#counterbattery

[historyandwarfare]

Radar in counter-battery role

Artillery is dangerous because it is hard to find, hard to destroy, and has the ability to very quickly attack targets via indirect fire. Importance and difficulty of finding the enemy artillery was noticed early in World War I; French were the first to try to locate the enemy artillery, by locating the gun flash produced when firing. This was hard to do if the artillery was far away (reflections…

[rhk111sblog]

Just some relatively rare Pictures of the 105 mm caliber M101 Howitzers of the Philippine Army (PA) being towed by a Military Truck, these ones during recent the “Shoot-and-Scoot” Exercises by the 1st and 2nd Howitzer Platoons of the Alpha “Archer” Battery of the 8th Field Artillery “Final Option” Battalion in Sulu.

“Shoot and Scoot” (also known as “Fire-and-Displace” or “Fire-and-Move”) is an Artillery Tactic of firing at a Target and then immediately moving away from the Location from where the shots were fired to avoid Counter-Battery Fire, or being fired upon by Enemy Artillery.  This is very important when facing Enemies which have their own Artillery Capability.

SOURCES:

8th Field Artillery Battalion, AAR, PA 08/26/24 – 0847H {Archived Link}

8th Field Artillery Battalion, AAR, PA 09/23/24 – 0738H {Archived Link}

[theurbanmechcomesforthee]

Get Super Booped >:3

SUPER BOOP COUNTERBATTERY

[captain-price-unofficially]

Bakhmut, Swedish-supplied Archer artillery systems in Ukrainian service continue to prove to be incredibly effective in the counterbattery role, seen here hunting down and destroying multiple Russian towed howitzer positions.

[necarion]

If my neighbors are continuing to set off fireworks after 12:00 AM on July Fifth, this means we are permitted to commence with counterbattery fire, right?

[the-clawtake]

The Clawtake has encountered such things before, when we were active during the Jihad. Our doctrine is simple. Engagement at extreme range with mobile artillery. Usually Arrow IV equipped configurations of Dragonfly and Shadowcat, along with other chassis capable of a similar turn of speed.

They are instructed to fire and immediately relocate, ideally to somewhere within a blast shadow from the original position. We learned the hard way to expect Nuclear counterbattery.

It is a time-consuming approach, but executed properly results in minimal casualties amongst the units so tasked, and their screen.

Star general I dont know how practical or easy it would be for the blakeists to transport or create rattlers but it bears being cautious jsut in case they still have some of those mobile fortress in stock. (Send from @freelance-belter-catgirl )

It would be prudent to assume they have them, indeed.

- Melissa

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Destroyed Russian Ural-4320 military truck and 122mm 2A18 D-30 towed howitzer, Luhansk region, Ukraine, August 5, 2023. Source: Naalsio26

P.S. By the 533rd day of the war, the Russian army has lost 5028 (+15 during the last day) cannons in Ukraine. Yes, they are cheap, and in most cases obsolete, but along with the destroyed guns are killed their their crews, destroyed trucks, ammunition stores and counterbattery radars...

[mariacallous]

“Just like in the First World War, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” Ukrainian general Valerii Zaluzhnyi admitted late last year. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

That blunt assessment from the Ukrainian commander in chief, made in a November interview with The Economist, prompted waves of enormous pessimism. Headlines around the world seized on the idea that the war had essentially ended. Ukraine had fought valiantly—and lost.

Politicians in the West, particularly Republicans in the United States Congress, declared that it was time to stop supplying Kyiv and push for major concessions to Moscow.

The general’s actual point, however, wasn’t quite so fatalistic. In an accompanying nine-page essay, published in the British magazine, Zaluzhnyi doesn’t use the word “stalemate.” Instead, he called the war “positional,” with both sides trading just tiny slivers of land. Critically, however, he said Ukraine can still win. But it will mean, he wrote, “searching for new and non-trivial approaches to break military parity with the enemy.”

Technological innovation, more modern equipment, and changes in strategy could still turn the tide of this war, Zaluzhnyi argued. He laid out five areas where progress could mean overcoming their Russian opponent: achieving air superiority, improving mine clearing, expanding counterbattery, recruiting more soldiers, and advancing electronic warfare.

To achieve those goals, he wrote, Ukraine needs a once-in-a-century technological breakthrough.

“The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing,” Zaluzhnyi writes. “In order for us to break this deadlock we need something new, like the gunpowder, which the Chinese invented and which we are still using to kill each other.”

