Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

RedDevilQuebecois said:
The UA have their work cut out for them. Learning from how the US Army punched the hole through Iraqi defense lines in 1991 is the key from the moment when enough tanks will join the fight on the Ukrainian side.
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Let's hope they are sufficiently rearmed and trained up on the next level of weapons supplied to them before all of this kicks off.
 
Raoul said:
Let's hope they are sufficiently rearmed and trained up on the next level of weapons supplied to them before all of this kicks off.
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Have they enough men to use these weapons?
That would be my concern. Can Russia just wear them down with sheer manpower over time - given we know Putin doesnt care about the quantity of men that die.

If the UA loses the battles on the ground what will NATO do?
 
McGrathsipan said:
Have they enough men to use these weapons?
That would be my concern. Can Russia just wear them down with sheer manpower over time - given we know Putin doesnt care about the quantity of men that die.

If the UA loses the battles on the ground what will NATO do?
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UA manpower is actually massive though given so many civilians are fighting, obviously that means large swathes of both sides now aren't really trained properly but I don't think manpower is an issue for Ukraine.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
UA manpower is actually massive though given so many civilians are fighting, obviously that means large swathes of both sides now aren't really trained properly but I don't think manpower is an issue for Ukraine.
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Last year Ukrainian said it would have 1 million men available to defend themselves by now. Whether that is true I don't know.
 
Don't Kill Bill said:
Last year Ukrainian said it would have 1 million men available to defend themselves by now. Whether that is true I don't know.
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I'm sure they have at least that many. Its a nation of 40 million people, 19m of which are male. When you remove kids and olds, it still leaves them with several million fighting age males to utilize. They also have a fair number of females fighting as well.
 
McGrathsipan said:
Have they enough men to use these weapons?
That would be my concern. Can Russia just wear them down with sheer manpower over time - given we know Putin doesnt care about the quantity of men that die.

If the UA loses the battles on the ground what will NATO do?
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Ukraine's 40 mil may not look that impressive compared to Russia's 140 mil but only one country has a significant surplus of volunteers to join the army. Despite the general support towards the war in Russia (it's hard to estimate the real percentage but you have to assume that it's still relatively high), it's not something that the majority of those supporters are willing to fight for. In Ukraine the situation is drastically different. The bigger problem is teaching those volunteers and supplying them with enough ammunition, it's not just the body count.
 
McGrathsipan said:
Have they enough men to use these weapons?
That would be my concern. Can Russia just wear them down with sheer manpower over time - given we know Putin doesnt care about the quantity of men that die.

If the UA loses the battles on the ground what will NATO do?
Click to expand...
EU and UK have commited to train 50.000 Ukrainian troops this year so there is plenty of well trained replacements comming. I think these troops will be held back from the frontlines until the promised equipment have been delivered and will then be used in a counter offensive.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
UA manpower is actually massive though given so many civilians are fighting, obviously that means large swathes of both sides now aren't really trained properly but I don't think manpower is an issue for Ukraine.
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We also often tend to forget that only a small portion of the Ukrainian population is currently fighting on the front lines while cohort after cohort of volunteers/conscripts are currently trained in NATO countries. Considering that the Ukrainians are not resorting to full guerilla tactics just yet, that tells me they are holding the line well until those extensively trained soldiers and the right hardware come in with the purpose of going on the offensive against Russian-controlled regions.
 
Salt Bailly said:
Again with the falling from the windows. It must have creeped into the top ten most common ways to die in Russia by now.
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I am sure loads of people are opening the windows in the middle of winter in Russia....
 


Smith sentenced to 13 years in prison
Mr Justice Wall tells David Smith to stand as he passes his sentence.
He jails Smith for a total of 13 years and two months and says his current time spent on remand will count towards his tariff.
 
Simbo said:
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Some more on this, after reading through the various threads on it.

The flying debris at the beginning shows something has just exploded right next to him, then seconds later he takes out the btr/bmp with the rpg (smoke seen, cannon fire stops). Proceeds to take out at least 3 guys and considering he's lived to release the footage fair to say they fended off the full squad assaulting them.

2nd guy is there to feed weapons/reloads, he uses 3 different weapons in the 30 sec clip. Judging from other videos released from the same source, this dude has been defending the same trench on the front lines for at least the past two months... absolute unit. I for one, will not be complaining about my job today.

I suspect NATO troops will be visiting Ukraine for training in the future, not the other way around.
 
Simbo said:
I suspect NATO troops will be visiting Ukraine for training in the future, not the other way around.
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While this is true for some of the novel tactics against the RA, a lot of the success is the pure relentnessness in defending your homeland and is not something that can be taught in lectures.

Some of the clips are real life COD though.
 
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Simbo said:
Some more on this, after reading through the various threads on it.

The flying debris at the beginning shows something has just exploded right next to him, then seconds later he takes out the btr/bmp with the rpg (smoke seen, cannon fire stops). Proceeds to take out at least 3 guys and considering he's lived to release the footage fair to say they fended off the full squad assaulting them.

2nd guy is there to feed weapons/reloads, he uses 3 different weapons in the 30 sec clip. Judging from other videos released from the same source, this dude has been defending the same trench on the front lines for at least the past two months... absolute unit. I for one, will not be complaining about my job today.

I suspect NATO troops will be visiting Ukraine for training in the future, not the other way around.
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UK Navy already used to train re counter UAV tactics pre war in Ukraine because they had so much experience fighting them in the Donbas although I doubt NATO has much interest in training trench warfare tactics like in the video. That said, it's a sterling effort from those two soldiers in a difficult situation almost like a video game with all the different weapons he's using.
 
tomaldinho1 said:
UK Navy already used to train re counter UAV tactics pre war in Ukraine because they had so much experience fighting them in the Donbas although I doubt NATO has much interest in training trench warfare tactics like in the video. That said, it's a sterling effort from those two soldiers in a difficult situation almost like a video game with all the different weapons he's using.
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Yeh, I said that in part to counter some of the posts in this thread that seem to insinuate that Ukraine is completely reliant on 'NATO' training to be effective. When in reality, they've been at war with Russia and fighting artillery duels / trench warfare since 2014. No military in the world has more experience in this type of warfare than Ukraine, although many of the vets will have been killed/captured in the early land grabs last year no doubt.

They do of course need training in new/unfamiliar equipment and will take any help they can get in general.
 
Simbo said:
Yeh, I said that in part to counter some of the posts in this thread that seem to insinuate that Ukraine is completely reliant on 'NATO' training to be effective. When in reality, they've been at war with Russia and fighting artillery duels / trench warfare since 2014. No military in the world has more experience in this type of warfare than Ukraine, although many of the vets will have been killed/captured in the early land grabs last year no doubt.

They do of course need training in new/unfamiliar equipment and will take any help they can get in general.
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I think it's testament to them that with ~8 years of training they've essentially remodelled the old Soviet doctrine into something more Western which put more emphasis on flexibility and therefore has been a capable counter to the number/artillery/tank superiority of the Russians. I still don't understand why Russia's air force has been so unused, relative to what we believe they have available, but you have to assume it's because Ukraine is now riddled with AA.

I wouldn't take away from the courage and stalwart efforts of Ukraine but I also think the NATO standard training has been invaluable for them (and also useful for NATO actually seeing it live against a so-called world power). The hope now is they can FastTrack themselves to becoming an army that uses NATO standard weapons across the board and they will already be able to start advising and helping NATO doctrine with the horrible experiences they are having to endure because, for all the awful parts of war, the benefit long term for them militarily will be huge.
 
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