The_Capt

I think Steve answered this one pretty well. Kofman was pretty much way off at the beginning of this war, but to his credit did get better over time. In fact we noted how much we were in agreement in that last podcast. As to last year, this forum was one of the only places that saw the war as clearly driving towards Russian disadvantage from very early on. And again, the RA did collapse, twice. We predicted a collapse was likely (all the indicators were there) while most were crying about how Russia was turning it into a war of attrition. And Kofman really did not understand the impact of HIMARs as far as I could see. ”Kofman on HIMARS. "I think I've seen Ukrainians use it in a very effective manner over the last two weeks. The Russian military is going to do what they can to adapt and probably its effectiveness will degrade over time." New weapons most effective when first introduced, he says.” whoops.

To do it would mean Russia is managing its own form of corrosive warfare. It is able to attrit with precision on the front and in depth while throwing human waves forward. And we are back to ISR, we know they do have some, but we also get reports they do not have enough. And of course if they have that level of resolution, why throw in human waves? Instead they could poke, prod and hammer being able to see. As far as we can tell the RA does not even have the firepower advantages it had last summer. We know the AirPower situation has not changed. Someone is going need to really unpack this with some proof.

Don’t disagree here, not sure why a UA offensive did not happen. Ground conditions, or maybe they simply were not ready yet? Or maybe the UA figured it was a better deal to let them smash out at Bakhmut. Regardless the signs are definitely there that they are planning an offensive this spring or summer. Having been the guy who has had to babysit battlefield tourists, it is nowhere near over the top. In fact it was the main point they were bragging about and are now going to use it as “cred currency”. If Kofman had written “been to Kyiv and met with strategic staff” I would be a lot more willing to lend credibility. But I have seen this too many times in person to not call it what I think it is. Even if Kofman et al had come back with tactical observations, but no we get “loss ratio was 1:1”, which sounds more like a conclusion they had going in as there is no way to determine that on the ground at Bakhmut. Trust me this happens a lot more than people realize. These guys show up for a weekend. We get told in no uncertain terms “do not get them killed”. They glad hand, maybe get mortared once or twice, and then get on the chopper and go back home to stick it on their Facebook page. We watch them fly off and do another ramp ceremony. Seriously? So you want me to prove that attacking is more costly than defending? Look this is what I call “an obtuse flanking”, where in a debate/argument someone demands that one has to prove first principles. This is a lot of legwork and frankly drifting into unpaid labour. So instead why don’t you go on your own learning journey. Start here: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA302819.pdf and then use an internet search engine. We build entire military offensive doctrine around the idea that we need to concentrate more force at the point of attack to overcome the benefits of the defence. We also expect to take more losses in the short term, to achieve breakin, through and out, which sets up for annihilation through dislocation (some more stuff you can go look up). The UA broke this rule regularly in this war by being either upside down or near 1:1. How they did this is still a big question. The RA has not demonstrated the same ability, in fact quite the opposite, they have had massive force ratio advantages (e.g. 12:1) and still failed. This has been the underlying argument of pro-Russian “experts” (go online and Google anything by Col Macgregor) and the fears of mainstream analysts. The narrative is that the UA cannot fight a war of attrition with Russia for various reasons. We have repeatedly seen people point to tactical battles of attrition as proof that the Russian “strategy is working”. Yet the UA keeps getting stronger while the RA erodes. You can scan these pages to see it echoed at times. Not really sure what you mean here. I think we are agreeing loudly. I am stating that Russia is not coming back from its losses in this war. In fact some of this is not losses, it is shortfalls it had at the start of the war that it would need to build from scratch. No it wasn’t. The significant contribution was C4ISR that allowed those munitions and boots to be used to effect. Russia can get fancy self-loitering munitions, and they will make life difficult in some localized regions, but they do not have the operational level ISR to plug them into. So the balloon saga was hilarious and an example of ISR pivoting going very wrong. Pivoting strategic ISR is incredibly hard unless you have constructed a global architecture upon which to pivot from. Take space based, those satellites are in specific orbits designed to fly over specifics target areas, reorientation is not easy or free - it spends fuel on birds that do not have unlimited supply. So the answer is put enough up that you need only swing feeds to a different bird. So China may have some ISR constellations up there but their orbits are aimed at covering the South China Sea. Other Strat platforms such as high altitude aircraft or UAS are pretty limited and need to be supported, so now we are talking about extending their range, so more fuel and support with the infrastructure to back it up. China is still regionally focused so asking it to retask platforms designed to focus on Asia all the way over to Eastern Europe (and not get detected) is well outside of any capability they have demonstrated - perhaps you can do some legwork on that and come back. Finally, even if China could pivot there is not evidence that the RA can plug into their systems. A lot of this is crypto and link systems. The UA trained with the West for 8 years and likely got a backbone up and running quickly. Not so sure China and Russia are tight enough to be getting that intimate with highly classified systems. But hey, trying not to talk myself into “safe spaces”. Then I would say you have a lot more reading to do. One of those “things” is logistics and sustainment and Russia’s failure to master that led to the entire northern front collapsing. Seriously, every now and then some clever academic poses that the operational level “is not a thing”, which sounds cool until you ask “ok, so who is going to do all the operational level stuff”? Most of the operational level is marshalling and distribution of enablers that provide and sustain tactical advantage, linking tactical actions together into a coherent campaign and shaping effects to set overall battlefield conditions - but hey, what do I know? So what I want you and everyone to do is measure the length of the RA front, from the tippy tip of that thing past Kherson to the far right flank at the border in the north of Luhansk. Now take that number and divide the number of Russian troops in-country by it. Now take that number and divide it in half. Ok, now that number is the total number of troops per km the RA has to defend what it has taken. That number includes any troop rotations and counter move forces. Now take 20k off the overall number of the RA and plug it in. What does it do to that troop density per km? Now do 30k. Now 40k. This is the RA problem. Now before anyone pipes up - no, it is not that linear. The line will need to be much denser in close terrain and less in the open. Water obstacles will help as well. But if you want to get technical this also does not allow for a lot of depth, and a 50-50 tooth to tail ratio is extremely generous. Further, the RA does not have ISR that allows them to leave part of the line unmanned - the UA does because they can see and react before the RA crosses the start line. So the RA has to sustain that troop density, they have to enable it. The UA needs only to find the holes and make them worse. Once you have done the math in the previous step, rethink this last part. And this is a military that was very badly mauled last year. It does not have a western-backstop. It was missing what it needed for a job this size from the outset. It has not solved for AirPower (that is a big one). It has not been able to attack UA C4ISR directly in any meaningful way. It has not been able to erode UA LOCs. So, yes, I am sure things are very bad at Bakhmut but until we see something that say all that is changing, or failing more quickly on the UA side, this thing is still going in one direction.

