The_Capt

So maybe 5k, not 50k. Well then this really was more RA leg humping to prove some sort of point. Based on the rumoured losses it looks more like Russian business as usual as they lose hundreds of people for small gains. The UA likely picked them up on ISR but either was constrained or did not have the resources at hand. RA grabbed a few kms and then got stopped. Dismounted aspect looks more likely either due to shortfalls or simple battlefield realities, as opposed to a shift in tactics. And we are back to another Friday in this war.

That is what made this one weird, it looks more like high mass and high density. Those are very modest frontages and depth the RA is playing with, if it was 50k troops then for the first time in a long time high density mass may have been used effectively. But of course it was at walking speed so the other important factor of momentum was lost. News reports are all indicating that the UA has bottled this one back up, but it is still not clear how (or why) RA dismounted mass was being employed.

Even though Steve gave this line a warning shot, I think we need to try and really put some punctuation points on the idea because it does directly relate to this war. Beyond these points here, opening up another strategic front in this war, which is essentially widening it into multiple proxy conflicts, comes with extreme risks. First problem is that it is indeed a major escalation on Russia's doorstep. This would be akin to Russia sparking a proxy war between the US and Mexico...that is how World Wars start. This may very well cross a nuclear or WMD threshold, and we would be starting it. In fact if we were going to go down this route it would make more sense to do it on multiple fronts - the Caucuses and the Stans. Start leveraging the East-West divides. This of course is setting in motion events which could lead to a hard-fast collapse of Russia - which a few people out there still are not getting as a bad thing. Second problem is resources. FFS, we can barely support one proxy war. How do you think we are going to do trying top keep 2 or more going? If we somehow talked Georgia into going rogue they may wind up looking at the 1992 Kurds longingly when it comes to western support. Third is that it will definitely make Putin's job a lot easier...and frankly the Russians would be correct in doing so. If my nation was suddenly being attacked on multiple fronts by a foreign power, no matter what we may have done to trigger it, survival instinct is going to kick in. This would no longer be a far fetched conspiracy, the West would be trying to destroy Russia - one cannot have a soft wide-scale proxy assault. Finally, if we are actually willing to go this direction...why not stop f#cking around and just commit Western forces to Ukraine? We are courting WW3 anyway, commit and hope we can drive Russia out (if we can) without sparking an Apocalypse. A bunch of proxies are a half-measure when compared to risk. I keep coming back to this. None of this is the western strategy here. We want containment and a slow burnout. We want a soft long fatal trajectory for Russia with a lot of potential for offramps along the way. We want to prove that the Western Rules Based Order works, not blow it up. Ukraine is important, but it is not that important. "So what is that important Cap'n?" Well good question and one we really need to have an answer for, before we drag ourselves further into a WW1 situation...but now with nukes.

Mass. The UA had been using small dispersed forces in its tactical bitings last summer. The RA has been using small Cbt teams as short sharp stabs. (and paying for it). From what we can see this was a large dismounted wave with some mech elements. Numbers of 50k have been thrown around. The aim was not infiltration-to-erode, it was to take and hold ground with what looks like unit sized dismounted troops. That is a different kettle of dead Russians.

This one is still bizarre to my eyes. Not the objectives or plan - opening up a new “front” has a lot of pluses from the Russian side, not the least of which getting the West all flustered. It was how Russia appears to have tried this. If the reports of this attack being done largely by dismounted infantry are in fact accurate then something is going on. Either this was an RA tactic based on battlefield realities, or the RA does not have enough mech left to make a proper go of it…or a combination of both. I mean conducting an operational advance with dismounted infantry is something from WW1. I think there was this sort of action during the Iran-Iraq war but again, this is not normal. I for one am really interested in how this all went down as it may provide some clues as to the health of the RA.

