The_Capt

C4ISR assets, logistics, engineering, EW, aircraft, guns/deep strike and specialists. We are wailing at our industry for the lack of depth in the western magazines. Russia had depth but found out it was largely filled with garbage. Every time I see an Oryx report that shows a maint depot or SIGINT or very expensive AD assets, it is equipment that the RA will take years to get back (if ever), and it was low density to begin with. These are the things that make the machine work. Without them all those shiny new T62s are pretty much useless. A military operational system is like a human body, it can take a beating but once critical organs start to fail it triggers follow on failures. The UA loses stuff but it is backed by the deep pockets of the west (and yes, they are still deep in comparison to Russia if one takes into account quality). China is the only life line for the RA on this sort of stuff as its own industry cannot keep up and is being hit by sanctions. But China hasn’t shown it is going to jump into this with high end support yet, and it likely isn’t going to go “all in” considering it has its own region to worry about.

"Happening in the fight now is that the attrition exchange rate is favorable to Ukraine but it's not nearly as favorable as it was before. The casualties on the Ukrainian side are rather significant and require a substantial amount of replacements on a regular basis," You know, no one was saying that Bakhmut was a cakewalk, but I honestly think the UA has been waging a corrosive campaign on the RA, but it was defensive at Bakhmut. The UA lost things they can replace or know is coming on line, the RA lost things they cannot.

Absolutely. In fact it takes on a "key rate if systemic attrition" aspect. Here ISR and precision become key. However, if the UA runs out of ammo for this sort of fight, they likely will not have enough for a big offensive action either. Slow pace by conventional standards is also a clear factor - we saw this at Kherson. This is a case of western biases and lack of understanding on how these wars unfold driving advice to political will. Someone just posted an article on some expert decrying the UA for not having enough "mission command". Frankly looking at how this thing is going I am not even sure mission command is the right way to go, but in the west we have pushed it into an almost religious dogma. This advice get to the political level and becomes pressure on the UA to "fight and win like us" when we have zero proof it would even work given the same constraints/restraints. So the western political level needs and education on war, let's face it no one has had to fight one like this since the 50s - maybe parts of Vietnam. The good news is that Russia hasn't either. Corrosive warfare will take longer and will need to be more deliberate. It is in effect precision attrition. It takes time to break a military operational system and in a lot of cases we really do not have all the metrics or indicators figured out. But door #2 is to try and force generate enough mass to overcome the ISR/strike problems and then project and protect it in this environment. We have watched the RA struggle with this for over a year and fail. The UA will likely corrode and then use mass when the shaping phase is done. Everyone in the west seems to be expecting Gulf War but I think it will be more like Kherson, or Kharkiv if we are lucky.

So an ICC indicted person could technically sit at the head of the UNSC? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_the_United_Nations_Security_Council#:~:text=The president represents the Security,UNSC and decide voting order. Getting a whole League of Nations feel at the moment.

So this highlights what appears to be a modern warfare dilemma forming up - concentrate force and get detected and hit well before you can use it, penny packet smaller profile forces that are harder to detect, but risk being unable to project enough mass and get cut up by inches. It is basically the AirLand dilemma without the airpower...and now everywhere, all at once (not a bad movie, not sure it should have won) as opposed to discrete regions of the AO. So we are back to what has worked, corrosive warfare. One does not form up large mass, one erodes an opponent en masse until their system buckles and then break in, through and out. I suspect the entire play at Bakhmut has been a corrosive play, much like Severodonetsk et al last summer (which also drew a lot of fire at making "no sense" and UA troops poorly trained and supported). The UA is not "following the Russian lead' they are also constrained in the battlespace because the RA still has some ISR and strike capability which make large mass formations suicidal right now. The UA will likely keep "eating snow" until the RA cannot hold up on it own and then mass - and smaller mass than we are used to - has, and may very well work. So I disagree that the UA needs to solve for "larger scale" attacks, they need to solve for deeper scale attacks, but I think they have a head start on this.

How does this FUBAR the whole Russian taking over the UNSC chair thing?