Go nuts. I think we should all get the "Hot Thread" ribbon in our sigs once this is done.

Oh, now we are talking my language. That ain't crazy at all. Tricky and with a thousand points of failure, but I like where your heads at.

Ouch, words hurt. Well the RA did collapse as predicted, it just did not translate into a full strategic collapse. Seriously - "what have you done for me lately" To be fair to us, Kofman and others were all sounding the drums of doom back then as the Russian military was "just getting started" and drawing big red lines all over Donbas. So who was less wrong in that little situation?

Heh, well this Bakhmut thing may work out better than planned after all. Now - if confirmed (seriously, feel like this has become the 21st century Information honorific) - this is what a strategic indicator looks like.

There is no way they are going to be able to deduce this going to Bakhmut. They are going to see a bloody mess and a lot of carnage but in order to "firmly assess" the actual ratios they would need gain access to classified data at staff HQs in both the UA and RA. Going on the ground, they are going to here a lot of warstories and some brutal anecdotes but even the local commanders in that storm, are not privy to every c-battery or deep fires mission that happens. I have no idea what the ratio actually is, doctrine says 1:2-3 is the norm more towards the upper end in an urban fight but a lot depends on the type of tactics employed. For example the Battle of Mosul was about 1:10 in favor of the attackers but they were deliberate and slow. The RA has been pretty reckless by all accounts, and again the depth of the battlefield has changed dramatically. The RA is slugging it out in the streets while getting HIMARsed in the rear. In the end the critical attrition numbers are not the poor dog-faced infantry fed into this meat grinder - we can make more of them. It is all the stuff in the back - (e.g. guns for the RA) that gets lost, that really hurts.

