cyrano01

From what we can tell..."not really".  The modern Russian military system employed at the beginning of the war looked a lot more western in composition.  Since then, it does look like Russia is rolling back to the Soviet Divisional construct at least for force generation.  As to EW employment specifically...who knows, but I suspect the Russians are falling back on volume.  They definitely appear to have upped their ISR game somewhat.
In the field both sides are down to multiple small unit actions to go anywhere - this is why Adiivka likely took months instead of days.
Why that is happening has nothing to do with the strengths or weaknesses of the Soviet era systems.  It has to do with profile and time.  We have seen plenty examples of detection of forces well back from the front line.  So if one tries to marshal anything bigger than a company your ISR signature is going to get picked up very early.  Hell the troop positioning movements alone will likely get picked up.
Second element is time.  It takes maybe 30 minutes to get a company group or combat team lined up and into action.  Less if you have drilled it.  A Battalion can be an hour or more.  A Brigade can take hours to days to get into position and lined up for an operation.  An entire day sitting with a lot of highly detectable assets in range (now being +50kms) of strikes is suicidal on this battlefield...so neither side is doing that.  This has little to do with upscaling ability, or Soviet era C2, and everything to do with battlefield illumination and long range strike at a tactical level.  If you want to lose a Brigade, sure deploy it within 50kms of the front in concentration and try and get it shook out for a major operation.
So both sides appear to be de-aggregating in order to have some chance of actually getting forces to the front.  This has resulted in corrosive tactical scatter in a lot of cases.  In the few areas where we see concentration (e.g. Russian assaults at Adiivka and Bakhmut) we still saw small scale actions, just a lot of them repeated.  We also saw horrendous losses.
There is a very real possibility that behavior on the battlefield is a result of the environment and not legacy shortfalls in C2.  This scares the bejezzus out of the west as we have bet the farm on the superiority of our own system.  The real lesson for the west is: "do not fight in a war like this one".  Which is a great idea, unless all war is headed towards versions of this one, at least for the next while.
I strongly suspect we are headed for something even worse for the western system to be honest.  The trends pulled out of this war speak to a completely different battlefield dynamics, much of which we have not figured out.  We could have entire volumes of doctrine that have been overtaken by events, and nothing scares a modern military more than that.  

This actually made me chuckle.
I expect it had no problem making contact with the ground.
 

I have never fully bought this reason for the UA or RA difficulties in this war.  It got rolled out after last summer to try and explain why the UA failed while trying to employ western doctrine and equipment: “well you see it would have worked but the Ukrainians struggle to coordinate above company level.”
Problem with this theory for both the UA and RA is that the first year of the war had plenty of examples of larger operational level coordination for both sides.  Russia pushed in a 5-6 axis attack that saw successful penetration up to 250kms.  It wasn’t a lack of coordination that stalled and killed these attacks it was the levels of friction modern C4ISR and weapons can project on conventional forces.
The UA coordinated two nearly simultaneous offensives roughly 450 kms apart at Kharkiv and Kherson successfully.  Kharkiv demonstrated Brigade level manoeuvre and Kherson started that way be devolved to Coy level actions the forced the Russia withdrawal more slowly.
Finally, there is nothing in the infamous “Soviet system” that precludes higher level coordination.  In fact it is quite the opposite.  Soviet doctrine was all about mass and scale.  Mission Command does not magically create upscaling.
We watched western doctrine and equipment fail very visibly back in summer ‘23 and our immediate reaction was “well it is clear they are doing it wrong”.  Based on the evidence we see, nearly daily, do we think perhaps there might be other reasons that are forcing both sides of this war to adopt multiple small unit actions as the primary mode of offensives?  After 2 years of this war, perhaps they understand and are employing what works as best as it can due to battlefield realities better than we do?
 

The Boeing guy in charge of doors just got a job there.

Following on from this thread, do we have any ideas why we're not seeing more evidence of HARM-type UAVs, yet?  LARDs ("Light Anti Radiation Drones"), if you will?  From what I can tell it shouldn't be particularly complicated to make a drone which takes off and flies towards (and then into) the strongest local source of radiation at a frequency of your choosing?
Wouldn't such a design be equally capable of attacking enemy EW or other enemy emitters (soliders with radios, FPVs, etc.)?

They can't seize and hold terrain, yet.
And how well will holding that terrain work out for the infantry in the future? Hell, how well does it work right now?