In recent months, WIRED has spoken to a host of NATO leaders and military analysts, as well as Ukrainian officials, regarding the future of the war. The consensus is clear: There is no silver bullet Ukraine can develop that will win this war. But there is agreement that Ukraine can and must innovate if it hopes to overcome its better-resourced and dug-in enemy.

“The thing that will break the logjam will be the right combination of new ideas, new organizations, and new technologies,” Mick Ryan, a 35-year veteran of the Australian Army who writes extensively on the future of war, tells WIRED. “It's really about how you combine that trinity of ideas, technology, and organizations into something new.”

Ukraine has already changed the future of warfare. Its use of aerial drones has revolutionized combat. It has developed and deployed the world’s first tactical naval drone. It jury-rigged a remarkably effective air defense system. It is leveraging artificial intelligence to conduct high-precision missile and drone strikes. It has consistently bested Moscow in the cyber and information spaces. If it can scale any of these technologies, or come up with new ones, it has a fighting chance to actually win.

Zaluzhnyi has sketched out the breakthroughs Ukraine will need to win this war. If it can do that, it may also change the future of conflict forever.

Embracing Positional Warfare

In November 2022, just nine months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zaluzhnyi triumphantly declared that Ukraine had liberated a huge swath of territory in Ukraine’s southeast. Months prior, Kyiv had liberated Kharkiv, its second-largest city, and was continuing to push the Russian invaders back. Now, in a surprise move, it was on track to liberate Kherson.

The speedy attacks caught Russia by surprise and prompted its extraordinary withdrawal across huge swaths of Ukrainian territory.

That run of victories, made possible by new weapon systems delivered by Ukraine’s NATO allies and its own creative use of technology, drove sky-high expectations ahead of Kyiv’s 2023 summer counteroffensive. Western media anticipated that Ukraine would break through Russian lines with similar ease and speed.

Ukraine’s drive to regain more territory, however, crashed into dense and well-fortified Russian defensive lines, descending into the positional warfare that Zaluzhnyi describes. Ukraine inched forward in some areas and retreated elsewhere. Moscow had, apparently, learned from its mistakes.

“The Russian military is often underestimated in terms of its propensity to learn and apply lessons on the battlefield,” Karolina Hird, an analyst for the Institute for the Study of War and the deputy team lead for their Russia desk, tells WIRED. Russia had swapped in new, rested units; fortified complex layers of trench lines; and laid 15 to 20 kilometers of minefields through Ukrainian territory. They named this formidable defensive network for the since-ousted commander of the war effort: the Surovikin Line.

This new “active defense,” as Hird describes it, is a fairly traditional set of defensive tactics. Even with advanced Western artillery and counterbattery, and advanced tank systems, Ukrainian soldiers simply couldn’t advance without facing constant shelling and dense minefields.

“The Ukrainians didn't necessarily have the equipment or the type of trained brigades to break through that incredibly soundly arrayed defense and overcome Russians—that were defending in a doctrinally consistent and, actually, quite sound way,” Hird says.

The failure to advance has prompted a tactical shift from Kyiv. During one of his nightly addresses in early December, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said it was imperative that Ukraine beef up its own defensive lines. It was a recognition that the front lines had, for the time being, frozen.

While some interpreted this development as a sign that the war is all but over, Ryan, the Australian Army veteran, says it’s a prime opportunity for Ukraine to refresh its strategy.

“Maybe Ukraine should embrace positional warfare for the time being,” he says. “Maybe that is the way it reconstitutes, regains its strength, and thinks through the problems that it has—from the tactical through to the strategic level.”

It’s a strategy that has already shown some dividends, Hird says. “Ukraine is very much preparing defensive positions, letting Russians run themselves against those defensive positions.” Ukraine estimates that Russia has lost more than 400 tanks, 500 artillery systems, and 30,000 soldiers in December alone.

“Whenever Ukraine feels that they have the equipment they need, the support they need … and the initiative shifts to their side, they can use those defensive positions as springboards,” Hird adds.

While a slowdown in fighting may benefit Ukraine, it helps Russia as well. It is now a race against the clock to plan how Ukraine may launch another counteroffensive that can breach the Surovikin Line.

Enough to Win

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, Kyiv has received tens of billions of dollars in military aid, including a raft of advanced equipment. But Ukraine’s position has also been, as Zelensky put it recently, that the aid was “not enough to win.” (But, he added, “we are thankful it was enough to defend.”)