We have the Lynx, which if one squints could pass for an M114. But these will be in the Canadian TOEs

Gonna weigh in here, so what we are dancing around here is political warfare/subversive warfare/active measures/stick-a-new-label-on-it-and-claim-it-was-my-idea. Is it an option space...sure. There are actions we could take in the backfield to create strategic friction and disruption, we could even engineer paralysis - it has been done to us. But this is the last thing from an "easy button." Subversive warfare campaigns take years to setup - mapping, testing and simply keeping up with internal shifts in an opponents human systems would cripple our current intelligence agencies. We had this back during the Cold War - and we all remember how well CIA follies went in places like Cuba. This is extremely tricky work, even with advent that human terrain mapping is technically "easier" in the information age (it really isn't). Assuming you can get enough awareness to even start to play this game, the risks are high. Human systems are non-linear and potentially explosively auto-catalytic. Subversive warfare has more in common with bomb disposal than anything else - a bunch of barely evolved primates armed with the internet is not a cave one walks into lightly. And then there is the target. Free democracies are incredibly messy, but we are resilient as hell compared to rigid autocratic societies. Dictators have single points of failure that when tripped can get out of hand really fast. We have talked a lot about a coherent theory of Russian failure. For subversive warfare - like somehow convincing and supporting Georgia with active SOF and CIA - we could see things get out of hand and out of control very quickly. No politician is going to sign off on - "Well we are not sure but it might result in Russia falling apart. You know...for Ukraine." Much more likely given our woeful inexperience it will blow up publicly in our faces. We cannot take a big "sh#t on the floor at the UN", it is the bloody house we built. Finally, these sorts of actions are more about strategic shaping for negotiation advantage, not really winning a proxy war. No single harassing ship sinking is going to force Russia to the table - however, it may very well drive support into Putin's arms and allow him to actually mobilize. Covert and clandestine in the modern age is a lot harder. Most times Russia "gets away with it" is not because we can't figure it out, it is because we cannot be bothered. If Putin wants an oligarch to prove the laws of gravity in another country, do we really care? Diddling our democracy is finally getting eyebrows raised but no one yet thinks it has been much more than an accelerant, not a cause. No right wing nut jobs stormed the Hill because Russia or China told them to. Those powers likely made plays to help it along but this is not a evil masterplan...we are doing most of this to ourselves. So what? Well I am sure these options are on the whiteboard. And we very likely have some backfield muttering around potentially friendly power elites that we might be able to woo. We have provided Ukraine with intel and support to make things happen, but it is all in a nicely controlled box. We simply are not at the point where we are either able to, or want to "set Russia ablaze." Nor am I sure we want to escalate to that point anytime soon.

As we are expanding back to 1976 for BOAR, I can say that the Sheridan is definitely on the wish list of new vehicles. And our wish list is looking good. Oh and thanks for the kind words on Lions ‘79….

Not saying the effort was the waste it was the rapid ramping up. Worked in government long enough to know a massive spending sinkhole when I see one. The government needed rapid production of a bunch of stuff so industry had to rapidly increase production lines - that costs an obscene amount of money, which that funding would need to backstop because risks are so high. Government contracts were not doubt flying. It is not anyone fault, or at least no one still in the business today. We dialled all that back in the 90s, GWOT did not need it, and we ignored the signals from 2014. But it means that for some production runs the cost per unit was very high which soaks up the limited funding. Once we hit steady state we will be awash in artillery shells, let’s hope they do not show up too late. Russia should be very worried because the clock it ticking against them and they likely know it, hence the push to make hay while the sun shines this year.

It is good news…but, how much of all those billions were spent getting these factories back up to a wartime speed? We really got caught flat-footed by this war in many ways, I hope we learn from it.

The thing about space and a world class C4ISR enterprise is that they are non-negotiable for credible major powers. We cannot invest in ground capabilities (air or maritime for that matter) as an offset. We could have all the gold platted Bns but if we do not have a full spectrum ability to illuminate the battlespace on par with an opponent, or we likely lose. Russia just proved this in spades over the last two years - of course one needs capability to exploit that ISR but as Ukraine has shown one can risk manage capabilities, one cannot risk manage C4ISR disparity. Especially in a western context as we would never accept the losses Russia has suffered in a similar context (I.e. a discretionary war). So space based and high end C4ISR are pretty much non-negotiable no matter what damned vehicles we decide to use for manoeuvre. The remaining question is what is the best mix of capabilities to form a new combined arms team in this new environment?

