cyrano01

Double post

I'm not entirely convinced on this one. I was going to mention Gordon's 'Rules of the Game' but Hapless beat me to the punch. It's a fascinating insight into how organisational culture interacts with technology to affect operational methods. The level of factionalisation in the pre-WW1 RN is quite imrpessive. The other WW1 naval example that springs to mind is the length of time it took the Admiralty to adopt convoys as a defence against the U-Boat threat to merchant vessels. At times there seemd an almost wilful determination not to consider it as a viable approach. I feel there is even less excuse here since convoys have existed in naval warfare since time immemorial; so it wasn't as if any great, conceptual leap of imagination was required.

Sadly we don't currently have an HMS Bellerophon on the strength to collect him...

Ah, so that's the explanation. The whole thng is just a mis-understanding between patriotic Russians set up by those subtle, cunning, rulers of the universe at British Intelligence! Would be entertaining if HMG actually had the powers the Russians seem to ascribe to it.

That was certainly my memory of the mid-80s, some interesting footage here, more CMCW than CMBS though. I'm not sure there is anything in the current NATO armoury designed to operate similarly though, or at leat nothing that might be sent to Ukraine (can;t see the STOVL F35s being handed out).

More or less in line with this from RUSI https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/meatgrinder-russian-tactics-second-year-its-invasion-ukraine?fbclid=IwAR09LOJ_FlPF4mA8cCKwyzxYalTxYZQQtVh8RN1c5WqGR_IKaa-d7goZl_Y Although the suggestion is that Russian qualitative improvements are still very much reactive and chasing the curve rather than ahead of it.

The other point that occurs to me regarding Storm Shadow is that it gets Western supplies to Ukraine across another threshold, in this case for longer range precision weapons. The relatively small size of UK stock piles means that while the contributions may be valuable they will be of only moderate impact on their own but it does seems that the UK acts as stalking horse to push the escalation boundaries. We saw it with Challenger, the first current gen MBT pledged, where the numbers were small but the UK anouncement was followed by the US and other NATO memebers anouncing Abrams and Leopard 2 deliveries. I'm just wondering if Storm Shadow is testing the waters for ATACMS, and giving the Ukrainians the chance to show they can be relied on to use the capability responsibly. Hope so becuase we don;t have all that many Storm Shadows to give.

Also interesting to see how the discussion of the UAF dispersed light infantry defence, plus ISR, plus precision fires at all depths defence is pretty much exactly what was discussed on this at the time. What caught my eye was the figure for just how dispersed that infantry was, 3km frontage for a company position! That's really quite a lot when you think that a late Cold War Soviet MR Battalion was expected to have an attack frontage of about 1km give or take.

Is it just me or does anyone else think that the British Army seem to have re-incarnated Brian Horrocks/Edward Fox from 'A Bridge Too Far' and he is currently cosplaying as a Royal Lancers badged Lt. Col?

Right. No suppressive MG fire, no supporting infantry. Tanks pushing up close to occupied enemy infantry positions. Even if they were confident that the target position was well suppressed that's a high degree of reliance on there not being any wild-card bad guys out there in unidentified positions. That sort of thing has pretty much never ended well for me in CMBS but the Ukrainians seem to go in for it and get away with it. Haiduk makes a good point about getting inside the ATGM's min-range though. Is it just my eyesight or was the commander operating with his head out of the hatch at least some of the time?

This mismatch between ISR/Hitting capability and ability to develop and conceal effective mass does seem to be fundamental. It also seems to be a continuation of a long term trend. The latter part of the C19th and early C20th up to and including WW1 saw continuous attempts to square the circle of effective mass attacks against increasingly accurate, long ranged weapons. Breech loading, rifled artillery and magazine rifles may not be precision weapons by our standards but compared to a smoothbore musket they are and, when mass looks like lines of infantry in close formations, they present a real challenge. Taking this through to WW1 the question for any general was 'how do I deliver an effective massed attack when my troops are spotted by these new-fangled aeroplanes, shelled by accurate artillery miles back behind the front line and can't move forwards in enough numbers to deal with a counter attack?' In the end the answer (at a very simplified level) was dispersion of assets, concentration of fires, more mobility all around and try to shut down the enemy ISR with your own new-fangled aeroplanes and AA guns. I've no idea how you achieve even more dispersion of assets and concentration of fires, or how to shut down the ubiquitous ISR but the direction of travel seems clear.

Hmm. If it is turning into WW1 attritional warfare (and I am not sure that it is, on the Ukrainian side at least) I am not convinced that it is the absence of a modernised Ukraininan Air Force that has made it so. I am also not convinced that providing even a decent number of Grippens or F-16s would alter that. Absent the full range of SEAD bells and whistles that the US possesses then you are still going to be severely limited by Russian air defences. I guess there might be some hope of reducing those with drones and long range ground fires but even so. Grippens/F16s would help with UKR air defence but the Ukrainians seem to be managing pretty well anyway, more so as more modern western SAMs become available. Sure, better to have some modern aircraft than not but not convinced this is really a game changer absent a SEAD solution.