Kofman has been hit or miss in a lot of ways. He started out this war within the mainstream assessments, which all turned out to be built on some pretty shaky assumptions. They then spent the early part of the war trying to somehow line up reality with their assessments, as opposed to just looking at what was actually happening. Back last early summer we heard the exact same narratives on how the RA was taking hits but its grinding offensives were in fact signs of success and a shift in the war. We here on this forum disagreed vehemently, mainly because based on the reported RA mass they should have been seeing much larger gains, and the big one - still no actual break throughs. In order to make an operational assessment one really has to see operational level evidence or build a framework that links tactical observations to operational ones consistently and effectively. We saw what happened last summer and what actually unfolded in the Fall. The UA went from "barely holding on" to being able to conduct two successful simultaneous operational offensives over 500km apart. I do not think most people realize just how hard that is to do and that the UA was nowhere near collapse, in fact all that time during Severodonetsk it would have been force generating and putting in place the architecture to make Kharkiv and Kherson happen. But lets say, ok, we here got lucky - broken clock is right twice a day. So what has happened since then to shift the calculus? Well the RA did mobilize and now has somewhere in and around 350k troops in country - but this is not all about mass - we keep coming back to this. Mass as we know it is not working in this war. So once again we see the RA playing smash face on a tactical objective that is has been trying to take for months. Their estimated losses at the low end are staggering. They bled out Wagner, they are bleeding out their mobilized troops. They are losing equipment they cannot get back - see tank production. They have not shown any evidence of creating the C4ISR, logistics or deep precision fires needed to turn into a force that can fight this war on even ground with the UA. So here we are back at "Russia re-gaining its feet" and UA on the ropes. Firstly, Kofman is not going to see what he needs to at Bakhmut - this is war tourism and showboating (gawd we saw a lot of that in the day). The actual data he needs to see to make accurate assessments are in strategic and operational HQs buried on hard drives and talking to the staff who work this problem. Second, the UA has been able to violate the historic force ratio losses attacker to defender, the RA has not shown any evidence of this. I would need to see this before even listening to any "1:1" loss rations. The steady stream of tactical anecdotes we see here do not support it, nor does open source intel collection. So I am pretty convinced the RA is losing at some pretty high force ratios compared to the UA, and on stuff that really hurts. Third, there is no evidence of UA bleeding out. Force generation is going on in full swing in places like the UK and Poland. There have been zero reports of shortages of manpower on the UA side, accept maybe right on the line units that in the teeth of this thing. Fourth. I do not care if Russia could mobilize a million men, they do not have the operational system to actually turn that into effective military capability in time for this war. People keep pointing to WW2 and the re-emergence of the Russian bear. Newsflash, war has changed a lot in the last 80 years. Sure you can stick a teenager into a uniform and give them a rifle, point them at the enemy and hope for the best. But today you need a lot of enablers in order to create decision. Again stuff like C4ISR, logistics, engineering, force protection and projection. You do not create these in the middle of a war this size without a lot of signaling. These things also take years to build up to a 21st century competitive level. The UA has, largely because they have plugged directly into western architectures - from force sustainment to generation. All indications of what I have seen show the RA going the exact opposite direction. Fifth. China. Sending a few hundred self-loitering munitions and boots is also not going to change things. Much in the same way a few dozen western tanks won't. China has been working on the C4ISR architecture to actually challenge the US but by all accounts it is 1) not there yet, 2) pointed in other directions - see Taiwan, and 3) China likely is not going to give away its actual C4ISR capability arc on saving Russia's dumb @ss. If China goes all in and somehow can link in the RA we will start seeing evidence. Much more precise fires and campaigns - UA logistics nodes exploding instead of RA ones, up to and including the operational level. Much more dynamic manoeuvre. Far more streamlined logistics. A lot more UA dislocation and disruption. Levels of actual SEAD and air superiority. So What? I will not only draw a link to the UA spring-summer offensive, I will predict it will be catastrophic for the RA unless we see some real operational level indicators otherwise. If the RA was smart, it would have dug in along the lines they really want to keep, hard. They would have dug in those mobilized troops, mined everything and tried to drag this thing out. Instead that went for a tactical objective and smashed thousands of forces against it. They lost several medium sized national militaries worth of equipment (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html) - that is just insane by 2023 standards. Good thing the T-34 takes a day to make because before this is over they may be driving them. At this point they must have pulled from all down the line to try and take Bakhmut, their force density on that frontage was pretty thin, it is likely cut full of holes right now. Once that mud dries they have a real problem covering it off. And meanwhile the UA can see all those holes because they are linked into real time multi-spectral satellites being flown out of Vandenburg. If the RA pull off a break through battle and get into the UA rear areas, or start a really good fires campaign to cripple Ukrainian rail or any signs the US is actually starting to buckle, then I will be the first in line to highlight it with red flags. But we have not seen any of this. In fact we are getting a steady stream of weird keening sounds out of the RA, and the UA is asking for engineering breaching equipment.

