The_Capt

If confirmed, these are some very good indicators. I would only add here that this is an attrition-to-manoeuvre based strategy at play, or at least I suspect so. That means that while taking ground is an indicator it is secondary to the primary, which is taking RA off the board at a rate their already stressed system cannot sustain. If/once the RA buckles from the pressure of that attrition, then we may see more manoeuvre warfare that we recognize better. This is corrosive warfare.

Oh military field pipelines exist and I am sure the Russians even have them (assuming someone maintained them). In NATO we have them, the French are the experts apparently. Problems with Kherson: - Still need a lot of trucks and engineers to lay them, hard to miss on modern battlefield. And crossing the Dnipro - an area they would have had a lot of eyes on would have been damned hard. - They are designed to be laid well back in the Corp/Div rear areas, outside of enemy artillery range and well protected from air strikes. Normally a fuel farm is constructed that is linked to civilian infrastructure or they bring fuel in bulk via trains. One does not run an operational pipeline that close to the frontlines because once it is seen it is hit. - To lay it across the Dnipro to a fuel point (again very hard to hide), in range of UA guns and missiles, they would have to dig the thing in in order for it to have any survivability. And we are back to very hard to hide. - The fuel farm would have to be out of HIMARs range, and impossible to hide but also target #1 for whoever has been blowing up airfields. So technically possible but I would be shocked if they could pull it off and not get smacked by UA arty or some such. As to deep penetration as Plan A, we have seen no evidence of this on the UA side. They have been pretty tight but sending a formation 20-30kms deep takes a lot of logistics build up and mass, which even the Russian could have seen. From what I can see a broad front attrition-to-manoeuvre was the most likely plan, after they had already stressed the RA support system. Real question is not “how well can the RA resupply?” Because unless we missed something big it won’t be enough without working bridges. The question is “how much did the RA stockpile that did not get got by UA deep strike?” That is the long pole in the tent as to how long that they can hold out….physically, moral is a different beast.

That really does not check out. If they were existing pipelines, then Ukraine built them before the war and they know exactly where they are. If they were built over the last six months during the occupation, even a small pipeline construction is going to be highly visible - gotta clear cut lines, lay down support, lay pipe, cross rivers, add stations etc. With western ISR they would have watched them build the thing in real time…and know exactly where it is and could have already blown them . No way they can support 25k troops on the defence effectively by tac aviation lift. Medivac, troop lift and basics like food maybe but the heavier natures of supply like POL, ammo, spare parts, field defence stores, forget about it.

What really bothers me is that the guy knows better. No way a SAMS grad (according to YouTube) with his background cannot see the same info as we are and comes up with this stuff without being in someone's back pocket. I can get leanings and biases, everyone has them, but the continuous line of unprofessional 'alternative facts' this guys keep pushing is bloody shameful. Further we live in a time without accountability apparently, you can say BS for months and no one ever goes back and says "hey wait a minute you said the UA was finished in March, and then again in Apr, and then in Jun in the Donbass and now again while they are attacking at Kherson....that doesn't make sense".

Been tracking this guy since the beginning and he is a stain on our profession at this point. According to him the entire UA was wiped out in Mar. Of course how a "destroyed force" managed to force generate 3 fighting brigades able to go on an offensive in 3-4 months kinda slips out of the narrative. (and I seriously doubt that was the actual number - although if 12000 troops are doing this much damage to approx twice that number of RA then they UA clearly still has 'game'.). The guy is out now and can say whatever he wants, but it is pretty clear which side he is on in this thing - I use him as a inverted truth barometer though.

