cyrano01

I was halfway through typing a long response to this and my computer spontaneously restarted, and both Steve and The_Capt got posts in first that provide supporting for what was writing (so thanks!)
I'd frame it differently than @The_Capt (information has mass) and closer to Steve (information is a force multiplier) and say that it gives you efficiency of force (or efficiency of other things in other applications).  The net effect is that when you're doing your calculations the old way, however one does those, you'd put in a dimensionless constant to account for the efficiency.  That constant is the force multiplier.
In practice, suppose you're Russia in 2022 and there's a platoon of UA defending 2 km of front.  You're basically blind to their locations, so you get every tube and rocket rail that's in range and paste it for 30 minutes, then you send in the prisoners to do recon by death. And die they do, because massed artillery just isn't that great against a dug in defender.  If you're Ukraine, you send up 3 or 4 drones and each time one spots a target, it calls in 2-3 rounds from one tube.  That gets rid of a bunch of the defenders because they don't have time to take cover before the rounds start hitting *their* holes.  A couple more drones fly around and drop grenades on vehicles, taking them out of the defense.  When the PBI finally have to go in and finish things, there aren't a lot of well placed defenders left, and on a good day the Ukrainian PBI are getting feedback from the drones at a level of "a guy just went into a dugout in the trench you're about to go into, go up to the edge, move 3 m to your right, and toss a grenade down without sticking your head over".  
And the catch is that you don't need just the information, but the ability to act on it at a level commensurate with the information.  If I know exactly where everybody is (Steve's example) but all I have is artillery with a CEP the size of the map, then the information doesn't do me much good. I'm still just going to plaster the whole map with all my arty.  But if I have drones with lasers and laser guided munitions, I can send a drone up to point at each guy, fire one lgm, then go to the next.
So while information is vital, and valuable, and adds efficiency, you also need equipment that has comparable precision.  Some pages ago, I pointed out that the extreme limit of perfect information and perfect precision you need a number of munitions less than or equal to the number of opponents you have to deal with.  It's like in science fiction where one good guy (e.g. Robocop) is in a room full of bad guys with machine guns (mass).  He kills them all with a number of shots equal to the number of bad guys minus one (he gets two with one shot once), taking advantage of his IR vision (information) to see where people are behind concealment and precisely target them.  Miltech is headed in that direction, where eventually every person on the ground will have augmented reality goggles that automatically integrate the information from all drones and all the other AR goggles so that every friendly and enemy shows up exactly in the right place, with appropriate shading/transparency to indicate that they're behind cover or terrain. 
The other catch is that you have to be able to do it all quickly - it doesn't do you any good to know how to do perfect information and precision if you can't deliver it faster than the other guy can kill you.  Russia probably has a lot of smart people in universities and their MIC who can describe all this, but they don't have the resources to implement it much past pencil and paper.

Two days ago city authorities of Kharkiv first time since Day 1 turned on all street lights and lightening of big Ukrainian flag on tall mast. Russian milbloggers issued some angry post in style "In what *** we wasted thosands of missiles if "khokhols" to this time have enough electricity even in Kharkiv? Maybe our strategists wanted only to force Zelenskiy to negotiations, but not to achieve victory, destroying transport infrastructure, stores with weapon etc"
Also some Russian politics today made a statement "This is revenge for Briansk"
Kyiv was struck with two missiles. First "Kinzhal" at 5:45 of morning hit thermal power plant in southern part of the city. Despite this is 11 km from my home the sound of explosion was so loud, that I jumped on my sofa - I thought this was impact nearby. Second missile, probably "Kalibr"  or Kh-101 either hit or was intercepted in western part of city almost simultainously with "Kinzhal" impact. Fragmemts of missile destroyed and damaged several cars, there were three injured. 
 

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.