Kinda dropping a few hints here: “Finally, the United States will sustain and develop pragmatic modes of interaction to handle issues on which dealing with Russia can be mutually beneficial. The United States respects the Russian people and their contributions to science, culture and constructive bilateral relations over many decades. Notwithstanding the Russian government’s strategic miscalculation in attacking Ukraine, it is the Russian people who will determine Russia’s future as a major power capable of once more playing a constructive role in international affairs. The United States will welcome such a future, and in the meantime, will continue to push back against the aggression perpetrated by the Russian government.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Biden-Harris-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-10.2022.pdf They had better be going nuts in the back channels and under the radar right now. This is not a “watcha gonna do?” type situation. The loss of centralized control of WMDs is just one dance on this floor that could go badly.

Haven’t we been here before? Back at Severodonetsk were we not told at length how Russia had reframed this war in their favour? And back then the RA still had massive artillery in play, now their indirect fires appear in trouble. Regardless, we got the same stories of the UA bleeding out and “behind the curve”…and then Kharkiv and Kherson happened. Here we are again. I am almost at the point that I am thinking this is a blue disinformation op aimed at getting the RA to keep pushing (and dying) at Bakhmut in order to weaken the line elsewhere. The reported Russian losses are staggering and unlike the poorly mobilized infantry, all those vehicles and equipment are not things the RA has a “bottomless sea” of within its inventory. UA is going to take losses and frankly it is in their best interests to look desperate - just keeping that big win slightly out of reach while the RA continues to bleed out. Here is an actual metric of the UA bleeding out: when they stop sending thousands of troops to western training centres. Once we can no longer load Ukrainians on these course streams because there are none left willing or able to fight, we know that the UA is actually in trouble. That or some sort of RA break through.

With you right up to here. We only have to be wrong once and having seen the Yugoslav scenario up close and personal, we can pretty much toss “rational” out the window as a foundation of calculus. Back to my previous point - so what are we doing to engineer the Russian defeat we want?

That is one scenario. I do not know. Things this war has demonstrated is that there is 1) a whole lot of distance between what a lot of Russians think and reality, and 2) there is a whole lotta crazy on the table when that reality hits. I cannot see the ultranationalists accepting their lot as the Sick Man of Europe quietly.

The major difference between the collapse of the USSR and one of Russia, is that the USSR collapsed into existing states. For the most part they simply fell back on internal structures and held the order together. The notable exception was Former Yugoslavia - from direct experience loose nukes in FRY was a nightmare scenario. So Russia does not have a state structure safety net. They have regional centres of power but Russia is highly centralized, so if that goes away quickly things have potential to go all loopy in a lot of ways. The list of destabilization scenarios is pretty long, but loose nukes is probably amongst the worse (unless some real crazies break into the Russian bio weapon programs) but frankly any WMD is just plain bad in this sort of thing as it can very well wind up in violent extremism circles pretty quickly.

