> obvious requirements for a future anti-armor weapon for urban combat is a low-signature, multi-shot, recoil-attenuated, light-weight weapon which can be fired from inside enclosures
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.
modern armor is incredibly resistant to spalling. HESH rounds, the high-tech version of sticky dynamite, have fallen out of favor in preference to kinetic penetrators and shaped charges.
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.
A closer look at video footages by DAESH reveals that the bombs dropped by drones are not as effective as vehicle-bombs since 40 mm munitions have limited effect. However, a drone with the help of a simple mechanism can still inflict casualties on ISF personnel or cause the injury of personnel and render them ineffective in the fight.
That might work in 1950. Nobody is bum rushing a modern tank. Well someone might, but they ain't living to talk about it. Modern tanks are too well integrated with mechanized infantry and their visibility is too good to be surprised by a man delivered explosive device. I mean you might get away with it in downtown Fallujah where you only need to rush 10yd but it'll take you three dozen bodies trying before you get a single mobility kill.
You wanna kill a modern tank, plant an IED in the street and wait.
Based on the antitank Twitter thread going around, the IED is optional.
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.
Ah, but they covered those contingencies in the article. Multiple teams, a machine gunner on the team to take out infantry, channelized environments with e.g. basement cover, and location research.
Thermite wouldn't be too hard to, would it? Potassium permanganate and glycerine can be used to start the reaction among the metal shavings reliably with a small (~2 sec) delay.
Both of those are readily available at drug stores, I'd find magnesium ribbon a bit harder to get, honestly, though I don't know how that changes at commercial scale.
The mechanism varies with the warhead. The PG-7 uses the acceleration from launch to set off a primer. This starts a slow fuse that will cause self-destruct if the grenade doesn't hit a target within a few seconds (so you don't have a live warhead cluttering up the place, requiring an EOD team to dispose of it.) It also burns away a safety plunger that allows the piezo-impact fuze to complete it's circuit and ignite the shaped-charge.
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.
A friend who grew up in Soviet Hungary told me that they got military training in high school. Every kid graduated knowing how to make molotov cocktails and disable tanks.
Same was for me in Russia. Basic military education was included in high school programme. It's just keep constantly being renamed by deceptive, and cryptic names to disguise what it is "UVP," "OBZh," "Sociology," "OVO," "Sports orientation"
Amusingly, kids in Moscow, and central parts of Russia don't have it in their programme.
Russia has a 10:1 advantage to the US in tactical nukes. They have all sorts of creative nuclear devices that can very much be used in theatre without triggering a MAD scenario. Why the big discrepancy? US weaponry is better. It's more precise. It's more effective. Head to head, Russia realized that they had no hope of competing against NATO. So they decided they won't. They'll just invest in and strategize around the use of tactical nukes which help them level the playing field without triggering a MAD scenario. It's all they've been investing in and cared about in the last 10-15 years if you've been paying close attention.
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.
Regardless, the widespread handing out of AK-47s seems to indicate that the Russians are going to be in for at least an Iraq if not an Afghanistan. Not hard to imagine a slow motion killing field in these cities.
Realistically, Russia just wants to cause chaos in Western Ukraine whilst rolling over the parts of Ukraine in the East where they have popular support.
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.
The east of Ukraine is the most heavily fortified due to literal war since the 2014 separatists.
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).
Russia having a clear strategy doesn't mean that it's working out for them. Preliminary analysis seems to indicate that the start of this hasn't gone how Russia would've liked: militarily, justification-wise, or popular support of. There are reports of even the previous Russian-leaning people in Eastern Ukraine rapidly losing support for Russia after this insane offensive (like Russian citizenry and even Duma member now). The doom-mongering is valid because what kind of futile flailing does Russia do when their "clear strategy" for a quick and decisive victory doesn't fall through. Admit defeat and lose face, or lash out?
Pro-Russia parties got less than 10% of the vote in the last election. It is hard to imagine that the sentiment moved in Putins favor since then.
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.
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.
Barking at the wrong tree. Putin threatened Estonia, Letonia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Moldavia, Georgia and Bulgaria. He said Ukraine shouldn't exist as a country and there is no such thing as Ukranians. The guy then threatened Sweden and Finland with military consequences if they join NATO. People that try and minimise this are simply playing into his propaganda. He also threatened the US with consequences it has never seen in its entire history (couldn't have been any other country he could have referred to because the above have seen everything). Belarus’ Lukasenka already said they need to monitor the “situation” all the way to Berlin and requested Russian S400s.
Depends on Putin's goals. Taking government buildings only might be a reasonably low casualty operation, while taking the city might be a high casualty operation. But there's little value in the latter, so I would bet he'll go for a siege of the city itself while using air power and cavalry to take the government buildings.
The biggest difference between Ukraine and Afghanistan or Vietnam is the ability of people to leave. The borders to Poland are open, almost anybody left is going to be hostile or a collaborator or deluded.
The fertility rate in Ukraine is 1.23. In Afghanistan in 2001 it was 7.39. Vietnam in 1960 was 6.35. Its much easier to fight guerilla war when you have hordes of young people. Ukraine is old, but so is Russia. Every male killed in this war there is probably the end of male lineage for that family.
That makes Russian position even worse. Because Poland will allow supply of weapons and fighters through its border. Making this a protracted war that Russians can’t win. Look at America and Pakistan, talibans moved at Will between the borders and American forces can’t engage.
