The_Capt

I do not know and that is a central question. Mobilization was not an escalation threat everyone made it out to be - it is a self-administered poison for the RA. This is like energy drinks - sure they will keep you up and moving, but you are going to pay for it later. Mobilization bought the RA roughly 100k problems, not solutions because they were not set up to deal with that level of a force generation bill than they were for anything else that happened in this war. Now they face a real dilemma - keep those poorly mobilized troops as unit-level tumors, or poison regular units - who are in pretty mauled shape? None of this points to a sustainable military effort in the longer term.

So back to the analysis of this war. Caution and confirmation biases disclaimer accepted - it is things like these which really set the antenna twitching. The level of systemic breakdown expressed in this one paragraph is enough to leave me wondering what is holding the RA together at this point. This points to broad failures from force generation thru to force employment; inadequate training, nearly non-existent RSOMI - particularly on the (I) integration"; significant leadership failures and attrition; non-existent RA targeting enterprise, and; a plummeting morale - to the point they are adopting it within a sub-cultural norm, they named it. The only question left is "how wide spread is this experience?" The answer to that determines just how badly the RA has broken itself in this war. We keep coming back to the idea of "freezing the conflict" as the new western fear. I have to be honest, I cannot see how the RA can do that by this point. To freeze any conflict one has to be able to create an unsolvable symmetry and frankly I cannot see how the RA can possibly accomplish this in the state it is in. A lot of pundits are going on about a "long war" but I have some serious doubts. I think we may see Steve's full RA collapse before this is over and it will likely start in units like this one.

So here is the part that people who have not been in a war simply do not get - it is an incredibly slippery slope to the bottom. Humans are natural born killers for the most part and when given license they get very good at it very fast. So in war, unregulated killing turns into exactly what we are seeing the RA do in occupied territories very quickly. ”I do not see the point of arguing combat warcrimes” is right next door to “killing of civilians is a-ok” when one is talking warfare. “What?! I never said that!” Well you basically did because “letting boys be boys” in combat will spread to non-combat situations incredibly fast and there is a mountain of history to back me up on that point. So the notion of a “war crime” started to try and keep civilians out of it. This turned out to be very difficult and we failed gloriously at it in WW2 - hence the big push in ‘49 and the new LOAC. The idea that two sides can kill each other but not “kill” each other seems counterintuitive and for some “woke” but it is core to military discipline and the idea that war does not need to collapse into strategies of extermination on entire populations. As to your last point - “stop war” well in 1949 the UN was set up to do exactly that. War between states without just cause and recognition of the international community is “illegal” - e.g. the Russian invasion of Ukraine is “illegal”. Why? Because unregulated war is very bad for everyone on the 21st century, not just those directly involved in combat. Finally without all these legal frameworks the case for defending Ukraine itself erodes. We may care to keep Russia at bay but in reality they are barely a global power - I mean seriously, beyond the strategic dead end of nukes, Russia poses an annoyance to NATO (and justification to spend money), it is not an existential threat. It is the attack on The Rules that underpins our support to Ukraine in this war - if there were not “The Rules” then why should I care about a “border dispute”* in Eastern Europe from all the way here across the Atlantic Ocean? [Canadian trade with Ukraine in 2022 was $155M out of over $62B in Canadian global exports. The $155M we do in annual sales to Ukraine is one sixth support we have provided so far (nearly $1B)] *(literally the words I have heard from some circles)

Absolutely agree with this. In fact this entire incident aside my main aim was to clear up misinformation and mythology around the LOAC. We have already had the “RA troops in civies can be shot by the roadside” misinformation. We do not need a “all POWs are fair game for treatment from an MG because one nitwit decided to go down blazing…see Geneva Conventions says so because, perfidy”. And we really do not need the open promotion of retaliatory war crimes as some sort of weird “levelling the playing field”, thanks to BFCElvis for weighing in on that one. If this thread has any hope of remaining objective and level-headed we need to all keep a bead on this kind of stuff, even when - especially when -things get emotional and hard to take.