I do not know. No one does and that is what is particularly scary. We have not outlined a strategy in the West that includes a theory of a Russian defeat - at least not publicly. All the O2 is taken up with “Ukraine can’t win” or “Ukraine can’t lose”, or how much support we need to push in order to make Ukraine achieve a “complete victory”. Problem is that we have largely left the post-Russia issue up to the dice rolls. Zelensky basically outline the Ukrainian position: “We do not care, so long as they are out.” Which is very understandable, but the grown ups in the West can’t think that way, it is far too dangerous. Worst case is Russia falls apart completely and descends into a violent break up. This will immediately raise the nuclear question. We have never had a nuclear power undergo a civil war or complete collapse. The USSR folded but it was pretty organized, more rolling up shop - although it came within inches (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/20-years-ago-russia-had-its-biggest-political-crisis-since-the-bolshevik-revolution/280237/) So a Russia in full free fall means that nuclear risk and regional instability goes up dramatically. I am not sure what the Russia theory of defeat is, I am pretty sure Putin does not have one considering how tightly he has boxed himself in. I can only hope some power players in the backfield have got a plan B.

Exactly. It highlights to requirement to understand an opponents cognitive and conative frameworks. Further is really underlines that war is not an activity that happens isolated from either pre-war or post-war negotiations. It shapes both states and engineering an opponents defeat must be part of an overall strategy, as important as engineering victory. One could even suggest that military power in war is that primary mechanism of an opponents negotiation with defeat. If you are heading towards victory, and vice versa if you are losing. All war is: certainty, communication, negotiation, and sacrifice.

Firstly, everyone should actually read the Budapest Memorandum, it was a pretty flimsy piece of work. Ukraine took the money for nukes it could not sustain nor really employ, the security guarantee was essentially backstopped by the UN and had holes one could drive buses through: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum “The Budapest Memorandum was negotiated at political level, but it is not entirely clear whether the instrument is devoid entirely of legal provisions. It refers to assurances, but unlike guarantees, it does not impose a legal obligation of military assistance on its parties.[1][46] According to Stephen MacFarlane, a professor of international relations, "It gives signatories justification if they take action, but it does not force anyone to act in Ukraine."[45] In the US, neither the George H. W. Bush administration nor the Clinton administration was prepared to give a military commitment to Ukraine, and they did not believe the US Senate would ratify an international treaty and so the memorandum was adopted in more limited terms.[46]The memorandum has a requirement of consultation among the parties "in the event a situation arises that raises a question concerning the ... commitments" set out in the memorandum.[47] Whether or not the memorandum sets out legal obligations, the difficulties that Ukraine has encountered since early 2014 may cast doubt on the credibility of future security assurances that are offered in exchange for nonproliferation commitments.[48] Regardless, the United States publicly maintains that "the Memorandum is not legally binding", calling it a "political commitment".[21] Seriously this thing ranks up there with the Munich Agreement. Regardless, one thing this war has taught me is that strategy in warfare cannot simply be a “theory of victory” in the 21st century, it must also be a theory of defeat for an opponent. This is a major shortfall in the entire concept. We have literally been watching Russia figuring out how to lose this thing for about 6 months now. They need to “win at losing”, almost as much as Ukraine does at winning, or none of those policy objectives in this article are going to work.

If true - even half of it - that is a military in the process of systemic failure. It highlight institutional level failures, nearly across the board: Force Management - inability to conduct troop rotations, plummeting morale and pretty abysmal culture right now. Force Development - in ability to adapt comms to environment. UAV failures. Force Sustainment - the entire Artillery problem. Force Generation - incredibly poor training quality of new troops. Force Employment - well this one is pretty self evident. I mean I do not know this source or how reliable it is but this is what military that is failing looks like.