Ok...STOP. I am not a moderator on this forum but I have @BFCElvis on speed dial. This thread is about the war Ukraine and, yes we have discussed surrounding issues and possible 2nd and 3rd order effects this war could have on the region. This thread is not about: - Bafflingly narrow or simply out of date concepts such as solving human cultural overlaps with policy. - Vilifying the entirely of all Russian peoples as somehow less than human. No human society, culture or whatever has or ever will be entirely homogeneous, good or bad. So sweeping ideas of how to solve a "Russian Problem" by a bunch of old guys with too much time on their hands, which they should spend learning more, are not 1) viable or 2) useful here. - I get we are sore on Russia right now, they earned that one; however, at what point on this incredibly myopic line of thinking do we become worse than that we assign to them? All in the name of "safety" - a whole lot of atrocity and historic marks of shame lay on the feet of "safety". I have been to one genocide and trust me none of you know what you are talking about, so stop hijacking the thread. - FFS, we did not even take the approaches some are proposing here during the Cold War, we went with "contain and attract/entice", and we won that one. In fact we look back on the occasion of the McCarthy era - which is where this is going- as a dark chapter You wanna talk about mass deportations, forced migration, race/ethnic cleansing/purity or any other whack-job nonsense there is literally an entire internet out there, let's try and keep this one small "sane space".

Finish.

Lemme clarify a bit here as it looks like we are at the point of the concept being tested. First off @LongLeftFlank has said he is a Canadian expat; however, it is clear he does not hail from Atlantic Canada or he would know the term by heart - "fog eats the snow" (in fact I get a whole central-Canada urban vibe off him, for which I may be totally off as we are a country of a rich and diverse cultural tapestry which we get very good at hiding - I, for example, hail from the far North originally but I have buried the hints of my somewhat 'wildling' roots quite well, I even use cutlery on occasion) So what is this fog-snow thingy? Not quite as JonS outlines but I kinda like the imagery. So this idea was one we came up with way back as a possible method for offensive operations given the context of the overall conflict - peer forces, no air superiority, defensive-centric thanks to ubiquitous ISR and smart weapon systems. It was an attempt to answer the question of: "how the hell is anyone supposed to attack in this environment when the other side can see you form up from space?" In reality as far as I can tell fog-snow is the third step in an operational approach, which I am sure someone will (or has) turned into a flowchart and checklist: 1. Establish pre-conditions. Gain ISR/cognitive superiority - know better and faster than your opponent. Neutralize enemy air superiority - this whole party is over if they can own the sky. Logistics - build a system that can be put in place without getting hammered before you can even get into place, here lighter is better than iron mountains. I am sure there is more here with respect to force generation, psychology and a bunch of higher level stuff but you get the idea. I think it is fair to say that the UA spent the summer getting these in place over the Kherson area while holding off whatever that leg-humping the RA was doing in the Donbas..."just eating snow" maybe. 2. Project friction. This was where the RA completely failed in the Donbas. They slammed fields and fields with HE - careless in their affairs and focused on causing stress but not really projecting friction. "What do you mean by that The_Capt?" - well friction is a Clausewitzian concept (I am pretty sure the Chinese masters also speak to it) that "war is a very large human organizational problem, and once you collect us in a group larger than about four we become horny cats to organization. So friction is the "badness" that got in the way of order and formation. Here Uncle C and myself diverge a bit as I do not see friction as the product of order rubbing up against order - an unfortunate byproduct. I see it as an actual force on the battlefield that can be applied as projected uncertainty, or chaos; those deep strikes into the Crimea are a classic example. Regardless, the next operational phase is to project that friction upon your opponents operational system, and here the UA has done a breathtakingly good job over the last two months - on par with what they did during Phase 1 of this war. They have hit Russian logistics, infrastructure as well as the morale and conative centers of the Russian military thru strikes on leadership and C2. We have talked a lot about indicators and a big one has been the fact that the RA was never able to get out of that "operational pause" back in Jul. My theory is this was because the UA hit them so well and created so much friction that the RA was only able to do disconnected symbolic pushes and never really got their operational feet back under themselves. Hitting the bridges is an example of just how much they stressed the RA system, and now that system is theoretically fragile, or at least not anti-fragile. So once the UA had those first two where they needed them - and that is a sign of a military that knows what it is doing btw - they moved onto to step 3. 