Ok well the I am not even sure we are talking about the same incident then. I am talking about the one blowing up all over mainstream media: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/world/europe/russian-soldiers-shot-ukraine.html Specifically: “The next scene is a cellphone video filmed in the courtyard by the same Ukrainian soldier. There are gaps in the video, though it’s unclear why. It shows the four Ukrainian soldiers, at least three of whom are armed. One soldier, with his rifle drawn, tentatively approaches the structure where the Russian soldiers are sheltering. The soldier with the machine gun provides cover. Several gunshots are heard — though it’s not clear from where — and the soldier slowly backs away from an outhouse, drawing out the Russian soldiers at gunpoint. The video cuts off, and when it restarts, six Russian soldiers are lying facedown on the ground beside one another. At least two of them are alive and can be seen moving in the video; the others are motionless. The video shows four other soldiers slowly exiting the outhouse, one after the other, some with their arms raised. They join the other soldiers on the ground… …Two of the Ukrainians standing by appear to be relaxed and are pointing their rifles toward the ground. The capture of these soldiers is initially orderly and without incident — but suddenly everything changes. As an 11th Russian soldier emerges from the outhouse, he opens fire, aiming at one of the Ukrainian soldiers. The Ukrainians are taken by surprise. The cellphone camera jolts away as the Ukrainian soldier filming the scene flinches. A frame-by-frame analysis of what happens next shows the Ukrainian soldier standing beside him raise his rifle and aim toward the Russian gunman.” Now all this based on a heavily edited video but that seems to indicate to me that the RA troops had surrendered or were in the process of surrendering - not sure how this is supposed to be translated as “knowing full well combat was not over.” Further them laying in a neat row with no visible weapons kind of also suggests this. If those RA soldiers came out of that house with guns up and blazing then fair game but the reports of the video do not appear support that. They do seem to support a POW capture gone wrong and possible perfidy by RA troops. Regardless the facts of the case are not clear as far as I can tell and an investigation is likely merited and it would appear a whole lot of people agree.

Are we talking the grenade tossing episode or combat coming from outside the incident? “The LOAC states that as soon as those RA troops came “into the hands” or “under the power” of then UA troops the combat between these two parties was over because the RA troops were legally POWs. Once the grenade was tossed the central question to be answered is whether that lone soldier was re engaging in combat in an act of perfidy? And/or was the rest of that RA soldiers unit also re engaging or had the intent to re-engage. If the UA unit were to come under fire from a third RA unit, they actually have the obligation to protect and extract the RA POWs. And nothing in LOAC says they can mow them down because a third party is shooting at them. Look, I get it. Ukrainian members on the forum really want to promote that the UA kept its hands clean. However, unrighteous shoots happen in warfare all the time - this the a harsh reality of combat. How a nation is judged is by how it responds to and ensures that any party who engages in these actions is prosecuted under a military legal system. Here they are afforded full legal protections under domestic law and a fair trial that will take into account all factors. Now if the UA is smart - and frankly I really think they very much are, far smarter than a few posters on this board - they will conduct an investigation etc with transparency etc, and the news cycle will move on with the footnote “Ukrainian authorities are investigating the incident in full and will share the results with its western partners”. These sorts of investigations can take freakin months or years so we will be on to a new crisis before long while whatever this is fades to the background. Or you can make a ton of counter-productive noise, bite the hand that is trying very hard - against some it it’s own electorates - to keep you from becoming a Russian province and provide a steady stream of sound bites for the pro-Russian crowd who are circling.

The mental and emotional state of all parties would absolutely need to be taken into account within an investigation. For example, were the RA troops convinced they were about to be lined up and shot so Mr Grenade-y acted out of desperation? Were the UA service members extremely stressed by previous combat and as such had their judgement effected? The mental state of the actors in this would likely become central.

And this should be taken into account as it may suggest they had capability but that is not enough, one has to demonstrate clear intent. Combat episode was finished as soon as the RA soldiers came out with hands up, the question is who and if they were employing perfidy to cause further harm or re-start combat. Nope, that is why professional militaries have Rules of Engagement, the review of which will be a major part of a follow on investigation. And is currently bank rolling this entire thing so you remain a free nation - now if you would like to explore other options your nation is free to do so. This is the club you are joining. If that doesn’t wash you could try knocking on China’s door.