Fearful of Russia’s “red lines,” the United States has consistently slow-rolled or withheld key technology that could help Ukraine’s advance. Meanwhile, Zaluzhnyi wrote in The Economist, Russia “retains and is able to maintain a superiority in weapons and equipment, missiles and ammunition.” What’s more, Moscow’s defense industry is ramping up production of the ammunition and gear necessary for its continued assault on Ukraine.

“We know that with continued US support, continued Western support, that likely would be the final push that Ukraine needs to liberate its own territories,” Hird says. “But political considerations, financial considerations, defense and industrial base blocks, that sort of thing, really inhibit our ability to bring that to bear. And that's very much what Russians are counting on.”

A particular problem has been Russian artillery.

Ahead of Ukraine’s 2022 counteroffensive, the country received shipments of the American-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). Those systems, particularly when fitted with medium-range missiles and aided by counterbattery radar, were able to quickly move and target advanced Russian systems well behind the front lines, clearing the way for Ukrainian forces to advance freely across the battlefield. But novel technology became routine fairly quickly in battle. “Russians have very much learned how to target HIMARS,” Hird says. “So Ukrainians can’t use them to the same effect.”

“Now, at each step of the way, the Russians are interfering with you, right?” Ryan says. “They're doing camouflage for their locations. They move things more frequently, now, than they used to. They attack counterbattery radars and other detection systems with loitering drones. And they are denying the use of precision munitions, in large parts of the battlefield, through the use of electronic warfare.”

To overcome this problem, Ryan says, Ukraine needs to close the “detection to destruction gap.” Ukrainian forces need to be able to avoid detection and to be mobile enough to evacuate in a matter of minutes if they are picked up by Russian radar or drone surveillance—while, at the same time, detecting Russian positions and attacking before they can escape. The gap, he says, has shortened from about 10 minutes from detection to destruction to just two or three minutes.

“It’s a complex set of problems, but it’s a known set of problems,” Ryan says. He believes it will require some heavy lifting from NATO’s research capabilities to solve them.

There’s also a question of scale. Since Ukraine managed to destroy some of Russia’s advanced and expensive artillery system, Moscow has deployed a huge number of its older systems, opting for brute force instead of nimble targeting. Russia has achieved parity not through technology, but through volume.

According to leaked Pentagon documents, as of early 2023, Russia owned nearly 5,000 artillery systems—of which only about 20 percent had been destroyed. Ukraine, by contrast, has received, at most, a few dozen HIMARS systems. Even if the missile system is less effective than it was in 2022, a greater quantity would undoubtedly give Ukraine an edge. That’s also true for the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, which Ukraine began receiving late last year. A group of pro-Ukrainian Republican lawmakers decried that weapon transfer as a “job half-done,” as they arrived in small quantities and equipped for only some of their intended capabilities.

“All these innovations—at the end of the day, it’s about scale,” Hanno Pevkur, Estonia’s minister of defense, tells WIRED. “If you don’t have the innovations which can be produced in such quantities that will change the course of the war, it means that they still have to rely on the existing methods and existing weapons systems.”

There is some optimism that new weapons deliveries could tilt the balance more in Ukraine’s favor, particularly the Dutch-supplied, American-made F-16 fighter jets and the Abrams M1 tank. Ukrainian soldiers are training on both platforms now.

“Mr. Putin is going to find out that there’s a whole lot of weapons systems coming on board that he is not going to be able to respond to,” US senator Mike Rounds, who sits on the Senate Committee on Armed Services, tells WIRED. “And it’s going to give Ukraine the opportunity to continue to advance and take back the land that is theirs.”

Throughout the war, more and more advanced missiles and launchers have enabled Ukraine to strike deeper and deeper into Russian-held territory. Now, Ukraine has successfully managed to attack supply routes as far as the Kerch Bridge, which connects Crimea to Russia, and Belgorod within Russia proper.

But Kyiv wants to reach even further into Russian territory, stepping up its tactical strike campaign to attack Russian ships, airfields, supply depots, and command centers that are currently out of reach. If Ukraine can destroy Russian warehouses and stockpiles near the front lines, and increase the distance its trucks must travel to resupply its positions, it could negate the effect of Russia’s overwhelming artillery.

But Ukraine still lacks several types of those longer-range missiles and has relatively low quantities of the munitions it has received. “We’re probably not going as fast as a lot of us would like,” Rounds told reporters at the Halifax Security Forum in November.

