Armchair Warlord Profile picture
Aug 18 8 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Anatomy of a Fiasco: The Bridge at Glushkovo

Late last week the Ukrainian command, seeing their offensive in Sudzha-Koronevo bog down, tried to expand the flanks of their salient into Russian territory in Kursk. Part of this was an attack on the Glushkovo district to the west. Image
The Glushkovo District is somewhat isolated from the Russian interior by the Seim River.

Having learned the wrong lessons from their 2022 counteroffensive in Kherson, the AFU command decided to try to induce a wholesale Russian withdrawal by attacking the bridges over the Seim. Image
The large road bridge at Glushkovo, the district center, would be their first target. As in Kherson two years ago, HIMARS fired on the bridge with GMLRS. As in Kherson two years ago, it was ineffective.

Unlike in Kherson two years ago, the Russians killed the HIMARS launcher.
Image
That was Thursday afternoon. Undeterred, the Ukrainians pulled up two more HIMARS launchers and fired on the bridge again on Thursday night, potholing the span further and probably rendering it temporarily unusable.

The Russians killed those launchers too.

Image

Still determined to down the bridge, the Ukrainians ordered up an airstrike. One of their MiG-29s hit the bridge with glide bombs, finally dropping the damaged span into the river.

The Russians tracked its return flight and killed it while it was refueling in Dnipropetrovsk.

But with the bridge down (and another one of the three damaged), presumably the Ukrainians were good to go - the Russian troops in the district were now isolated.

Right?

Well, no, because - plot twist - the district isn't actually isolated. There's no large river to the east.Image
Of course the Ukrainians had a plan to deal with this. They aren't stupid. They ordered an attack into the area to seal off the open flank and trap the defenders against the river.

That attack resulted in the largest mass surrender of Ukrainian troops seen in Kursk to date.
As for the bridge, the Russians had a pontoon crossing up within hours to replace it. One which the AFU seems to have decided against trying to attack for now.

And for the moment, the Glushkovo District remains firmly in Russian hands.

Thanks @Malazan_enjoyer for the image. Image

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More from @ArmchairW

Aug 16
Today was probably the worst day for the Armed Forces of Ukraine since February 2022.

Let's walk through it.

The Russians started the day off by destroying two HIMARS launchers at their hide site in Sumy. This has likely ended GMLRS support for the Kursk operation temporarily.

Next to emerge was a video of a MiG-29* struck at an airfield near Dnipropetrovsk, just as it was being armed and the pilot had climbed in for preflight.

Once again the Russians coldly waited to cause maximum casualties among key AFU personnel.

* initially reported as an Su-24
13 Ukrainian soldiers were caught on camera surrendering in Kursk, and today was the first day I didn't even hear substantive rumors of new AFU advances in the area. Instead they seem to have lost considerable ground.
Read 12 tweets
Jun 30
Putin HATES THEM!

Or does he?

Top 10 Failed Wonderweapons of the Ukrainian War⬇️ Image
My criteria are simple - these are weapons (defined loosely) that were heavily hyped by Western pundits that actually failed in service.

So, for example, the Leopard 2 isn't on here because it's actually a perfectly functional tank that has performed in line with other tanks.Image
10. The Ukrainian Foreign Legion

After the war kicked off, Western outlets began encouraging adventurous foreigners to travel to Ukraine to fight. These new recruits were housed in barracks at the Yavorov Training Ground.

One Russian missile strike largely ended the project. Image
Read 12 tweets
Jun 23
Apparently four missiles were shot down at sea, with one hit far enough into its final dive that falling submunitions still killed several civilians.

As this occurred on a Sunday afternoon and the nearest military target is three miles away, this was likely a terror attack.⬇️

First of all, I'd like to note the speed with which Ukrainian propagandists, while still celebrating the deaths of Russian vacationers, have come around to a remarkably pro-Russian position while commenting on this event: (1) that Russian air defenses shoot down pretty much everything fired at Crimea; (2) that the Russian Ministry of Defense generally puts out accurate information to the public; and (3) that civilian casualties from downed enemy missiles and malfunctioning interceptors are the responsibility of the defender rather than the attacker. I'm sure they won't immediately do another 180-degree turn as soon as they are presented with a less convenient fact pattern.

Secondly, the range at which this attack was delivered (>160km from any point of UKR-held territory) indicates that the Ukrainians have received a number of M39A1 extended-range ATACMS missiles with cluster warheads. There were only a small number of these manufactured around the turn of the century and apparently most were subsequently converted to unitary models, suggesting that the US is already scraping the munitions barrel to keep Ukraine supplied with missiles (and explaining our reluctance to hand any over previously). ATACMS activity has certainly fallen off dramatically in the last two weeks.

Thirdly, as I pointed out upthread, the nearest obvious military target is an airfield located three miles north of this particular beach. There's also an area of farmland about a mile and a half to the east that may serve as a SAM positioning area. Ballistic missiles that get clipped late in their flight don't fall three miles away from their intended targets, and if the Ukrainians had been interested in a military target they would have done what they always do and attacked in the middle of the night. They struck instead on the afternoon of Orthodox Pentecost Sunday, when the streets and beaches would be crowded with civilians. As such - and in light of a pattern of Ukrainian attacks targeting civilians in Russia gathered for holidays - it is likely this attack was intended to terrorize civilian residents and vacationers in a wealthy Sevasopol suburb and the work of Russian air defenses prevented an enormous number of deaths and injuries.
Addendum: Just to provide some visual context on exactly how far this beach is from the airfield in question - it's farther from it than from the harbor! Image
Addendum 2: It's not clear from the way I wrote it, but there were five missiles in total - four shot down at sea plus one over the beach in question.

I apologize, should have been clearer.
Read 5 tweets
May 20
D+10 update for the Russian Spring 2024 offensive. I mentioned last time (D+8) they'd begun to turn the pressure back on in the Donbass after easing off to let the Ukrainians pull troops to Kharkov.

They've marked up gains in 14 locations across the front in the last 48 hours⬇️ Image
1 / Starting from the north, Volchansk, Russian troops have secured the north of town and pushed troops across the Volcha River to begin evicting the AFU from the south side. Image
2 / No map for Liptsi because the location of the contact line in the area is astonishingly murky for this fishbowl of a war, but the fighting is visible from Kharkov.
Read 17 tweets
May 2
By popular demand, I'm writing a listicle - my top ten US military acquisition disasters of the 21st century.

It's a little distressing that I have so much material to work with.⬇️ Image
This list is largely informed by two factors - taxpayer money wasted and capabilities not delivered. So despite my catchy F-32 frontispiece above, the F-35 didn't actually make the list because despite being very expensive the program delivered working hardware.
Number 10: the VH-71 Kestrel

You think it'd be easy to design a VIP version of an AW101, but the DoD managed to make an off the shelf design cost $400M each.

Cancelled in 2009 after sinking $4.4B; sane program management got the replacement VH-92 in at a third of the unit cost.
Image
Image
Read 13 tweets
Nov 5, 2023
The Russians have lost around a thousand tanks in Ukraine during the war thus far.

Oh, you want an explanation? Okay. Thread. ⬇️ Image
There has been a problem in estimating Russian vehicle losses since the first hours of the war - Ukrainian propagandists have flooded the internet with dodgy pictures of destroyed Soviet-era vehicles, claimed as Russian. I got started debunking them.

See:
It occurred to me recently, though, that there's a way to "back out" Russian vehicle losses from far better-confirmed data for Russian personnel losses. According to Mediazona's ongoing count there have been 724 Russian tankers killed in the war to date. Image
Read 9 tweets

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