The_Capt

I am kinda here on this one too. There is a post war argument to build up the Ukrainian Air Force, and frankly the introduction of a new fleet of aircraft is on that sort of timeline anyway. If you want boom-boom at 100s of kms by the end of next week just jump over the line and send in ATACMS. I am not sure if manned fighter/bomber aircraft are going to survive this war as a concept to be honest (and people are wringing hands about tanks). Unless someone can break the Air Denial paradigm and actually achieve air superiority, which fighter they have may be a moot point.

That is definitely the vibe in defence circles. Fence sitting is no longer an option, neutrality is fine but you are out of the club. For us it was the whole AUKUS thing and a real fear of being punted from 5EYES. Suddenly we are buying F-35s and have an aggressive (for Canada) Indo-Pac strategy. Basically Empire is calling in the chips, and frankly we do have debts to pay up on.

No, bullet to the head….more humane. Seriously, what century are we in?

No I mean we had deep invested interests in staying on the fence on this whole China thing. Our political level tried (and still is trying) a bunch of weasel words and side-scuttling on the issue, we danced around the whole 5G Huawei thing and tried to pretend it would all go away. But it did not. And recently guns were pulled and ultimatums made and we folded. Now the decoupling will likely happen slowly over time unless Taiwan or some such happens but it is going to happen. US seems to be taking this one pretty seriously, so word to the wise when they come knocking. The collision with China in the next 20 years is going to be challenging.

Yeesh went straight for the “colonial” card. Ya we get it, Europe is a complex tapestry of cats, to which applying the action of herding is nearly impossible. Well I guess we will see. Sometimes the best way to herd cats is with a shotgun and dynamite. I do know the US has zero interest in dealing with what is coming shackled to corpses (and likely why China is keeping Russia at arms length), so a collision is in the works.

Way ahead of you… https://wits.worldbank.org/CountrySnapshot/en/CAN

Do some reading on pre-WW1 economies and I think it will become clear that just about anyone can “be so insane”. Clausewitz got a lot right but he missed the boat on all war being a rational political exercise. A lot of times is it personal or relatively rational.

I think Europe is going to agree wholeheartedly on #2 - I mean c’mon guys this is your backyard, if you want to keep a rabid bear in a cage this is the cost. Superfluous? Russia just invaded a neighbour illegally and killed a few hundred thousand people…I mean how apathetic can Western Europe get if it lets this one slide. As to China…well the US is likely the most benign empire in the history of the planet, but I would not test them on that too far. The level of arm twisting that can be applied by the worlds last superpower can be epic. And China matters very much to US, more than Russia. Take it from a nation who just got pulled into this, and China is our second largest trading partner, the US will demand at some point that people pick a side in this thing and start playing ball. And considering stuff like this: https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2022/6/pdf/220627-def-exp-2022-en.pdf I am pretty sure who is going to blink first. This will be a test for NATO and frankly Europe. Is this a massive and bloated military bureaucracy, or is it actually going to defend the western world? Regardless, I think that Ukrainian entry in NATO or some sort of binding collective defence mechanism will be interesting to say the least but it basically has to happen sooner than later.

Not sure I follow the logic. If Russia loses Crimea will they still not be likely to "try it again" anyways? I mean the only way that seems to work is to draw a NATO line somewhere and dare Russia to cross it overtly - this is why this all happened in Ukraine and not on the Baltics. Russia will definitely still do dirty in the subversive space but has been deterred from stuff like sending in 200k troops and bombing the hell out of things. So Crimea does not really seem as pivotal as establishing collective deterrence mechanisms that encompass Ukraine. The issue with Crimea and Donbass is that if they are retaken, but Ukraine winds up with a resistance or worse and insurgency in these areas it could cause problems with that that whole collective deterrence mechanisms part. For example, if Ukraine is seen as heavy handed or failing to enfranchise these populations - and insurgencies really are good at making this happen - that could insert some uncertainty into all this. Ukraine has every right to the Crimea as a sovereign state (Russia does not get to play "backsies"), however it is a potential open wound, along with the Donbas (which may be worse) that could act as a spoiler for what follows. The aggression of Russia is a given no matter what unless there is a dramatic political and social change within that country.