Article 37 does prohibit perfidy or the unlawful use of the protections of the LOAC; however, it does not give license for further violations or mean the rest of LOAC does not apply. https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/ART/470-750046?OpenDocument The Russian soldier(s) who are proven to have participated in an act of perfidy are prosecutable under the LOAC. If the whole unit and its chain of command were involved then they too can be prosecuted. However none of this gives licence to legally gun down every man in the RA squad, especially unarmed men lying face down on the ground. For that, they would need to prove that the entire squad was about to get up and re-engage in combat - so intent and capability, which allowed for lawful engagement or self-defence. As to the legal defence of “well they are doing it!” Welcome to the western world. Having spent time in combat with people who were absolutely medieval I can sympathize but this is the deal - we follow the rules even when the other team is not. Why? Western Rules Based Order…key word is “rules”, and we all have to follow them or risk breaking the deal. You want to support the Russians just keep promoting a reciprocal Russian-way of war for the Ukrainians. You want to beat the Russians in the strategic narrative? Keep to the high ground and remain recognizable to your western supporters. Fair? Nope. Reality? Yup.

Well this was not a shot at you personally. More the love-hate relationship with the western military industrial complex. When aligned with military strategy industry can do (and has) amazing things - like win the Cold War. However, these guys are in this for additional reasons outside defending national interests, like their own interests. So we have been on the receiving end of more military snake oil in the last 30 years than I care to remember. Add to this the deep internal resistance to change by both the industrial complex and militaries themselves and we have a recipe for truly epic screw ups in the next 10-20 years. Warfare is moving - I, and others in the business, have felt the trembles for years. And I suspect it is not incremental shift we are talking about. The militaries on top, who are heavily invested in a certain paradigm, do not historically do well in times of major shifts...we shall see.

This is extremely relevant to the discussion because we have been watching the UA do it for 8 months. These two phenomenon are directly related to the greater employment of UAS on the battlefield for which the guns system is supposed to defend against. The logistics vulnerability isn't even a stretch as logistical trucks can get drone bombed pretty easily. If we are not "talking about a system to prevent this" then we are not talking about a relevant system to the actual war we are likely to fight in 5-10 years. I worked in military force development for a lot of years and trust me even western military professionals are not immune to what we called the "tactical shiny". "Let's buy those fancy new F-35s, man they will let us do some real stuff. Hey what about the re-fuelers and airborne aerospace control? Huh? Oh I am sure someone will figure it out later." Unless we are talking about an entire system to counter an entire system, then grab-bag tactical solutions makes for an integration nightmare in the future at best. At worst you waste an enormous amount of money and wind up in an investment trap where "we can't change now...look how much money we spent." The you go to war upside down...kinda like the RA just did. The reason to buy military kit is to build military capability not to simply have the kit. If you are making purchases that are not solving the bigger problem then you are not actually solving anything and you might be making it worse. Now if this 30mm gun is part of a larger system, cool. But all I see is a single weapon system with some customized ammo, that may not be able to actually do anything about UAS as a enemy military capability in 5 years. I am highly suspicious of the military industry - with reason - as they will roll out some quick win high profile sales to reinforce stock value, while militaries are scrambling to look like they are doing "something about something" they should have seen coming about a decade ago - a lot of money being spent but not actually solving anything. But hey, you guys do you.

Fair points but I guess my point is that this is like your seat cushion being used as floatation device when you fly over the ocean - it is a placebo military capability, and history is rife with them. So it is 2028 and the Russian bear somehow glues its head back on and decides "well Ukraine turned out so well, let's try for Poland and NATO...woo hoo!" And let's assume they get Chinese high tech support because China has also legally lost its collective marbles. So the RA now has significant drone strike capability along with comparative PGM and C4ISR. So what? - Well in 5 years "bomb drones" we are seeing in this war will likely be a quaint memory as systems are developed that allow for stand off and sub-munitions delivery (for some reason the Turks are out in front on this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/06/17/turkish-military-to-receive-500-swarming-kamikaze-drones/?sh=528ef2de251a). So you will have these things coming in at treetop level and dropping all over you, while you blaze away with a 30mm gun. In a wide open desert you may stand a chance but in any rolling, forested or built up areas swinging and targeting that big ol gun around will not cut it. - All them 30mm mounted guns are on big hot vehicles, all blazing away and will be spotted for kms. So even if they can swat those nasty bomb drones, the boys will have about 2 minutes to celebrate before the PGM artillery cuts them to pieces...assuming the enemy even bothers with "bomb drones" in the first place. - The trucks that provide the gas and ammo to operate those big ol smart guns is can also be seen from space and it had better have a lot of 30mm smart guns on top of it or the RA will simply cut Polish supply lines to pieces through deep strike and all them security blanket 30mms will run out ammo. So will these neat 30mm guns with new ammo solve anything if in 5 years your opponent brings "bomb drones" from 2022 with them?...maybe, and yes better than nothing - tactically. Strategically and operationally - worse than nothing if one sinks billions into this solution and short-changes longer term transformational changes that need to occur in order to secure competitive advantage against a nation state. What I see is a very expensive weapon system that may be effective against non-state VEOs who buy a drone on Amazon and mount boom-boom on it (it has been done). However, the solutions to the much bigger issues of the shifts in warfare, and ensuring we can fight and win against another nation state in 5 years, are going to need a much deeper and painful evolution in western military enterprises writ large.