Yes. Endless supply from the north swooping into Cambodia around the DMZ and right back into South Vietnam. They moved at-will nearly anywhere they wanted in South Vietnam.
At will... aside from the strategic and interdiction bombing of North Vietnamese trails (officially) and Cambodian trails (semi-officially) and substantial (especially for the 1960s) monitoring of the routes.
You're underestimating the effort and dedication that it took to move sufficient quantities of freight by foot over mountain trails.
"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.
Ignore anyone telling you the russian army is strong. They cam do damage but their strength is grossly overestimated and part of propaganda used for demoralising the enemy. They are peasants with guns.
> 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.
> "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."
I'm surprised that they haven't learned the lessons of Afghanistan (the Soviet era, the NATO era) about a population that is fighting for their homeland, vs. soldiers fighting because they were told to.
Or, I guess, the lessons of the Eastern Front of WW2.
> I'm surprised that they haven't learned the lessons of Afghanistan (the Soviet era, the NATO era) about a population that is fighting for their homeland, vs. soldiers fighting because they were told to.
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!"
I worry that handing out arms to civilians means Russia is going to have excuses for any civilian casualties from now on. Sprinkle an ak47 on the body take a picture and call it justified.
> I worry that handing out arms to civilians means Russia is going to have excuses for any civilian casualties from now on. Sprinkle an ak47 on the body take a picture and call it justified.
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.
There's nothing to stop anyone from claiming anything they want. It's word against word. There is no neutral authority that's going to investigate during the middle of a war.
The only way to prove a war crime (like killing civilians), is documented evidence and/or testimony from fellow troops.
Russia has such a history of making fake videos that hopefully any video "evidence" presented by them is immediately taken with mountains of salt anyway.
It’s sounds like the Ukrainians have priced that in. There are already videos popping up of Brits, Canadians, and Americans firing on Russian positions around Kiev. I’m also hearing form some Ukrainians that they’re planning to make it Russia’s Vietnam.
I’m sure the US and allies will make that happen. This isn’t Afghanistan - even if the Russians occupy the Ukraine we will be supplying the insurgent forces with technology that will make the Russians feel like they’re fighting the Martians.
"we will be supplying the insurgent forces with technology that will make the Russians feel like they’re fighting the Martians"
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.
Having elite forces with fancy equipment only matters if you use them well. If your only strategy is to yeet them far behind enemy lines while your main front with support is still bogged down then you won't have elite forces or fancy equipment much longer
Where does this portrait of Russia as an incompetent troop army come from? I thought we learned with ww1 that portraying your enemy as weak and incompetent only created morale issues when they were tougher than expected?
The war going on right now is a good place to start. They did a massive air assault with elite VDV units without proper support, which caused them to lose Antonov Airport like six hours after capturing it, and are now wandering armor through urban areas that have AT nests camping out every window. Really the only reason they managed to do as well as have is their focus on shutting down Ukranian air in the initial missile wave and their sheer numbers.
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
I think the parent comment means there’s kit that could be given to the Ukrainians that’s way better than what the Russians have without having to worry about bigger things like shoulder fired missiles a la Afghanistan in the 80s.
There are several videos about that incident because it happend right next to another incident where a military truck got ambushed and the personal was killed. Those were wearing Ukrainian uniforms. I'd really like to know whose tank that was (seems to have been Ukrainian) and who steered it and why it crashed into the car. Might actually have been an attempt to avoid a perceived attack instead of intentional.
What civilian casualties to justify? You don't send cremation trucks with your forces because you want an accurate accounting of the dead. The number of people who are just going to disappear - on both sides - is sobering.
Many Russians have Ukrainian ancestry and/or family in Ukraine - especially in the southern parts of Russia. If the Russian army wanted to inflict higher civilian casualties they could, but that's not the goal.
Handing out AK-47 to everyone without even recording who got a weapon is outright irresponsible. Without training or any kind of command you will get yesterdays civilians killing other civilians. We already have seen how "territorial defense forces" have shot a family of five (two parents, two girls, and one boy; only two kids have survived) who tried to flee from Kiev. Who knows how many of those 60 diversants reported by Kiev are truly Russian forces and not Ukrainians killed in friendly fire.
> Handing out AK-47 to everyone without even recording who got a weapon is outright irresponsible
"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.
So, some random bystander person says in a video posted on Telegram that they are giving out weapons without documents, while the actual military official in charge says that they tie serial numbers to passports. Not trying to say that the officials never lie, but the level of credibility of those two claims is tilting heavily towards the military official for me.
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.
Why don't you go tell them they're doing wrong yourself? They're probably not reading HN. Go volunteer to record the passports and documents while the enemy is on the horizon, and post videos so we can all watch and make sure you're documenting properly.
They didn't exactly have a lot of time to form a committee and design a proper gun database and licensing process. They just wanted to kill some invaders.
Excellent read and some of these tactics would be still applicable in urban settings but the Russian army is in a very different state than in the 90s, early 2000s.
Although I ponder how you could defend against RPGs launched from a skyscraper or high rise.
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.
Yup, they learned they need higher numbers. It’s weak to think the russian have a strong army. I imagine the propaganda of fear has worked, but they can easily be eliminated _with_ the right equipment and tech.
they can easily be eliminated _with_ the right equipment and tech
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?
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)"
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