Ukraine deployed new military aircraft, heavy weapons and vehicles to bolster troops fighting separatists in the country’s east as it continues peace talks with rebels and Russia’s government.Has anyone noticed something about this conflict?
The reinforcements, which included fighter jets, armored personnel carriers and artillery, follow a September truce in which the government paused an assault after rebels drove its forces back in what the country says was a counterattack spearheaded by Russian units.
“Ukraine was able to restore its military preparedness during the cease-fire,” Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said today in Kiev.
If heavy weapons moved to the front line it may conflict with the Sept. 5 cease-fire agreed in Minsk, which has been broken almost daily. Ukraine has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of supplying rebels with tanks, artillery and other materiel. Putin, who says he “respects” the insurgents’ ambitions, has denied involvement in the conflict, which has triggered the worst standoff between Russia and its Cold War foes in more than a quarter century.
The reinforcements include two MiG-29 and two Su-27 fighters, 42 armored personnel carriers, 18 self-propelled howitzers and other vehicles, Lysenko said.
Airpower is playing an extremely minor role in the conflict. Could it be that effective anti-air defenses over the battlefield actually can deter close air support in the modern era?
Additionally have you played close attention to the prominence that artillery (both cannon and rocket) has played?
The King of Battle is back!
Make sure you read the entire article. The developments in the Ukraine conflict are starting to come fast and furious. The second peace talks break down the fight will be back on.
The King was never out, he just let some air princess to play.
ReplyDeleteMinor role of air components was rather the effect of very poor state of Ukrainian air force. It was the same poorly founded and commanded as other branches but as it is a highly tech force it was hit double. Still it would be more then enough to deal with that situation... if not we all know who. Modern ground to air missiles and real time intel about every movement in airspace, no to mention probably well organize "spy" network. Well organized and equipped army would had problems with that, not to mention Ukrainian one.
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DeleteIt's right. The ex-government representatives were slowly and smoothly destroying the army. Majority thought that Ukraine had no enemies. From one hand that makes sense as west Europe will never start a war, while Russia is a main friend. From other hand now when they need a battleworthy and equipped army then the army is weak and breathes its last. There is few serviceable battle aircrafts, but I guess there is also fear to loss the last planes. In addition their planes haven't modern precision weapons thus the aviation can't hit targets without big collateral damages of building and death among civilians. Pro-Russia propagand medias publish info about almost each case with killed civilians during the war. If the quantity is going to get bigger than it will helps strongly the propaganda work.
DeleteI'm sorry for mistakes.
ReplyDeletei think the current ukraine military cant offer much if they renew their offensive against eastern rebels.. maybe if US sold them M1A1 like those sold to iraqi army , and send modern Apache gunships and UAV , and use US mercenaries to carry out the battle , they might have a slight chance of surviving..
ReplyDeletethe question is how far US willing to help ukraine armed forces in military operation and not just sending toys..
/grabbing popcorn while waiting do fireworks
Did you just ignore the premise of the story?
DeleteFor the past 40+ years, we've only been involved in wars where we have air superiority against those with conventional forces and complete dominance against those like the Taliban who have zero AA capability.
Since the 90s, we haven't even considered the prospect (except maybe PDRK) we might face an enemy that would be able to deny us freedom of movement via the air. Every troop transport, air ambulance, UAV, gunship, etc, would have a hard time simply flying anywhere near a place where SAM, MANPADS or a decent ZSU-23-4 or Tunguska was hiding.
We had difficulties against a country such as Yugoslavia in 1999 and lost F117 and F16s to their obsolete SAM network.
Sol touched on this last week, but our military is dependent upon delivering precision fires via air for when the grunts stumble into something they werent expecting. Anytime they run into trouble, they call in airpower to bail them out.
What happens when they run into an enemy that is tactically savvy enough to lure them into ambushes and then have another MANPAD, SAM ambush waiting for air to bail them out.
And really, if our guys tried walking upright into a Ukrainian village the same way they have been walking towards Afghan ones, they are going to get smoked by Russian artillery. If they get cut off, could US fires or counter-battery bail them out?
Paralus my friend.....you just responded to Buntalanlucu......consider your self sufficiently ambushed. No fires can save you now from his Roman Legions partnered with US and Polish mercenaries.
DeleteParalus! you get the prize! only you focused in on what i was trying to get across. the first thing that an opposing force with any knowledge will do is deny us air support, setup air ambushes etc....
Deletecan the US Army and Marine Corps operate in an environment where air support is denied? is artillery in US ground forces robust enough to make up for the lack of airpower? do they have the reach?
The USSR placed a great deal if stock in gbad to win the air war. Relegating aircraft to a secondary attack role.
ReplyDeleteBoth the combatants are successor states to that thinking.
Pagmatically
Neither side can really afford to risk their air assets against the others defences.
Ukraine will hold them back for a do or die situation.
Russia can hardly field several fighter groups and maintain deniability, nor does it have the aircraft to lose.
Beat me to it TrT. Spot on!
DeleteUkraine didnt have anti-radiation missiles or EW so their chances were quite low against Russian SAM's.
ReplyDeleteAll in all Ukraine is a good reminder of a very conventional war in Europe, tanks, artillery, mines trenches etc...
This current conflict in Ukraine and the Kargil Incident in India.
ReplyDeleteThe two incidents may be completely different, but I detect a a similarity in both conflicts in the fact that all beligerants here tried to minimize the extent and scale of conflict by picking and choosing service arms and even weapons to be used in actual combat. Thus no use of the Navy by India, no full scale use of the Airforce over the length and breadth of the International border by India and a reluctance of Ukraine and Russia to fully use their Airforces.
Any views ?
yep. The Ukrainian airforce was basically neutralized by some MANPADS and a single Buk system.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't show air support as dead all it shows is that if you aircraft without the proper tools and training they can easily by neutralized by a enemy.
If we provide the Ukrainians with TRAINING, and some kit like Harm missiles for a wild weasel outfits they could put their airforce back in action but they would still need some type of guided munitions for them to be able to stay above the MANPAD's. What the Ukrainians really need and would possible be a game changer for them would be counter fire radars and trained crews to run them. They have the missile batteries in spades with enough range accuracy to put some deadly teeth to those radars. Artillery is a major enabler for the "rebels" of course we are probably scared to provide such tech because everyone knows when that counter battery landed Russian volunteer regulars on leave with their equipment would be the dead.
Bottom line it doesn't say much about viability of western airpower. Does say allot about modern artillery and how critical counter battery radar with trained crews can be to a force in the field facing real competitor.
Artillery is just really, really, really, cheap compared to modern air. Those old classic Russian guns are maybe in the 150,000 to 200,000 range to buy and operating them is cheap. Each boom of an unguided shell is somewhere around 400-600 dollars. That is a lot of rounds down range compared to a 15,000-20,000 per flight hour aircraft.
ReplyDeleteThat is the reason that South Africa had one of best artillery systems in the world during the 1970-2000. They could not afford anywhere near the level of air that America is accustomed to.
Throw in that modern SAMs could be placed in Russsia proper and still cover a lot of Ukraine and that decent CAS is all but impossible to conduct from a MIG-29 or SU-27 and I would leave it at home too.
CAS either requires air dominance so you can fly your lazy racetrack in the sky and carefully spot your target with a targetting pod and drop your PGM on it. Or you have to come in low, rapidly acquire the target and put rounds on it the first pass because on the second pass your chance of being swatted from the sky by a clever gunner with a SA-18 has quadrupled.