Well I am not a lawyer in LOAC but can take a shot. In all those links I provided the first one goes fairly deeply in who constitutes a POW. Basically the definition is “a combatant who fall into the hands (or under the “power”) of their opponent. Practically POW designation is afforded to anyone who either declares it and/or is clearly incapable of continuing in their role as a combatant - e.g. wounded or disarmed. So if we have say 10 RA soldiers coming out of a building with no visible weapons and their hands raised (there is a list of recognized non-verbal signals) then by LOAC everyone of them is likely to be considered a POW. Revocation of that status is actually supposed to be done by a military legal body and here we get into spies and unlawful combatants. However, none of this denies the UA soldiers right to self-defence in the event that one or all of the RA soldiers are exercising perfidy - or an unlawful ruse that exploits the LOAC. So one of those RA soldiers has a grenade and tosses it - clearly exercising perfidy - and a frankly bafflingly dedicated/fanatic level of commitment because he had to know how this would end. Well under the rules of LOAC there could be a case that the individual forfeited his POW status and could be re-designated as a lawful combatant and therefore a target. Further, the RA individual clearly demonstrated intent by tossing a grenade and an easy case for self-defence could be made by whoever takes him out. All good. Now as to the other 9 RA troops, nothing in LOAC removes their status as POWs based on the actions of Mr “I will die for Putin because reasons!” In fact they would each have to assessed by their actions as to whether or not they too were exercising perfidy. So we are talking the right to self defence and here the slope get really slippery. An investigation would have to show that as a group the other 9 RA soldiers demonstrated intent and capability to pose a lethal threat to the UA soldiers - who all still had there issued weapons. Here I expect the legal threshold is higher than “well they may have all had grenades in there undies”. Even if that were true they would need to all be reaching for those grenades to justify the love they received from that MG. In short, it appears - and here we can only see pictures and a video on social media - that some of those RA may have been legal POWs who got caught up in a self-defence response. This is not crime in itself if it can be proven that the shooter was trying to restrict fire to the offending RA troops but collateral happens. Either way a far more detailed investigation- eg one that looks at ballistics, eye witness accounts and wound patterns, will be required to determine what actually happened with enough resolution to hand this over to a legal proceeding. The important thing now is for Ukraine to declare that investigation and make it transparent enough to pass the sniff test from their international supporters. We get that bad things happen in war, we just want to make sure we are backing the team that fights and looks like us in all this.

