Bil Hardenberger

{Apologizing for a very long post up front - proceed at your own risk}
Ok now we are getting somewhere.  There is ample evidence that in 2014 the RA surprised the world in that it did not actually suck, there is your citation above and then from the references I posted:
"The Ukraine conflict has been described as “World War I with technology.”11 One aspect that stands out in the Ukraine conflict is the Russian employment of indirect fires. Combining separatist and regular BTGs, Russia has effectively degraded Ukrainian military forces with long range artillery and rocket fire. Russia’s preferred concept of operations has been to keep its fires units at a safe distance, while relying on drones, counter-battery radars, and other intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets to target over the horizon.12 The observed combination of increased range and precision tracks with a general trend noted worldwide, particularly with multiple rocket launchers. As a result, Russia has on numerous occasions successfully blunted Ukrainian operations while avoiding significant casualties. Ukraine, on the other hand, is estimated to have suffered 80% of its casualties from artillery fire.13 The increased lethality has required fewer rounds, yet Russia has also demonstrated that it retains the ability to mass large volumes of fires when necessary."
"A defining feature of Russian fires has been their speed. Ukrainian units report that once a
Russian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is spotted they may receive artillery strikes within
minutes."
https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NS-D-10367-Learning-Lessons-from-Ukraine-Conflict-Final.pdf

 

These by Karber - there is no grey area here and plenty more which we could fill pages with.  Yes, the Russian proxy forces did suck but these were not Russian "hybrids" by any stretch, it was not until summer '14 thru winter '15 that RA conventional forces got fully in the game, and even then highly constrained because - denial.  Once those conventional forces got into the game they appeared to largely dominate the battlespace and a series of major reversals on the UA ensued.  
This surprised the hell out of everyone - I was in FD at the time - because exactly as you note "Russia has been sucking" at conventional war since the end of the Cold War, from Chechnya thru Georgia.  Suddenly this yokel military was doing things that we could not do, particularly with integration of tactical fires.  But...and it is a big "but" (tee hee) even Karber saw some holes that point to the fact that all was not sunshine and roses on the RA side:

Ah ha!  To my old eye this speaks to 1) lack of PGM integration and 2) a rigid system that can deliver very fast but lacks agility to switch on the fly.  So what?  Well in the intervening 8 years the UA adapted to highly dispersed and more mobile warfare.  There is a lot more out there on how in 2014 the Russian's did not suck tactically and even hints they got their act together operationally - but nowhere near enough for 2022.  Finally the results also speak for themselves as the outcome of the war was clearly a Russian win - even with only gaining half of the Donbas, the Russian failure was translating a tactical win to a strategic one.  In fact it appears that Putin simply "post-truthed" the entire thing and called it a strategic win, when it was not.   We could fill a lot more forum space on this but in the end Ukraine was not cowed and subserviently accepting Russian dominance, they pivoted heavily to the west - we started our training missions there then - and conducted major military reforms exactly because they had suffered battlefield defeats.  It is on Putin and Russia for 1) giving Ukraine the breathing room and 2) convincing themselves of their own superiority.  Both factors led directly to the debacle of this war.  In fact Putin likely set in motion the very reasons for this war - a westward facing Ukraine looking seriously at NATO.
So rather than playing "Russia Sucks" and "No It Doesn't - UA rulez" because it is frankly going to get us nowhere lets have a conversation on what the real issue is in the early assessment of this war and why it went largely wrong.  I offer it had nothing to do with "Russia Sucks" or "Russia Rulz" and everything to do with two key factors in the analysis - context and scaling, the pitfalls of effective military assessment. (that is right folks, the deep truths are very often the least sexy).
So the primary issue with pre-war assessments - and I am talking for both the west and Russia - as far as I can can tell is that they took the tactical performance of the RA in 2014 1) out of context, 2) failed to properly understand the challenges of scaling and 3) applied very poor alignment of that scaling.
So what is The_Capt talking about?
Well context is the first daemon people did not slay.  Karber glanced off it and many cautioned against directly translating the phenomenon of 2014 over to this war but it looks like everyone did it to some extent anyway. 
In other work we studied global pandemics for various reasons, the fact we were in one being the primary, and we found that pandemics are not unlike wars when looking at macro and micro social constructs.  It causes similar tensions, vertical and horizontal, and reaches deeply into human psyche.  But that is not my point here, the major conclusion was that pandemics are like wars in that each has commonality between events but also is each unique in its context.  There will only ever be one COVID-19 pandemic.  In ten years COVID could take a twist to the left and do its gig, but the context will be very different.  Primarily, it would occur in a post-COVID 19 world.  The trick in pandemics and wars is being able to identify what is a trend and what is an isolated phenomenon, and how we do this is through careful analysis of context.  
So the 2014 war was very small by the standards of this one.  Russian involvement at the strategic level had major issues - one of which I just explained up there.  Russia demonstrated acumen in strategic subversive warfare - and frankly I have read and heard plenty that we probably over estimated this as well - however, they had no strategic follow through and displayed a lot of poor assumptions and biases both going into and out of 2014.  It was no strategic masterpiece and we should have expected a strategic mess in this war as this was a visible trend from way back to Chechnya.  Further it was made unfixable largely due to political interference.
Next, there were signals that at the operational level the RA was still operating under an old ruleset.  My take away from Steve's posted citations was likely problems with the RA logistical system and the lack of operational enablers.  The Russian issues with operational level of warfare were not really that evident but there were plenty of indications that all was not perfect either.
Tactically, we have already discussed at length but here is where context left the building.  Ok, so 4000 RA conventional troops summer '14, which is what? about 3 BTGs? - managed to score some pretty impressive points against a military that was clearly not prepared for what they brought.  But this does not immediately translate to the entire RA, nor does it mean the RA could do this at a different scale.  Assessing tactical success or failure without context is nearly useless - we learned that in places like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan the hard way.  Further onto the real punchline - tactical success or failure without full understanding of scaling is not useless, it is dangerous as hell.
So scaling can go up or down, and the major failure in understanding this war from a lot of the experts was the assumptions on scaling the RA in both directions.  First there was taking the tactical performance in 2014 and upscaling it.  It was a huge leap, and frankly pretty amateur for the pay grades of some of these experts, to take the observed RA tactical "wows" and upscale them through the operational level to the strategic. The level of complexity and investment to make those "wows" happen on a larger scope and scale, let alone synchronize them is a challenge for the US military who is spending the most on military capability in the history of our species (ok, and before the Prussian, Mongol and Spartan lovers jump in...per capita exceptions accepted...gawd, I hate all you so much).  It was an enormous leap of logic to think that Russia would walk out of phonebooth as a super-military able to do something the US and western allies would think twice about - the upscaling challenges were (and are) frankly humbling.
Now because chaos rules in this universe, it is a bit less of a leap to say badness upscales, I will give you that; however, it is also a risky venture.  Less so for outcomes but it masks a whole lot of the macro-issues, which frankly if Russia ever did solve for, we should be concerned because by definition it will mean they understand their weakness and can learn from them.
So at the beginning of this war, we had a lot of experts who had spent 8 years upscaling 2014 and then failed to down-scale when the war actually happened...seriously?!  A whole lot of wargames and operational research showed the RA in Kyiv in less than a week.  Wargames in the Baltics showed the same Russian blitzkriegs.  So, ok, lets forget that Russian superiority at the strategic and operational level was in doubt even from 2014, failure to downscale and actually test the Russian "wows" against what they were going to be facing at the tactical level (and we had a very good idea what the UA was capable of at the tactical level - we had been training with them for years).  In the business we call this macro-masking, which is where macro calculus fails to take into account micro-phenomenon across a broad range of samples. 
For example, if all the experts had loaded pre-war scenarios into CMBS they would have seen that battlefield friction had gone up significantly.  So if your dice rolls at the operational level say "the RA will advance in three days", well test out that advance across a range of tactical vignettes and lo and behold it did not go so well because it turns out that global ISR advantage, plus smart-ATGMs, plus PGM against what the RA could bring to the party pointed squarely to rethinking those stupid operational dice tables. 
So what?  Well over here in CM land we were looking for other things than those at the macro-table.  The (very expensive) experts with lot of letters behind their names were watching the big red lines on the country map because that is how they played their games.  We were looking at a lot of abandoned Russian equipment - and I mean a lot of very valuable equipment.  We were seeing a steady stream of hi res UAS video coming out of Ukraine on a daily basis when we should not be seeing anything.  We saw RA combined arms fall apart, right along with their logistics as demonstrated by F ech vehicles out of gas and burning re-fuelers.  It did not take a major leap at this altitude to know there was really loud dangerous sounds coming out of the RA engine room, while mainstream was waiting for Kyiv to fall.  However, we also understood upscaling as well.  The effect of the tactical mess spread along most operational axis was consistent - as was the complete lack of operational integration.  Targeting, air support, logistics and the list goes on - the RA was fighting 5-6 separate 2014s, not a coherent and integrated joint operation designed to collapse Ukrainian option spaces.  
So, so what?  Well sitting around and patting ourselves on the back is about as helpful as circle-jerking does for procreation. I think we have established we were, and still are to some extent ahead of the curve - no point dancing a jig on that one.  What we need to do is fully understand what is happening on the ground on this war, what is a trend and what is isolated context.  I am not really interested in what I think I know, I am interested in what I know I do not know.  For example, the old Capt has gone on about mass...at length.  Well if the utility of military mass has shifted, even slightly, the repercussions are profound - one need only study WW1 and WW2 to see why.  Do the principles of war even still apply?  Is conventional manoeuvre warfare still a thing? Is the tank dead? What the hell just happened?  
The point of a highly distributed collective "brain" as we have developed here on this little forum is to try and understand the events better - to inform and create cognitive advantage.  So this is not about sitting around and feeling good watching RA soldier have a bad last day, nor self-validation or promoting/reinforcing echo-chamber; it is about collective learning about war through what is happening in this one...and what better place to do that than a bunch of computer wargamers with far too much time on their hands? 
  
