Armchair General's DonbAss Derailed Discussion Thread (Topics Include History, Traps, and the Ongoing Slavic Civil War plus much much more)

[Agent23]

How would the slow A-10 perform against a foe with plentiful modern anti-air?

Somebody forgot that they are no longer playing tag with a bunch of quote: "bronze age barbarians" in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan?

It has been 20 years, and probably old habits die hard.

 

[Zachowon]

Somebody forgot that they are no longer playing tag with a bunch of quote: "bronze age barbarians" in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan?

It has been 20 years, and probably old habits die hard.

Helos and SU 25s seem to not be compeltly absent so...

 

[planefag]

vatnik, which is a racial slur against ethnic Russians, be added to the list too.

My sides have entered orbit. The term literally has its own Wikipedia page, and the vast majority of memes based on it directly reference the origin of the term - the cotton wool jacket that is as iconic with a certain kind of Russian nationalist forum troll as tracksuits are iconic to young Russian men who like hardbass. (Nobody hates on them unironically because who doesn't like some doof doof untz untz, much less some хардбас?) To illustrate the point, allow me to share some primo vatnik memes, all featuring the jacket as the character:

The poiunt is that the A-10 isnt going to be used as this supreme tankbuster because the battlefield will be saturated with anti-air and enemy fighters. They will be very vulnerable

I mean, the airspace here is not highly contested and the Russians are damn near incapable of SEAD. Though according to the Ukrainians. SEAD is very effective so...woth both sides using the same sort of equipment....we now know how effective SEAD would be against the US.

Something you should both remember is that the A-10 was expected to blunt a Soviet armored advance across Europe. Not stop it - blunt it. The joke on-base used to be that they called A-10 pilots "speed bumps." Everyone remembers that the IL-2 was the most-produced warplane in military history, but they usually forget why - because it got shot down so often. And yet, it was still so cost-effective that Stalin famously threatened the factory foreman personally to get production increased. Remember that the original RFP for the A-10 (in 1970) specified a unit cost of $1.4M, which is about $10.4M today given inflation. (Figuring unit costs is always a pain in the ass due to economies of scale in production runs AND inflation, etc. Wikipedia puts the cost, according to a 1998 source, as about $10M, when inflation should only have made it 5M from the initial RFP cost. I've seen the $10M figure elsewhere as well so I'm gonna accept that as a decent estimate for the original bird.) Compare that to the average unit cost of the Apache in 1986 which was about $13.9M. Then compare that cost to an M1A1 Abram's unit cost which was, for an initial run from 1986 to 1992, approximately $4.3M per.

The F-16's unit cost in 1998? $18.8M. Strike Eagle? $31.1M.

What I'm driving at is -

• Any CAS aircraft, be it A-10 or SU-25, is basically an attack helicopter with fixed wings. It loses the ability to operate from literally any field (even the SU-25 needs something, even if just a hard-packed dirt road,) and to hover behind cover, but gains range/duration and an awful lot of payload in exchange so it's a wash.
• CAS aircraft are cheap precisely because they're likely to get blasted. It's the entire reason CAS aircraft exist, so the airframe you're sending into the low-level shooting gallery is a 10M one and not a 30M one. (Incidentally the wonderfully cost-effective F-16 is the USAF's favored tac-air multirole. For many reasons, but I'd say this is a significant one.)
• If a CAS aircraft gets one good cluster bomb run (or bomblet dispenser run for you Rooskies and/or Bongs) on a tank column, it's already paid for itself three times over.

Something else to remember - these planes we're talking about are fucking old. They debuted at the veeery earliest edge of the modern PGM's emergence. A-10 pilots in Desert Storm and before literally used the infa-red seeker on their Maverick missiles to navigate/steer with at night, as it was just more convenient than the NVG goggles and even had zoom capability. The armor-piercing potential of the GAU-8 is a combination of high velocity and top-attack flight profile that allows hitting roof armor. Ever wonder why they also made it fire at 80 rounds a second? Seems like they could have shed a lot of weight without the gatling part, right? Well, they needed it for standoff distance. The idea is to engage at at least 1KM or so; at that range a one-second burst of 80 shells will put maybe 5 or 6 on your average sized tank given the dispersion. What I'm saying is these aircraft were built to fight a WWII style fight with mostly improved WWII style weapons. I mean in this era an SU-25 might be expected to make a treetop level bomblet dispenser run down the length of a convoy in exactly the same way an IL-2 did in 1944. This was some old school shit.