I've been thinking about this post most of the day, and keep coming back to "Neat. Now what?"
Which got me thinking about how other step changes in military capability were handled. The two obvious ones that come to mind are tanks in WWII, and airpower during the Cold War. Now, clearly, in both cases they existed early, but they only really became effective/worrisome/"game-changing" some decades after their entree to the battlefield.
For the infantry, in both cases, the response became basically the same: very small infantry units became fully capable of anti-ing the other thing, either anti-tank or anti-air.
During WWII anti-tank rifles, bazookas, fausts, shrecks, Piats and hearty grenades gave platoons and sections an ability to defend against or attack against tanks, pretty explicitly at the detriment to the nominal role of the infantry, which was to oppose and defeat enemy infantry. That trend was significantly enhanced during second half of last century with things like RPGs and M-72s. This is at the point now where with weapons like Javelin tanks perhaps have more to fear from infantry than the vice versa, even though lugging Javelin around is a royal PITA especially for light infantry.
The introduction of air power, and especially effective CAS, started us on the road to the fully illuminated battlefield, where nowhere is safe and to be seen is to die. During WWII the only real counter that the infantry had was to dig on, or hide, or both. But during the Cold War a lot of effort went into MANPADS, resulting in the Stinger in the 1980s and with other systems following soon after. Just like their anti tank weapons, lugging around anti-aircraft missiles is a PITA which detracts from the nominal role of engaging enemy infantry, not to mention the drain on budgets and training schedules. But on the other hand now every platoon and section is capable of destroying any tank or aircraft that wanders into it's little tactical AO. And once the air and armour battle is won - either locally or globally - then the rest is just mopping up. The degradation of the infantry platoon and section's ability in the infantry-battle doesn't really matter, since while that bit remains hard and unpleasant, it is incredibly harder and more unpleasant in the absence of either air or armoured support.
So you can probably see where this is going.
Assuming UAS remains in play (and why wouldn't it?), then the role of infantry platoons and sections will change again. Instead of being little nodes of anti-tank and anti-air goodness,with some residual anti-infantry capability, they will become little anti-UAS nodes, with the weapons, training, mindset and purpose to defeat enemy UAS in their local area, and also protect or project friendly UAS capability around themselves. If an enemy tank or aircraft turns up then the section or platoon mightn't be able to deal with it themselves, but they will be networked to someone who can - guns, missiles, friendly armour or air, or friendly UAS. And they'll still, you know, carry rifles. Mainly out of habit and tradition, as well as giving the NCOs something to inspect every day. But most of their weaponry, and sensors, and just the general claggage they're carting about will be geared towards winning the UAS fight, because winning that will mean that the rest is just mopping up.
In other words, the infantry will be able to concentrate physically and cognitively on the UAS battle because it won't be their role any more to win the tank, infantry, or local airspace battle.

Just stop it.  This war would be over in a day if the US and West fully slammed down...and then we would be dealing with the next war right behind it.  In what universe do you imagine Russia quietly skulking back over the border, avoiding all eye contact and gracefully accepting defeat if the West rolled in all the dice?
Should we support Ukraine, absolutely.  Should we fight this war for you, no freakin way.  Don't believe me?  Ok, let's take a look at the last time two nuclear powers got involved in a conventional war...oh wait, there really have not been any.
Closest we ever came was here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_wars_and_conflicts
And this skirmish was within a year of Pakistan becoming a nuclear power (maybe).  So in human experience we have gone to incredible lengths to keep nuclear powers out of direct conventional wars...why do you suppose this is? 
Cut the "West is to cowardly" and "nukes are not a thing" BS because it clearly is an underlying calculation in this war and just because "you think so" is not going to change that.  

A common western critique has been that Ukraine "needs to upscale".  Last summers offensive appeared to be penny-packeting - "why can't they get mech to work? Must be because they do not know how to do Bn level manoeuvre.  It is their Soviet tradition (which does not even make sense with respect to upscaling)"  
I am in the camp that after 2 years of war the UA knows how to fight this war better than we do.  It looks like they have picked their "upscaling" effort.

I think even with just 5 confirmed, we can count this as Sukhoi February.
(Sukhoi mans dry).

