cyrano01

Maybe but the West was a bit busy at the time. Taking on the USSR and Nazi Germany simultaneously might have been a bit tricky.

Quoi qu'on fasse, on perd beaucoup de monde (Whatever you do, you lose a lot of men) Although I don't think the Ukrainian generals are likely to have an apptite for the casualty levels that Mangin regarded as the norm.

Hell-Fire, did these people not go to staff college.

Ukrainian tactics are smart...avoiding urban battles...bypassing resistance. Has nobody told the Russians that's what you are SUPPOSED to do if you are running a mechanised attack?

And, interestingly, they appear to be firing pretty directly rather than the pull up 'spray and pray' lob with rockets that has been prevalent on both sides for much of the fighting. Suggests either a reduced air defence threat, a greater willingness to take risks for a more accurate attack or both.

There seems nothing new in the world. That description could have been lifted from any one of a number of accounts of the major difficulties facing the British and Imperial armies during their massive expansion of 1914-16.

Truly away with the fairies....(him not you)

I'll swear that there are only two groups with a fixation on the evil British in this way. There are some UK, Guardian reading (left of centre) commentators who are convinced that their political opponents are fixated on restoring the glory days of British Imperial conspiracies, and the Russians who think they already have.

Their operational art does seem to have regressed to that of 1915/16 and with rates of advance that make Haig look like Guderian. Almost impossible, 24 hour rolling media coverage of a retreat like that would be un-survivable for a Western government, doubly so given the far lower degree of trust in politicians amongst the general polity today. That said we shouldn't lose sight of how close the UK came to throwing in the towel on May 1940, it would only have needed Halifax to become PM rather than Churchill I suspect.

This, absolutely, and it has been around for a fair while. I recall watching news coverage of Gulf War 1 in the UK (can't recall whether it was BBC or ITV) with a report from a journalist accompanying the leading dismounted elements of a British Army infantry recce unit. They had come under machine gun fire and were in good cover waiting for artillery support to do their thing but the journalist was rattling on dramatically about the attack grinding to a halt under heavy enemy fire, woe and catastrophe etc. I remember thinking at the time that reporter clearly had no historical or military context within which to recognise this as the 'small change' of day to day operations (although clearly important to the guys actually being shot at).

When I saw the picture of the D-20 with the 'petals' at the end of the barrel remains I did wonder about that. The first image that flashed into my mind was of British guns destroyed at Dunkirk prior to evacuation. The damage to the D-20 seems far more catastrophic and nearer to the breech though which favours a premature.

In many ways a Taliban type opponent so -equipped would be even harder to deal with. The Ukrainian army is, at least, a regular army in the sense of wearing uniforms, carrying their weapons openly etc. A Taliban type foe (with NLAWs/Javelins, Stingers/Starstreak and UAVs all backed up with a modular cell network) who merged back into the population following their actions would be a nightmare for any military, even one as well equipped as the US, that had ambitions to stay more or less the right side of the Hague and Geneva conventions.

I can see where you're coming from although it pays to make sure you are not the Allied high command in France 1940...

And, of course, the Israelis crossed going the other way on October 15th during their counter-attack. Possibly more impressive as it was managed at shorter notice and without the massive numerical edge.

Agreed, doubly so since for the armoured units you'd need to stick it on tracks, we could call it son of Gepard. So what we need is a mobile, forward deployable, relatively low cost system with a wish-em-dead capability against multiple, small, potentially stealthy targets up to a few thousand feet and operable by the average infantrymen. Should be pretty straightforward.

Impressive, so we need a SPAA system attached to what, every company, platoon? The accountants will have a cardiac.

My recollection is that the intention was that these things would actually be quite substantial, something about the size of a Hellfire warhead. Probably millimetric radar or thermal image guided, so not really submunitions in the bomblet sense. How big does a submunition have to be before it is just a 'munition' rather than a cluster weapon and hence verboten.

Back in pre-history (well the mid 80s) I can recall being involved in modelling target selection and allocation algorithms for an potential, autonomous, unmanned air weapon that would cruise down roads detecting columns of enemy vehicles and dispensing the good news in the form of guided sub-munitions. I am beginning to think the technology has caught up with the idea forty odd years on...

Back from cycling to the dentist, and not entirely convinced that self-driving cars are likely to be any worse than the current man-in-the-loop variety, at least the self driving sensors are likely to be switched on rather than devoted to texting or social media...need an RPG.