And this is the problem with Russian strategy overall. I am reading Strategiya by Fridman right now and the Russians come from the same western school as we do. They have cultural spins but they are basically on the same pages (at least as far as I can tell being about half-way in). So if it is an escalatory control buffer zone/strategic that Russia is trying to secure then why pursue strategies that run directly opposite to that end?! This gets to the heart of why this bloody war makes no sense. Even if they took Ukraine, they would never be able to hold it. We would have turned it into a grinding resistance with safe havens in NATO treaty nations, so their "buffer zone" would have become an open wound for years. And then there is the Sweden-Finland effect. Russia goes all off menu on hard power and literally drives its desired buffer zone right into the arms of its opponent. It is at this point I call BS on the whole line of thinking. It is far more likely that Putin is engineering "buffer zone" crisis for domestic consumption - "see I told you they were all against us". The endgame is to keep himself and whoever he picks as successor in power for another 50 years.

That is not the issue. Of course out of control escalation of this conflict is a worry. What a lot of people in the “must not start WW3” side of things tend to forget is that Russia is just as afraid of WW3 as we are. Proof: despite severe setback and bleeding at historic levels, Russia has not turned to WMDs in this war. Now we know that they do have red lines and we cannot forget that; however, we should also remember that we have red lines too. There are lines that are worth escalation and Russia (as well as ourselves, apparently) need to be reminded of that. Controlled escalation to be sure, but if we’re are too terrified to act in a measured response to escalating Russian aggression we basically cede the strategic initiative. This would give Russia de facto escalation dominance in this conflict. FDR was right, the thing we need fear the most is our own fears. A measured but clear escalation to this drone nonsense is required and while we are keeping this war in a box, we also cannot let our fears - nor forget that they are just as nervous as we are - hold back deliberate action. ”But why are we not imposing a no fly zone/boot on ground/striking Moscow”. Couple reasons - all war is negotiation . Escalation ladders have rungs one can only use for the first time once, after that they become de-escalation options or norms of conflict. So we want to keep strategic options open. If we jump straight to no fly zones, we have a lot less escalation room before things get to a nuclear exchange threshold. Second one is trying to avoid inducing strategic panic on our opponent through miscommunication. A no-fly zone over the Black Sea may seem reasonable to us but rationality is relative. Russia may see this as a prelude to establishing air superiority for an invasion and panic. Putin needs a centralized and functioning control system on his own escalation and panic is toxic to that. So in this responses must be clearly communicated and demonstrated through signalling. So, for example, if one is going to employ offensive cyber to shut down Russian military airspace control, unlike in a Grey Zone/Subversive context, this action would have to be more clearly a communication of action - all war is communication. The primary mechanisms of that communication are cause and consequence. Attribution would need to be clear and message needs to be received that buggery out over the Black Sea against US assets has consequences. This speaks to the reality that the west needs to accept, this war is as much ours as it is Ukraines. With China now communicating along with Iran it is becoming clear that this entire thing is becoming a global decision point in just how the global order will proceed. We are not supporting Ukraine because Russia is bad (they are in this), or “the children!”. We are doing it because this war is an attack on the global order that demands a response or we risk losing that order itself. In many ways this war is already moving towards a global conflict as power poles invest in it as a proxy conflict - it is becoming an indirect WW3. And while we must do what we can to avoid a direct WW3, we cannot let that fear drive us to losing the war we are already in.