Now there is a valid debate as to how much the old school shit does or doesn't matter in the modern age of MANPADS everywhere and stealth and this and that and yadda yadda. And you have to bear in mind that we're throwing old skewl shit into a battlefield laden with zoomertech. Just because our dearly departed stealth attack chopper the Comanche never got to live (lmao abortion meme when) doesn't mean that it never will. And you can also argue that, since the F-35's terrifying all-seeing witch eye seems to work - i.e. it can find one unlucky sonofabitch from 40,000 feet and ram a JDAM right up his ass - that granpappy's style of CAS is no longer necessary.

But I'll just leave you with this - for all the hurfblurf over fixed-wing CAS, nobody seems to question the utility of attack helicopters and they're fundamental not that different. 🤔

 

[Marduk]

But I'll just leave you with this - for all the hurfblurf over fixed-wing CAS, nobody seems to question the utility of attack helicopters and they're fundamental not that different. 🤔

You said it. They have a few more options when it comes to evading fire. But they are next in line to be get booted out of insufficiently permissive battlefields after CAS aircraft. Or in some cases, even before - CAS aircraft can take other roles too, like flying well above MANPADS ceiling and dropping the same PGMs F-16's do, in quite unreasonable quantities thanks to their high payload capacity, and also have good loiter time.
They can also limit their time in the MANPADS performance envelope and climb higher after their attack, provided medium and long range air defenses were suppressed. Helicopters can't go that high though, ever. Combined with their lower speed, they are much more vulnerable to being ambushed on the way.
The confusion here is that the creation of said "insufficiently permissive battlefield" is quite a bit trickier than some people think and it should not be taken for granted.

 

[paulobrito]

And you see how many attack helicopters have been shot-down (both sides) in Ukraine. Even the more advanced ones like the Ka-52 with good defenses have been hit hard.
Ukraine is not Iraq or Sirya. Is a way more lethal/high intensity/high-tech war.

 

[Zachowon]

My sides have entered orbit. The term literally has its own Wikipedia page, and the vast majority of memes based on it directly reference the origin of the term - the cotton wool jacket that is as iconic with a certain kind of Russian nationalist forum troll as tracksuits are iconic to young Russian men who like hardbass. (Nobody hates on them unironically because who doesn't like some doof doof untz untz, much less some хардбас?) To illustrate the point, allow me to share some primo vatnik memes, all featuring the jacket as the character:












Something you should both remember is that the A-10 was expected to blunt a Soviet armored advance across Europe. Not stop it - blunt it. The joke on-base used to be that they called A-10 pilots "speed bumps." Everyone remembers that the IL-2 was the most-produced warplane in military history, but they usually forget why - because it got shot down so often. And yet, it was still so cost-effective that Stalin famously threatened the factory foreman personally to get production increased. Remember that the original RFP for the A-10 (in 1970) specified a unit cost of $1.4M, which is about $10.4M today given inflation. (Figuring unit costs is always a pain in the ass due to economies of scale in production runs AND inflation, etc. Wikipedia puts the cost, according to a 1998 source, as about $10M, when inflation should only have made it 5M from the initial RFP cost. I've seen the $10M figure elsewhere as well so I'm gonna accept that as a decent estimate for the original bird.) Compare that to the average unit cost of the Apache in 1986 which was about $13.9M. Then compare that cost to an M1A1 Abram's unit cost which was, for an initial run from 1986 to 1992, approximately $4.3M per.

The F-16's unit cost in 1998? $18.8M. Strike Eagle? $31.1M.

What I'm driving at is -

• Any CAS aircraft, be it A-10 or SU-25, is basically an attack helicopter with fixed wings. It loses the ability to operate from literally any field (even the SU-25 needs something, even if just a hard-packed dirt road,) and to hover behind cover, but gains range/duration and an awful lot of payload in exchange so it's a wash.
• CAS aircraft are cheap precisely because they're likely to get blasted. It's the entire reason CAS aircraft exist, so the airframe you're sending into the low-level shooting gallery is a 10M one and not a 30M one. (Incidentally the wonderfully cost-effective F-16 is the USAF's favored tac-air multirole. For many reasons, but I'd say this is a significant one.)
• If a CAS aircraft gets one good cluster bomb run (or bomblet dispenser run for you Rooskies and/or Bongs) on a tank column, it's already paid for itself three times over.