More HIMARS and long-range munitions are critical in overcoming that parity, but they will be meaningless if Ukraine runs out of more basic ammunition. “It's not just a matter of providing some of the new technologies,” Rounds said. “It's a matter of making sure that they actually have the other resources that they need to make it through the winter time.”

In recent weeks, Ukraine has had to ration its 155-mm caliber artillery shells due to shortages. Various NATO countries have tapped into their stockpiles to provide those shells over the past year, and are now scrambling to boost domestic production. Bill Blair, Canada’s defense minister, admitted in November that there are “shortfalls” in that production capacity. “We need to see the same type of investment and progress in increasing production here in North America and in Europe,” Blair said.

Ramping up that production in NATO countries could take a year or more. Zaluzhnyi wrote that Ukraine needs to produce this equipment, and even more advanced weaponry, itself.

Some of this is already happening. Ukraine’s defense industry is being “overhauled for innovation,” Hird says. A prime example is Kyiv’s Seababy naval drones, which were developed inside Ukraine and have managed to deliver devastating damage to Russia’s Black Sea fleet. But the volume of output will need to increase drastically.

So as Ukraine tries to boost production at home, it is fighting a three-front war: one on the front lines; another deep inside its occupied territory and even in Russia itself, where warehouses and stockpiles sit; and a third in the information space, worldwide, in trying to convince its allies to continue and boost their support.

Fortifying its defenses will buy Ukraine time to come up with new strategies and test out new technologies—but it should also be an invitation to rethink its “strategic influence narratives,” Ryan says. That is, convincing NATO to not just maintain its support, but increase it.

That also means fighting back against Russian propaganda. Last month, the BBC and the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank, uncovered a massive Russian disinformation campaign on TikTok, designed to discredit Ukrainian officials using narratives tailor-made for Western audiences. It is just one skirmish in a broader information war, where Ukraine is losing ground.

While Kyiv has its supporters, like Rounds, Blair, and Pevkur, it also has new opponents. Mike Johnson, the recently elected speaker of the US House of Representatives, has held up billions in military aid. Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary, has similarly frustrated support from within the European Union. Big wins for pro-Russian politicians, from Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to Robert Fico in Slovakia, could threaten future aid packages.

Information Superiority

An “essential” part of breaking out of this position warfare, Zaluzhnyi wrote, is obtaining “information superiority.” Understanding the battlefield better than the enemy.

It may seem counterintuitive. This is a conflict where, as Hird puts it, “everyone knows what everyone’s doing at all times.” The war in Ukraine is probably the most visible conflict in human history: Both sides have employed a suite of drones, radar, aircraft, and satellite to chart every inch of the conflict. But, as Ryan explains, an aerial view is only a piece of the picture.

“We confuse increased transparency with increased wisdom,” he says. “And they’re two very different things.”

Military planners often talk about ISR: intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. (Sometimes the acronym is expanded to include target acquisition.) Certainly, Ukraine has managed to do incredible reconnaissance, particularly thanks to its fleet of drones, which it has integrated tightly into its ground operations. But it can do more, Ryan says. Russia’s ability to quickly move and deploy its reserve units has previously caught Ukraine by surprise, he notes.

Figuring out how to not just improve its intelligence collection, but make it more accessible, will also be key.

Last fall, Luxembourg and Estonia launched a new IT coalition, with an eye to connect the private sector to the Ukrainian military. “The coalition, of course, will not change the course of the war immediately,” Pevkur says. “But it’s just one piece of the puzzle to find the solutions.”

“We’ve sent some software to them to help shape the battlefield,” Pevkur says. He says they’ve already received “good feedback.”

One such piece of software is SensusQ, an Estonian AI-powered platform that mixes real-time footage with a variety of other inputs, from social media updates to human intelligence. The company says its platform is already in use in multiple places across Ukraine.

Kyiv has also used software developed by tech giant Palantir to conduct target acquisition, deploying AI and facial recognition technology to identify Russian positions. While Palantir has not revealed exactly which capabilities it is providing to Ukraine, the company recently unveiled “a ChatGPT-style digital assistant that enables operators to efficiently deploy reconnaissance drones, devise tactical responses, and orchestrate enemy communication jamming,” as the US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology described it last June.

Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer, told a US Senate committee last year that Ukraine’s ability to integrate new technology into its military, particularly AI, has seen the timeline from procurement to implementation trimmed “from years and months to weeks and days.”

What makes this innovation particularly remarkable is how widespread it has already become.