Well so far, you: - have applauded a Russian direct attack on a U.S. military assets in international waters. “Perfect soft kill” was your exact term, which is just wrong on a lotta levels…not perfect, sloppy because we have freakin camera footage…not soft, hard as it was very likely by kinetic impact and not EW jamming etc. - Argued that is was within some sort of justifiable ROEs because the US is supporting Ukraine while it fights for it’s life. It is not justified, at least until this war expands outside Ukrainian borders - hell we are tip toeing around hitting targets inside Russia but apparently international waters and airspace are the Wild West now. - Offered that we re-write international legal norms as they relate to international waters…reasoning and logic TBD. - Linked the current incident to another over Turkey in 2015 (unless you believe the Russian position because they have a good track record of being truthful in these matters). And somehow are trying to make the current situation, again, acceptable. - Made a huge leap between WW3 and a couple banks collapsing in the US. - And linked it all back to “elites” because we all know they run the world through a Star Chamber near the earths core…ok, I made up that last part but it really wasn’t that far off-narrative. But I will accept you are not in the “nut-camp”, however, when you decide to join us in the “grown-up, I am over first year philosophy and political science” camp please let us know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shootdown This? We are talking about this? No, this is a Russian violation of Turkish airspace that prompted a lethal response (that was a hard kill to btw). Ah, well you squarely have the Great US Satan in your brainpan today and look like are planning on a pretty wide scope logic journey while standing on the righteous hill of “it isn’t fair!” Can we expect a sequel of how the US and NATO forced Russia into invading a neighbour? Bioweapon black sights and sinister US oil interests? How all those people at Bucha were crisis actors? I mean if you are going to go all crazy in public, why do half measures.

Well, yes. US is free to provide bilateral direct support to Ukraine especially from outside the conflict zone. A Russian direct “soft-kill” on a US asset in international waters is technically an act of war. By the logic you seem to be proposing, Russia can conduct attacks on US personnel who are flying these things in Italy, or Nevada. So what would be an “international crisis” by your measuring stick then? Because is we do not have legally defined limits of what is inside and outside this conflict then we are very likely to have a lot of them. For example, Russia is flying their version of AWACS within Russian airspace who are directly supporting the targeting of civilian housing. Russia industry with links to defence outside of Russia? Russian military outside Russia? Tell me where the redline is then. (note: by military definitions this was not likely a “soft kill” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_protection_system. Looks more like a hard kill by ramming).

Good lord, here we go with WW3 again. Well there is an argument to be made we are already in a global level conflict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aid_to_Ukraine_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War Not sure how knocking down Reapers is going to make that situation any better for Russia, but hey it is a theory. Or is it that time of the week to roll down the nuclear escalation rabbit hole?

Did they really? They directly attacked a US assets in international waters. The US is now justified in all sorts of escalation and likely can generate the internal support to do it. The US has over 300 MQ-9s, a dozen or so with Stingers and Hellfires handed over to the UA would be appropriate right now. Maybe finally green lighting ATACMS to hit the airfields those MiG flew from. Oh and let’s not forget the fact that the US can do offensive cyber too. Said it before, will say it again - the west has escalation dominance here, not Russia.

It is their world, we just live in it.

Wow, Kazakhstan for the win. They team up with Mongolia again and we could be in serious trouble.

Well -1 now apparently. So does Wagner have airfields and infrastructure too?

So on Bakhmut, we are hearing an entire spectrum from "it is a deathtrap for the UA!! It will collapse at any moment, run away!", to "It sucks because we are not supported and untrained, arty is running out of ammo", to "It is ok and we are making it work", to "It is an RA graveyard, and we are crushing them, we have a lot of arty ammo". This tracks with these sorts of situations in the past. The truth is likely down the middle and the extreme POVs are happening but are somewhat on extreme ends of the experience (maybe). One thing we can say is that Bakhmut is holding, well past mainstream news media prepping for its fall. Ukrainian and military leadership appear united and in line on the battle. The RA is smashing up against this fight and moving slowly, the steady stream of video (which is skewed in the west) demonstrates that the battle is costly to the RA - how costly remains to be fully seen. My instinct, and history tells us that it is likely skewing towards "high". The biggest factor in attrition of combat power as a whole is the force generation competition. We are seeing older and older RA equipment and more reports of poorly trained troops. The UA has reports of poor training and support but also a video streams of newer (and western) equipment rolling into this fight. Add to the this the steady increase in UA asks for offensive equipment and it is clear that this whole thing is not close to being done yet. What I am looking for in particular is culminating points. The RA might actually be past theirs, which would have been last summer and this entire thing is a zombie operation for domestic audience consumption - there is a whole lotta "righteous sacrifice" narratives floating around the RA info sphere right now. The UA has not hit theirs yet, that point going to be key for how this war ends. Likely culminating point scenarios for the UA: - This spring in the event of an operational offensive that fails. Based on Bakhmut, I would say the ability to "freeze" this conflict is in Ukraine's hands right now and this would be on the table if this is as far as the UA can go for this war. - This summer with a successful operational offensive but no tank left in the gas for finishing off Crimea or Donbas - This fall, or next spring after retaking a pre-2014 region - my money is on Crimea because it makes the most military sense. - The whole perogy, likely as a result of a total RA/Russian state collapse and then we got a whole new set of regional security problems to deal with. Once culmination happens (and we are talking strategic here), this war could drag on but it will be more likely more in line with the 2014-2022 period of a nasty open sore while both sides try to reconstitute for another round in a few years. The question of how that reconstitution race would pan out is interesting.

