The numbers of dead/wounded in this war is very difficult to ascertain with any kind of accuracy. This is not unusual, since it is a dynamic, ongoing situation, and in addition, both the Russians and Ukrainians are low-balling their own numbers for political and morale reasons.
It is common to use wounded-to-killed rations to get a norm count, but that is very deceiving here. For one, define a wound. I have kept track in my changing group of 15 people… I have been with others, but they are gone and I have no idea where or what their status is now.
I have been “wounded” twice from shell fragments and natural missiles from shell explosions, but I never sought medical aid, nor reported them. Six of the fifteen I know had similar, non-reported wounds, and four had serious wounds or wounds they felt needed medical attention.
Three have been killed. So the killed percentage is 0.2. The “wimp wound” number is about 0.5. The “real” wound number is 0.26. So, doing what we are doing, our killed and wounded to-group ration is almost identical.
Obviously this is a small sample.
After an infantry firefight, even one with heavy weapons involved, it is usually relatively easy to get a body count. The body parts may be displaced from an explosion, but are almost always intact enough to count.
Also typically you do not get the high temperature burning that makes things difficult, again due to explosive displacement prior to sustained burning.
On the contrary, in a vehicle hit by AT, bombs or artillery, and especially if it cooks off, what you are left with can be a little confusing. At 1000 C or so even bones can shrink a considerable amount before the vehicle cools enough to be accessible.
And if it explodes which they often do, because of the tamping effect on the vehicle (especially a tank) things tend to deconstruct radically.
So, things can be hard to count, assuming you have time to do so, which you often do not. Really what you are left with is the large bones or insulated bones (in boots), which are now likely charred and in some cases broken up.
Teeth enamel usually holds up, but that is not a viable count media. Most everything else per a body, to paraphrase Tom Wolfe is: “burned wings and shanks.”
Generally in an unaccelerated fire, the peripheral bone parts survive better than the core parts, simply because of less body fat. But, this is not always the case in a fire fed with volatile chemicals and reactive metals.
In an APC or troop truck you might be able to count damaged weapons, but that can fool you since they may have been hauling weapons supplies. Feet with boots on them is another method. But, in the end, you often just have to make an estimate.
What I report is the minimum number that I can count, and if I cannot count, then I say I don’t know. Due to the number of Russian’s extant in high temperature situations, we may be off by 20 – 30%, possibly more. Another problem with my numbers is that we predominantly operate at night, and that creates its own confusion and difficulties in estimating casualties.
In Vietnam and northern Iraq it was much easier to get body counts, even after an Arc Light attack (Vietnam). There would almost always be enough stuff left to get a viable count. Obviously napalm and WP (white phosphorus—ed.) were some exceptions to that.
Another issue is the future state of the wounded. We generally do not have the time and resources to deal with wounded Russians, and the risk is usually too high anyway. You can swear some guy with half of his head blown off will die, but you never know for sure. Some guy will die of a hangnail and the next might survive a full mag of 7.62.
It is usually easier to estimate combat ineffective, which is practically the same as dead, and in some cases may be better since wounded people require additional resources to deal with.
But even this has had difficulties. In a fleeting firefight at range and/or at night, you just don’t know for sure until you have time to sweep for bodies and wounded.
One thing I can say with confidence, at least from my limited experience in my sector, the Russian KIA/WIA is much higher than on the Yook side.
And, unless the Russian’s are keeping accurate manpower records, and I doubt they are, and then following-up on them, they don’t know either.
When this thing ends, there will be a lot of MIAs, ranging from nothing left to count, desertions, and the widespread use of third-party combatants.
I can say with confidence that our mutt to us kill ratio is very high, mainly from AV hits and cook-offs and concentrating on troop carriers. Lot of bang for your buck there, especially since they also carry supplies.
I wish we could concentrate on artillery and rocket launchers, but working that deep with little cover and limited escape routes is pretty much suicide.
(Incomplete discussion of unmanned tanks follows—ed.)