 
 

Night launch of Javelin. Successful
 

Extended version from unlocked account. Russian helicopter flew along neutral zone and after missile hit turned right to own territory. It fell between Spirne (UKR-controlled) and Mykolaiivka (RUS-contolled)
Russian social media shared the same video with claims this is UKR helicopter, being shot down near Kostiantynivka, but this is fake. UKR really lost Mi-8 there, but it reportedly crashed because of technical reasons. Crew allegedly survived. 
Russians claim the helicopter on the video is Mi-8 of older series, which now use only Rosgvardiya and they always have a cover of Mi-24/Ka-52. Army as if uses only newest Mi-8AMTSh and Mi-8AMTV-5 (no). But this can be a chopper of Wagner or Rosgvardiya, here the photo of UKR crashed Mi-8/17 - we can see diffrent terrain with some facility on background

PS. Other Russian TG already confirmed this was Mi-8 of Wagner - 2 pilots dead, 1 injured 
"Due to information we have, this is board of Russian PMC.... Today we lost exellent officers, even they are already retired and do not "employing" in MoD. Fastest recovery to survived one. Ethernal flight, men" 

I know everybody is excited and would like to know what is next after the Base Game... believe me we are all excited too!
As far as follow-on modules go.. yes several are planned, but what they are specifically we will keep to ourselves until after the game is released.  For now the focus must stay on the base-game for us, but feel free to conjecture and dream, I enjoy those threads, but we won't be confirming or denying anything until after this one is on the street.
Just so you guys know that we aren't ignoring you in those discussions, we are trying to stay focused and not get sidetracked so we can deliver this thing in time.
Cheers, Bil