Very glad it was unmanned, if the US had lost a live pilot this would be a very different day. This will create an interesting little ROE conundrum though - should we kill a Russian human to protect an unmanned asset?

Again, which "1" are we talking about? One thing that I have not seen from anyone is an actual assessment of combat power attrition at Bakhmut. Combat power attrition is basically how fast each sides operational systems are eroding in comparison to how well they can sustain and backfill losses. So this means the "ratio" is far more than just infantry in the grinder. Guns, logistics, ISR, C2, engineering, specialists etc. The US Army defines combat power through - Leadership, Firepower, Information, Mobility, Survivability. (https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/fm3-0.pdf), so the real question is what is the attritional ratio within those components? Followed by, what were their start states? How are they sustained? And what trajectory are they on now as a result of this battle? And remember this is a net and gross equation. Pulling out the old copy of War By Numbers by Lawrence (and again take with caution) and he outlines how attacking is historically normally more costly than defending...up to a point. Context is king here, was it an ambush or an attack against a prepared position? Ignoring the noise, the ratios should be in the neighborhood of 1.5:1 against the Russians as a start point and then move around based on historic figures. The biggest evidence of significant Russian losses is the simple fact that they have not been successful after trying for nearly 10 months that is a lot of failed attacks and failed attacks tend to skew losses heavily against the attacker. Now expand that out to a operational systemic level - and we know it is based on ISR and deep strike capabilities and we start to see what is in play.

Add to this arty assets. The other thing Oryx does not show is the wear out attrition. There have been reports of RA guns wearing out, but basically nothing in combat has a long shelf life without maint and refit. Just simply driving tracked vehicles causes all sorts of issues over time (worn parts, gun sights get knocked out of whack, comms burn out). The UA does not even need to kill this stuff, just keep it in operations without proper maint and it will simply die on its own. Given the state of the RA, I have serious doubts that they have been able to sustain upkeep let alone refits. As to backfill production, well once again it is what is missing - does anyone think that if Russia was rolling stuff off lines at a great of knots that they would not be flashing that to the world? "Look at our mighty war machine!" We have not seen it because it is not happening.

Well there was that pretty long stretch of standing in a line with pokey stuff and stabbing each other but the overarching principle is sound.

I mentioned this before but casualty ratios are only one metric (and frankly a squishy one). The question is one of combat power attrition. So in Feb we saw tallies of RA logistics, C2, engineering etc. This is stuff Russia cannot get back easily, while the UA is being pushed this stuff from the West. I expect the combat power attrition is still acceptable to the UA, hence why they hold onto Bakhmut. As to counter-attacks, why waste the effort in Bakhmut, which is now a grinding wasteland and the RA main effort. The counter attacks should be operational offensives to the east or west. I mean this is why I don't really buy the political symbolism argument, the UA is not counter-attacking at Bakhmut because it is simply not worth it, bleeding the RA is. They are marshalling offensive combat power in the backfield, why waste it on Bakhmut? Frankly it is what the RA should have been doing as they now have lost time to prepare defensives with all those troops they got killed at Bakhmut (time is an attritional metric as well).

Silly rabbit, all roads lead back to CMCW.

Given the suppressors on the on the rifles these are likely specialized troops such as Recon, or a photo op.

Whatever happened to that “1:1” attrition ratio claim from last week? Did anyone follow up with details? And of course was that straight casualties or combat power attrition?