So my guess is you practice real estate law? Uh, no. Not even close in legal terms but it is complicated. So let’s be crazy and post some refs: https://guide-humanitarian-law.org/content/article/3/prisoners-of-war/ So this outlines all of the protections and definitions of what is and is not a POW etc. The legal term we are talking about with respect to a Russian POW tossing a grenade is perfidy - https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul_rule65. This is a warcrime in itself but does not immediately remove POW protections of the perpetrator- legally but practically there is a solid case that the individual still able to employ lethal force is no longer a POW. Here we get into the LOAC and the right to self defence - https://lieber.westpoint.edu/understanding-self-defense-law-armed-conflict/ And not a bad opener on the whole subject here- https://www.genevacall.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2013/11/The-Law-of-Armed-Conflict.pdf So what? Well if a POW exercises perfidy during capture then technically they could be deemed as forfeiting their status is a POW, IF it can be proven that they intended to fight. So whoever tossed that grenade was likely a legitimate target under both LOAC and the right to self defence. Blanket wiping out that persons whole unit because one person exercised perfidy is well outside LOAC and it will be a challenge to sell self-defence. In LOAC the principles of distinction and proportionality are likely the ones that are going to bite here. Originally designed to protect civilians, they also protect POWs and a massive GPMG response on the whole unit likely violates both. Unless the UA troops can prove that the entire unit was exercising perfidy and a collective lethal force response was required then they are on very shaky legal ground. In short the legal principal of “Shoot first, last and let God sort them out” does not stand under LOAC. Now that all said - this is war and this stuff, on the line stuff, happens all the time. You basically have a lot of emotions and ammunition in the same place so over-reaction is very understandable and happens. This one, from the photos and video may have crossed the line to an unrighteous shoot but there will need to be a full investigation to establish that and then a military legal process to prosecute any offenders etc, allowing them full protection of the law. The Hague and international court will not be getting involved as this is 1) too small/not systemic and 2) Ukraine as a signatory of the Geneva conventions is more than capable of prosecution under national law. So to summarize - mass shooting of POWs is almost never warranted or legally supported even if one of their members exercises perfidy. If a crime was committed by UA troops there is a process to establish this and deal with it. Until Ukraine demonstrates that it is not going to follow that process or the LOAC, which we have seen no real evidence of particularly considering the actions of the RA, then any international criminal process is off the table. It does not help the Ukrainian cause in the least to have these sorts of things happen but these things do happen. Why? Because all war is personal. A Russia POW got sh#tty and UA troops took it personally…whether it was a crime or not is for the investigation to decide.

Well the first problem - that this is not solving - is that the lowest tier UAS/loitering munitions can see out to 2+ kms and feed that back to a targeting system. They are too small for MANPAD or VSHORADs. Hell they even have commercially available thermal/IR versions - https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/buying-guides/best-thermal-drone These are class I drones that will be able to see ground based 30mm chain guns blasting away at the clouds from kms away. Attacking an opponents recon assets is the first basic step in what should be a systemic attacking system, but thinking it is the solution is draining the ocean with a spoon. Off the top 'o' the old noggin, for an initial start: - Effective hunter-killer UAS designed to go out and kill other UAS. This is the beginning of re-establishing symmetry within the unmanned aerial space. Here we can scratch that recon asset elimination itch but it is a far bigger problem than this. - That first one up there needs to be linked into a ground based system to do the same on surface/sub-surface. This will in effect shift the calculus of warfare to where the comparative knife edge unmanned systems envelop will be as critical to warfare as airpower ever was. - Then you need a c-space system to deny and disrupt your opponents space based capability and resources (data/GPS) while preserving your own. - Add to this a healthy offensive cyber capability able to attack and degrade an opponents field C4ISR systems. This is more than hitting their networks, this is gen 2 information/data warfare where you are able to essentially hijack an opponents C4ISR central nervous system and feed it the wrong data. This will require physical infiltration/exploitation in addition to the standard cyber-at-range effects. Nano will likely start within this space about mid-century and expand outward from there - e.g. you physically re-wire an opponents C4ISR. This will also extend from the frontline all the way back to strategic industry. - C4ISR overmatch - you need an integrated system that is able to learn faster and better than an opponents...while in motion. This goes beyond a different technological approach and platforms, it hits at the heart of "how we think and make decisions about fighting" and operational planning processes. This is the AI/ML integration space and how we pair these new technologies with people based warfighting systems to develop new theories of cause and effect over an opponent. - Integrated Precision Deep Strike - land battles are likely to occur more and more decisively over the horizon where the side that can see, fix and strike with long range precision fires will gain advantage. This will mean unconventional targeting and munitions able to hit an opponents C4ISR system - so long range EM/EW systems, long range unmanned sub-munition swarms able to hit an opponents nerve centers (nodes), networks (connectors) and cognitive centers of gravity (processors). - People. We will likely re-think how we select, train and employ people dramatically to gain advantage within this environment. The internal military cultural issues aside (and they are legion) - occupations and trades, leadership skillsets and decision making within human dimensions will all need an overhaul as we are all working on 20th century models. Western governments are going to insist on keeping humans in the loop, and if we think we can stick the same humans we have been using for decades into that loop it will very likely cause serious problems. Advantage will go to the side that can collect, process and weaponize data faster, better and at greater overall scales - just as we have seen repeatedly in this war. So, no, I am sorry but NG does not get a participant medal for bilking the military contracting and acquisition process for billions cause "at least they are trying something". Lord we have been here before with IEDs back in the '00s. We got sold a lot of "up armored Mad Max vehicles" that we are dumping now and a bunch of c-IED robots/ detection systems. The reality is that C-IED was a counter system requirement that spanned from finance/logistics-planning/targeting-production-employment-exploitation, all looped within COIN. In war it is almost never simply countering the thing. It is about countering the things that made the thing, a thing, in the first place.