I think a nuance with Ukrainian NATO membership that we might be missing is that normally entry into NATO can take a decade or more...there is nothing normal about this situation. There is enormous incentive to pull Ukraine into NATO quickly once this thing is over. First we will likely be investing billions into Ukraine as part of reconstruction, and we like our investments to be secure. Second, it is the one way to put Russia squarely back in a box, which is a major strategic aim for the West. And finally, it sends a very strong signal to China that we mean business. If we dither and hand-wring for a decade all we are doing is signaling disunity, risking investments and leaving ourselves wide open for a follow on dislocation from Russia. My point being that Ukraine entry into NATO has a lot of momentum behind it, particularly from the US, and NATO being a military body - slow as it is - will be reading the wind direction as well. So I do not think we can apply normal metrics here, is my point.

A lot of armor doctrine relies on this sort of thing versus ATGMs, but with T62s is pretty impressive. I have seen it with T64s and 80s but never with the T62. I think in FreeWhiskeys videos they unpack why one needs to keep ones tanks together in a line, and this is one reason.

Well to sidestep all the yelling a bit, let’s talk about the deep well of Russian ability to suffer and endure….leading to victory. I think this really concerns a lot of people and is central to the fear in engaging in a war of attrition with Russia. The large historical examples point to the “fact” that “one cannot win a war of attrition against Russia”. Well if Ukraine was invading Russia with intent to conquer them I would be onside. Russia has demonstrated incredible resilience in historical existential wars…but this is not an existential war for Russia, it is discretionary. Putin is working overtime trying to convince the Russian population that this war is indeed existential, and for him personally it is, but for the nation it is a harder sell. In discretionary wars Russia, as has been noted, has not performed any better than anyone else. They had their “Vietnam” in Afghanistan too which finally buckled under the weight of erosion of public sentiment. So in trying to assess Russian Will you have to first recognize the war that they are in. A discretionary war of intervention, or at least how it was sold at the beginning. It is a preventative war designed to push NATO and western influence back. Putin’s strat comm machine now has it framed as a direct confrontation with NATO - burning M1s and all - but how well that is selling remains a mystery. I have zero doubt that intel communities are inside the Russian info sphere collecting data and trying to figure out where the Russian people stand on all this. Given the mass exodus of some Russians it is clear that not everyone is buying it. Now there is one party for which this war is existential and that would be Ukraine. And the history of organized and well supported parties who are in an existential war versus a side that is in a discretionary war is something people may want to explore further.

There is definitely an opportunity for this in Crimea - that scenario does make a bit nervous, but by then it might not matter as the current Russian regime might go into free fall with a loss that big. And then what do you do with the PoWs? As to denying Russia an ability to rebuild and continue to make trouble along the border, I would offer that there is no viable military solution to that problem right now. The answer at that point is a political, economic and diplomatic one - military options will pretty much exhausted at the Russian border unless we are talking about concerted and prolonged strikes into Russia itself…and that is a scenario that should make everyone nervous. I mean if this were realistic the UA would have done it already (beyond largely symbolic strikes as a form of IO). No the answer then lies in pulling Ukraine into NATO or some sort of collective defence and security agreement that takes Russian overt military action off the table. We know these exist because they kept Russia out of the Baltics - I mean they talk a good game but they know the real score. Try and bring Russia back to sanity with sanctions negations but reparations and warcrimes have to be on the table. Russia will then go back to subversion, picking at internal regional scabs and generally making life hard, but I think Ukraine will become almost impossible to conduct subversive warfare within outside of the former 2014 annexed territories. And if the loss is bad enough, maybe not even there.

Well the first thing is keep killing Russians. One thing we have not really touched on is political collapse and heavy attrition could force that. As to the RA, continued pressure/erosion, operational victories and positioning. The RA really does not have to collapse entirely to win this thing. They need to be put into an untenable position that forces withdrawal. That is something that the UA can definitely do.

Is Ben Hodges reading the thread?

Is this guy reading our thread? Didn’t we talk about exactly this awhile back?