Ok, well let’s start there then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington's_crossing_of_the_Delaware_River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plunder
And of course the big one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord
And let’s pull some doctrine in: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-90-12/fm3-90-12.pdf
So adding this all up, essentially it has and can be done but there are a lot of caveats.  Ultimately it is a question of weight.  How much weight is being projected across the river as combat power?  How much weight is needed under combat conditions to sustain the weight of the combat power on the other side?  There are multiple ways to get that weight across a river other than a fixed bridge.  Fixed ferry, unfixed ferry, tac aviation and now, UAS.  Forward foraging and cannibalization etc.  
Now doctrine agrees with you, the best is solid fixed LOC bridging but any crossing operations, even conventional ones come in phases.  The opening phase is very often lighter more mobile resupply methods until the bridgehead force can push the enemy back far enough that it is safe to build a series of fixed bridges.  Essentially almost every opposed military river crossing in history began with what we are describing south of Kherson - light forces establishing a bridgehead, sustained and then heavy force link up once conditions are established.  D Day being an exception as were other amphib operations which all had to be sustained by air and sea.
So “sustaining a scale of operation” without a bridge is not only possible, it is really the only way to get many water crossing started in the first place.  Now as to “how long and how far?”  Well that depends on a lot of factors.  If the UA stays light it keeps the logistics bill low.  They might not need a fixed pontoon bridge if they can advance - as you say - “10-30kms”.  Pontoon ferry’s might be able to sustain them as they did for the RA for quite some time before the RA withdrew.
So basically as an engineering and logistics problem what we are looking at south of Kherson is not new or novel.  In the current environment it is going to be challenging and dangerous but it is not the thing being invented from zero in all this. 
 
Ok, so this one opens up the question of how well prepared are the RA forces on the other side?  Light forces have proven pretty important in this war.  They were critical in the first month pretty much everywhere and at Kharkiv constituted the breakout force.  If the RA has built a heavy line of defence as you seem to indicate then you may be correct.  But have they?  We really do not know, but the fact that a small bridgehead at Krynky for months - no massive RA armoured c-attack, and a few maps of force lay down estimates may help:
https://features.csis.org/ukraine-war-map/
https://militaryland.net/maps/deployment-map/
These seem to suggest that the RA have accepted risk in this sector exactly because there is a river there.  So how dense are those RA fortifications?  That map appears to show roughly a single Division covering off 100 kms of frontage.  That is - and let’s be really generous and say that RA division is at full strength - approx 10,000 troops, or 100 troops per km..which is extremely thin.  Estimates of the rest of the RA line are around 300 troops per km.  100 RA troops per km means that there are massive holes in that defensive line.  Light troops can not only cross, they can infiltrate between forces and get into rear areas, which will force the RA to react.  So we are not talking the Atlantic Wall here, we likely have RA hard points on obvious crossing sights, small c-moves forces and a bunch of RA ISR.
So indications are that RA force density is quite low, which makes the light dispersed option a good fit.  Now the UA has much better intel and will have to plan according to that but based on what we can see, the employment of light forces over that river in strength is not only possible, it is viable.
An and now we get to the crux…but you kinda answer your own question here.  “What can these light forces actually do?”  Well at Kyiv they stopped the RA cold.  Elsewhere they have been instrumental in causing the RA to collapse - please find me one major tank battle in this war?  Hell it is hard enough to find a decent mech battle.  This is a war dominated by fires, not manoeuvres.
So the answer to your question is right in your post:
”RUS regroup, reassign reserves to the zone, pile on the drone/artillery/aviation support”.  
That is exactly the objective of a bunch of light forces running rampant in the backfield.  Why?  Because the RA will have to pull these (shrinking) assets from somewhere else.  This is the minimum objective by the way.  If the RA cannot or does not have “reserves” then an opportunity to redraw the lines south of Kherson presents itself.  If those light forces can actually establish a bridge head then options open up for heavier forces and other crossing options.  By that point the entire left end of the RA line is in trouble. But let’s leave that all as a branch plan and stretch goal.
So the real question is not in your response or reasoning.  They are not “can it be done” or “will it do anything?”  The real question is: does the UA have the forces and capabilities to do it at scale?  This we do not know and will have to simply wait and see.

I honestly don't think Russia would respond with anything more than rhetoric. They've pulled key assets from the Finnish border and even key air defense assets from Kaliningrad to replace losses in Ukraine already. The leadership knows deep down that NATO is not an offensive alliance and they have no worries about being attacked by them without a provocation that couldn't possibly be ignored.  If they didn't truly believe that, they wouldn't still be in this war fighting a "second rate" power and wasting all their hard to replace assets that would be critical to the defense of their homeland in the event of a NATO attack. 

https://www.ft.com/content/10df6f24-7ce6-407f-8509-76c65ec6e740
.....I don't get it, if its so bad having German soldiers setting targets up for it, why not just give it to Ukraine with the training to use it? ****ing hell. incoherent. makes no sense. whats next, a german train carried the missile to the Polish-Ukrainian border, therefore, no missile for u (could describe all German aid to Ukraine, im surprised he let it get that far). Idiotic. Makes mockery of German support for Ukraine when Scholz acts like Ukrainians are barbarians who dont know how to program a missile, or cant be expected to align with German reluctance to strike Russia proper (when they have acted as such with other weapons), or even worse, scared of saying out loud that targeting of "supposedly" Ukrainian occupied territory in Crimea is a red line for Germany.....which is just bravo, just so on par, for 10 years of occupation to be enough to erase sovereignty. 
Can't wait for occupied Donbas to be the red line 10 years down the line, then occupied Ukraine another 10, then Baltics another 10. absolute idiot. The partitions of Poland took 23 years to pan out, im sure Putin is so glad Scholz and Germany are content with 10. 

