a river to it's back and no supporting forces behind it or passing through it. Either they themselves decided to retreat or their higher commanders looked at the situation and ordered the retreat. In any case, they probably figured they were toast if they stayed where they were.

As to why any of these river crossings were attempted, the best explanation I can come up with is that the Russians were still fiddling with the "broad envelopment" that was suggested as a possible strategy for them to adopt. At present, given what is happening in Donbas, the "narrow envelopment" is in the process of playing out, and Ukraine is having to decide whether and how to prevent significant forces from being cut off. You may remember that the "broad envelopment" would have required crossing the river someplace and exploiting South and West to essentially isolate over 1/3 of the Ukraine and trapping basically the entire defensive force East of the river. If such had been attempted and succeeded, it probably would have ended the "war", as the "back door" would be open to Western Ukraine with few/no troops in the way. However, while the Russians were repositioning, many of the pundits said they didn't think the Russians had the combat power to pull off the "wide envelopment".

What did the Russians think? We don't know, but Russia has a very long history of not choosing one strategy but rather pursuing multiple strategies at the same time. When one of them appears to be succeeding, they then choose that one. It is also true that in this war Russia has tied down a large portion of the Ukrainian forces by threatening attacks across a broad front. Sometimes they actually do attack, as they must to keep the threat credible. Continuing to attack around Karkiv is similar. It isn't going anywhere, but it ties down Ukrainians all out of proportion to the effort required. These river crossing attempts keep the "broad envelopment" on the table. Of course, you can't tell the poor bastards doing the attacking that you aren't serious, so they do and die.

You also can't wait for the river to drop, because that doesn't tie down the Ukrainians.  It lets them train and incorporate their new weapons in relative peace, so when you do wade across the river you meet a much better prepared enemy. So, were these attacks "serious" or a feint? Who knows?

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - BostonCard - 06-13-2022

Thanks, Goose. I appreciate your thoughts. It’s certainly plausible and certainly more plausible than my hypothesis.

By the way, the Russians blew up all three bridges across the Donets river from Sieverodonetsk. I guess the goal is to trap the Ukrainian troops and civilians in the city as they reduce it to rubble, and I imagine they presumed that if they didn’t do it, the Ukrainians upon their retreat.

Still, it does make the capture of the remaining portions of Sieverodonetsk tougher since retreat is not going to be an option, and I’m guessing after Mariupol, neither will surrender.

BC

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - BostonCard - 06-13-2022

Good thread on Ukrainian asks versus what can be provided.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/markhertling/status/1536474288261414913?s=21&t=z4XKDsj9hodRi5OI2PAWBw[/tweet]

BC

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - Goose - 06-14-2022

(06-13-2022, 05:22 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  Good thread on Ukrainian asks versus what can be provided.
https://twitter.com/markhertling/status/1536474288261414913?s=21&t=z4XKDsj9hodRi5OI2PAWBw


BC

It is indeed a good thread on what the US can actually provide, although parts of that are just a bit misleading. The really important point the General makes, IMHO, is that creating a Western style army from basically scratch is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. All that training isn't "optional". To make the NATO style army work, you have to have it. Ukraine is being forced to do it in the middle of a war while not losing said war. Even harder. This needs to be understood by the public. This is a very difficult thing to do.

I think the General under-stated the availability of M777 and MLRS systems by omitting the Marines and the National Guard from the enumeration. In fact, the Marines just shed a bunch of M777s in their reorg. The General undoubtedly knew that his divisions in Europe would have (Reinforced) beside their designator if we had ever seriously fought there. Even in Desert Storm 24th Mech had over 25K personnel assigned. It went into battle with 9 arty battalions, not 3. There are also reserve stocks of these weapons. Granted, the US has spent the last 30 years redesigning the Army to only fight failed states and terrorists, but many of the weapons are still there.

It is absolutely true that we don't have enough weapons to arm Ukraine with 1000 howitzers, and even if we did, we don't have nearly enough ammunition to supply them. The General correctly points out that our Army doesn't fight like the Russian army or Ukrainian army. We never expected to match the Russians "howitzer to howitzer". He said we have "other means" of countering Russian artillery numerical superiority. Unfortunately, he doesn't enumerate those means and explain how we can transition the Ukrainians to using those other means. This is a big issue, unfortunately.

First of all, the US Army never intends to ever fight a "linear battle" like the Ukraine is currently doing. We would use a mobile defense that is low-density and hard to target while moving, but able to concentrate rapidly, deliver a blow, and then disperse. We would also use rapidly moving armored striking forces on offense, overrunning most towed artillery and making self-propelled artillery ineffective because we would be a moving target. At least that is the theory. Second, and most importantly, the US Army always fights under the Aluminum Overcast. Neither of these conditions exist in Ukraine.

The General also seems to feel the speed with which the US has acted is appropriate. Given that he points out the difficulty in training and how much time it takes to do so, I find it hard to accept that only now have we reached a "proof of concept" stage with HIMARS. The past two and a half months were available for that training. Seems contradictory to me.

The following link is also IMHO a good read: https://coffeeordie.com/grey-wolf-team/ It casts some light on the current air battle. Right now, the Ukraine is holding it's own, but if the West is looking to have Ukraine fight "like a Western army", their Air Force is going to have to become much more effective. How does this happen?

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RE: Way OT: Ukraine - Goose - 06-14-2022

(06-13-2022, 04:44 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  Thanks, Goose. I appreciate your thoughts. It’s certainly plausible and certainly more plausible than my hypothesis.

By the way, the Russians blew up all three bridges across the Donets river from Sieverodonetsk. I guess the goal is to trap the Ukrainian troops and civilians in the city as they reduce it to rubble, and I imagine they presumed that if they didn’t do it, the Ukrainians upon their retreat.

Still, it does make the capture of the remaining portions of Sieverodonetsk tougher since retreat is not going to be an option, and I’m guessing after Mariupol, neither will surrender.

BC

It is my understanding that the Russians destroyed the bridges by shelling, i.e. they are not physically there (yet). This means that while Ukraine can still retreat (the river is falling, you can wade across) it will not be possible to easily bring out anything/anyone that requires truck/motor vehicle transport. In this case. being leg infantry has it's advantages. Equally importantly. supplies cannot be brought in by truck either. This may not really be that different, as the Russians were regularly shelling the roads anyway, but if the bridge was there trucks could chance it. Of course, Ukraine can build pontoon/Bailey bridges too. Probably not worth it as they would just get shelled out of existence.

UPDATE: https://www.yahoo.com/news/bridges-ukraines-sievierodontesk-destroyed-access-170353735.html basically confirms the above. However, it seems the Russians are on the river bank or soon will be.
 
At one time Ukraine supposedly had 20,000 troops inside the pocket. Presumably, as the pocket contracted most of these troops retreated to the other side of the river. Zelenskyy seemed to be laying the groundwork with the public that they would do that. As he has said, Ukraine needs live fighters, not dead hero's. Lets hope they pull out as much as they can. Politically, it will be difficult. The home guard may refuse to leave. I certainly hope they got all their 155 mm artillery and any (other than MANPAD) anti-air assets across the bridges before they went. If not, that is a BIG error.

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