Ukraine Blog 63 - Guerrilla Patriot and Vuvuzela Shock
Dear friends, family and colleagues,
“Niels,
it seems quiet in Ukraine. You don’t hear anything from it anymore and it’s all
about Palestine and immigration now” is a quote I receive a lot these days.
Well, this is Russia’s information campaign at work and congratulations: you
fell for it. By my observations, the opposite is true. We are currently in a
phase of the heaviest fighting since the war started and on levels not seen
since World War II.
Sad
truth is that we won’t see any Ukrainian offensive this year. Ukrainian
artillery stocks are depleted to such a level that Ukraine needs to completely
switch tactics. A lot of blame is being put on the MAGA republicans for
“blocking” aid to Ukraine. However, it’s fair to say that they are only partly
responsible for this. The Democrats are just as guilty as the MAGA republicans.
The simple truth is, that there’s still a budget of more than 4 billion USD
available for military support free to spend by the Biden government. In
addition: military equipment that is expired according to U.S. military
standards can be provided free of charge to other countries. Instead the Biden
administration chooses to scrap hundreds of badly needed M3 Bradley Armoured
Infantry Fighting Vehicles (AIFV) and ATACMS missiles. This actually costs
money and leads to the destruction of capital.
On Ukraine, Republicans Can’t Win. Joe Biden Can Send Excess Weapons. (forbes.com)
500
American M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles will go to Morocco instead of
Ukraine (topcor.ru)
My
suspicion is that Ukraine isn’t on the priority lists of either the Republicans
or Democrats and is simply being used for the purpose of domestic politics. The
Democrats want to blame the MAGA republicans for failure to make a deal on
Ukraine and the MAGA republicans want to blame the Biden government for a
failure to act on the (truly) uncontrolled levels of immigrants currently
flooding the southern border.
The
equipment that Ukraine currently lacks the most, are 155mm artillery shells for
the Western supplied artillery pieces. This has led to Ukraine switching from
offensive and hold-the-line operations to a strategy of “active defense.” This
means that on quite a lot of occasions you let the enemy advance into new
terrain and once they get there you pepper them with anti-tank guided missiles
(ATGM’s) and First Person View (FPV) drones. In addition, an asset that has
proven to be particularly destructive on the Russians, is the earlier mentioned
M3 Bradley AIFV. In Blog 53 I already wrote that it will be the Bradley that
will be responsible for killing a lot of Russians. While this didn’t happen
during Ukraine’s counteroffensive, the Bradley proves to be excellent in the
role of active defense around Avdiivka and Kupyansk areas. We have many
instances where just one Bradley takes on basically anything from wiping out
entire squads of Russian infantry, to absolutely wrecking Russian APC’s,
AIFV’s, tanks, including at least one of Russia’s most modern T-90M
tanks. The following footage is cruel, but absolutely satisfying since
it’s the first time we see very effective “vehicle-on-vehicle combat” in the
Ukraine war.
The
Ukrainians seem to be absolutely proficient by now in operating the Bradley as
opposed to the counteroffensive last summer where they drove the Bradley’s just
like the Russians in long columns into dense minefields. While you don’t want
to be on the receiving end of the 25mm chain gun of the Bradley the Ukrainians
need to watch their fire bursts. The chain gun is designed for short bursts of
5 to 10 rounds and then a couple of seconds rest. If you continuously fire it
for half a minute, it will seriously wear down the barrel and parts are in
short supply.
The
other asset that keeps the Ukrainians in the fight are the FPV drones. These
small commercial drones cost usually a couple of dozen euro’s and Ukraine
manages to fit them with expired ammunition like artillery and RPG rounds that
can no longer be fired from barrels but still have explosive power and Ukraine
has hundreds of thousands of tonnes available of.
While it usually takes around five to ten FPV drones to completely destroy a Russian vehicle, it really doesn’t matter. It’s a cheap tool and there are plenty of them available. Usually a Russian vehicle first gets disabled by an ATGM round or TM-62 anti-tank mine and is then usually finished off by FPV drones once it’s abandoned by the crew. Because there are so many drones and also the Russians deploy them actively (though with far less effect), the sound on the battlefield resembles that of a football stadium in South-Africa during the 2010 World Cup where the South-African fans blew their Vuvuzela trumpets en masse. This constantly buzzing sound combined with the fact that one or multiple drones can literally strike you any time, has led both Ukrainian and Russian channels reporting that shell shock is being replaced with drone shock. A very macabre evolution of the concept of war trauma.
The
other terrain where Ukraine is scoring some important tactical, psychological
and economic impacts, is its smart operation of the MIM-104 Patriot system.
Ukraine had two full batteries for the most part of 2023, but those two
batteries formed an essential part in the air defense of Kyiv and the
north-east of Ukraine around Sumy oblast. At the end of 2023 Ukraine received
an additional Patriot battery from Germany and immediately the number of
Russian aircraft losses skyrocketed. In total four SU-34’s, one SU-30, one
IL-22 and one Beriev A-50 Mainstay AWACS aircraft have been shot down. I
heavily suspect the Ukrainian operated the new Patriot battery in a shoot and
scoot role. In other words, they quickly deploy a battery on particular points
very close to the front line, shoot their missile(s), quickly pack and leave
and giving the concept of guerilla warfare a whole new dimension.