Pretty good info:
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2023/03/07/which-fighter-jet-is-best-for-ukraine-as-it-fights-off-russia/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dfn-special-report
The country is not lacking for pilots, Bronk said, but the problem is they don’t have enough airworthy jets.
The F-16 “is a lightweight fighter designed for nice runways,” Bronk said. “Most Ukrainian runways are pretty rough. So if they’re moving around like that, the fighter has to be [able to] handle it and not suffer a massive increase in maintenance [needs], and the support equipment and maintenance arrangements have to be able to do it.” A better option for Ukraine might be the Gripen, Bronk said, as its standard maintenance and logistics equipment can be loaded into standard 20-foot shipping containers and easily moved on trucks. (Let's see if US inside the beltway ego gets in the way of this.)
But the status quo, Penney said, is untenable. Without a modernized Ukrainian Air Force, she explained, the conflict has become a war of attrition, echoing the trench warfare of World War I.
That places Ukraine in a dire situation, she added.
“Ukraine only has so many people they can feed into the meat grinder of land warfare,” Penney said. “They need to move this into the third dimension, and you do that with aircraft.”
She said the U.S. could develop a streamlined, accelerated training program for Ukrainian pilots that would last two to two-and-a-half months.

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/
 
 

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/
 
 

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/
 
 

No we are not.  I have not posted my military resume for some very good reasons, but let’s just say it is extensive.  And there are a lot of other business experts posting here as well.  A guy I work with noted that we are one of the few professions that has to put up with this much amateur armchair quarterbacking - pretty sure chest surgeons are not on a forum trying to explain by-pass surgery to a bunch of guys who played Surgeon Simulator 2, and then get accused of “talking down”. (Who am I kidding it is 2023…)
Ok, so the “curve” you are boiling this down to appears to be a magic 65000 troops to do a break out battle in the south before the RA can (and here you get a bit muddy) - get reinforcements or Chinese-backed capability in place to deny it until the Second Coming?  So a force generation competition “curve” with some pretty vague components.  Or more simply put “the curve of the UA generating Attack faster than the RA can generate Defence” and based on your assessment Ukraine is behind that “curve”?
Ok, let’s just put all the other inconvenient facts about force generation to the side - because why would we need any of that getting in the way? - and roll straight into your simple model.
Yes, your wargaming experience has taught you well….attacking is hard and costly because you have to get out of your hole, move in the open into defences that are by-design aimed at skewing force ratios…at a tactical level.  At operational and strategic level Defence becomes far more costly because of frontage and depth.  Now if all you have to do is defend a narrow defile in Greece - with a ridiculous Scottish accent - your problem is pretty easy.  If you are defending about 800kms of frontage in depth of land you stole, from an opponent with all the ISR and accelerating levels of precision strike while your own AirPower is not working and getting blown up in strange smoking accidents…well let’s just say your Defensive curve is pretty f#cking steep.
So while we are clearly at “Amateur Pearl Clutching Day” again - oh, I tried polite, but the gods of Dunning-Kruger and “I have an internet connection” clearly rule these lands, so we are at “Grasshopper”; unfortunately you are not in range of a well aimed rice bowl being tossed at your head - just employing your adorable little model, Russia’a defensive problem is absolutely enormous.  Like epic historical big.  Way back we did some back-of-cigarette-pack estimates that the RA would need around 1.5 million troops in-country to secure that line in something that resembles completely air tight. And last I checked they are no where near that “curve”.  In fact even employing old Defensive ratios the RA would need around 20k effective troops (meaning at equal or better quality) to defend against this 65k being generated in the UA backfield…in the right location and able to react quickly enough, and supported/enabled, to counter along a 800km front.  So you tell me, in your well informed opinion, just where the RA is on their force  generation curve to solve that one?
Ok, back to UA problem. 65k troops is the number that came out of that EU report.  It is roughly 3-4 Divisions, really a modern Corps and a heavy one.  If the UA had that force today on top of what they are employing to bleed the RA white, this war would likely be over in a few weeks. In all three major UA operational offensives the UA did not need anywhere near that level of mass.  All three were variations on the theme of corrosive systemic collapses that were projected onto the RA, they were done with frankly baffling force ratio closer to 1:1 or in the case of Kyiv completely upside down.  
So what?  Well first off Attack-Defence ratios are in the wind, at least on the UA side.  They retook Kherson at a 1.5:1 attacker to defender ratio, while successfully defended Kyiv at as high as a 1:12 defender ratio.  The RA has had nearly an inverse result, massive overmatch ratios do not work, nor do traditional defensive ones.  The determinative factor appear to be ISR advantage, combined with an ability to generate ersatz Air superiority through deep precision strike.  Bottom line, there is not much good news for the RA with respect to mass.
Next, corrosive strategies are a thing.  The RA did not simply “over-extend” they were made to be “over-extended” by cutting up their entire military system front to back.  Even if they dig in - and based on the ground they have to cover, it will be shallow - they are not immune to whatever this thing is.  All those minefield are useless if the guns covering them are dead or cannot get ammo.  Nor can the RA plug holes if their C2 is slow (it is) their LOCs visible and hittable (they are) and they do not have robust logistics to sustain a counter move (they do not).
So when I hear Ukraine shooting for 65k, I do not think “hmm clearly this is what they need to win this war”, I think “hmm, Ukraine is already thinking about the next one”.  Regardless, based on the steady stream of hints - ATACMS training, whisperers of engineer equipment and a steady stream of troop training going on all over freakin Europe, I am betting the UA is actually ahead of “the curve” for a spring-summer offensive when compared the the RA problem-set.  Will it be easy? Of course not.  Is the UA demonstrating that is is near a breaking point - not even close.  The large drunken guy swinging in the bar right now looks like he also has stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and it ain’t Ukraine.
Now I would really like to unpack the southern axis Melitopol problem based on what we do know but that will have to wait a bit.

