Bil Hardenberger

Warren, as an old school maneuverist and die-hard Boyd School mission command advocate this was a very interesting write up. Probably my favorite post of yours in the entire thread. You have actually given me some things to think about, rare for you.   
The future of the tactical and operational battlefield is an exciting thing. We are lucky to have something like Combat Mission to enable experimentation.
Bil

Warren, as an old school maneuverist and die-hard Boyd School mission command advocate this was a very interesting write up. Probably my favorite post of yours in the entire thread. You have actually given me some things to think about, rare for you.   
The future of the tactical and operational battlefield is an exciting thing. We are lucky to have something like Combat Mission to enable experimentation.
Bil

There are significant caveats to this, no? Does not Ukraine fight (and fought) the way it does out of sheer necessity, not just pre-war doctrine?
It seems that Russia fought in its original style in many ways due to its large pre-war vehicle park. Howebver a year of destruction has eroded that park and Russia does not seem capable of overmatching the current Rate Of Attrition, so is forced into tactical adjustments. Very soon (if not already in motion) they will be force to change their operational formatting. In fact, I suspect this is actually underway with the effective abandonment of the BTG model and the readjustment of force back into the classic (and larger) more resilient formations.
An all-western force by its own internal definition, would not operate under the same pressures, fail-points and stressors as the ZSU did at the start, no? A modern, integrated and fully implemented NATO style force (if that's what we're implying here) could not have struggled vis a vis this Russian invasion. If the ZSU, for all its faults, weaknesses (and even outright treason in its ranks) was able to both hold and throw back multiple Russian axis then surely a NATO force would have tripled that effect? The sheer quantity of quality equipment and matching doctrine, training from trench level to 40,000 ft up top would have done enormous damage extremely quickly. The Ukes are kicking some serious *** with just dribbles of our gear, They're using the stuff in the way it was intended, designed and doctrined for and slaughtering Russians with it every day- but you think an all-western approach might have struggled? 
I do fully agree, institutional blind spots abound in Western militaries, indeed all militaries because they are institutions. It's inevitable and inherent in the nature of the beast.
But there are blind spots and just plain blind.
 
 

Warren, as an old school maneuverist and die-hard Boyd School mission command advocate this was a very interesting write up. Probably my favorite post of yours in the entire thread. You have actually given me some things to think about, rare for you.   
The future of the tactical and operational battlefield is an exciting thing. We are lucky to have something like Combat Mission to enable experimentation.
Bil