Collapse - not quite. I think you may be outlining Strategic collapse, which has not happened. I argue that the RA has suffered at least two operational collapses. In a warfare context a “collapse” had at least three critical components - it is under pressure, it systemic, and it is uncontrolled. If a military collapses outside of warfare it is an institutional collapse, which is a whole other thing. A collapse has to affect multiple military systems, often in a chain - looking at operational functions things like Act, Sense and Command often all fail at the same time or quickly in sequence because they are interlinked. And loss of control - it is debatable if Kherson was a collapse because it was controlled and somewhat orderly, this is what differentiates a collapse from a withdrawal operation. So Collapse #1 - Northern Front Phase I. We are going to need a lot more data but the withdrawal of the RA from the two northern operational axis had the hallmarks of a collapse. The question of Loss of Control is somewhat unclear. I think it is safe to say that there was a level of collapse based on the numbers of abandoned vehicles alone. Systemic failures were pretty obvious as well. Time will tell but I think that the evidence will show that we saw a cascade failure on the Northern Front as higher C2 essentially lost control of the situation. Collapse #2 - Kharkiv. No other way to paint this one and it was definitely operational level by any measure. The RA had been eroded so badly in this sector that when the UA broke through they achieved operational level manoeuvre and objectives, Izyum being the big one. The RA managed to tie this one off but this was a full on rout. Collapse #3 - Kherson is really debatable. I honestly think the RA pulled out before it went into complete free fall but it was obvious that the RA was in an untenable position for months. If there was a collapse it was within the RA chain of command but had the look of a more orderly withdrawal. So the question really remains - what will it take for a Strategic collapse of the RA? I think we have tossed this one around at length and honestly I am not sure. Something like the German Navy mutinies in WW1? Of course all the elements of erosion are there - poor uncoordinated C2, wasteful use of soldiery, system cracks from force management to force employment and continual battlefield failures. When or if it will happen remains a mystery.

The other thing within this area is the issue of troop positioning. The UA looks like it has been pretty consistent with its formation placements and rotations (correct me if I am wrong), while the RA has been noted as pushing troops up and down the line, particularly last summer, as they either feed these grinding attacks or try and fill gaps. Beyond the obvious strain-costs of doing this wrt logistics etc. There is again a hidden human cost in tacit collective knowledge. In CMCW we got comments on how much harder the Soviet Campaign was than the US one…”BFC is all ‘USA,USA!’” Well first off, no. We got zero pressure or direction from BFC corporate (also known as ‘Steve’) on content beyond “gimme 3 campaigns and 15-20 scenarios and for the love of gawd don’t screw this up” - seriously I think I still have the email. No what we had were US troops who had owned the sectors they were in and defending as collective organizations for decades. So what? (Beyond an obvious plug for CMCW?) Well formations and units get to know their locales. They learn the weird quirks - “Ya, ignore the maps this is really over there”. They get to know their opponents - “The Russian commander has a hard-on for morning bombardments and they always fall short here”. They know the troops to their left and right - “I did OCS with that guy, do not trust him”. We call this integration. Which is a fancy term for, you guessed it, corporate knowledge. It comes with a lot of other things like coordination and ISR sharing but the implication is that the Russian units getting bounced around are not getting a chance to gain Situational Awareness (SA) of their slice of the line when they are continually getting moved around. There are ways to mitigate this, like really good communications, but all these solutions fall into areas of identified RA weaknesses. This is a form of induced corrosion as the RA units and formations have to continually reorient themselves, while suffering internal attrition. This leads to mistakes and information/learning gaps that lead to more attrition. Then throw onto this a bunch of replacements who have zero experience and we see the ongoing erosion of the RA at a foundational level. This is why another 150k rapidly mobilized troops can be more of a problem than solution - you need to have the C4ISR architecture to integrate them into the fight and offset both individual and collective inexperience. The RA is failing at a genetic level when it comes to operations and we have been seeing the steady decline for months. Gotta be honest I am not sure what is holding them together at this point.

Ah yes, this would be the line between Veterans - who are normally kept in combat until they die/wounded, got promoted out, or pulled back to train incoming troops, and Elite forces, who are specifically selected (normally but not always Veterans), equipped and trained for a more specific set of jobs that normally occur at critical choke points on decision trees.