The
downing of the A-50 is crypt of the crop. It’s the first time in the history of
warfare that an early warning and control aircraft has been shot down. Salient
detail is that this cost Russia 330 million USD or one full day in pre-war oil
and gas exports. I suspect that the Ukrainians first cleared the flight path of
the Patriot by destroying Russian mobile air defense batteries, then proceeded
with flying an ADM-160 MALD decoy (capable of mimic any aircraft) to confuse
the Russian early warning system around the Crimea bridge and luring the A-50
closer in range in order to create a very small window of opportunity to fire
at the plane (see tweet below) Truth to be told: I don’t expect the Ukrainians
to do this again.
What’s embarrassing for the Russians is that the Patriot variant that scores all these air victories, is the PAC-2 version, which is obsolete in the arsenals of other Patriot users. In other words, the newest Russian aircraft are being shot down by expired missiles that are close to forty years old. For Ukraine it’s of vital importance to have a Patriot system in this setting. The missiles are not cheap, but by shooting down very expensive aircraft, the return on investment is big and Ukraine is able to score important operational and propaganda victories with limited resources.
While Ukraine only performs active defense and Russia is continuously on the offense, Russia has almost nothing to show for it as a result. While Russia continuously manages to take some land in the form of a windbreak here and potato field there, it can only do so at the expense of absolutely eye watering losses. Since the start of the war, it has always been a question what Russia will run out first of, people or equipment. For the first time I can say with certainty that it is equipment. As discussed in blog 62 the Russian deep storage facilities are really becoming empty now and recent footage of Russia’s only operational tank factory shows that besides the occasional T-90M on the line, all the other tanks are old T-72 tanks being modernized to the so-called obr 2022 standard which is actually a downgrade from obr 2016 (yes, the numbers correspond with the year).
Yevgeny Prighozin and his Wagner PMC were at least able to capture urban areas in Bakhmut last year by massive frontal assaults on the city. The Russian army right now under command of defense minister Sergey Shoigu and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov have absolutely nothing to show for it. While I think it’s really in the realm of possibilities that Russia ultimately captures Avdiivka, I expect the Russians to completely exhaust their offensive potential on the Avdiivka and Kupyansk frontlines. I might paint a rosy picture here for the Ukrainians. Unfortunately this is not true. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky really needs to think about taking unpopular measures like additional mobilization amongst the population or else the Ukrainians will inevitably gradually lose more territory.
The
last issue that we need to talk about is North-Korea. I initially didn’t expect
this country to join the “Axis of Resistance” (the Iran-Russia axis) in
offensive warfare, but in the past couple of weeks I see very worrying signals
that we haven’t seen before during earlier crises in 2017, 2013 and 2010.
1. North-Korea is for the first time ever modelling its domestic propaganda for a violent “re-unification.” Monuments that don’t play a role in the foreign audience are now being demolished and very quietly the North is rebuilding its heavy artillery emplacements. Usually when North-Korea stokes a crisis it directs its message towards an external audience and keeps the internal message that “Evil Americans” are to blame for all problems, but reunification in whatever form is possible.
Watch:
See satellite images indicating Kim Jong Un destroyed part of his father's
legacy | CNN
2. North-Korea and Russia signalled that Vladimir Putin will soon visit Pyongyang. Last summer Iranian president Ibrahim Raisi visited Moscow while the parties involved voiced similar rhetoric and two months later Iranian proxies started to cause trouble around Israel. We have to remind ourselves that Putin is a formidable speaker and I think he’s completely capable of convincing dictators like Khamenei and Kim that he can win the existential fight with the West. In other words: you were always alone, but now Russia has your back and together we can win.
Putin willing to visit Pyongyang soon, North Korea says | Reuters
3. But there’s another reason I think Putin wants South-Korea out of the fight. And this is my opinion, no internet channel has voiced this. South-Korea is the only nation in the world that is currently able to produce modern ground weapons on a truly massive scale and quite some NATO countries are capitalizing on that. Poland has bought 1000 K2 Black Panther tanks. The North-Koreans call this the “monster tank” and is currently the most advanced main battle tank in the world. The Poles also ordered 800+ K9 Thunder heavy artillery pieces. Norway, Estonia and Finland already have large numbers of this very advanced artillery piece. Poland alone ordered 288 K239 Chunmoo MLRS systems (Korean copies of the American M-270 MLRS system) and already operates 14 of them. Also the Polish air force is heavily reliant on South-Korea. 48 KAI T-50 Golden Eagle trainers/close air support aircraft have been ordered with already 12 in active service. If Putin manages to disrupt the flow of South Korean arms to Europe by having South-Korea committing every available resource to fight off the North and due to war activities having the supply lines cut off, it will be a massive boost for the Axis of Resistance. Especially Poland, which I see as one of the few countries that truly understands what’s ahead, completely needs to rethink its rearmament policy. And finally, let’s not forget South-Korea is the party that made the Ukrainian summer counter offensive possible. Only they had the available shells, where European countries and the United States desperately failed.
I honestly think that South-Korea will be able to fight off an attack from the North on its own. The South Korean military is one of the best trained and the earlier mentioned very advanced equipment is available in large numbers and in good condition. In addition, the quality of the North-Korean artillery shells that Russia now uses, proves to be worse than even the wildest expectations. I have seen over 20 videos right now of Russian artillery being blown up by faulty North-Korean artillery shells. In case they leave the barrel, they hardly make it to the target and in case it reaches the target, there’s no guarantee the shell explodes. However, looking at the confidence that Kim and Putin display, I doubt that Russian soldiers send user reviews to their suppliers and in case they do, I really doubt it will reach the producers inside North-Korea.
Regardless of bad quality shells, any North-Korean attack will result in an unimaginable amount of destruction and will set back this industrially advanced nation by at least dozens of years. Let's hope for the best and we shouldn’t f*ck around to find out here.
"Slava Ukraini!", “홍익인간”
Niels
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