3. Add Pressure - "Fog Eating Snow". A square kilometer of fluffy cloud weighs about a half a million kilograms (https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/how-much-does-cloud-weigh) which is not a bad analogue for fog. It is not weightless by any stretch, it is how that weight is distributed and holds/exchanges its energy that makes it different, same goes for warfare...again, theoretically. Once you have done steps 1 & 2, your opponents system is vulnerable but you have not changed the context enough for traditional manoeuvre warfare, this approach may work. We saw hints of it on the UA defence at the battle of Kyiv. Essentially the idea states that one employs highly distributed mass to: Infiltrate your opponents defensive lines - you have already mapped out where the enemy is in detail as part of Step 1. Further here it is best that your opponent is employing traditional conventional mass defence, which the Russians appear to be obliging. ("Fog on fog" is a really interesting concept and could be the future of peer-to-peer warfare but lets leave that one.) You use your ISR advantage to infiltrate in and around your opponents conventional mass concentrations, essentially filling in the 'gaps and seams'. We know the RA has lots of these because they simply do not have the force density to create a uniform defensive line. So UA has made a multi-prong set of advances along broad areas, which are looking "infiltration-y" - fog is not in one place, it is everywhere and gets into everything. Isolate tactical "bites" - A few maps done by Grigb are showing what suspiciously like tactical isolation of some forward pockets of RA strongpoints. Isolation means the removal of mutual support between positions. If you can do that, particularly by eroding artillery support, you are in business. Further this obviously has a significant psychological effects along with logistical implications. Once the enemies tactical positions are fully isolated.... Finish. Pretty self explanatory but you want to quickly remove these tactical positions from the field either by surrender or annihilation, preferably by precision weapons systems as they are faster. Rinse and repeat - Fog eating Snow. The whole "Adding Pressure" step is cyclical and the idea is that by repeating this process enough times, fast enough, the entire enemy operational system will collapse - this is the essence of attrition-to-manoeuvre, which is the opposite of what our doctrine says. Key here is tempo. This is weird as one is now employing attritional tempo instead of positional, but the rule still applies, one has to Finish faster than an opponents operational system can recover - which is why you did Steps 1 & 2. And here we come to more questions than answers: - Will it work on the offensive? - Can you Finish fast enough, and how does one rationalize the fact that as you advance deeper this gets harder? - When can traditional manoeuvre/annihilation take over? - Have you gauged the enemies system correctly? If it is more resilient than you thought you can bog down very quickly. - Do you exploit success and go for a spearpoint, or do you keep doing broad system pressure? I have no idea, these we can only observe and watch for indicators. The UA does look like they are trying a version of the idea, which explains all the "this won't look like a 'normal' offensive" and why we have suspected that the offence actually started back when we saw clear evidence of Step 2 over a month ago. I suspect if this works that it won't look like much, and even bogging down...until it does. If they have done this correctly, or if it will even work at all, the RA operational system north of the Dnipro will likely collapse suddenly after continuous pressure - think jiujitsu not boxing. So I would not get too excited if the UA is not in Sevastopol by the weekend, that is not how this kind of warfare works. We are way too biased by our western experiences on this one - this is system based warfare and the metrics are different. Anyway, sit back and keep eyes and ears open. If this works like I can envision it, it may break modern military doctrine as we know it. If it fails, the UA may not get too many more chances and this may turn into frozen conflict because the Left Hand of Mars (Defence) is back in charge...we shall see.