Something else to remember - these planes we're talking about are fucking old. They debuted at the veeery earliest edge of the modern PGM's emergence. A-10 pilots in Desert Storm and before literally used the infa-red seeker on their Maverick missiles to navigate/steer with at night, as it was just more convenient than the NVG goggles and even had zoom capability. The armor-piercing potential of the GAU-8 is a combination of high velocity and top-attack flight profile that allows hitting roof armor. Ever wonder why they also made it fire at 80 rounds a second? Seems like they could have shed a lot of weight without the gatling part, right? Well, they needed it for standoff distance. The idea is to engage at at least 1KM or so; at that range a one-second burst of 80 shells will put maybe 5 or 6 on your average sized tank given the dispersion. What I'm saying is these aircraft were built to fight a WWII style fight with mostly improved WWII style weapons. I mean in this era an SU-25 might be expected to make a treetop level bomblet dispenser run down the length of a convoy in exactly the same way an IL-2 did in 1944. This was some old school shit.

Now there is a valid debate as to how much the old school shit does or doesn't matter in the modern age of MANPADS everywhere and stealth and this and that and yadda yadda. And you have to bear in mind that we're throwing old skewl shit into a battlefield laden with zoomertech. Just because our dearly departed stealth attack chopper the Comanche never got to live (lmao abortion meme when) doesn't mean that it never will. And you can also argue that, since the F-35's terrifying all-seeing witch eye seems to work - i.e. it can find one unlucky sonofabitch from 40,000 feet and ram a JDAM right up his ass - that granpappy's style of CAS is no longer necessary.

But I'll just leave you with this - for all the hurfblurf over fixed-wing CAS, nobody seems to question the utility of attack helicopters and they're fundamental not that different. 🤔

Because CAS will always be needed and even in a force on force, with enough AS over some areas CAS will be king. Because ground can only go so far, and we would rather have the AF have a dedicated plane then one who would break off for a dog fight.

Helicopters will always be viable for the close fight, as that is where long range is less likely to be and MANPADS are the only threat, and most militaries don't have as many spread out as we are seeing in ukraone

 

[sillygoose]

No one commented on Austin begging for an immediate ceasefire?

US Defense Boss Called Russian Counterpart and Urged for a Ceasefire

In the highest-profile official talks in months between the two countries, Lloyd Austin III spoke to Sergei Shoigu and urged a ceasefire and more communication.

www.vice.com

Or Scholz doing the same?

Scholz urges for ceasefire in call with Putin – DW – 05/13/2022

In a call with the Russian president, German Chancellor Scholz reiterated calls for a cease fire. Meanwhile, the EU said it would provide Ukraine with another €500 million for military aid.

www.dw.com

 

[Bacle]

No one commented on Blinken begging for an immediate ceasefire?

US Defense Boss Called Russian Counterpart and Urged for a Ceasefire

In the highest-profile official talks in months between the two countries, Lloyd Austin III spoke to Sergei Shoigu and urged a ceasefire and more communication.

www.vice.com

Or Scholz doing the same?

Scholz urges for ceasefire in call with Putin – DW – 05/13/2022

In a call with the Russian president, German Chancellor Scholz reiterated calls for a cease fire. Meanwhile, the EU said it would provide Ukraine with another €500 million for military aid.

www.dw.com

You mean Gen. Austin trying to reopen lines of communication with the Russians due to the new NATO members.

Austin was not 'begging' for a ceasefire, he wanted one but it seems Shoigu doesn't, and it seems like Blinken hasn't even talked to Lavrov recently, who would be his actual counterpart.

 

[Agent23]

Andrey Martyanov goes into deep detail regarding about real military planning vs. basementdweller gamer twitter addict that listens to the MSM.
Exccellent!

 

[sillygoose]

You mean Gen. Austin trying to reopen lines of communication with the Russians due to the new NATO members.

Austin was not 'begging' for a ceasefire, he wanted one but it seems Shoigu doesn't, and it seems like Blinken hasn't even talked to Lavrov recently, who would be his actual counterpart.