Why flares? Aren´t heatseeking missiles (mostly) short range?

Recently, I noticed that my UKR listening skills have improved noticeably. With the aid of translators and some effort, I can watch and translate UKR videos. So, let check the following interview with UKR AFV expert (former AFU tank officer)
 
 

From my limited observation 60-100 kmh helps to decrease the chance of hit There are unverified RU claims that with 100-120 kmh you can drive away from FPV  The second video  shows Avenger escaping from Lancet Keep in mind that piloting FPV is not easy - you need to compensate for example for the wind etc. Even tanks can benefit from speed, but I mostly see wheeled vehicles escaping attack. Here is quadracycle at full speed escapes the attack and we also can compare it with successful attack. RU claims that the current typical suicide FPV that operates at frontline has just 25 minutes (at longer range UKR use different noticeably slower drones). It does not mean that speed is 100% protection, but it does mean that speed helps.  [EDIT] Another good video of RU drone that was too slow.

Back to war assessment.
Let's have a look at battle damage of RDK M113 from Avdiivka. The M113 got hit by 1-2 RU FPV drones.
00:50-00:56 damage to fuel tank from fragments 01:00-01:10 damage to engine compartment from fragments 01:10-01:20 damage to heater from fragments There are a lot of floor shots to show blood from the wounded they were transporting 01:20 other vehicle (again damage from fragments) M113 was able to return to base Interesting, but the damage comes from fragments, not HEAT. It's possible that HEAT warheads aren't often used at that location or that the FPV drone trajectory isn't always optimal for HEAT, or it missed due to pure luck.
Conclusion
FPV damage is primarily caused by fragmentation and HEAT from 40mm grenades and RPG-7 type-rounds (in hindsight it is kind of obvious). The damage is moderate and may be considerably reduced by standard methods such as bar and ERA armor, as well as spall liners.
The most significant distinction between FPV and conventional rounds is that FPV may hit anywhere on the vehicle, whereas current militaries are primarily concerned with up armoring vehicles against standard Grenade and RPG trajectories.
Reasons for extreme effectiveness of UKR drones
If we look at RU AFVs there are three distinct groups:
Highly flammable tanks and BMPs Low flammability yet weakly armored MT-LB Completely unarmored wheeled vehicles The exceptional success of UKR drones is due to the inherent vulnerability of RU vehicles and the RU's virtually total lack of a mass uparmouring program.
Let's see agent Murz opinion
Other reason for FPV effectiveness
Unlike in low-intensity combat, once a vehicle is disabled, it is effectively gone due to arty fire. So, FPV drones just need to disable the vehicle, not to inflict major damage.
And the FPV drone does not even need to disable the vehicle; instead, it may damage the sights, external electronics, and unmanned turret. In low-intensity conflict, such damage is not critical; in this war, it is effective mission kill because there are many other weapons systems around.
What is the point of your top-of-the-line unmanned turret if drone with the cost of 400 bucks can destroy it quickly. 
New paradigm of AFV up armoring
Apart from other things (APS, AD, Drone EW) we need to change the paradigm of uparmouring.
As much of the vehicle's surface as feasible should be armored to survive a 40mm grenade Engine must be protected even better than other compartments (withstand RPG-7) External components, such as electronics, turrets, and weapons, should be resistant against 40mm grenades or have the ability to be moved inside the vehicle quickly. Spall liners is a must. Crew members may benefit from a full-body flak suit. Previously, there was a possibility of receiving few RPG strikes during missions. Now you may be struck by dozens of FPVs. Each of them may do small damage, but fragments could eventually strike, for example, the driver leg, making the vehicle temporally immobilized and vulnerable to arty fire. Wheeled light vehicles
Let's look at RU recommendation for wheeled and unarmored vehicles 
So, the speed of the vehicle increases survivability. That means steps must be taken to ensure that logistics and unarmored wheeled vehicles can travel at the highest possible speed. Roads need to be improved and fixed. Drivers need to be trained. Vehicles need to have better accident protection (due to obvious decrease of safety).