Good detailed post there. A couple things to add: I would argue from personal experience that “fighting spirit” and “experience” are inversely proportional. A lot of times inexperienced troops are all pee and vinegar, ready to win the war single handed. While the troops who been in it for awhile are basically trying to do their job and survive. This could be where some of the OP narrative is coming from. Collective or corporate knowledge is a thing. Every unit/sub-unit has a body of experience and knowledge that kind of floats overtop of it like a cloud. People come in and out but that experience and knowledge survives - it normally get labelled as “how we do things here”. In combat this is no different with the exception of complete wipe-out. Even if a unit gets 50% attrition, the surviving half will pass the knowledge onto the replacements. The longer a unit as a collective is in combat the better it learns and gains experience - “we used to do that but it is now a bad idea”. Leadership both formal and informal gets rolled into this soup, so you can see how it is a pretty complex arena. In the end units that can keep attrition to manageable rates seem to have a better chance of survival. This is one of the debates against whole unit rotations as a lot of corporate knowledge is lost. We hybridize it by doing unit rotations but formation offsets and all sorts of tricks but I don’t think anyone has a perfect solution.

The heartless randomness of the whole thing is absolutely true but these are micro-observations that when upscaled run into other factors. For example an experienced outfit knows to disperse, dig in and camouflage itself as best as it can. It has noise and light discipline and sticks to the basics on all around defence and STANO. When the shells land they stay their holes and stay as safe as they can. A highly spirited crew with no experience builds a camp fire and sings stirring war songs. You can see how that will (and has) unfold(ed) and who has the better chance of surviving the night.

What I don't get is that if this was a domestic report (e.g. US) a lot of people in some political camps would be losing their minds. Yet some of those same people completely dismiss these reports when it concerns Russia. Did we not just have a heated debate that the Russian economy is pretty much bulletproof? I am not an economics guy, it really remains a bit of a dark art to me. And some stuff is totally inverse in logic, e.g. "rising ruble value is bad". But news like this, along with other indicators kind of back up a lot of the analysis that pointed to the damage to the Russian economy will be under the waterline until it is not.

Actually our entire western doctrine is built around the exact opposite of this; however, we are also not really built for attrition warfare. I am also not sure of the veracity of the statement itself. In the large world wars the more experienced a solider survived to be, the better their chances of survival is the prevailing wisdom - not sure if that is myth or backed up by serious study. Further one thing that is backed up by history is that experienced troops fight better and smarter. In experienced soldiers panic and run, largely because they are more likely to suffer dislocating psychological shock. The narrative here sounds a lot like "Fighting Spirit and the end of bayonet, for King and Country!" Which is not a bad thing or untrue, but is more in line with strategic messaging than actual performance on the battlefield.

What also baffles me is just how hard Putin is tying things in knots to avoid mobilization. We had all sorts of machinations - weird incentives and big payout contracts, prisoners, Wagner, Syrians-Chechens-and even freakin Afghans (?!), soft “partial mobilization”, and now more PMCs. I honestly think Putin is more afraid of large scale mobilization than anyone else.

Fair point. This would be neglecting the state of the Canadian military in Aug of 14, which was in a perpetual state of a lack of capacity…just like it was in 39. Low capacity does not always have to follow attrition, lack of political will to spend on defence will do as well. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/history-of-the-armed-forces-in-canada#:~:text=By 1914%2C Canada's permanent force,than 70%2C000 partially trained militia. Our military was so small that it lacked the capacity to force generate what it needed nor could it mobilize fast enough, so turned to a privately raised regiment. It is actually a very old model and was last used in Canada during WW1 with the Patricia’s. They were essentially a privately funded and raised rapid reaction force and went from zero to France by Jan 14 (pretty impressive). Composed of a lot of veterans it was likely one of the best units we put into action that early in the war. But correct the PPCLI was not raised to to attrition during the war, it was raised due to institutional attrition before it. Interesting article on this history of PMCs. http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/Vol19/No1/page46-eng.asp Of course a very key difference between the PPCLI was that they were privately raised and then turned over to government control. They were a strictly non-for profit organization that did not violate a state monopoly on warfare. Russian PMCs appear to be a similar response as the state currently cannot produce enough capacity so is turning to private industry. Albeit after spending their government military in the last year in the dying fields of Ukraine. And of course are “for profit” which comes with a lot of issues.