Infantry are like sand, they get into everything - actually scratch that, I used it before. They are like raccoons, they get into everything and steal anything not bolted down. So, yes, the primary role of infantry in this case would be infiltrating for recon and deep strikes. The UA has used quads and the like, in reality this may be a SOF task with link up to partisans. Regardless the RA have to have some sort of line security or risk taking all sorts of rear area risks. Also if the RA are laying some sort of Putin line, they then have to cover all those obstacles or 1) risk losing engineering assets while putting in obstacles or 2) wind up having all sorts of holes cut in them by aforementioned infantry. Now knowing the RA, they are going to stick to the roads, this is why I do not lose sleep on massive obstacles belts because they are likely not able to put them in along the frontages they need to for when things dry out, and even if they did they cannot cover those obstacles. In your post you highlight what a single connected guy can do, well imagine having dozens of these teams in your rear areas (sburke…don’t do it). And now throw in new self-loitering munitions making their way into this. Nope, the frontage problem is enormous and the RA is just making it worse breaking their hands on freaking Bakhmut (which they have been imminently taking for six months now). There are likely holes in the RA lines you could push a battalion through, and to make things worse RA C4ISR is also spotty having been shot up for a year with no real backfill, so they may very well miss the freakin battalion as it does. Now the real question LLF should be asking is: “what happens if China starts backstopping the RA with ISR?”

Could be if the UA has the legs. My bet is an Eastern push to pull in RA forces and then up the centre, but doing both definitely creates a dilemma. This is why I think Bakhmut is a clear and simple bleeding operation. Make the RA spend as much valuable equipment as possible - every tank/AFV/truck/gun/ammo dump/CP/engineering vehicle and ISR/EW system the RA loses is one less to deal with in 2 months. This and the harder one can degrade the back end now the more likely it will fail when being stressed again. The waves of dead Russian infantry are a side-product of the real corrosion being projected on the RA.

Dude you need a mechanized intervention. Your are hurting the ones you love. That is still a lot of roads but the UA still have legs last we checked and leg infantry (or on quads or whatever) armed with tac UAS infiltrating your lines and sneaking into rear areas is bad. Like murdering all my logistics bad. So the RA cannot wish away the frontage problem. The UA covers off with ISR, the RA does not have that much ISR…so they gotta do it the old fashion way.

Why the hell would the US or West get involved? It would finally be a war we could finally not feel guilty about letting it happen. We could all sit back and watch 2 adversarial states bleed each other out. Oh we would laugh and drink, take notes. It could be a Hot Thread Part Deux….right up to the point it became a thermonuclear war.

My only question on this one is, “was this designed to pull troops away from Kharkiv?” Recall back last summer the UA signalled pretty brutally it was going after Kherson and then followed up with big stroke frontals. This pulled depleted forces into that AO and away from the east (or at least that is a working theory) and Kharkiv happened. The RA was really badly depleted after Severodonetsk, because that was a dumb idea, the additional lateral strain forced on them at Kherson just made it worse. So basically I am not sure if the whole large loud costly frontals were not intentional. We probably will not know until after the war, but I am looking out for something similar this spring-summer.

Switchblade 600 - now we are talking! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade Hits like a Javelin but out to 40-69 km. That Altius looks new, multi-role beast (very ISR/EW) and has a 200 nm range (!) https://areai.com/wp-content/uploads/ALTIUS-600-22-Slick-Sheet.pdf Jump 20 is a MALE with a 185 km range and 14 hour endurance. https://www.avinc.com/uas/jump-20 Cant find anything on the K8 but it is by these guy (unless they mean the X8) https://cyberlux.com/unmanned-aircraft-solutions-uas/ So if China wants to play proxy war unmanned systems…

That is one weird engagement. First off it appears that the RA are out of RPGs or any effective AT really. Also was that the tank coax hitting those trees or were those air burst from something else (maybe the tank had frag loaded in its launchers?). Problem with AT mines is you have to mine the front of that entire wood line…that is a lot of mines. Seriously bizarre, the UAS must have been the determining factor. Whoever was flying it could probably see the RA lacked AT.