This is unsurprising - existing industry trying to re-sell old technology as a solution to a new reality. Might stop-gap the issue but likely will cost billions for something that will end up doing little. Unmanned systems technology's drive to miniaturize, operate with lower ISR profiles and shift to multi-domain (surface, sub-surface and aerospace) capability is moving too fast for old-gun tech to keep up. Further, none of this solves for what we have seen repeatedly in this war: omni-C4ISR. UAS can 1) be layer up from the ground to space, and 2) stand back at range with a decent camera and see all those vehicles in hi-res while they blast away at the sky, and 3) feed it back through an integrated C4ISR network so that PGM indirect fires can position and hammer them in seconds. That is the issue. The idea that we can somehow "gun-cleanse" the sky so we can get back to older forms of warfare is a fools errand that the western military industrial complex will waste mountains of taxpayers money upon. True counter-UAS is not c-UAS at all, it is counter-C4ISR which needs to be an integrated system that is capable of eroding on opponents ability to see, communicate, move and shoot from the kinetic tip all the way back to the human decision making brain-in-the-loop (for now).

I strongly suspect that as in 2014 the entire Russian political and military strategic plans were built on a foundation of unassailable bad assumptions. To the point that much like the WMDs of Iraq 2003 fame, the entire Russian decision making system created a reinforcing feedback loop where only information that supported the assumption was accepted as fact - these sorts of giant echo chambers are totally toxic to military planning. This led them to highly unrealistic planning and expectations that the war would be over in a week or two tops and slide into some sort of counter-insurgency situation that they would have to risk manage for years through a proxy puppet government. What we have not seen, or at least not fully confirmed is “why Feb 22?” What was the forcing function here? A lot of theories from “Putin is dying”, “Putin was sure he could get away with it” and “The Devil made Russia do it”. But not really line up well. In the end we may never really know but regardless…it was a terrible idea obviously. As to the RA suddenly swinging this war into Russian favour via “freezing” or “shrinking so our BTGs suddenly work”, to “screw it, let’s nuke everything” - these are also built on some pretty wild assumptions, none of which really have any evidence for on the battlefield. Freezing means that one can create relative symmetry with an opponent, and here we are not talking tanks and infantry numbers - that ship sailed at Kherson. We are talking things like C4ISR and the weapon platforms manned by trained soldiers to make full use of the opportunities advanced integrated ISR provides. Russia could do this…in about a decade assuming it can work around the increasingly crushing economic pressure. So for this war “freezing” is looking harder, a combination of western ennui and possible Ukrainian exhaustion is more likely but I honestly do not think we are there yet. Russia cannot even establish air superiority at this point which makes freezing anything pretty damn hard. Shrinking scale did not work in the Donbas and only exhausted the RA for really minor gains. And nukes, well we have talked about nukes to death - punchline: if it comes down to nukes we really won’t care about the war in Ukraine anymore because we will be in WW3 - hot, warm or cold. So we have Russia with just about zero options left other than keep pouring young men into a bloody mess until the UA and West run out of gas, or enough Russians have had enough and either force their government to stop, or change it by force.