“I think the Ukrainians are well down this path to what I call the democratization of digital command and control,” Ryan says. “They have pushed down digital command and control, the access to information, on smart devices in a way no other military has really done.”

Decentralizing intelligence collection and distribution means units are armed with much more information on the front lines, and are more equipped to make decisions on the fly instead of being reliant on senior commanders. Ryan says it will be crucial to push that information further down, and more quickly—but it will also be necessary to improve the flow of information upward.

“The Ukrainians are pretty good at bottom-up adaptation,” Ryan says. But they need to be able to apply battlefield lessons quickly, in a systematic way. “It’s been improving, certainly, since my first visit—and I’ve had some pretty long conversations about it on my last one, about six weeks ago. But I think that systemic learning culture is something that they need to continue improving because the Russians aren’t very good with bottom-up innovation.”

Given the speed at which Ukraine is learning and adapting, it will also require that its NATO partners be willing to adapt at the same speed. Pevkur insists they are already well on their way. “So that means that when they have the weapon system and they use it, we will get some feedback, we will change it,” he says.

Prior to last summer’s counteroffensive, American military planners held a series of tabletop exercises with their Ukrainian counterparts to game out how the fighting could play out. Ryan says that kind of collaboration needs to be broader and deeper, geared to win the war, not just individual battles.

“We can be their strap-on brain,” Ryan says. “We can work through the theories that might help with more effective offensive operations in this scenario. I mean, NATO has hundreds of people who are military planners and can help do this.”

What Comes Next

In the coming months, Ukraine and Russia are likely to opt for missile and drone strikes instead of big ground operations, as winter sets in and they work to refresh their ground forces.

If last year was any indication, Moscow will spend early 2024 expanding its defensive lines and deploying a huge amount of hardware to the battlefield, new and old—mines, artillery systems, fighter jets, and missile launchers.

If Ukraine hopes to advance this year, it will likely need to discover its own equivalent of gunpowder. That may come in the form of uncrewed land vehicles, which could crash through Russian lines and clear the dense minefields in its way. Or, perhaps, Ukraine will finally find a way to network its drone fleets and attain air superiority over its skies. Maybe it will achieve a breakthrough in electronic warfare, devising a way to jam Russia’s systems and neutralize its missiles and loitering munitions. Kyiv may receive the long-range missiles it has been requesting or begin producing its own. Perhaps it will be all of the above, or something else entirely.

But as Kyiv and its allies work feverishly to find that breakthrough, it will need to continue perfecting the tactics that have made it such a worthy adversary thus far. That will mean holding its international coalition together, making the most of its existing weapon systems, and figuring out how to adapt on the fly.

[warsofasoiaf]

How important a weapon is artillery in modern warfare? I know its general purposes but not necessarily the specific ins-and-outs of its application. It seems like the most ubiquitous weapon in the case study of the Ukraine war right now. Obviously inability to establish air superiority and strategic failure to force a meaningful breakthrough of Ukrainian defaces on Russia’s part has relegated the conflict to an ugly protracted slugfest reminiscent more of earlier 20th century conflicts rather than more recent strategic masterclasses such as either Iraq war (overthrowing Saddam, not successfully succeeding his regime). Is the degeneration of the conflict inflating the value of artillery or even in a more strategically sound and tactically more competently waged campaign would artillery be of such imperative importance?

Artillery is quite important in modern warfare, particularly for anti-personnel operations beyond infantry firearms range.

The reason why a lot of NATO warfare doesn't see as much emphasis on artillery has everything to do with Soviet, and later Russian, strategic decision-making. NATO decided that fire support was better suited to be delivered from the air - it was more precise than ground artillery. Certainly, tube artillery is much more inaccurate than air-to-ground attack delivered by attack aircraft (however, tube artillery can provide close support as opposed to rocket which is typically deep support), and this fit NATO's strategic mission of using high-precision artillery strikes to maximize damage to enemy positions and minimize collateral damage. The problem with this is that precision munition and aircraft are expensive. They require a highly competent airforce, a robust defense industrial base, and an extensive training program, all of which significantly eat into the defense budget. The Soviet Union realized it could never compete with the United States in aircraft production, so it prioritized its development for SAM systems like the S-300, hoping to reduce NATO air superiority and use ground artillery for indirect fire of its own. The Soviet Union in general was always rather cavalier toward civilian casualties, and Russia has continued this trend.

Artillery is typically used for:

Counterbattery fire: delivered for the purpose of destroying or neutralizing the enemy's fire support system.