And I would argue that the point you are missing is that on a strategic and operational level they took that “pretend force” and advanced deeply into the country they were invading and still hold over 20% of it.  We can slight their tactical capability all day (and do) and even though they have been a mess strategically and operationally there is nothing Potemkin or “cargo cultish” about the threat they pose or what they were capable of at higher levels of warfare, particularly at the beginning of this war.
It is as slippery a slope to under estimate the comparative tactical capabilities, as was demonstrated by many experts before this war.  They failed to downscale their strategic and operational assessments and we saw pretty quick the results on the ground quickly failed to meet predictions.  Hell three days into this thing we knew all of the higher level assessment were off because of what we saw on the ground.
Underestimating cuts both ways.  It is just as dangerous to try and take tactical shortfalls and upscale them directly onto the operational and strategic levels.  We have witnessed too many brilliantly conducted strategic campaigns with low quality forces in the VEO space to fall for that one.  Russian tried a form of combined arms that simply did not work; however, they still translated that into limited strategic/operational objectives.  
It was the Ukrainian way of war, supported by the west, and some emerging realities of warfare that broke the Russian system.  Ukrainian forces learned faster and better.  Without western support would we be talking about a Ukrainian offensive at all?  Without Ukrainian fast development of capability?  No, the RA was a hot mess and is a dumpster fire at this point but that was not the determinative factor in this war.  They had enough mass advantage, as ugly as it was, that if this was a battlefield of even a decade ago they might have pulled it off.  This is the biggest problem with the “Russia Sux” narrative, it is far too easy an answer.  It misses a lot of nuances and complex factors that we have literally been tracking right here.
The RA was a fumbling mess but it was at the gates of an enemy capital.  They still are resisting and will likely still be on occupied ground by this winter.  What I am on the lookout for are signs the Russians are actually learning.  For example, they bought a bunch of Iranian UAVs but they are using them as ersatz cruise missiles, not to improve their C4ISR game…which is a good sign they are still not learning.
Finally the biggest reason I am firmly against the “Russia just sux” narrative is that it encourages us to stop learning.  If that is the definitive unifying theory of this war then all phenomena can be explained by it, we have nothing left to learn.  This does nothing to inform us on the direction modern war is heading nor how we need to start thinking about it because it all boils down to “Russia Sux!”  Well 1) Russia is sucking but not everywhere, 2) that does not explain everything we have been seeing and 3) there are things happening in this war that “cargo cult” does not explain and we are way off if we start to thinking that way.

I know everybody is excited and would like to know what is next after the Base Game... believe me we are all excited too!
As far as follow-on modules go.. yes several are planned, but what they are specifically we will keep to ourselves until after the game is released.  For now the focus must stay on the base-game for us, but feel free to conjecture and dream, I enjoy those threads, but we won't be confirming or denying anything until after this one is on the street.
Just so you guys know that we aren't ignoring you in those discussions, we are trying to stay focused and not get sidetracked so we can deliver this thing in time.
Cheers, Bil

I returned to Red Thunder having never really given it a fair shake (I don't have F&R but will soon) and resolved to try and grind through the Soviet campaign.
I struggle with the Micro at Bn scale but have got used to it now, and I enjoy trying to apply lessons from @Bil Hardenberger's great blog. 
 
Honestly I am struggling a bit. The issues with Hammer's Flank are well known (there's at least one huge thread) and It is what it is, but I'm able to get some successes but still can't quite work the Soviet infantry properly.
Specifically, I've got competent at scouting but on the third map It's extremely difficult to achieve fire superiority. Time and again I try and set up a base of fire and a defending MG squad overwhelms them with relative ease. The 2 81mm mortars I have for battalion support take 10 minutes for a fire mission and aren't particularly effective as keeping the spotter alive that long is a challenge. The map is wide flat with hedgerows and cottages for cover. There is a slightly elevated railway line towards the back but I am not there yet...
The fundamental issue is a base of fire from concealment (hedgerow or treeline) is vulnerable
Usually I'd bring up an assault gun but the map is laced with AT guns and they simply can't maneuver into firing positions. Plus the SU76 is probably the most brittle thing out there.
I'd picked an approach using the nearest edge of the town, which went okay but as soon as I find a dug in position (just beyond, right on the railway line) the I struggle to get effective fire on it. Then of course the arty comes in, exacerbating things.

I cant bring up an SU76 because it'll get popped by an AT asset (there's a big AT gun under the 'Depot' label, plus some others off to the right). The one mortar strike I managed did nothing, and if I position supporting fire troops in the hedge rows they get wasted after a turn or two. Anything inside of 200yds vs an MG42 team needs very good cover.
It's really, really hard to pull it off with just infantry. Any tactical pointers are appreciated. I'm thinking I need to use the hard cover of the houses more. I'll try that, but there's a whole company on this flank and bringing them all to bear is difficult.