It may just be me, but I think that NATO would want someone competent.

Well if the past is any indication, the UA will lead with Light Inf and SOF, heavy on unmannned systems support, to do infiltration first, those are huge frontages on that Jomini of the West map and not a lot of RA troops to cover them.  Find your opponents quickly, and hit them hit precision artillery.  At the same time operational ISR is illuminating in depth and they conduct a deep strike campaign on RA artillery, C4ISR and logistics.
Minefield are going to be a challenge but there are ways through them.  Have not seen any real discussion on explosive breaching or even mechanical breaching support.  The UA is going to be needing assault engineering to break through those belts, but the lighter infantry and SOF will likely find or make gaps first.  This may drive back observation and cover fire on those minefields, which makes breaching a lot easier.
And then once you get enough forward moment, and corroded the RA - while pinning them down elsewhere, you go for manoeuvre and try for a breakout.  Nothing easy about any of this but that is the order of the day to break the back of the RA.

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.

Good point. I hadn't even considered the strategic level as I don't think the RA will be able to do the learning at the operational level. Not necessarily because 'Russia sux' but because it is so difficult to do, especially while fighting a war. 
I recently re-read Dr Aimee Fox's Learning to Fight about how the British & Dominion armies went about learning in the FWW and the complexities of it - vertical vs horizontal, formal vs informal, Western front vs other fronts, exercise vs pamphlet etc. They had to try to overcome pre-war prejudices, snobbery between fronts (Western Front thought they had nothing to learn from other fronts), snobbery from British towards Canadian and Australian, traditional vs modern, learning the wrong lessons etc. They just about managed it but it took four years. And despite what can be garnered from Blackadder, those armies were open-minded, keen to learn organisations (well most of them). 
The long and short of it, I got from that book that learning on the job in a war is bloody difficult and complex. 

I have seen a few of these and frankly they are kinda big celebrations of confirmation biases.  There is nothing inherently wrong with the BTG, it lies somewhere between Combat Team and Battlegroup in organizational constructs. I think the theory was that the unit would really heavily on quick response firepower linked directly into the tactical level C2.  Add UAS and this sort of unit worked and saw some success when facing mounted manoeuvre units back in 2014.  
In some ways the BTG has advantages in lower size and profile, and logistics requirements.  In the right hands and fully enabled the BTG looks a lot like some sort of ACR/ACS concept.  Lighter, faster and carrying a lot of boom-boom.  Obviously the BTG runs into problems in infantry heavy fight requirements, but so do ACRs - not designed for it.  The RA actually had several BTG types if you look them up and some look more manpower heavy.  I think the intent may have been to make the modular but it looks like it did not pan out. Overall the thing looks like a self contained raider unit with a lot of integral firepower.
The BTG failed not because it was a bad design, it failed because so many other aspects of the Russian military system failed.  A BCT without air superiority and under constant illumination and deep strike PGM is not going to fair well either. The second problem is that a BTG is fine so long as you only ask it to do what a BTG can do.  If you ask it to do too much any unit organization will fail.  The third problem was what looks like a serious lack of peer-coordination.  These sorts of units will need to work together a lot and provide mutual support - this is very MC and self-synchronization stuff, which we have seen that the Russian doctrine on C2 does not support.  And finally on support, this organization will work fine if it has a formation over it to C2 all the enablers.  And we know that was a serious issue.
I mean the BTG didn’t work in the same way that asking an ACR to do a heavy urban assault unsupported, after losing air superiority etc, would not work.  Focusing on the organization as the “reason” for Russian failure is missing the much larger issues at play here and frankly highlights some incorrect lessons.