I think analysis such as these miss the much bigger points and possible implications of this war. The easy answer seems to be to blame the BTG concept - “bad BTGs”, “silly BTGs!”. So go look up the BTG structure and then compare it to the TF or BG structures in the west - we are not talking about a massive difference. From what I have seen the BTG kinda slides in between the Battlegroup and Combat team. There is no fundamental flaw nor does “designed for small wars”” track, if, Russia could upscale BTGs into working formation structures. The issues at play are far larger than “those darn BTGs”: - ubiquitous and persistent very high resolution ISR - particularly on the UA side. The RA could optimize BTG all week, or even adopt identical structures as the US and they would still be in trouble because 1) they still need a lot of gas, and 2) the UA can see those supply lines from space via western ISR. “Finding beats flanking”. - long range precision strike. The UA can not only see the RA, they can hit them at ranges traditionally the purview of AirPower. The UA has employed a fraction of the indirect fires compared to the RA and done a lot more damage to the RA operational system proportionally. “Mass beats isolation, precision beats mass, massed precision beats everything.” - unmanned systems. We are seeing the dawn of the impact of mass use of unmannned systems on the battlefield which appear to be right on the seam of ISR and strike. “Swarming beats surging” - smart long range, man portable. The impact of next gen ATGMs and MANPADs on the RA has been enormous. It has dramatically changed the role of light dispersed infantry and their corrosive effects on an opponent. “Small cheap distributed many, beats few expensive concentrations of large”. In short, I am becoming more and more convinced that US/western formations may have faired better strategically and even operationally but we would be learning the same lessons tactically that the RA are is we faced a similar scenario. So, not all about the BTGs.

Going flat to ground while under effective observation and fire = death. Once they have a bead on you, going flat means you are pinned and you can expect indirect fire (mortars or grenades) to start landing on you in seconds. Based on video it kind of looks like they were doing the right thing at first and were getting off the X in an orderly manner but then it kind of all fell apart once they started taking casualties. In fact it was pretty ballsy for them to try and extract the first ones hit, but a bad idea for exactly what we see happen. Where they do lack experience is in spacing. Very human to bunch up at night especially if they lack NODs. They should have been much more spaced out, which means if they got hit they would have a much better chance of exfil. Some IR smoke would have come in hardly as well.

I agree with this. Look, we are talking about thousands of pounds of HE being flung around that theatre on nearly an hourly basis. Although we talk about precision and its effects on the modern battlespace a lot here, the reality is that warfare is still a human activity and as such will be prone to human error in either the manufacture or employment of weapon systems. It is tragic that two innocent people in Poland got killed in this strike but people do not need to do a Zapruder Film level of analysis here - a weapon system went way off target (experts are leaning toward a UA GBAD system) and landed where it was not supposed to. This validates The_Capt's Rule of War #18 - in war things get broke - if you don't want things to get war-broke, don't go to war. How many incidents of US/western "whoopsies" with long range fires are out there from Afghan weddings to the freakin Chinese embassy on Belgrade? These are not an international conspiracy or complex disinformation operation - a freakin missile went off course and landed on a farm. Again, this really sucks for the victims and their families, but this is not a strategic turning point etc. What this does do is highlight just how dangerous this stupid war is, and how easy it would be for mistakes to lead to uncontrolled escalation.

Hmm, well you definitely have a point on the lack of “P” in their PGMs but rail infrastructure is more than rail lines and bridges. Hub stations, rail yards and maintenance infrastructure have a pretty big footprint- they are large targets. I mean you can’t load a Brigades worth of vehicles and stuff from a roadside crossing. I would think that if they can hit electric power distribution and those dam locks, they have enough precision to at least make a go at internal rail LOCs. I am still in the “they are weak Ukrainian mouse, bug Russian bear will terrorize them into submission” camp. Which defies all logic after March this year, however, never underestimate the ability of any military to keep on trying well after it makes sense - zombie ops. Regardless, just another example of how not to win a war brought to us by the RA high command.

Well welcome to the discussion. That is not a bad starting point, perhaps the Russians were so confident of a quick victory that they wanted to avoid infrastructure damage they would need later. I would have thought at some point this summer they would have realized that they needed to do some defensive shaping of the battle space in order to avoid exactly what happened this Fall. Spiteful wrecking of the railways on their way out would fit the Russia MO but one does not win wars through petulant revenge - one does it through deliberate compression of an opponents viable options spaces, eroding capability and the will to fight. I am pretty sure by all metrics that make sense Russia has already lost this war, but perhaps you are correct, maybe when they do start hitting rail lines it will be a clear indication that they realize what we have known for months. Of course by that point they may very well be out of long range strike capability regardless.