Good summary from Tatariagmi.
Judging by various accounts aggregated here and there, it seems to be one of first Russian successes in coordinating airstrikes with infantry assaults. FABs were flying naturally before, in Severdonietsk, Soledar etc. but this time they indeed report of great concentration of hits by this type of weapon, supported by near-constant presence of Russian drones over city. Relatively crude tactics, but effective over time- muscovites definitelly were able to concentrate a lot of resources here.

It's not slumbering.
It's swallowing fistsfull of pentobarbital, and washing them down with vodka.

All the lightweight (2-300kg) torpedoes seem to be anti-submarine, not anti ship

At the risk of dragging in more historical analogies, what you describe sounds remarkably like the original torpedo boats when they first became a thing in the late C19th-early C20th which similarly scared many naval thinkers of the time. That's torpedo boats before the long, slow evolution into torpedo boat-destroyers...destroyers...something about the size of a cruiser like, say, a Type 45.
Whatever the white elephant type qualities of the aircraft carrier, British or otherwise, who fancies a bet that they end up as a means of conveying your swarm of UAVs into a lunch position where they can be unleashed on the other side's swarm of UAVs, or something.
 

At the risk of dragging in more historical analogies, what you describe sounds remarkably like the original torpedo boats when they first became a thing in the late C19th-early C20th which similarly scared many naval thinkers of the time. That's torpedo boats before the long, slow evolution into torpedo boat-destroyers...destroyers...something about the size of a cruiser like, say, a Type 45.
Whatever the white elephant type qualities of the aircraft carrier, British or otherwise, who fancies a bet that they end up as a means of conveying your swarm of UAVs into a lunch position where they can be unleashed on the other side's swarm of UAVs, or something.
 

These drones could in theory also become small torpedo-bearers. Their payloads are easily reaching something circa 200kg, which seems not far from weight of light torpedoes already used by various navies. There are technical limitations here probably, but stationing several clandestine drones 2-3 kms from target and shooting a volley would leave very little time for ship crews to react.
http://www.hisutton.com/Ukraine-Maritime-Drones.html
Hard times for sailors, that's for sure.

The best I can provide is this: 

I marked all relevant locations.
 
There are industrial buildings to the right of Brevno. There are two lone urban buildings between Avtobaza and the urban area at the train station. They can be used to stage counterattacks toward railroad. I feel it is foolish to push beyond the railroad.

 

Sorry to interrupt the lively discussion about US politics, but I'd want to add my two cents regarding the Avdiivka situation.
Most likely, it will attempt to halt or slow down the current RU attack on the O0542 route. It is the most dangerous RU attack, with the potential to collapse the entire Avdiivka pocket rapidly. If 3rd manages to stop or slow this RU attack down, we could argue that 3rd indeed saved Avdiivka from quick collaps.
 
Most likely, Avdiivka is going to fall because the Russian gliding bombs (UMPK) have not been neutralized yet. Essentially, RU are simply leveling with UMPK UKR strong points that their meat groups encounter. The system works as follows: an RU meat group meets a UKR strong position, dies while the RU command watches it through drones and then RU command orders a bombing of the strong point into oblivion. A fresh RU meat group is then dispatched forward. So, given enough time and bodies, RU will capture the place that once was called Avdiivka. 
 
The situation is advantageous to UKR in Avdiivka. Avdiivka is the most fortified area in UKR. Even with UMPKs, the Koksohim plant and south urban areas are incredibly tough to breach, and RU losses are horrific.
The problem is there is a certain critical vulnerability that RU have found and are trying to exploit now. If they succeed, Avdiivka will fall swiftly. Much faster than it would be otherwise.
Let's discuss the overall situation and then look at my quick map.
RU failed to encircle Avdiivka via Stepove > Orlivka (north axis) and Vodyane > Tonenke (south axis). The assault via Tsarska Ohota (48.11372615890259, 37.77596770282691) toward the major urban area (that pipe infiltration) was originally successful but is now slow and painful. Finally, since the Azov Steel battle, RU want to avoid any major assaults on large plants such as Koksohim.
So, using their standard tactic of persistent pressure by meat groups along the front lines, they discovered the weak spot.

The O0542 road is the primary communication route for the Avdiivka defense sector. Assaulting via Avtobaza and Brevno is the shortest way to reach it. There are not many urban-style buildings in this village-style area. As a result, it provides sufficient concealment for assaulting RU meat groups while providing substantially less cover for UKR defenders against UMPKs.
If UKR manage to neutralize this assault they could hold Avdiivka a lot longer. So, I believe this is the reason UKR commit 3rd assault "to save Avdiivka".