Interpreting of last Mashovets posts
During last 5 days Russians have been crossing to active preventing of further advaning of AFU on Svatove - Kreminna section. They are trying to win a time for more solid defense establishing and want to seize more advantageous forward positions
NW from Svatove Russians are counter-attacking in area Kolomyichykha village with forces about 1,5 BTG of 1st GTA, mainly consisting of 27th MRB units
W and SW from Svatone Russians countering UKR troops on the line Raihorodka - Karmazynivka and also on direction Krasnorichynske - Makiivka. Here Russian forces consists of mainly of 3 BTGs of 254th MRR of 144th MRD and 55th MRB (moutnain), elements of some Spetsnaz brigade (likely 16th, but maybe 3rf too), elements of reservists volunteer battalions BARS-13 and BARS-16
Most active attempts not only to delay UKR forces, but even to retake the line Terny - Torske, enemy has conducted 4-5 days ago, atatcking of Terny and yesterday, shifted attack of Torske. Initially they have thrown forward 6th assault detachment of Wagner PMC, completely consisting of former jailed - 110 men. They attacked by two groups per 40-45 men with recon groups ahead, but anyway were spotted by UKR troops and shelled with mortars and artillery. Later Russians moved forward 2nd echelone - reinforced company of 752nd MRR of 3rd MRD, two platoons of BARS-13 reservists, and a rifle company of DPR mobiks (on the map mistakingly depicted as LPR) from 119th rifle regiment. Ememy had too small number of armor (likely only in 752nd MRR company and likely abot 50 % of full composition), but actively used artullery and mortars fire to support own troops. Russian attack was repelled, Wagner assauult unit lost about 30 % of personnel, at least one jailed was captured. He told about on their section soon will arrive one more assault detachment from the former jailed and about 30 % of personnel have high motivation to fight. Yesterday assault of Torske also was repelled, though Russians likekly could reach outskirts of the village - one soldier wrote "Russians are really in Torske, but only dead"
If we will take whole sector Svatove - Siveroidonetsk, Russians formed here two conditional groupings - "northern" (Svatove area) and "southern" (Kreminna - Rubizhne - Siverodonetsk).
Total their defense consists of 10-11 BTGs in first line and 6-7 BTGs in second line as tactical reserve. 4-5 more BTGs are in deep rear on replenishing.
Theese forces are from 2nd, 20th, 41st CAAs, 1st TA and elements of one Spetsanz brigade (16th or 3rd): 2 BTGs of 21st MRB, 2 BTGs of 30th MRB, 2 BTGs (remains) of 200th MRB, 1 BTG of 55th MRB (mountain), BTG of 27th MRB
Also here 2 BTGs of 4th MRB of LPR, 4 rifle battalions of mobiks from two rifle regiment (one of them 119th rifle regimeny of DPR), 7 battalions of LPR Territorial defense and mobiks, 6 detachments of different BARS and regional voulunteer battalins (total strength is about of 1,5 standard battalions)
Need to know, that Russian BTGs after Balakliya disaster in real in better case are "2 company-sized" or "reinforced company-sized". BTGs also lost from 30 % and up to 50-60 % of own vehicles
Russian grouping wich covers remained part of Kharkiv oblast and border area (Tavilzhanka - Troitske - Nyzhnia Duvanka) has 6-7 BTG: 2 BTGs of 55th MRB, 1 BTG of 15th MRB, 1 BTG of 252nd MRR of 3rd MRD, remains of BTG of 200th MRB,  remains of 59th TR of 144th MRD, combined battalion - remains of 18th coastal MRD of 11 Army Corps 
   
 

Teen uses dating app to get Russians to reveal their positions (msn.com)