Counterpreparation fire: intensive prearranged fire delivered when the imminence of the enemy attack is discovered.

Covering fire: used to protect troops when they are within range of enemy small arms.

Defensive fire: delivered by supporting units to assist and protect a unit engaged in a defensive action.

Final Protective Fire: an immediately available prearranged barrier of fire designed to impede enemy movement across defensive lines or areas.

Harassing fire: a random number of shells are fired at random intervals, without any pattern to it that the enemy can predict. This process is designed to hinder enemy forces' movement, and, by the constantly imposed stress, threat of losses and inability of enemy forces to relax or sleep, lowers their morale.

Interdiction fire: placed on an area or point to prevent the enemy from using the area or point.

Preparation fire: delivered before an attack to weaken the enemy position.

There are plenty of reasons why you would want to deploy artillery instead of air assets, even for a NATO army. In areas of high air defense, deploying an air asset can be very risky, in which case ground artillery may be a better option. Artillery can also respond quicker, rather than requesting an air asset which may need to be redirected from an operational air area or even prepped and taxied for launch (mortars in particular are relatively quick to set up and fire). Artillery is also cheaper, so in areas where air assets may not be available, ground artillery provides fire support as a cost-effective alternative.

Thanks for the question, Luke.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[workersolidarity]

🇷🇺🇺🇦 🚨 Report on the progress of the Special Military Operation according to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

Report by Press Centre Chief of Zapad Group of Forces

▫️ The Zapad Group of Forces continues to fulfil the combat missions within the special military operation in Kupyansk direction.

▫️ In the course of active defence, a motorised rifle unit of the Combined-Arms Army, supported by mortar fire, repelled a counterattack launched by assault groups of the AFU 57th Motorised Infantry Brigade near Liman Pervy.

▫️ Heavy flamethrower systems struck a cluster of troops in the shelters of the AFU 14th Mechanised Brigade near Sinkovka.

▫️ In addition, in the defence belt of the Combined-Arms Army, the unit's servicemen, supported by air and artillery fire, neutralised up to 20 servicemen, two BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles, one BMP-2 IFV, one 152-mm 2S3 Akatsiya self-propelled artillery system, and two Humvee armoured fighting vehicles near Terny.

▫️ A Tor SAM system destroyed five unmanned aerial vehicles, including four Furia and one Leleka-100 UAVs close to Melovatka, Zhitlovka, Zaliman, and Petrovskoye.

🔹 Russian Defence Ministry

⚡️ Russian Defence Ministry report on the progress of the special military operation

(30 November 2023)

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation.

▫️ In Kupyansk direction, units of the Zapad Group of Forces supported by aviation and artillery repelled two attacks launched by assault detachments of the AFU 14th and 30th mechanised brigades near Sinkovka (Kharkov region). The enemy lost up to 45 Ukrainian troops and two motor vehicles.

▫️ In Krasny Liman direction, units of the Tsentr Group of Forces supported by helicopters repelled one attack launched by an assault detachment of the AFU 60th Mechanised Brigade near Yampolovka (Donetsk People's Republic).

The AFU losses amounted to up to 250 Ukrainian troops, two armoured fighting vehicles, and four motor vehicles.

▫️ In Donetsk direction, units of the Yug Group of Forces supported by aviation and artillery repelled two attacks launched by assault detachments of the AFU 79th Assault Brigade near Maryinka (Donetsk People's Republic).

In addition, strikes were delivered at manpower and hardware clusters of the AFU 93rd Mechanised Brigade near Andreyevka (Donetsk People's Republic). The enemy lost up to 270 Ukrainian troops, two armoured fighting vehicles, and three pickup trucks.

One U.S.-made AN/TPQ-37 counterbattery radar station was destroyed near Zhelannoye (Donetsk People's Republic).

▫️ In South Donetsk direction, units of the Vostok Group of Forces supported by aviation and artillery inflicted losses on manpower of the AFU 72nd Mechanised Brigade, 79th Airborne Brigade, and 58th Motorised Infantry Brigade near Novomikhailovka, Konstantinovka, and Novoukrainka (Donetsk People's Republic).

Up to 100 Ukrainian troops, one tank, two armoured fighting vehicles, and three motor vehicles were neutralised.

▫️ In Zaporozhye direction, units of the Russian Group of Forces supported by aviation and artillery repelled three attacks launched by assault detachments of the AFU 82nd Airborne Brigade and 71st Jaeger Brigade close to Verbovoye (Zaporozhye region).