Hmm, so their divisions are basically taking all their best cadre and throwing them into high casualty close assaults?  Essentially a form of organisational autophagy.

Bakhmut: Ukrainians are making short counterattacks in the north (they managed to hold last line of hills through the night) and south (fights for Krasne are again in the way). 17th. Armoured and 46th Brig. attacked in the north and pushed katsaps up to Jahidne.A lot of casualties again on both sides, but Russians are clearly crawling forward in several places.
Interesting movie showing heavy conditions in the city- unfortuntelly only in Ukrainian, but worth to watch for combat footage.
Excellent material. Author himself described it  as orientantional rather than fixed organizational measure- Russians are experimenting in a way that is becoming similar to various assaults groups in WWI. Bomber section, Lewis section, bayonets etc. Note how small "assault platoon" is- only 12-15 people, they clearly (but probably temporarly) left template based on squads fit in APC/IFV.
It's curious if this pattern is indeed ppular among the frontline troops or just an example of local adaptation.

The lesson of the last year is that real military power actually counts for quite lot. Witness the parade in Kyiv Putin has spectacularly not had. China obliterated Hong Kong's Democracy because it could, it hasn't taken Taiwan because it CAN'T. Real military power sets the table for the rest of the discussion. All the diplomatic niceties really do flow from the balance of kinetic power available to each side.

1 year of the war is passed. From the start of the invasion and to the huge count of air and missile strikes. One of my friends has been killed by wagner artillery in Bohorodichne village near Bakhumt. My father-in-law has been killed by storming the defensive enemy positions in the Kherson region 1st of October. I gave 3 of my salaries (all what I have)on the first day of the war on the military budget. Thanks to all of you, thanks for your help. Taking carry of our refugees, helping our soldiers to destroy enemy forces with AT weapons, artillery, APS, AFV, and Tanks, peoples who served in foreign legions. Thank you for giving billions of money to support our economy. Special thanks to battlefront for small support for me, when I asked about a discount, they gave me 2 games with all DLCs for free - I didn't expect this. Some of my relatives were in Kherson in occupation, and all high-value electronic and expensive things were looted from them by Russian forces. And now we don't fear rocket strikes (10 times they exploded 700-1000m from my house) we don't fear nuclear threat, we don't fear the second army in the world and you shouldnt. Sorry for we English would that what I want to say for all of you, I can tell you many things about the war but first i will try to improve my language knowlages.

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.      

I have a couple of comments.
1. Maybe at this stage it would be helpful to specify what is meant by MC/DC at the particular command level under discussion to avoid talking about different things. Twitter discussion sparked by a post of Tatarigami_UA mentioned the problem of "senior officers" micromanaging deployment at platoon, company and battalion level. UKR do not fight in divisions, so he may have been talking about a brigade commander or brigade chief of staff telling a company commander where to place his platoons and company support weapons. Referring to that example specifcally - how likely is it that the  brigade staff will have a better picture of the action at the appropriate level to do this better than the company commander? I think it is quite unlikely, even with the modern communications. Even if e.g. the brigade commander has some information from drones etc. it is still more likely to work better if he shares this with the lieutenant on the ground rather than take the decisions himself. So I think MC should be preferrable at this level of fighting, unless junior commanders are known to be incompetent. 
2.  Ukrainian commentators themselves seem to be complaining about too little MC and too much DC. Although they may be wrong, I would give them the benefit of the doubt.
3. An interesting example pertinent to the DC/MC debate came to light a couple of months ago when discussing Wagner tactics. It was related to the the lowest tactical level, showing individual fire team leaders of Wagner's penal battalions being directed by way of drones flying over their heads to move literally a few metres in this or that direction. They had movement routes planned on a tablet with an overhead map looking like a video game screen (so maybe this was not "Mission Command" but "Combat Mission Command"). Paradoxically, I think that at such a low level a directive style of command has a lot more sense than brigade command moving individual platoons/companies on the battlefield. Here, a junior officer or NCO looking at the battle from an overhead drone indeed has much more information than a fire team leader and is not distracted by the enemy fire.
 