If anyone is interested the Royal Air Force Museum is hosting a virtual lecture entitled: Why did the West overestimate Russian military capabilities and why does this matter? later today, 1730 GMT. https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/virtual-events/virtual-lectures/virtual-lecture-why-did-the-west-overestimate-russian-military-capabilities-and-why-does-this-matter/

I read Aimee Fox's book after hearing her speak at a Western Front Association meeting and found it similarly recalled to mind during current events; in the context of just how hard it is to change your doctrine on the fly during a shooting war. It's also worth noting that, in the end, the BEF and French armies pretty much gave up on trying to bring about deep strategic breakthroughs, recognising that logistics and technology didn't permit them. They got their late war results by breaking into the defences while staying within their own artillery range and leaving the Germans the options of retreating or making a costly counter-attack. I don't think the Russians have the capability even to do the break in bit. I suspect their operational art has regressed to about 1915.

Absolutely. Come to think of it I am not even sure that Western style manoeuvre warfare really has that great a track record against competent peer opponents.

And there is a general tendency for the ages of commanders to fall during wartime as death, stress, exhaustion and weeding out of the inept all take their toll. I seem to recall that, for the British Army (BEF) in France during WW1 the average age of battalion commanders was down to 34 by 1918, in 1914 it had been 47.

Interesting video and a pretty bold move. When I attempt anything similar, that close to possibly occupied buildings, in CMBS my BMP immediately finds itself on the receving end of an RPG, or something equally unpleasant and it turns into a bad day at the office.

Yes, and the oppoosite effect with some British formations who in Normandy who had just enough survivors of Italy / N Africa to give them a reputation for being 'sticky' in attack even if competent in defence. I vaguely recall reading that US formmations that saw first combat in Normandy started to see the same symptoms around the end of 1944 but couldn't be sure where I saw this. @The_Capt's point about corporate expertise and staffwork is also a good one as it can accumulate amongst the the staff officers and higher commanders who are possibly a bit less likely to be killed as often. Assuming you can persuade them not to lead from the front too much (cf the BEF's problems with this in 1915-16).

In support of @JonS and @The_Capt 's posts on the subject. The build up of stress over time on troops in combat during WW2 is discussed by John Ellis in his book 'The Sharp End'. He quotes a 1946 paper by Lt. Col' Appel and Cpt' Beebe (US Army) in the Journal of the American Medical Assoc. as saying that any soldier surviving that long would break down after 200-240 combat days. It seems the British used 400 days but this was reflective of different rotation practises and probably amounted to much the same thing. Ellis goes on to suggest that, for trained troops peak effectiveness was reached after about three weeks of combat with gradual deterioration setting in after six. Rotation can delay or even restore this process a bit but it takes a long time out of the line. I guess the message is that experienced troops fight better and smarter until they don't any more. There is a rather chilling quote from a British 7th Hussarsa officer dating to 1941 saying that '...the actual business of fighting is easy enough. You go in, you come out, you go in again and you keep doing it until they break you or you are dead.' Unlike some here I have never had to lead people in anything more hostile than a cricket match or even been shot at, I am pleased to say, so I have no personal experience to draw on. That said, it seems to me that the this sort of thing is more likely to be a problem for the UKA as their individual soldier is likely to have a longer lifespan than the Russians. Maybe the rotation of key formations out of the line give as much benefit in terms of psychiatric recovery as they do re-training on Western equipment.

Seems to be a bit of a trend for the UK to act as a 'forlorn hope' for new classes of kit (cf Challenger as first offered MBT) even if they don't/can't supply much actual equipment. There are, perhaps, fewer internal constraints on the UK PM acting as a bit of a lightning conductor for other potential donor leaders.

Indeed. I am pretty sure I have seen both The Marquis of Argyle's Royal Regiment and Monck's Regiment of Foot on duties around London at one point or another. These PMC's take a long time to get rid of...

Sounds like 'the curse of Jean-Claude Junker,' who said (when discussing potentially unpopular EU financial reforms), ' We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.'

Great summary. Should ground based anti-air weaponry appear in there somewhere. The medium and high level missile coverage does seem to have pretty much prevented the exercise of manned air power in line with much pre-war expectation. That's on top of using your surface to air defences to kill the incoming missiles that are doing the jobs that airpower might have been expected to do.

Quite. One of the factors driving the Challenger 3 upgrade is not having a producton line for 120mm rifled ammo any more. Given the rate at which ammunition is being expended in Ukraine the Challenger 2s would be a time-limited asset at best. My feeling is that the importance of the Challenger offer is that the UK is trying and push the Western nations over the MBT threshold rather than any sensible practical, sustainable capability.

Been around since the 1970s... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swingfire#Replacement_in_British_Army