In addition, strikes were delivered at manpower of the AFU 118th Mechanised Brigade, 46th Air Mobile Brigade, and 15th National Guard Brigade near Rabotino and north of Novopokrovka (Zaporozhye region).

The AFU losses amounted to up to 30 Ukrainian troops killed and wounded and three motor vehicles.

▫️ In Kherson direction, as a result of actions of the Russian Group of Forces supported by artillery and aviation, the AFU lost up to 55 Ukrainian troops and two motor vehicles.

Operational-tactical and Army Aviation, unmanned aerial vehicles, missile troops and artillery of the Group of Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation wiped out a rear command post of the AFU 53rd Mechanised Brigade, an artillery battalion command and observation post of the AFU 31st Mechanised Brigade near Krasnoarmeysk and Novogrodovka (Donetsk People's Republic), two CT-68UM and P-18 radar stations for detecting and tracking air targets, as well as manpower and military hardware in 118 areas.

Air defence units intercepted nine Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles near Tokarevka (Kharkov region), Lipovoye and Maryinka (Donetsk People's Republic), Pshenichnoye (Zaporozhye region), and Chaplinka (Kherson region).

📊 In total, 544 airplanes and 255 helicopters, 9,310 unmanned aerial vehicles, 442 air defence missile systems, 13,712 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,187 combat vehicles equipped with MLRS, 7,205 field artillery guns and mortars, as well as 15,781 units of special military equipment have been destroyed during the special military operation.

🔹 Russian Defence Ministry

#source1

#source2

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[gyls23unsc]

Russian Missile Strikes Slovakia!

Polska Agencja Prasowa

18 December 2023

VEĽKÉ SLEMENCE, Slovakia — In what is believed to have been an intended strike against infrastructure in western Ukraine, a Russian missile is reported to have hit eastern Slovakia in the early hours of 18 December turned an outdoor market into a fiery, blackened ruin where weeping civilians looked for loved ones among the mangled, burned bodies scattered across the ground.

The blast in the town of Veľké Slemence killed 17 people and wounded at least 32 in one of Russia’s deadliest miscalculated strikes on civilians in months, Slovakian official Milan Sklenár said, a figure verified by the Slovakian Red Cross.

Behind him were the remnants of the market, where charred bodies could be seen in the street, their clothes still burning, near cars engulfed in flames. 

A short statement from the Kremlin denied the allegations -- instead blaming Ukrainian counterbattery fire for having missed its intended target. Just last month, a Ukrainian missile hit the village of Przewodów in Poland, killing two.

Slovakia is a member of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union, and foreign policy watchdog organisations warn that this mishap could potentially lead to a wider regional conflict.

[argumate]

Ongoing localized Russian offensive operations near Avdiivka likely demonstrate the ability of Russian forces to learn and apply tactical battlefield lessons in Ukraine. Russian forces launched localized attacks towards Avdiivka after intensive artillery preparation of the battlefield in the early hours of October 10, and geolocated footage from October 10 and 11 confirms that Russian troops advanced southwest of Avdiivka near Sieverne and northwest of Avdiivka near Stepove and Krasnohorivka. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that a grouping of up to three Russian battalions with tank and armored vehicle support intensified offensive operations near Avdiivka. Ukrainian General Staff Spokesperson Andrii Kovavlev clarified that these battalions are part of three motorized rifle brigades of the Southern Military District’s 8th Combined Arms Army.

Russian sources celebrated Russian advances in this area and outlined several adaptations that suggest that Russian forces are applying lessons learned from operations in southern Ukraine to other sectors of the front. A Russian artillery battalion commander who is reportedly fighting in the area claimed that Russian forces are paying significant attention to counterbattery combat. Another source who also claimed to be fighting in the area reported that Russian forces are using electronic warfare (EW) systems, conducting sound artillery preparation of the battlefield, and are demonstrating “clear interaction” between command headquarters, assault groups, aerial reconnaissance, and artillery elements. The milblogger noted that Russian forces are not employing human wave-style “meat” assaults, and several Russian sources amplified footage of Russian armored vehicles leading a breakthrough along roadways towards Ukrainian positions, followed by infantry columns.

the war continues

[enriquemzn262]

My pick for a ship that was protected by ther gods is definitely HMS Warspite. She survived several direct hits at Jutand, and every encounter she had with another warship ended in either her victory or being able to withdraw and limp home. During the D-Day operations, she was on shore bombardment duty, and had a hole in her hull so massive that they hadn't been able to fix in time, so they just poured concrete into the hole to plug it up. Didn't stop her returning to port to restock her magazines after she depleted them shelling the german fortifications. Then when they finally decided to scrap her after the war, she ran aground on the way to the breakers, and resisted all attempts at refloating her. She killed three tugs in the process, and they even tried fitting her with rocket engines to shift her off the sandbar. In the end they gave up, and she sat there for a decade before they got around to dismantling her in-situ. The Grand Old Lady went kicking and screaming to her appointment with the reaper, defiant to the end.

