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Comment by IIAOPSW | Hacker News Reader

When would be a good time for an invasion? Not when the snow thaws. Ok. How about when its ice cold? That option sounds even harder, though I guess the vehicles don't get stuck as badly. How about waiting until summer? That sounds like a more conventional military strategy, though I don't know enough Ukrainian geography to tell if its a sound option. Is there ever a "good" time for an invasion? If so, why did Putin jump the gun? If not, the current situation was inevitable in some form or other.

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Part of the supposed strategy also involved hitting Ukraine when Europe is reliant upon Russian gas for heating. I was a bit surprised how late into winter they invaded given this goal.

My understanding is that Europe has several months of gas reserves. Even if Russia cut it off completely, the real pain would come next winter rather than immediately.

Where do you store that much gas?

Pressurized tanks, I assume.

Not really:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_storage

Thanks. Funny thing is I even knew that at one point, but had forgotten. At least I included "I assume" in my comment rather than stating my faulty assumption as fact!

Underground:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_storage

This blows my mind! I knew you couldn't possibly store so much in tanks, but the idea to pump it into the ground is really insane.

I'd say late in winter could be really good for that strategy, depending on the weather. Doesn't explain this fully tho, more the opposite, so probably other factors played a larger role.

I read a few days ago that Germany's gas reserves were at 31% and they were basically just being helped by the good weather. A colder winter would've made it a much bigger problem. And Germany had very recently decided to basically go cold turkey on nuclear, which means using more gas plants. Now they're thinking of extending the life span of nuclear a bit. Not that a gas furnace can heat with electricity though, so not sure how much that will help.

Would probably be enough for the next winter as well, so not reason to panic. Then you still have the expensive option to heat with electricity or the cheap one to heat with wood. Warm water would probably be the largest problem, but that is far away.

I don't think it's a question of being expensive, but more like completely impossible. One good thing is that heating in Germany usually is via radiators that are water fed and the water is heated "centrally". Even in single family homes. Apartment blocks have different options. Some are central (basement heater feeding the radiators) but also some apartments have a gas heater in every apartment individually feeding just that apartment's radiators and gas is distributed throughout the apartment block.

If you had to replace every single gas heating system that would be both very expensive and without having any actual data I would gather that you wouldn't be able to retrofit all of Germany with that in time. Wood I would gather is gonna be even worse. While I can see how a single family home would convert (lots of folks have replaced their gar furnace with a wood pellet heater w/ auto-feeders), how would that work for apartment buildings with individual gas heaters in the apartments? These are all concrete buildings where it'd be quite the feat to replace the gas distribution with central water distribution for radiators. And those gas heaters do not take a lot of space and are used even in tiny apartments. Where do you store wood pellets in that situation?

Of course there are exceptions where heat is provided remotely already by a "Heizkraftwerk" (e.g. fed from industrial cooling systems or garbage burners).

Travel across anything not paved during spring break up is near impossible.

I don’t think it’s break up, I think it’s resistance, they are getting stalled in the cities.

Ukraine has paved highways moving tanks isn’t an issue, except that the highways run through cities.

The problem is fundamentally that for every soldier and civilian they kill they are creating 5 to 10 freedom fighters. The more people are killed the greater the resistance. The less likely they can hold the country without reprisals from the people. If they have to resort to barbarism to subdue the people then the sanctions will never end.

Putin needs to establish a govt quickly that doesn’t have to resort to atrocities to govern. If he fails to do that he loses the greater overall war.

I don't know how accomplishable that really is at this point - it's looking like Russian troop cohesion is insanely low[1] and Putin may just need to withdraw forces to keep the domestic situation under wraps. I'm pretty sure if Putin started peace talks he'd be ousted at this point, so he just has to sorta pray that western powers don't stall out the annexation - otherwise I think he's pretty hooped domestically.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/01/russia-lo...

There's still plenty of room for them to convert this apparent impending loss into a partial success by gaining control of the territory they care most about, which is (likely) the South (to relieve Crimea's currently tenuous & expensive situation) and South East (to take full control of the fossil fuel resources there and bridge their territory over to Crimea), which also happen to be the areas they're having the most success in, judging by the various maps of territory they're semi-successfully occupying.

personally i always thought the greater invasion was so that he had something to deal away to get the sanctions lifted.

> I'm pretty sure if Putin started peace talks

Didn't this happen two days ago?

It's not peace talks. It is something like "agree to our demands, otherwise we keep bombing". It's trying to get the outcome they want without further military action. And a takeover by any means is not a peaceful action.

> It's trying to get the outcome they want without further military action.

That's peace talks. The end of military action is peace.

I get what you are saying. But referring to it as "Peace Talks" is misleading. There is no goodwill or altruism here. It is purely another military strategy. If the outcome is occupation, that is not peace.

> If the outcome is occupation, that is not peace.

This is not a definition of "peace" that you share with the Anglophone community in general. Are the United States and Japan currently at war?

The US is not currently occupying Japan, but they did at some point. The US and Japan are currently in an alliance. Japan's constitution requires a self-defense force, so they don't have a normal military. That was imposed by the US after WWII.

Please don't deflect.

Let me ask you: do you think it would be just to have Russia occupy Ukraine? Do you think countries have a right to self determination and sovereignty?

Russia was signatory to the Budapest Memorandum, basically agreeing to acknowledge and help protect Ukraine's borders.

I wonder why you support occupation.

What comes after can also be occupation, oppression, labor camps, executions, dictatorship. Is that "peace" you say?

Yes, of course. There's a difference between "peace" and "heaven". Who's saying peace is the absence of anything that is subjectively bad?