Very good questions. And nothing wrong with Clausewitz, so long as one does not accept that his was the final word. Figured I ought to get something out of having to read On War, that term my nights belonged to Charlie. Still I suspect that reading Clausewitz for military history students is like eating greens for small children, necessary to alllow you to grow up big and strong... I think one has to attack that light infantry system along its length as well. Cutting off supplies of relatively cheap ATGMs, and MANPADS, along with ISR (I have no doubt Russia would love to cut those western ISR feeds if they could), or all data for that matter, is a very important step. This would push the ranges and lethality of that infantry back to "harassment" levels. Absolutely. Doubly so for the bigger, heavier things that enable the DLI defence (Diffuse Light Infantry - apologies to the Durham Light Infantry) to hit you at the longer distances you were mentioning earlier. All those artillery shells and longer range rockets have to be moved somehow. And I think this raises a very important point. What about UA offence? I am not sure if they are employing this light infantry approach on the attack. Something is definitely happening up around Kharkiv, but it is not clear if this is more traditional conventional operations or if they are doing something else. I am not sure how we would employ this on the offence, I suspect it may be that Infiltrate, Isolate, Destroy idea, but I would want to see it in action. I think if one employed the "simultaneous slow grinding pressure" idea until your opponent cracks, you could then swing back toward conventional offence. Right up to the point an opponent started using distributed light infantry defence in depth, then you become the hunted, not the hunter. This makes for a very interesting dynamic. This is what I am struggling to get my head around. In any case, even if the Ukrainians are using a DLI offense around Karkhiv, and prepared to accept slow progress, they are doing so against a Russian army that can't resort to the DLI paradigm because they don't have the capability. It doesn't really solve the problem for Western armies who do, fighting against opponents who also do. Is this leading to relative battlefield stasis with the ability to make slow advances going to the side that can best integrate good light infantry with ISR driven, responsive long range supporting fires (massed or precision according to target and circumstances)? Not going to play well with the Shock and Awe set I fear. Airpower, yeesh. Some of those MANPADs we equipped the UA with have ranges up to 23,000 feet; that is also nuts. So high altitudes are likely still where we can operate freely; however, integrating airpower way up there to ground level will be the challenge. Seriously this! Perhaps the air power of the future is more about expendable UAVs that you don't really expect to get back? Although, as SeinfeldRules observed, surely it is only a matter of time until the anti-drone measures start to develop and when they do does that enable you to fracture your opponents ISR bubble and undermine the long range bit of his DLI defence? I'm quite taken with a drone, Fokker scourge. More seriously and immediately, the obvious outcome of the more capable MANPADS/SHORADS is that air power is forced up and deep. If you have suppressed the high altitude air defences is there any way you can leverage that to fracture the enemy's ability to resist? Dark thought (for a wishy-washy western liberal) does that mean we are back to the strategic air power paradigm and trying to use that to destroy the enemy economy or starve their population. Neither quick nor something that sits well morally even if it could be done, which has to be open to serious doubt.

Fascinating debate. At the risk of going all old school Clausewitzian does a diffuse light infantry+long ranged weapons defence have an identifiable centre of gravity and if so how do you get at it? Might it be the defenders logistics or does their lack of mass reduce this as a volnerability? If the defence is relying on being able to use lots of deep fires to hammer your LOC then they are going to need a fair amount of 'stuff' brought into place to do that. Is that where air superiority might come in? If (and it is really only the US who can really do this) you have suppressed the enemy air defences to the point where you can operate freely above 10-12,000 feet then would that allow you to strangle the defenders' logistics. I guess an interdiction campaign like that is going to give up on your need for speed mind you. And for it to be effective you would probably need to maintain pressure on the ground so that the defenders used up their supplies more quickly so you would probably need lots of light infantry of your own to do that, perhaps not palatable for western armies?

This is a really good point. Mind you, the more I think about it the more I wonder about ' most militaries do not find themselves in this position.' The British commanders in the Western desert subject to Churchillian pressure to mount premature offensives might say different. Similarly the relationship between Lincoln and the various Union commanders during the earlier years of the US Civil War resembles a continuous negotiation. The German and Soviet comanders subject to no-retreat directives from their respective dictators were suffering from an inability to negotiate as you describe. I recently read a damning analysis of the British army's role in the Iraq occupation where the military manifestly failed to negotiate with the government, although such problems are always going to be more prevalent in counter-insurgencies. Perhaps this negotiated tension is more prevalent than we normally allow. I guess the obvious difference is that those political leaders who ended up on the winning side managed to find themselves a general they were happy with before too much damage was done, whether that be a Monty, Grant or Zhukov.

I'm wondering if the fire might be the result of unburned missile fuel in the Neptunes catching alight . This was certainly a big factor in the loss of HMS Sheffield to an Exocet hit during the Falklands War.

If my experience of gunnners is anything to go by they would probably reply: Massed Infantry - Defeated by artillery Machine Gun - Defeated by artillery Tanks - Defeated by anti-tank artillery Heavy tanks - Defeated by better anti-tank artillery (some of which may take the form of missiles) ATGM - Defeated by artillery + drones Drones - Defeated by AA artillery EW AAA Light UGV Tank - To be defeated by precision artillery Artillety - Defeated by ...nobody defeats artillery...Ubique.

Which leaves an interesting question. In this brave new world where the UGV/UAV combo can deliver the effects a tank might have done; and where UAV+Artillery can batter anything that stands still for more than a few minutes into oblivion where does this leave the PBI? Do we still need them to 'close with a defeat the enemy?' Or could our unmanned and ranged combinations above do that? Do we need them to occupy terrain, or m ore generally to operate in any area where the ground is too steep/rough/boggy/wooded or otherwise UGV unfriendly. Oh, yes, built up areas! Interesting question, just how mobile are UGVs in poor terrain. How do we protect the infantry? In ICVs or APCs they have some protection against small arms and artillery but in a world full of highly lethal AT weapons is that a good trade off? Alternatively do they have to dismount way before getting anywhere near the sharp end, and operate on foot and realtively dispersed? The Ukrainians have shown a pattern for this but it does mean your infantry are limited to the speed they can march and have no protection beyond their body armour. Does this mean we are heading down the Starship Troopers route for the infantry? I can see the casualty sensitive, mainly Western, states, getting squeamish about being seen to send their human beings in to fight robots. All of this, of course, ignores the need for dismounted troops in situations short of high intensity warfare. UGVs might not be too good at talking to the locals and gathering information. No idea of any of the answers of course, but loads of interesting questions.