I mean, not to shit on Warspite, but she was the only ship in Evan-Thomas fast battleship squadron to actually be damaged by Sheer’s doomed battlecruisers, and damaged in such a way she had steering problems for the rest of her career.

As for Normandy, as impressive as that sounds, German counterbattery fire was almost nonexistent, so she wasn’t in too much danger during her shelling missions.

Her defiance in the face of scrapping was very admirable tho.

[jcmarchi]

Ukrainian HIMARS Destroyed an Extremely Expensive Russian Radar - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/ukrainian-himars-destroyed-an-extremely-expensive-russian-radar-technology-org/

Ukrainian HIMARS Destroyed an Extremely Expensive Russian Radar - Technology Org

Counter-battery is a very important part of modern warfare. Artillery is used all the time, which means that the enemy’s howitzers are very important targets. Therefore, counter-battery radars are being developed to be more precise and quick to deploy. Russia has just announced that it sent its latest counter-battery radar called Yastreb-AV to fight in Ukraine. And now it’s been confirmed, because Ukraine just destroyed it.

Yastreb-AV in a place of its destruction somewhere in Ukraine. (Screenshot)

On January 2, 2024, the Ministry of Defense of Russia revealed publicly that its counter-battery radar 1K148 Yastreb-AV had been sent to Ukraine. This system is supposedly highly advanced and its characteristics are not disclosed. Back in 2017 it was announced that it was almost finished. Then in 2022 it was publicly showcased at the Army-2022 forum.

The Yastreb-AV started its service with the Russian Army very recently –  tests were completed only at the end of 2021 or at the beginning of 2022. And now it is definitely in Ukraine.

Although we cannot say what special features does the Yastreb-AV possess, it is still just a large weapon tracking radar. Its job is still just target acquisition. Basically, it looks for incoming artillery shells, mortar bombs, or some ballistic missiles, follows their trajectory for a bit and uses this data to determine the location of the launcher (howitzer, mortar, etc.) Then counter-battery fire can be arranged.

The Yastreb-AV is particularly large, mounted on an 8×8 chassis. It most definitely can track multiple targets at the same time. And is obviously built to be highly mobile to avoid detection.

Did Russia really deploy this system in Ukraine? Yes! On January 2, 2024 – the same day when Russia announced it being in Ukraine – a video was shared online of a destruction of a Yastreb-AV:

A Russian 1K148 “Yastreb-AV” counterbattery complex was destroyed with the use of GMLRS.

Funny fact, the Russian MoD today announced they were put to work in the ”SVO” 🥳https://t.co/rgEZSuPMth pic.twitter.com/HbYOUe1Xpf

— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) January 2, 2024

Obviously, this Yastreb-AV radar was spotted by a drone, which recorded its coordinates and directed HIMARS fire towards it. The radar in question was then destroyed by a GMLRS missile. It may not look like it was eliminated, because you’re used to videos of equipment blowing up in huge mushrooms of smoke and fire.

However, remember that the Yastreb-AV is not really a weapon – there is no ammunition in it. It was shredded by hundreds of tungsten balls and is definitely not operational.

Also, an interesting thing to note – defenders of Ukraine have said that they’ve destroyed a Yastreb-AV radar before. It might have been a second one. One such counter-battery radar is estimated to cost around 250 million dollars.

Sources: Mil.in.ua, NOELreports Twitter

[captain-price-unofficially]

Luhansk Oblast, a Swedish-supplied Archer 155mm SPH in Ukrainian service hits a Russian 2S19 MSTA-S 152mm SPH with drone-spotted counterbattery fire, destroying the self-propelled howitzer.

[cyberbenb]

Ukrainian forces hit a Russian 2S3 Akatsiya SPH with counterbattery fire, Zaporizhia Oblast.

Ukrainian forces hit a Russian 2S3 Akatsiya SPH with counterbattery fire, Zaporizhia Oblast. Source : twitter.com/Osinttech…