So if anyone wants to take a break from this entire Poland missile thing - https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/war-not-an-excuse-ukraine-rail-boss-keeps-trains-running-1.6155075 So this is the kind of thing that I look for with respect to metrics. If you are in the process of invading a nation it is normally a really good idea to directly attack and degrade its ability to defend itself. Russia has clearly demonstrated the intent and capability, what it appears to lack is expertise, or perhaps the ability to unify that expertise - but my big question since this started is "why"? The general answer has been a lot of eye-rolling "well Russia is just dumb" but how they are "dumb" is important to my mind - what is their epistemological failure-engine being driven by? In this war Russia has expended a LOT of high priced long range missile hardware - https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/october/lessons-russian-missile-performance-ukraine. It is noted that they are likely having very high failure rates; however, this is further compounded by shortfalls in Russian ISR that allows for precise targeting even assuming all the missiles work. But there is more. We have been bouncing a hypothesis around this forum on how a lot of this war is about Russian identity and its place in the world - that internal political dimension definitely plays a role, at least in Putin's calculus. Further it is about Russian identity relative to Ukraine - this would be akin to the US invading Canada and losing (again, *ahem 1813*), the collective identity impacts would be severe. However, we have also suspected that those "identity biased assumptions" have been driving the progress of this war - from the wildly overambitious opening moves, to the re-set of objectives and responses. In fact it was demonstrated that poor strategic assumptions were a factor for Russia, even back in 2014. So what? Well the complete failure to effectively degrade Ukrainian rail is another potential peice of evidence that support that central hypothesis. Russia has focused its limited long range fires capability on terror strikes, and now it finally appears to be focusing on civilian power infrastructure to keep the heat and lights out. The central Russian premise appears to be that Ukrainian collective will is vulnerable and all they need to do is keep hitting it towards failure. Somehow just one more hard push and the Ukrainian resolve will falter - this is nuts at this point in the war. I have brought up relative rationality before and Russia clearly is suffering from it. To the point that it is driving their military targeting enterprise. Russia should theoretically be able to cripple the Ukrainian rail infrastructure. Railways do not move, their supporting infrastructure is impossible to hide - one can see it from Google Earth. If Russia had done that, the ability of Ukraine to conduct two simultaneous operational offensives separated by over 400 kms would have been severely challenged. Ukraine having a rail system able to sustain an "85% success rate" (something I know the UK would find impossible to do right now in peacetime, having just suffered their rail system) should not be possible at this point in a war this large - especially when their opponent has the ability to hit the full range of their nation. So, so what? This is less about Russian targeting "sucking" - although their missile failure rates definitely point to that, this is about Russian decision making being 1) rigid well past the point of general rationality, and 2) built on flawed assumptions more about them than the reality on the ground. For those who have been following this thread throughout the war I understand that this is not really news, but it does lead to a series of indicators and warnings we should be watching out for in case Russia actually figures out that its assumptions are completely broken. However, I also suspect that they are well past the point of return regardless - too many losses and failures along with the continued corrosion of the RA means that even if they did figure it out now, it is likely already too late to change the trajectory of this war. I already have a book title in mind - "A warm, dark, smelly, but safe place - How Russia went to War with Its Head Up its Own Bum."

That is a really good way to throw or break a track. In fact they might have but the video cuts off pretty quick after the hit.

Hollywood mythology, which has not done the profession of arms many favours in my opinion. Espionage does not equal immediate death sentence, at least not in the west since the late 40s - in fact they would be smarter to try and turn any captures so they can penetrate sabotage networks. They are normally assigned the label of “unlawful or unprivileged” combatant but that needs to be established by a process as well. And then as unlawful combatants they do not fall under the Geneva Conventions Article 3 but do for Article 4, which entitles them to a fair criminal trial. They should be prosecutable under Ukrainian law, especially is a war measures act is in place. However, cutting them deals and sending them home is more likely to get more saboteurs to surrender than summary executions. If we shot everyone dressed in civies trying to kill us in Afghanistan there would have bloody executions on live stream nearly daily…which would have went over fantastically I am sure. No, Ukraine will likely arrest and prosecute the really bad ones and use the rest for PoW exchanges. For those interested wiki is not a bad place to start and I know the Geneva Conventions are online in multiple places as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant