The_Capt

So this is a concern, not a huge one based on what we are seeing, taking ground is great but this is about neutralizing as much Russian combat power as possible. Things are really turbulent right now and we have rumours of PoWs and video of abandoned captured RA kit - a Dunkirk is good too. But the RA pulling back in anything that resembles an orderly fashion means they will likely dig in further back. Let's all cheer for Russians withdrawing in a dis-orderly fashion.

Except the part where those RA guns get spotted from space and lit up by HIMARs.

I like the idea but we need a functioning central authority that actually has control of them first. There are all sorts of de-escalation schemes we could try but if we get a dozen fractured sub-states/duchys/whatever and 6000 nukes floating around then everything get so much worse. My honest bet that if it comes to it, we will see a UNSCR happen pretty quick as the grown-ups rush into to secure them, but my that has breathtaking points of failure.

I am not sure to be honest. My gut tells me "a lot less". Heavy - I am talking about an entire military system, so F ech in on tracks (IFVs and tanks), SPGs, armored engineers, A1/A2 are also on tracks. Logistics is hardened but wheeled. Building that en masse is extremely logistically stressful and really hard to project quickly. For example, a modern US Armd Division uses 600,000 gallons of fuel per day (https://www.forbes.com/2008/06/05/mileage-military-vehicles-tech-logistics08-cz_ph_0605fuel.html?sh=5ee30ace449c) at 6 pounds per gallon, that is 3.6 million pounds or about 1800 tons, per day. That is just fuel, there is ammo, maint supplies and spare parts, spare equipment, food and water for troops etc. So the problem with heavy is, well, it is heavy. And that logistical tail is vulnerable, hard to hide and long if we are attacking, and we love to attack. Precision systems might be inside that Heavy formation, but that might be putting weight on something that doesn't need it. If they have the range and are linked into ISR, like the UA HIMARs, you need less fuel, ammo and vehicles to get effect because every round hits from a long way away. As to armor or heavy, the question really is, well if I can do what it does lighter and with less logistical stress - why wouldn't I? Strongpoint keep getting brought up - well precision weapons systems can hit a strong point from kms away, like it was a bridge in Kherson. So if I can go lighter and hit like heavy with precision, why do I need heavy? How to defend heavy? That is the real problem. As to today, you cannot beyond getting rid of it, or eroding your opponent to the point they are no longer a threat to it. Also remember you have to protect its entire logistical tail as well or you wind up with very expensive paperweights...the RA did exactly that several times in this war. There comes a point where the cost to protect the thing outweighs what we get out of it. The most common argument for the mighty tank I have heard is that "there will be tanks until something comes along that can provide the same capability". This is so narrow that it borders on nonsensical. The capability a tank delivers could be delivered by multiple integrated systems so it is disaggregated across them and not a single "thing". Further if the employment costs of armor get too high, we will simply figure out how to live without them until we develop a replacement technology(ies)…just like we did with cavalry. The question is not "is the tank dead or alive?", the question is "are we entering into a capability gap phase of warfare?" If so will it be symmetrical? How fast can we close that gap and how? Those are the real questions. I honestly think what we may see is a bunch of light/medium formations/units buzzing around, linked to precision deep strike and doing a lot of damage damage, and then something too hard for them to handle comes up, even with precision weapons...and like a cave troll, you then bring up the heavy and have light go long and wide to protect it while it pounds away...rinse and repeat.

Heh, that is probably the hardest thing for any military person top learn once they hit the strategic/political level - doing nothing. It grates against the grain but sometime you just have to wait for Y and Z to emerge, no forcing it. Of course ending this war quickly is the plan - weapons planning and all that, we are seeing brilliant demonstration from Ukraine right now. I was speaking about "what to do about that rascal Russia" once this war is over. This war: - Needs to end with a hard unambiguous Ukrainian win, which by extension the West will also win. - Be followed up by a Marshal Plan level of reconstruction in Ukraine. - Result in a functional Russian state that 1) we can deal with like a sane-ish person (we have managed crazy), and 2) Gets back in line. Obviously neither of those two include poor old Vlad but he bought the ticket, he and his cronies take the ride. And our God Money will save us! Here is the problem with that particular spin - there are people out there that hate us more than they love money. Trust me, I have met them. And 6000 loose nukes is very bad...as in very very bad. Because even if only a few squeak out of our "nuke for bucks" plan the entire game changes. Best case is that people of the former Russia use them on each other, then we only have to deal with the fallout. Worst case, someone uses them to trigger an article 5 against another nuclear power and then we can all save our mighty dollars for toilet paper. In the middle are a whole bunch of revenge scenarios against places like Kyviv, Western Europe and North America if whoever gets them has legs. Nope. nope. nope. If it does start to happen we might actually see western intervention into Russia to try and grab them.

This does not really track. Sure, there is an element of Russian erosion, and it plays well to the conspiracy crowd; however, the risks are simply too high. We are a couple mistakes away from WWIII right now. It is not likely, so long as we are being rational but human error is a real thing right along with irrational. Everyday this war drags on is another high-risk dice roll and all those in power in the West know it - this is why the fear-narrative is "this war will never end". Then there is the collapsed Russia problem. We have bounced this one around a lot here but I have yet to hear one coherent theory as to what we are going to do about a collapsed Russia and its 6000 nuclear weapons. We have "who cares, let em burn", which is insane because 6000 f#cking loose nuclear weapons. And we have "it will be ok, it was in the 90s"...talk about hope as the option. Conditions in the 90s were pretty different. I have also heard "the nukes will be controlled based on where they are stored now"...thing about collapse, it makes "safe" anything really hard. Non-state actors get involved, rogue new semi-states etc, all with a possibility of being armed like a superpower...sure that sounds fun. No, the best case is a rough but stable transition to a new set of a$$holes in charge we can at least count on not to invade anyone for a few decades, keep a grip on the nukes and the country, and then we risk manage the rest...and we are back to hope. We spend trillions on defence and the Ukraine - making it a nasty well armed member of the western club, the one we threaten Russia with for a century. All the while we try and manage whatever the Chinese are doing as we re-write the global order. None of that works well for a very long drawn out war with a fragile former-super power, no the west wants a short one that stops those damned dice from rolling every morning. That line plays very well in military circles...right up to the strategic line. Then when one starts to mingle with political reality you quickly learning that hope is very often the only plan, and everyone works very hard for the best-hope scenario. The reason is that once you begin to encounter factors that are completely out of your control, the best one can do is build the best hope one can. For example, Canadian security is entirely built on hope - we hope the US will protect us, and remain the biggest guy in the room. We have no plan to for this, there can't be one as we cannot control the US, at best we can try to influence. However, that influence is also hopeful as we cannot guarantee it in any way shape or form. With respect to Russia, we are very much at the hope stage. We are pouring support into Ukraine, hoping they will win. We are putting as much pressure on Russia as we can, hoping it will induce change. Russian regime change/political change, that is the biggest hope-campaign of them all. Considering that the Russian people will have to decide the outcome, trying to build a plan for that is not a plan, it is a hallucination. We can try to influence (there is that word again) and some of that influence can be quite direct. But we cannot make a plan for it, or at least one that will work with any accuracy. I always go with: X+Y=Z, solve for X. That is the strategic political problem. You can't solve for it. All you can pull from this is what you know - the relationships between X,Y, and Z. So that when Y and Z eventually pull out of the fog, we can finally see what X is - if you aren't doing that, and it is incredibly hard, you are at X,Y,Z, solve for X.

This is a very good point. I am not sure either to be honest. Some phenomena will be unique to this war; however, some will be part of larger trends - figuring out which is which will be very difficult. So lets put Ukraine down and move to a peer fight between say US-led west and a large well funded unnamed Asian country. Keeping the conversation on hardware - I suspect we will see some of the things we have seen in Ukraine on steroids: - ISR. Both sides with a column of ISR capability that goes from space to underwater, and thru cyberspace. This is backed up by an integrated architecture of human/AI pairing that can keep up with the ISR feeds in real-time. So what? Surprise is not a thing until someone's ISR is eroded to the point that they actually have blind spots. - Unmanned. Both sides are going to field unmanned systems very broadly. UAVs are going to be layered from the squad to just below space. UASs will be capable of ISR, however, they will also be autonomous enough to conduct hunter-killer swarm missions. Very small UAS armed with precision weapons, or self-loitering munitions - the line between will blur capable of swarming and overcoming C-UAS systems. We would also very likely see UAS v UAS warfare, something we have not seen in this one at all. UGS will come online and we will see mixed units of manned and unmanned ground systems. UGS will be out front, manned systems back. Like UAS, UGS capable of precision strike and ground based self-loitering munitions will come into play - minefields with legs. - Massed Precision. The vast majority of weapons on the battlefield will be "smart". Designed toward 1-weapon = 1-kill, many able to self-target on the fly. Combined with integrated ISR bubbles, this means that any concentrations within the friendly ISR bubble will be seen and killed, most likely over-the-horizon. Logistics will remain the most vulnerable part of any military system. - Deep Strike. Massed precision with very long ranges. There will be counter-system development but the physics of some of this deep strike technology will be very challenging to counter in the near-mid term. This, again, combined with ISR will mean that each side can see out to hundreds of kms, and hit single vehicles with a single munition. Ok, there is likely more, but lets just take these 4...so what? Land warfare will evolve - how? Is the question. Some think it will go the way of naval warfare with a heavy core surrounded by a cloud of ISR and unmanned systems. A land warfare BG will now engage over the horizon first in an ISR/Unmanned edge war until one sides cloud starts to collapse, then more traditional systems will close in and conduct the finish. The biggest weakness of this approach is logistics: how does one protect logistics lines that stretch hundreds of kms from being seen and hit? The other end of the spectrum is to completely disperse and go as light as possible - all lethal cloud, no steel core. Gives advantages of much harder to see and hit - ISR is getting powerful but spotting a human is still much harder than a hot large vehicle, same will apply to small dispersed unmanned. Also has a major advantage of a much smaller logistics tail. Disadvantage, and question mark, is how will it fair against a cloud-armed heavy core? If the clouds collide and a non-core force manages to defeat the steel-core cloud, will it have enough power to defeat the steel core, or at that point can Deep Strike precision do the job? Upscaling into formations, the most likely answer will be a mix of cores. Some will be "Light Dispersed" - no core beyond some C2 - thru to "Heavy" having traditional steel in the middle that can still move and hit while bringing protection. Management of Light - Hybrids - Heavy within a larger formation cloud will be the challenge and the roles of each of these capabilities are up for grabs. In the end we might wind up with an optimized one-size but we will have to go through a series of evolutions first. To my mind Massed Precision+ Deep Strike+ ISR is a wild card combination. It already looks like it can replace elements of airpower out to around 500km with next gen systems. There is no viable technological counter to a HIMARs-like system, or very long ranged artillery, except "don't be seen or stand next to (but not too close) to a higher priority target". The ability to beat counter-systems are just too high when the munition is coming in at Mach 2.5 (e.g. smart submunitions). Add to this long range self-loitering/self-targeting swarms of unmanned systems of all types and the battlefield is going to get a lot more lethal, at much longer ranges - to the point that all of our current capability will need a re-think. Finally, none of this accounts for software warfare - information/cyber, human effects etc. And this war has been mind blowing on how far the needle has moved in those directions.

To be honest the simplest answer to most of these points has been staring us in the face this entire war - precision indirect fires. I have seen no heavy assaults on RA strong points but we have seen a near endless stream of precision strikes on everything. If a hybrid light infantry force meets a strong point - one that ISR somehow missed - the answer so far seems “call in Excalibur”. If indirect is becoming so precise, why drag a bunch of heavy metal along? Add to this indirect fire ranges are getting really long. Steve makes a good counter-factual analogy, here is a pro-factual; what if the UA had 400 HIMARs systems? Each light Bn had a battery on call…do I need to bring steel to strongpoint now?

So the part where I specifically said “this is not about the death of the tank” didn’t stick? Unfortunately we cannot even try to have a conversation on this without someone making it about that; this tells me that something is up and everyone knows it. According to US congress: https://sgp.fas.org/crs/weapons/R44968.pdf Light forces are: “Light IBCTs are primarily foot-mobile forces. Light IBCTs can move by foot, vehicle, or air (either air landed or by helicopter). While IBCTs have light- and medium-wheeled vehicles for transport, there are not enough vehicles to transport all or even a significant portion of the IBCT’s infantry assets in a single movement.” So basically infantry with limited transport that is designed to carry the to the fight but not into the fight. They lack organic heavy armour as well. Based on this post: It looks like the UA is employing Light/Med in a hybrid similar to what was tried and abandoned in the 80s. Right now I am not sure how the tanks played a role in this offensive. We have a bunch of possible reports: -Initial shell cracking and then Light has been pushing out doing the exploit. -In support, Light infiltrates and attrits, heavy is called up to finish off hard points. -I have seen one map where it looks like heavy is handling the shoulders while lighter stuff does the breakthrough/breakout. -What is happening/going to happen at Kherson? The dynamic on that op is different. I suspect the RA are going to collapse there too but the road to that collapse is quite different than what we saw in Kharkiv - or is it? I think it is safe to say at this point there was not a lot of heavy in this last push. We are not seeing a lot of heavy formations or units in play here, at least not one would expect for a frontage coming up on 100kms on some maps. Now why that is could be because the UA knew they did not need them as this part of the RA line was already weak. Or they didn’t have them and took a risk. It does look like the UA just pulled off a historic offensive that retook 3000 sq kms with a pretty modest force that was mostly wheeled and light in nature. We know heavy was in the game but not how we normally think about it. We also know that the RA has put up almost zero heavy response as a c-attack. Is that because the HIMAR campaign hit RA logistics so hard that they are out of gas? Is losing 1-2k MBTs making RA nervous to pull out armor? - we had reports they were using them as direct fire sniping but no heavy formation responses. In fact RA heavy has not been in this fight since Mar as things devolved into an infantry arty war in the Donbas. Does the combination of hi resolution ISR, deep strike and modern ATGM nulled RA armor? Dunno. This could be an isolated phenomenon on this single operation but one can see some trends, the main one being that UA use of mass does not conform to our thinking on it, in defence or offence and neither does the RA’s. For example, the role of Light forces is normally to project rapidly to a key operational objective, and then have medium/heavy link up. Not be the primary force capability in a breakout - reason being is that Light cannot survive the heavy enemy c-attack…until now, I guess. Nor is Light supposed to be doing the heavy lifting in defence, it can hold but lacks the organic heavy combat power to c-attack. We have seen exactly this in this war, why? Because the UA does not have enough heavy capability. So rather than giving up, they simply wrote a new doctrine…and it is working….so far…in these cases. However, war is not over yet and we do not have all the facts. So fewer tanks in play does not mean the “death of the tank” nor does a few photos or 45sec snippets of them point to a shining renormalization. At this point I think heavy military mass is in trouble and will be forced to evolve. It is in trouble because 1) it is becoming impossible to hide on the modern ISR battlefield, 2) it is logistically too vulnerable, the RA has demonstrated that for about 6 months and 3) Given the enhancements in range, precision and lethality of smaller, lighter and cheaper weapons systems/capability the use of heavy mass as the primary vehicle for annihilation-dislocation or attrition based warfare is going to need a rethink. We have not even seen what unmanned can fully do, nor what current or near-next gen weapon systems can do (remember almost everything we gave the UA is last-gen). And we haven’t even gotten into force generation, projection and management savings going lighter may provide. So we will see. The trends towards smaller, lighter, smarter and more deadly capability integrated with ubiquitous ISR are changing warfare. Up until this week I was concerned that we may have entered a WW1 era of Defensive primacy, and the jury is still out, but the events of this week show that offence is still very real - we might just need to rethink the conditions by which it happens. I will say that the “precision-mass” debate is pretty much been definitively answered, that ship has sailed. As has the “UAVs are a fad” narrative. I guess the next question will be how that precision is protected, projected and positioned on the next battlefield?

Ok, so that may solve the soldiers problem in that window of time but pulling together a formation to the point it is ready to fight, particularly as we know they had to equip a large portion of it. It is like saying “I got my fists in shape in 6 months”, great but what about the entire rest of the body? I assume they had some existing staff structures to build off of but building a multi-Bde formation able of offensive ops is not something one normally whips off in a few months. Unless you are Ukrainian apparently.

Ya, the 6 month thing is to train up a civilian into someone who can fight the basics. 6 months to fill out, train, equip and integrate 3 Div-ish sized formations, let alone in a warzone while holding off RA attacks in the Donbas, is something else entirely. Keep in mind that for at least one of those months the RA was on the doorstep of Kyviv. The UA really accelerated things well beyond normal force generation timelines: for example, back in the Afghanistan days it took the Canadian Army 9 months to get a Brigade-like thing together...for COIN Ops, not this. And that was out of a mostly regular force standing structure. And then there are the operational enablers, no one I know was thinking that the UA could pull those together and set up the architecture to coordinate two operations simultaneously. Stuff like logistics and C4ISR can take years to pull together. No, this one was one for the books. How the UA did this will be interesting to unpack.

Damn, I lose the bet. I figured it would be at least 48 hours before any mainstream media said "collapse".

Cool, clearly on the field and this guy really likes em. Of course if the signals out of Moscow start gelling, this thing could be over by Mon and then the post-game analysis can really start.

I have to say what surprised me was that the UA had enough capacity and depth to pull off a double operation. We knew they were force generating like demons but being able to assemble three Div-level/like (and where is that 3rd one btw?) formations and then support two of them at the same time is a much higher level of capability than I think anyone had reported on. I fully expected a grind for a few weeks at Kherson and then a RA collapse there before it gets too wet - and that is very much still on the table, but to do it in two places at once!?...I will literally plotz if they pull out a third.

Oh my, here we go.

It isn't massless, it is anti-mass...brilliant.

Ok, the mention of the US 9th Infantry is enough to melt western force developers for a generation. This really resonates - high speed, low drag, shorter logistics tale and capable of dispersion - heavy in support for the grudge jobs...and all the ISR.

Well first off I am very wary of western analysts declaring anything "settled" in this war considering how much they got wrong in the first place. By their metrics of tank-power Ukraine should be a puppet state of Russian by last Apr. So I am curious as to how the tanks have been essential or have been employed. For example, "15 tanks did the break in battle at Balakliya", that is a single Company, so what/how were they integrated into a break in battle that was kms wide? It is not so much that the "tank is dead", it looks more like its role is evolving. Nothing we have seen in this war looks like it was supposed to wrt mech and armoured warfare - so here we have a successful breakout battle and I am still not sure how it was integrated into it. And then there is "what the hell happened with RA armor?", but by this point I doubt the Russian can keep theirs in gas, let alone in combat. And then we have this Light Infantry/SOF breakout, unless some of these maps have been wrong. We wont answer it here but the most dangerous thing we can do with this entire experience is validate pre-existing biases and promptly ignore all the other weird signals. Especially when the validations might be the weird signals, not the main.

Nice, infiltration, isolation, push, finish - repeat. It definitely happened fast up at Kharkiv. Still slower at Kherson but we are only a week in and the RA on the wrong side of the river are going to run out of gas and ammo, and maybe resolve sooner than later.

Heh, there it is. Losing about 2500 sq kms in a week = "All part of the plan"

It is really interesting from an operational surprise point of view. How the UA managed to do operational surprise in this day and age - even given the poorer RA systems - is beyond me. I am wondering if they went lighter for reasons of lower profile and logistics load? Well I guess things will become clearer in time. Let's face it, we are going to spend years unpacking what actually happened in this war.

I am a pretty big fan of testing out that theory.

So I am not going to reopen the "tanks are dead...no they are not" debate...please gawd no. However, is it just me or do light forces seem to be leading on this whole thing again? I am sure there has been some heavy action but we still are not seeing big armor from the UA - unless I am missing something?

Is he going to apologize for his abysmal Phase I or Phase II analysis/predictions? No, no, we are better than that...take the highroad, it is a win for everyone.

Ya "leash" is a bit insulting. The US does not work that way, at least its military as far as my personal experience is concerned. A leash insinuates that Ukraine is somehow the pet or under control of the US and the West. The reality is that these sorts of operations are one long continuous negotiation. The US has likely expressed some "red-lines" that it is not comfortable crossing; however, things would have to get pretty bad before they started threatening to pull support. If the UA decided to make a drive for Moscow for example, that may do it...maybe. As to the military objectives in-country, the US and the rest of the west have largely been...guns? you want guns...we got guns....training? How many? ISR? Here is the most we have ever put up and out in the history of warfare. Think stakeholders not shareholders.