Ok and @Kinophile can jump in on this one too.  So we are muddying up some stuff here, so to clarify:
- The original point on MC vs DC was to point out the cultural constipation of conventional services and how they are nowhere near as innovative or open to disruptive thinking as is often sold.  Over the military generations, military doctrine becomes dogma and counter-thinking in an organization that literally exists to create uniformity in behaviour is not well accepted.  We in the west have built a democratic myth of "empowerment and gumption" but it really does not translate well into actual military reality.  We can debate this but I know what I have lived for the better part of 3.5 decades. 
- The UA is a hybrid mix of Soviet and Western schools, and for them I think this was a major advantage.  It was not because we peppered them with western doctrine and training, it was because they had both worlds to pull from.  If we had an all western force in this thing, with the same restraints/constraints and capabilities as the UA, my hypothesis is that we would have done worse because we would have tried to apply an all-western approach.  I can definitely see in Phase I where this would have gotten us into a lot of trouble.  The UA is already outside of boxes and pulling in so much from the civilian side so quickly also helped in breaking doctrinal group-think and creating whatever this has turned into.  As to which school MC or DC, that the UA employs I do not think we have a clear idea but it is also likely a hybrid - which was how the entire thing was actually designed to work.
- MC vs DC schools of thought.  Ok, this is a whole other thing.  Mission Command is a essentially (and I will just use my own descriptions, feel free to go look up others) is essentially empowered command.  It arms subordinates with context and intent, "why we are doing this and here is what we are looking for".  This, plus allowing them to exercise initiative to exploit opportunity - the alignment of circumstance, context and capability, theoretically provides a force with higher potential for tempo advantage.  The thinking goes that empowered tactical commanders can see opportunity well before formation level and as such if they exploit it without waiting to be told the entire force can OODA faster than an opponent.  This is a cornerstone of Manoeuvre Warfare which is really a strategy of Annihilation through Dislocation.  We seriously bought off on all this and drank the Kool Aid on it about 40 years ago, to the point it became so dogmatic that it left little room for counter thought.
DC is one of mission control being held at higher levels.  Subordinates are empowered to do a task (The terms are actually derived from the Germans largely because Depuy and Starry really were hot for German warfare - Auftragstaktik and Befehlstaktik, The first meaning "mission tactics" the second "detailed orders tactics").  They then wait for further direction before exploiting opportunity.  They can still execute initiative in execution of the task but not the overall mission. 
So was born the Great American Military Myth (and frankly almost every western nation jumped onboard).  We were a democratized military built on "good ol 'merican innovation and initiative."  Further this All-Yankee Doodle (sorry but we really got beat over the head on this one back in the day) approach is very economic as it yields quick nearly bloodless wars.  The Persian Gulf became the poster child for this type of warfare, but more than few put up their hands and asked if it wasn't a false-positive.  The Gulf War was highly attritional and mostly driven by air supremacy - the land battle of mission command and manoeuvre warfare was basically executed against an already beaten foe, and one crushed by far more Detailed Command approaches of the Air Force. (This brings up the other problem with the Kool Aid, it really does not work for either the Navy or Air Force - and does not work enough for SOF, kinda).  
The truth is far more complicated.  The largest problem with Mission Command is that while it is great in theory it runs into serious problems in full execution because of all those pesky enablers.  Tactical commanders can run all over the place all empowered but there is only so much ISR, artillery, engineers and logistics to go around.  So what really happens is far more control in practice.  The Main Effort gets a lot more empowerment but if you are on a side gig, well you might very well get held back because the boss simply does not have the stuff to support you if you go all manouvrey.  Detail Command it far to restrictive and you get into micromanagement, so in reality neither systems works in extremes.
The future.  Well the problem was seen coming way back during the RMA days.  "What happens when a higher level commander knows more than a tactical one?"  I suspect if the UA has created a sort of ad hoc JADC2 system then this has already happened.  If a higher formation commander knows more than the tactical level, then DC starts to make a lot more sense.  And then what does Manoeuvre Warfare turn into? Well a form of Corrosive Warfare is one option apparently.  There is a lot of sense to this, we already do it with unmanned systems, which are going to expand in use not contract.  Detail Command that controls the battlespace like a production line and not a jazz band is not totally out of the question.  
So at one end we have "lets go all DC because higher can see all".  While at the other end we have "remove higher command entirely."  This is hyper-Mission Command, or self-synchronization.  Here tactical units are loaded up and basically command themselves with their peers - this gets a lot of traction in SOF circles. They then share enablers in a hand-off system where "higher" is really coordination and not command and control.  Here we get into military effects clouds and inverted command systems.  This also makes some sense but many are shy as to human nature.  How are enablers going to be shared?  This is always a friction point, and higher commanders are the referees.  What happens if we get rid of them.  Some have suggested AI does the job as it can calculate requirements far faster than a human can, or a human AI pairing because human can do context.
So in the end there is no "answer".  We should continue to try both, and maybe have a C2 system that can swing wildly from one to the other based on good ol human art of war.  But service cultures and equities already get in the way.  This is way tanks got resisted, the machine gun and even unmanned systems.  We make idols of our history and sometimes it gets in the way of evolution.  Experimentation and paying attention to wars like these are absolutely critical as we can start to get some idea of where things are going and then plan to adapt at a better rate than an opponent.      

Sorry, but I think this will be appreciated here...

Shame about the arrests - lets hope its stern telling off for these arch criminals

Two things: 
1. It sends a clear message to Russians that not only is the US president behind Ukraine but that he thinks Ukraine can win and that either Russia is afraid to attack him or that it is unable to. I've been watching Russian tv this morning and you can see the propagandists struggling with it. They are a mixture of appalled and outraged.
2. That bit of theater has elevated Ukraine even further as a political issue in US politics. Biden is nailing our flag to the mast on this issue. He is trying to turn it into one of just a few main themes of 2024 and given how DeSantis stepped into it on Fox this week, Republicans intend on going along with it.
 

@PEB14, might I humbly offer my Combat Mission tactics blog The goal for my blog was teaching the application of real world tactics in the CM games. Look for the Tactical Toolbox along the left side of the page.
Bil

This is simply incredible work. I will be taking this for a spin in the near future, well done and answers a need that has been left wanting for years.
Bil

Interestingly I think the step the Russians missed was the same one that a lot of western mainstream analysts kinda glossed over at the start of this war, and is near and dear to just about everyone on this forum - the war game.
In military planning this is a major step/exercise (in fact we do it at least twice).  In strategic planning it is normally done through a series of operational war games and results summed, but you can do a version of opposed strategies.
In the war gaming phase one takes a plan and smashes it up against an opponents counter-plan.  What a lot of students miss is that it is not about winning, it is about completely acid washing your concepts.  War games are not supposed to be fun, they are supposed to brutalize your planning before your opponent does it for real on the battlefield.  Until you see every flaw and hole in your plan, you cannot fully understand the risks.
You can even do this for non-linear campaigning, but it is trickier.  One has to re-think the war game for emergent phenomena, and here a bottom up micro-sampling based approach may work better.  However even for top-down - and here I think a lot of western experts made this mistake - one can see macro-masking leading to significant poor assumptions.  This just underlines how hard a discipline this is to carry out when you are really trying.  
As far as I can tell Russia did not war game this out.  When the boss has a habit of having people who disagree with him thrown out windows, it is pretty hard to get honest assessments of holes in his plan. This is a planning environment of lethal group think which is just a perfect recipe for progressive unreality.  
But for a few dozen copies of CMBS and Putin not being a gamer, a war was lost.