Once the humans are gone, you can reduce the armor and make them faster and make them faster and more maneuverable. But, I am not a tank expert by any means.
I am however becoming quite adept at fist pumping and yelling “Fuck you, Ivan” when one undergoes rapid disassembly.
Troop carriers not in an armored convoy have always been pretty soft targets. Lately I have caught myself thinking a bit of heresy, that even tanks seem a lot of softer than they should be. I toast their lack of infantry cover.
But, it is also the man portable AT weapons. In Vietnam we had LAWs, but we never used them against tanks, only people and defended hooches and positions. The things available now from the west are amazing.
Well, we did miss a Zil 6X6 with a LAW by about 40 feet when the thing went off when the tube was extended. That meant a quick retrograde attack….i.e., a tactical footrace to the rear.
I have flown in helos twice here over miles of open ground, just like a stunned turkey with his dick out. At least in Vietnam you could fly low and fast over the trees.
Oh, and per the Russian’s “Wave” comm systems, I have yet to see any evidence of it, although it could certainly be in-play. It is a well known technology, but requires a lot of effort and coordination to use. And, I don’t think they can pull it off without some local centralization. I will keep looking.
I think to work, they would have to delegate more control to non-existent specialized NCOs than they would care to do. But it depends on how the network infrastructure is set up. They do like HF for sure.
I can see quite a bit of aviation comm on 8 Mhz, some is encrypted, but an equal amount is native voice. General group messages and weather tends to be in Morse Code.
Those tend to be very uninteresting, but I have a Morse translator, since I am not good at code, and even worse when it is in Cyrillic. Supposedly, Siri and Alexa can do that.
Some messages have a preamble in the clear, and you can gather from that whether it is to air, rocket or ground forces, and also the message urgency, then they are followed by encrypted garbage. I have a lot of that garbage saved. I basically screen capture the waterfall and record the audio. The encrypted messages tend to be short, less than 30 seconds.
I can get a direction on them, but that has to be taken with a grain of salt due to ionospheric influence.
The potential for SDR for all kinds of fun and interesting things is not fully tapped. I have learned a lot here just by experience. And I can put my whole rig in a shoebox. I carry it in two gallon double zip baggies. I can unpack, assemble and be on the air in a few minutes…if I don’t have to excavate a hole to get a decent ground.
I would also look at a log periodic, it would be inefficient, but would probably provide a wider bandwidth. And, maybe vertical and horizontal LP, since I am seeing the edges of what I think are circular polarized signals. Maybe from satellites.
Any chance those are from Starlink sats I wonder?
Don’t think so, their beacons are in the KU band.
Another thing would be folding side reflectors that I could adjust to cut-out side noise. If I keep hanging around here cooling my heels, I might try to borrow some wire and hang a long wire up and see what I can get omnidirectionally.
I do not have jamming capability, but what I can do, after some learning, is inject digital signals and try to confuse a platform. It is far from perfect, delay is a real issue.
One thing I suffer from is a bad ground. Not being able nor willing to haul a ground rod with me, nor the means to drive in the ground, I came-up with another method.
I drilled a hole in the blade of my knife next to the quillon, and put a small bolt stud in it with a female electrical quick connect. The male part is on my ground wire. It works pretty well, unless the ground is really dry on the surface. I soldered the quick connect onto the stud. I carry a few extras. But, here you can usually dig a bit and find wet soil.
And for the knife freaks…yes, I do have to jam it in the dirt. But, I do carry a small whetstone to keep it sharp. I have to since I shave with it.
One of my daughters watched me dry shave with a knife once and asked me if I was practicing for the First Afghan War. Smart ass.
A few other things that in retrospect I might bring: at one point I was outfitted with a super strong tape that did not have a large hollow roll it was just wound on itself and was about ½” in diameter. THat would be handy here.
A quality gun cleaning kit. But, would need to be small and light.
Condoms or balloons to put over my rifle muzzle. I should have thought of that. Like at my age they have any other use.
Ukraine Volunteer Transcripts 