I think it's obvious what he should do if he's smart. Focus troops in the southeast. Destroy the Azov Regiment. Take their uniforms, patch, flags, make a big show of it on all media. Claim mission accomplished. "We de-Nazified Ukraine!" Set up a base on the Azov, withdraw other forces to 2014 borders. Commit $x billion in rebuilding aid and payments to families in Ukraine, once sanctions are lifted and currency exchange returns to Feb 25th levels so they can afford it. Prosecute a few token scapegoats domestically for war crimes (anyone for whom the evidence would make it politically impossible not to).

Ukraine will never trust them. But it's enough to take the pressure off, and enough for him to remain in power.

It does seem like if he's just invaded donbas he could have gotten away with it.

Having watched the previous fall of the soviet union eventually enough people in moscow get pissed off and there is a regime change, although I suspect putin has control of the apparatus and security forces. So, we might just see a Russia civil war.

One thing that I've never seen discussed is the notion that the incident to break the 75-year "not nuking anybody" streak the world has been on could well be a civil war in a nuclear state, in which the side in control of the notional military apparatus sees no other way our of losing.

Luckily, people like Eric Swalwell - the Congressman who proposed using nuclear weapons against Americans who resist gun confiscation - are few and far between.

... In a tweet, that was pretty clearly a troll[1]. It's important to clarify that he never seriously proposed the measure.

1. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/eric-swalwell-gun-owners-n...

Of course he didn't "propose" it. There is nothing to propose until the war starts.

In the heart of winter the whole country is a road, right now it is very narrow strips that are easily passable and it is getting worse by the day.

That applies to UA armor too.

Way harder to do hit and runs on road columns when you can't fall back to where ever but have to follow roads your self.

Defender advantage is substantial in situations like that. Moving targets are a lot harder than stationary ones. Ukraine armor is concentrated around the main cities instead of strung out in long vulnerable stationary lines.

Ukraine also has javelins and other shoulder fired anti tank weapons

Anything you hit with those is pure luck.

Source: experience.

Edit: I was thinking of what we had in the Army, which was definitely not guided.

> Anything you hit with those is pure luck.

I've never seen a Javelin miss in my entire life. They've got like 5,000 recorded successful engagements.

> Source: experience.

Are you firing them before they've got a chance to get the sensor down to temperature?

Er, no. Javelin is guided. They are videos of them doing some really amazing long-range shots.

For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sah9nbGQLFY

> For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sah9nbGQLFY

I guess you posted that for the compiled footage, but Lord do I hate voice synthesized narration.

From my armchair, it seems totally practical to hit-and-run attack the convoy on foot using fire-and-forget Javelins from 1.5-2 miles away. If the terrain is impassible to vehicles, the attacker can just shoot from the top of a hill and run away down the other side (maybe without even being seen).

That's interesting. I didn't even notice that! I suppose I found the footage sufficiently compelling to distract me.

Might the javelin fail to hit the tank, by accidentally homing in on one of the trucks next to it instead?

From what I've read, they have too few javelins already

You lock the missile on a target while aiming it. The seeker will remain locked to exactly that target until it hits. Only way it's hitting a neighbouring truck instead is if that's what you aimed at when you pressed fire.

Ok. I suppose this works also if the tank moves -- but if it gets out of sight, let's say a truck drives in front of the tank, then might the javelin miss?

Or is the javelin so high up in the air, so it could typically see the tank anyway?

Yes, in principle, obstructions could make it miss. But also yes, Javelins fly lofted arc trajectories, unless you take the shot a half a second before the target is obstructed, the missile will almost certainly be able to maintain lock even if something obstructs your view of the target.

Also, it strikes me that there are only 1000 tanks in the force. It seems like such a small number contrasted against 100,000 soldiers. That seems like a tractable number of tanks to destroy.

54 down, still a ways to go:

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...

Note that that is a lower bound.

1000 tanks are quite a lot. I think future wars will feature less of them aside from power projection. But for occupations they are pretty vulnerable targets despite their armor.

Tabks are hard to use unless the terrain is ideal. Maybe great for driving across dry countryside and lifht rubble and mowing down infantry, but not for occupying a city you don't want to flatten.

Saint Javelin never misses.

In close quarters and urban environments, I would think that it would be hard to miss

I too sucked at CoD.

We aren't talking about RPG-7 here, but ATGM (which, as the name imply, are guided missiles).

Weather: An invasion that begins in January or February would have the advantage of frozen ground to support the cross-country movement of a large mechanized force. It would also mean operating in conditions of freezing cold and limited visibility. January is usually the coldest and snowiest month of the year in Ukraine, averaging 8.5 hours of daylight during the month and increasing to 10 hours by February.8 This would put a premium on night fighting capabilities to keep an advance moving forward. Should fighting continue into March, mechanized forces would have to deal with the infamous Rasputitsa, or thaw. In October, Rasputitsa turns firm ground into mud. In March, the frozen steppes thaw, and the land again becomes at best a bog, and at worst a sea of mud. Winter weather is also less than optimal for reliable close air support operations. From: https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-possible-invasion-ukra...

Cities are large targets, and given the disregard for civilian casualties (indeed the specific targeting of schools and hospitals which are generally large facilities) would seem to reduce the problems of poor visibility.

I don't think tanks normally want to drive straight through buildings, so I think visibility might still be an issue in cities.

Europe's dependence on Russian gas is a gun to their head that only exists in winter. It took some deliberation to get Germany to accept strong sanctions. That might not have happened a month ago.

I always wondered why attacking in winter would ever be a good idea in any case. You want to have clear supply lines which certainly work better in friendly weather.

Best invasion is a cancelled invasion of course...

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