Article says this:

In a call marking the first time in months since top U.S. and Russian military officials spoke on the record, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III urged his counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, to consider a ceasefire in Ukraine.
...
“Secretary Austin urged an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement, noting that the last time the two spoke was on Feb. 18, eight days before the Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine.

No mention of new NATO members. Sounds like a polite way to say begging. Why now would he renew communications and 'urge an immediate ceasefire'? Maybe because the Donbass grouping of forces are about to get buttfucked hard without lube.

 

[Zachowon]

Andrey Martyanov goes into deep detail regarding about real military planning vs. basementdweller gamer twitter addict that listens to the MSM.
Exccellent!

I actually know real military planning dude.
A lot goes into it.
Specifically HOW TO KEEP YOUR SUPPLIES GOING, and HOW TO PROPERLY CONDUCT A WET GAO CROSSING.

But you will take anyone's word that doesn't have real world experience at the level I have

 

[LordsFire]

Maybe because the Donbass grouping of forces are about to get buttfucked hard without lube.

Would you care to make a specific prediction about this? How many days it'll take for the Russians to force the Ukrainians to retreat a significant distance, meaning at least measured in tens of kilometers? How long it'll take them to manage an envelopment, force surrenders, etc, etc?

 

[Zachowon]

Article says this:


No mention of new NATO members. Sounds like a polite way to say begging. Why now would he renew communications and 'urge an immediate ceasefire'? Maybe because the Donbass grouping of forces are about to get buttfucked hard without lube.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Maybe because trying to settle things peacefully os how things should be done and that every major event would instil talks.


Also, show me where you think this grouping is gonna break through.
Please, and the analysis for it.

 

[sillygoose]

Would you care to make a specific prediction about this? How many days it'll take for the Russians to force the Ukrainians to retreat a significant distance, meaning at least measured in tens of kilometers? How long it'll take them to manage an envelopment, force surrenders, etc, etc?

At this point the information we're getting is so limited it is impossible to set time tables for anything. But watching the map situation evolve things are clearly getting quite bad for Ukraine and given both Germany and the US called Russia today asking for an immediate ceasefire it would seem things are getting to a tipping point. Whether that is tomorrow or 3 weeks from now is impossible to say to any degree of certainty, but the behavior of the US and Germany is not one of confidence in Ukraine's military success.

 

[Zachowon]

At this point the information we're getting is so limited it is impossible to set time tables for anything. But watching the map situation evolve things are clearly getting quite bad for Ukraine and given both Germany and the US called Russia today asking for an immediate ceasefire it would seem things are getting to a tipping point. Whether that is tomorrow or 3 weeks from now is impossible to say to any degree of certainty, but the behavior of the US and Germany is not one of confidence in Ukraine's military success.

Uh...
First time I have heard no confidence in Ukraone from the US.
Again, calling for ceasefire is part of war. You reach out for it, they don't answer, deny, what ever. You shrug and keep going.

But again, the map is evolving where the Russians are taking so few kilos a day it makes Verdun look fast

 

[Bacle]

Article says this:


No mention of new NATO members. Sounds like a polite way to say begging. Why now would he renew communications and 'urge an immediate ceasefire'? Maybe because the Donbass grouping of forces are about to get buttfucked hard without lube.

How about you post the whole article, instead of cropping out the part that mentions new NATO members:

Communications between Shoigu and Austin comes amid increased fear of nuclear war between Russia and NATO nations, which might add Finland and Sweden in the coming weeks, putting the military alliance originally created to be a force against the Soviet Union on the doorstep of Russia. The Kremlin has been clear that if those two nations were to join NATO, it could necessitate a military response from Russia on the grounds that the move imperiled its national security interests.

And characterizing this as 'begging' shows your blatant pro-Kremlin bias.

The fact is that trying to get a ceasefire going is not a bad thing, if it can actually morph into something more like a withdrawal agreement from Russia.

 

[LordsFire]

At this point the information we're getting is so limited it is impossible to set time tables for anything. But watching the map situation evolve things are clearly getting quite bad for Ukraine and given both Germany and the US called Russia today asking for an immediate ceasefire it would seem things are getting to a tipping point. Whether that is tomorrow or 3 weeks from now is impossible to say to any degree of certainty, but the behavior of the US and Germany is not one of confidence in Ukraine's military success.

'We'd like all the killing and dying to stop' is an attitude some people have, you know?