While RUS is further grinding down its "elite"  (read, above AFRF average training with good equipment) units in strategically useless (but operationally useful)  assaults on Bahkmut,  the ZSU is building fresh Line units with excellent training and superb equipment into a strategically critical operational reserve. 
One force is throwing a lot of its best infantry into a meat grinder,  the other army is forming the core of a new model army. 
Six months from now Bahkmut won't matter and will have no effect on the course of the war, while six months from now the ZSU will be in full swing of NATOization of its fighting units, indeed its entire operational posture and formatting. 
RUS Army is fighting for short term gain.  UKR is holding off that gain while building for long term quality.

Just one soldier, doing the job of an entire squad... no wonder the Ukrainians are winning most of these engagements.
Fascinating video, thanks for posting it @akd... you can feel the fear and panic, you don't need to understand the language, but that man carries on. True bravery in action.

For the non-Mil here (such as myself), these observations from a relative in the British Army:
The fella fighting was going through a mag every couple of seconds. They all need to be reloaded. The grens are shipped in two parts,  fuse and body and they have to be married almost immediately beforehand. The RPG warhead has to be fused, and married to the motor. The frightened bloke did well to keep at it. He came out to fire at one point, but fighting bloke told [him] to get back in.
There is enough work in that intensity to take half a section* out just maintaining the fire. In a platoon the Reserve is constantly rebombing the mags and sending them forward. That pit was held because of the sheer amount of suppressing fire that bloke laid down, and it was only possible with the support from the frightened guy.
[The Shooter] has been in that position for weeks, but I’m surprised he didn’t have a firing ledge cut into to get better visibility.
You’d wonder at the BMP crew. They just ate a RPG, and second one, and didn’t return fire into the position. Might have been too close to depress their cannon.
Yeah, milchat is laughing at ‘most engagements are at up to 300m’ yeah chew on 30m.... 
So the comments I've seen (not here) mocking the second guy are just sheer, stupid amateur ignorance. In a fight everyone plays a part and not everyone is a hero every time. Artillery explosion overpressure waves and constant combat (and the threat of combat) do awful things to the human brain.  The bravest man can be steadily reduced to a nervous cat with enough concussive impacts.
The "scared"  guy could just as easily be the hero next time.  Or not,  but who knows - unless you're in the fox hole and you're him or his shooter buddy. No one else knows. Any commentary beyond that is just talking uninformed ****e. 
 
*In the BA a Platoon is made of Sections. In the US they're called squads or teams (I believe? ). 

Just one soldier, doing the job of an entire squad... no wonder the Ukrainians are winning most of these engagements.
Fascinating video, thanks for posting it @akd... you can feel the fear and panic, you don't need to understand the language, but that man carries on. True bravery in action.

Just one soldier, doing the job of an entire squad... no wonder the Ukrainians are winning most of these engagements.
Fascinating video, thanks for posting it @akd... you can feel the fear and panic, you don't need to understand the language, but that man carries on. True bravery in action.

Just one soldier, doing the job of an entire squad... no wonder the Ukrainians are winning most of these engagements.
Fascinating video, thanks for posting it @akd... you can feel the fear and panic, you don't need to understand the language, but that man carries on. True bravery in action.

Just one soldier, doing the job of an entire squad... no wonder the Ukrainians are winning most of these engagements.
Fascinating video, thanks for posting it @akd... you can feel the fear and panic, you don't need to understand the language, but that man carries on. True bravery in action.

Just one soldier, doing the job of an entire squad... no wonder the Ukrainians are winning most of these engagements.
Fascinating video, thanks for posting it @akd... you can feel the fear and panic, you don't need to understand the language, but that man carries on. True bravery in action.

My morale always drops when I get a Teams call invite if that helps ... 😉

Longer version sees even more weapons in use by this one guy:
 

If true, this is the sort of information that I think is a violation of OPSEC and unwise to disclose.  I suspect some misdirection here aimed squarely at the Russian's sense of insecurity;
   "...look we have fuel from all over the world and you can't touch it!"     
I hope it is simply another example of Ukraine's outstanding Information War, which has been running circles around the Russians since the beginning.
Bil

@PEB14, might I humbly offer my Combat Mission tactics blog The goal for my blog was teaching the application of real world tactics in the CM games. Look for the Tactical Toolbox along the left side of the page.
Bil

@PEB14, might I humbly offer my Combat Mission tactics blog The goal for my blog was teaching the application of real world tactics in the CM games. Look for the Tactical Toolbox along the left side of the page.
Bil

Hi Bil,
Thanks for the insight; coincidentally, I found your blog earlier today while following some of the above poster's recommendation.
Looks very interersting and relevant !