 

You know what I hold BF accountable for this sentiment!!!
You produce computer games and folk get used to winning after a few hours!!!
How unrealistic and folk then accustomed to winning when they see the real thing think it's a stalemate!!!
So BF buck up and do something about it!!! Jeezzzz  😉
I really don't know how the folk during WW2 dealt with the length of time it took to defeat the Germans, I guess there were some that thought it was a stalemate and we should have just given up....
🙄
KEEP CALM CARRY ON

Ok, let’s say you are totally right.  The Col Macgregors of the world have got a bead on reality and we here are deluding ourselves (completely ignoring our track record to date).
The war unfolds as you outline above…so freakin what?  It will be a hard fight, so we should quit now?  We should quit now and hope that Russian and Chinese expansion stops somewhere “over there”?  Especially after we pulled off the field, tails tucked between legs.  Or maybe we should negotiate and hope they leave us alone?  What possible historical experience points to where backing away from an expansionist dictator is a good idea?  That somehow they take a foot off the gas when they win?

Seriously, who are the people who promote this?  They cannot be the children of the great generations who built this world. If they are they have forgotten what their grandparents and parents fought and sacrificed for.

Exactly.  Let's be brutally honest with ourselves here.  Western warfare theory and doctrine is highly elegant and has demonstrated superiority in some contexts.  However, it is also very fragile.  Books have been written about why this is and how we got here - to be honest I am leaning towards the "let's sell war as political 'fast-food' - cheap, fast and goes down easy" linked to a bloated military industrial complex (War Incorporated) as the primary reason.  Regardless our entire military doctrine is based on a highly interlinked and dependent system that we have labelled many things over the years - combined, joint, JIMP, multi-domain, all domain. 
It is a brilliant theory but it is not robust.  You pull out one critical component and the whole thing falls apart.  And of course being us, we have highly incentivized finding ways to pull out critical components for our adversaries.  Saddam H was a monument on "How not to fight the western world" and everyone who might be "agin us" took a lot of notes - and modern asymmetric warfare doctrines were born.  A2AD, grey zone, subversive, hybrid, NavWar, swarms, cyber and a bunch of stuff which we probably have not even thought of yet all got a lot of heat and light because they could be weaponized to help the western way of war fall apart. 
Say what you will about the Russian way of war but it is damned robust.  What is happening is a final exam on whether dumb resilience can still stand up in the modern era - my guess is "no".  However, our system is very vulnerable.  Take away air power and AirLand Battle falls apart.  Take away armor and combined arms falls apart.  Take away C4ISR and the whole damned thing falls apart.  The best generals right now train by taking things away because that is what our opponents are going to do.
So to clarify my point.  Given the same forces that the UA has, I do not think western commanders would have done better and in fact may have very well done worse.  Manoeuvre warfare clearly needs some rethinking in this environment and we already saw what happens when it is blindly applied, by the RA.  The RA are the ones who started this war fighting in a manner very similar to our own, not the UA - they did something else entirely.  Now at some point, good old fashion western manoeuvre (aka dirty tank-love) is going to work, but likely after a long campaign of corrosive warfare.  And right now the experts at managing that corrosive warfare campaign are in the UA, not back in NATO.
 

Of course this makes the somewhat biased assumption that NATO commanders know how to fight this war any better.  In fact in many ways fighting this war employing NATO doctrine would be worse and likely lead to operational cul de sacs.  I am not sure mission command is always appropriate or effective in this sort of environment. 

I've been retired now for about a year and a half and I'm absolutely loving it. But I can't play CM all day. There are too many other things I'm really interested in. For example (not in order):
* I'm 66 and been a competitive runner since I was 18. Lymphoma took a bite out of that but I'm back at it again and feeling good. But at this age I'm much slower and need more rest after pushing myself.
* My model railroad
* Amateur radio
* Reading
* Piano
* Guitar
* Things my wife and I like to do together (she's retired and has her own interests too). This should really be higher up the list 😀
* Other games (yes, there are others, haha)
You guys wait until you retire. You'll see. I mean, still not having time for everything is a good problem because now "everything" is only stuff you WANT to do. The good news is I won't be bored in retirement!
Dave

Yeah, it's from French actually. Sorry used wrong Polish version instead of English one.😉
 
Interesting read from RUSI:
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/ending-russias-invasion-requires-reframing-discourse-diplomacy