That you are willing to interpret such a routine diplomatic gesture as a sign of weakness, says more about how desperate you are for a sign of Russian victory, than it does about how desperate the situation is for Ukraine.

As a reminder, while Russia has made advances in many areas, they lost the battle for Kiev, the single most important battle in the war so far. Neither side is actually in anything approaching a clear winning position, and unless Russia shows willingness to start treating this like the real war that it is, and fully mobilize, rather than as a 'special military operation,' things are much more likely to shift in favor of the Ukrainians than the Russians.

In the end though, this could still go either way.

 

[Marduk]

At this point the information we're getting is so limited it is impossible to set time tables for anything. But watching the map situation evolve things are clearly getting quite bad for Ukraine and given both Germany and the US called Russia today asking for an immediate ceasefire it would seem things are getting to a tipping point. Whether that is tomorrow or 3 weeks from now is impossible to say to any degree of certainty, but the behavior of the US and Germany is not one of confidence in Ukraine's military success.

This is purely an attempt at reading something that you do not understand. It has been official line of western diplomats to call for ceasefire since the beginning of the conflict.

Britain, India call for ceasefire in Ukraine | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson met his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Friday.

www3.nhk.or.jp

Ukraine: Scholz and Erdogan call for ceasefire

Relations between Germany and Turkey are considered difficult, even if they have recently stabilized again. The Ukraine war is now welding the two sides together.

www.deutschland.de

G7 leaders call for ceasefire in Ukraine

G7 leaders call for ceasefire in Ukraine G7 leaders called for a ceasefire in Ukraine as soon as possible. The G7 leaders called on Russia to agree on a ceasefire in Ukraine and withdraw its troops. APA reports that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that "We call on the Russian President to...

www.txtreport.com

Scholz, Macron speak with Putin to call for cease-fire in Ukraine - Breitbart

March 12 (UPI) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday for more than an hour to call for a cease-fire in Ukraine and a diplomatic end to the invasion.

www.breitbart.com

When western leaders start calling for continuing the war ceaselessly, that's gonna be news. But them calling for a ceasefire, that's no news at all.

 

[Bacle]

'We'd like all the killing and dying to stop' is an attitude some people have, you know?

That you are willing to interpret such a routine diplomatic gesture as a sign of weakness, says more about how desperate you are for a sign of Russian victory, than it does about how desperate the situation is for Ukraine.

As a reminder, while Russia has made advances in many areas, they lost the battle for Kiev, the single most important battle in the war so far. Neither side is actually in anything approaching a clear winning position, and unless Russia shows willingness to start treating this like the real war that it is, and fully mobilize, rather than as a 'special military operation,' things are much more likely to shift in favor of the Ukrainians than the Russians.

In the end though, this could still go either way.

Russia cannot fully mobilize for a few reasons.

1) They simply do not have enough weapons to equip a full mobilization at anything like modern levels of tech or supplies. Even commentators on Russian state TV are saying as much.

2) The domestic situation in Russia is not such that a full mobilization is likely to be accepted very well, as there are already disedents throwing moloktovs at recruitment/intake offices inside Russia.

3) They still have wildfire season coming up, and will need conscripts to fight said fires.

 

[Zachowon]

This is purely an attempt at reading something that you do not understand. It has been official line of western diplomats to call for ceasefire since the beginning of the conflict.

Britain, India call for ceasefire in Ukraine | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson met his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Friday.

www3.nhk.or.jp

Ukraine: Scholz and Erdogan call for ceasefire

Relations between Germany and Turkey are considered difficult, even if they have recently stabilized again. The Ukraine war is now welding the two sides together.

www.deutschland.de

G7 leaders call for ceasefire in Ukraine

G7 leaders call for ceasefire in Ukraine G7 leaders called for a ceasefire in Ukraine as soon as possible. The G7 leaders called on Russia to agree on a ceasefire in Ukraine and withdraw its troops. APA reports that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that "We call on the Russian President to...

www.txtreport.com

Scholz, Macron speak with Putin to call for cease-fire in Ukraine - Breitbart

March 12 (UPI) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday for more than an hour to call for a cease-fire in Ukraine and a diplomatic end to the invasion.

www.breitbart.com

When western leaders start calling for continuing the war ceaselessly, that's gonna be news. But them calling for a ceasefire, that's no news at all.

If western leaders call for war things escalated