Since when did what become an acknowledged fact?  
To restate my point - the Afghan withdrawal pathway started in February 2020 and was supposed to have been put to bed well before it actually was put to bed.  There is an argument to say that it was sooner than that as the previous US administration was widely reported to be on the cusp of a deal in 2019 but stepped away from the dialogue in September 2019 following the death of US personnel in a Kabul IED attack.  From those start points the obvious question to ask in relation to the theory that the Afghan withdrawal is related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February this year is ... was a Russian invasion of Ukraine on the cards in 2019 or 2020?
In my response to the reemergence of this canard ... President Biden announced the withdrawal decision on April 14, 2021 and being an insider on matters Afghan and somebody who regularly attended meetings at the European Delegation, HQ Resolute Support and the UK and US embassies, I can tell you for a fact that nobody in the international community in Kabul had any idea which way President Biden was going to go until the decision was announced.  The supplementary question; therefore, is ... was a Russian invasion of Ukraine on the cards in April 2021?  The article I posted in my last post indicates that this was not the case until September 2021 which was after the last US service member walked up the ramp of a C17 in Kabul. 
The main problem with politically motivated theories of this ilk (and this is one, because it has been doing the rounds for at least over a month now and the handling of the Afghan withdrawal is a subject of justified scrutiny in the US) is that very few people are prepared to run the facts down and, as I said in my August 18 post, the most obvious explanation is usually the right one
Feel free to challenge any of the above (on another thread) but Afghanistan and intelligence analysis is my day job, so it is always handy to have some facts to hand before doing so.
As to "actual proof that there was early intel" - that is a big ask - intelligence is generally classified and/or on a limited distribution.
To bring this back on topic - guess which country beginning with 'R' and ending with 'ussian Federation' has been buying up container loads of medical equipment, body armour, helmets and other assorted military paraphernalia from local suppliers in Kabul this month?

I do wish these videos would show the actual engagement, without edits.  These edited videos, which skip from the early fight to the aftermath, without the interesting bit in-between are frustrating. 

I do wish these videos would show the actual engagement, without edits.  These edited videos, which skip from the early fight to the aftermath, without the interesting bit in-between are frustrating. 

I do wish these videos would show the actual engagement, without edits.  These edited videos, which skip from the early fight to the aftermath, without the interesting bit in-between are frustrating. 

@akd
Here the full video of episode, where Russian T-80 destroyed UKR T-64 with point blanc shot, but this video filmed already from Ukranian drone. Part of it I've posted several hours ago, but this one has additional episodes of Russian infantry bombing from the drones. 
This was near Yehorivka village, Donetsk oblast - Vuhledar sector. I thought, Russians had (or seized) some positions in tree plant and our troops hit them hard with arty. Probably tank was sent there, but simultainosly Russian troops (likely 61st naval infantry brigade) sent there armored convoy with T-80 and BMP-3 - 6 vehciles total. UKR tank spotted the enemy, when they already approached. Maybe crew paniced, maybe gun failed, but T-64 got a shell from T-80 and set fire (at 0:48 - 0:54). But Russians also were surprised and became to roll back, probably expecting more UKR armor. When half of enemy armor became to withdraw, ATGM launcher of National Guard SOF unit "Omega" launched a missile. First hit mid Russian BMP-3, but it's abscent on next cadres, so it probably either could move itself or was towed away. One BMP-3 stayed near treeplant to take wounded or dead Russian soldiers from destroyed position. When it departed, next ATGM chased it.   
 

I like the completely irrelevant inclusion of the sunken Moskva just to remind everyone about it
 

BVP-80A squad in action somewhere on South
 

To restore balance:
 

Close-range tank fight:
 

Sorry for interrupting a lovely conversation about a deeply relevant topic but we have an interesting UKR rumor

Ukrainian Su-24 strike near front lines with high-drag dumb bombs (and a good reminder of how off CM is with dumb bomb employment):
 

There is potential for some very interesting Pacific war situations.. Khalkhin Gol and the early war from 1935 up to 1942-43 has some very interesting situations, the Japanese fought the Soviets, the Brits and Commonwealth, and the US.. how can that not be enticing? But this is not my area of expertise, and thus not really on my radar as a subject, though I do think there would be a market for it... if done right.
Bil 

You should put that on a T Shirt.

Oh no we pretty much all got your point.  I was attempting to elevate the discussion past your personal grievances and back to the root issue at hand.
But of course, we all know you have been wronged, it is a subject you have not been exactly shy about expressing.  We can only hope that this alleged injustice can be addressed in the fullness of time.