I gotta be honest, I am far more concerned at the indications that then western mil industry complex has become a sponge for military aid. It makes sense that we had to go through them as Ukraine really had no MID of their own and we have been buying few-expensive for the last 30 years. Now we are asking industry to do many, so there are going to be losses. But I have a sinking feeling that a whole lot has been wasted getting our own factories up to speed while the UA goes dry. I am not sure that even if we got western troops involved (which we won’t) that we ammo stocks to supply them either. This trend of highly inefficient contributions has to stop. But perhaps we are in a “darkest before dawn” moment.

Ugh, now that 1) rings true and 2) is discouraging. We spend money for Ukraine on our own manufacturing to build capacity…which of course is going to come with western overhead and likely no small amount of fat-catting. FFS, it isn’t Ukrainian corruption we need to worry about, it may be the good old fashion western mil industrial complex.

You should really quit now because you are getting way out of your lane. You are now trying to apply the start up cost of strategic ISR to my tactical example. Strategic and operational costs are treated as equal in a peer conflict…that is why it is peer. You are also confusing operational and tactical platforms but that is more forgivable given the blurring we are seeing. A switchblade 600 also has a 40km range, at $80k apiece I can field 156 of them for the same cost as a single Skyranger. And this game is just starting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136 Yes we can assume parity in guns…peer conflict. If an enemy fancy prancy multimillion dollar mech company tries the same thing we will do it to them. We have got plenty of evidence of the significance losses cause by the ISR - artillery combo in this war on AFVs, there is no debate here. I have read a lot of articles and assessments and to be seen in this war is to be targeted and killed…so disperse, stay back or dig. C’mon man, you aren’t even trying now. I am the TV you are yelling at by this point. You wanna come on this thread and share you informed opinion at least do the damned homework: There is no APS for submunitions or EFPs but you completely missing the point…likely because you don’t want it. We are talking about layers of incoming threats that are going to overwhelm anything other than a very expensive - think carrier group - defensive bubble. For some weapons, like artillery, there is no counter. Or, while you accuse me of hand waving, going to chirp up on CRAM? I have stopped the company by this point because they are all freakin dead. That is because you have clearly demonstrated that you do not know what you are talking about. You have offered no real evidence or references, this is all your opinion. I know your background so go ahead and post it and we can play the compare resumes game. A battalion is a major target, as in “hey this ain’t no lovin probe”. It is going to draw an order of magnitude more hellfire, while being visible from even further back. So now we can introduce rockets like HIMARs, tac aviation and likely stand off CAS - do some reading on Chinese precision strike at 100kms. That is going to get engaged on top of everything else you have not solved for. With a Bn we also get into logistics loads and lines, which are definitely going to be targeted by a lot of systems. You are pinning a lot of hopes on the shield systems here. 30mm AA guns, APS, CRAM, AD and armor. I would add friendly UAS to this as well. And here is the punchline to my overall thesis - it still won’t work. We will end up spending so much money trying to keep very expensive platforms alive that we will cost ourselves out of the business. If I need a suite of counters that cost more than those Boxers themselves we get upside down very quickly. The evolution of warfare is not on the side of mech, which makes perfect sense as we have heavily incentivized countering mech for 80 years. There are too many cheap, mass producible ways to project friction and corrosion on the modern mech system. To the point that the system one would need to achieve superiority is likely able to replace the mech system we have. If you have an integrated system that can shoot down every bird sized drone flying in trees, swat every next gen ATGM and zap every artillery shell…point the f#cking thing at the enemy Boxer company! It will be able to shoot the tire bolts off from a postal code away. The solution, if we can build it, will change war more than the current problem we have. But you are so desperate to try and make the current system relevant that this point is being left on the table. Real grown ups do not give a flying fiddle whether tanks, IFVs or squirrels in f#cking jet packs can get offensive operations back up and running again. They care that they can get them up and running again in a manner that won’t bankrupt the nation and we can sustain for a high intensity war.