Seems to be a new spin - or maybe a very old on. Operational level: Set pre-conditions - Project friction - Add pressure. Tactical - infiltrate, isolate, destroy...repeat. Slow and methodical, until it is not and goes fast...at least that is the working theory.

Points to @Hapless for calling it. Looks like the month of Aug was a shaping operation for this. We don't see any punchy western style spearpoint manoeuvre yet - and I am of a mind that we likely won't. This is instead a steady increase of tactical pressure and projection of friction, now that pre-conditions have been set. The operational objective is likely everything north of the Dnipro with a focus on Kherson (obviously), however, the UA has to be thinking about the next bound or they risk simply winding up at a new border. Now let's see if it works.

All war is a collision of certainties - which of course means it produces uncertainty. And we as humans abhor uncertainty - as demonstrated here. Most people have been in a physical fight at some point in their lives - schoolyard, bar, or whatever. Thing is, very few have been in a lethal fight and they are a very different species. A regular, "two guys having at it" is going to end with injury of some scale - bruises, knocked out teeth, maybe even a few broken bones. A fight to the death is unique as neither party really knows how it will end; we have no real idea what lies beyond the veil. That uncertainty alone makes deadly fights unique, having a different texture - parties know that one of you is not going home, one of you is going somewhere "else". Now that is the uncertainty that those who do war must live with every day - worse, you live it long enough and you realize that everyday, even in peace, is lethal - means you never really go home again, but that is a separate conversation. Unfortunately I cannot help you here. I have no idea how this is going to unfold - how long Ukraine can hold out, how long and how much western resolve, or how long Russia can continue - no one does. The Russian front could collapse tomorrow, or the UA could have a major setback - these are simply symptoms of a deeper deadly contest. This is the reality of war...all stop. Now that we have got that out of the way. Are things at a decision point? Do we need to adopt new strategies because what we have "ain't working"? Well for Russia, I expect the answer is "yes", while for Ukraine I would say "no". Based on the progress of the collision, Ukraine has traded terrain (and lives) for time. Time to force generate. Which is not only getting all the sexy western kit, it is training people on how to employ it. This is a lot more than crew training, this runs the full gambit all the way up to training people to be staff and plan complex joint integrated operations. It takes 1-2 years in the west to train up a major, a senior tactical officer, to be able to function and wage operational level warfare - and Ukraine has a lot of operational level warfare going on right now. Russia on the other hand appears to be panicking. They are simply sticking uniforms on people and pushing them at the front a la Enemy at the Gates. I highly doubt they are able, or willing, to churn out the full gambit of professional fighters they are going to need to sustain this war, while I know Ukraine is - we are training some of them right now. Russia has culminated at least strategically, possible operationally. They never came out of the "pause" of last summer. The fact that we are talking about them "freezing the front" is a sign of this. We have gone over at length the challenges they are going to face holding onto an 850km frontage, and entire depth now in range of Ukrainian weapons and ISR. Can Russia freeze this thing and drag it out for years - sure, the Donbass lines were a conflict region that lasted 8 years before this war. I think it much less likely given the conditions they are facing now; however, it is always a possibility. Ukraine has adopted a strategy of "hold, nibble and deep strike". Holding everywhere they need to, nibbling to sustain the initiative and force Russia to react to them and deep strike to hammer stuff Russia cannot easily get back. It seems to be working, so I am not sure if Ukraine needs to dramatically shift strategies right now. And definitely not ones that come with too much political risk. So where from here...running in the darkness? Well time is actually not on Russia's side, more so than Ukraine. Ukraine has a couple years at least. As I posted elsewhere, the US alone spent $2.3 trillion (I would love to see the total NATO bill) in a landlocked hole with zero larger scale geopolitical repurcutions. I do not think they are out of runway yet. Even the staunchest pro-Russian politician is going to have trouble turning things off in a couple years. And then there is Europe - notoriously fickly bunch but when they do get their act together that have an economy that is in the same league as the US. For them Ukraine is "too big to fail" now - so my point is we have some time here, like probably 18-24 months of continued support. Russia, not so much. Its loss rates are too high. It economy is going to start to buckle, signs are already there. Worse, they are going to run out of excess human capital they can throw at this thing, then force generation will start to hit organs and bone. Putin knows this, hence the incredible machinations to avoid general mobilization. My point being that politically and strategically Russia has no escalation room left. There is no "other gear" that won't risk completely blowing the engine, in my opinion. It would be a different story if Ukraine were at the gates of Moscow but to Russia this is a foreign adventure and no amount of pundit quacking is going to change that. Russia has pretty much broken its professional force in being, and its ability to force generate more forces, based on what we have seen, is questionable. So what? Well, I am of a "stay the course" mind on this whole thing. The Russian war machines has some really weird rattles and popping sounds in this thing and they are getting louder. In my experience, these are symptoms of a machine that is not well. Ukraine on the other hand is getting better, able to hit deeper and harder everyday. Will they solve for the offence, no idea but I like to think so. I am not sure we in the west could solve for the offence given these conditions; however, Ukraine is highly motivated and more importantly they are learning, fast. So what have learned - war is hell, darkest before dawn, keep calm and carry on - kinda weird but all those platitudes kinda ring true, don't they?

Really specific complaints there. I am pretty sure the UA has the whole "leg blowing off" part covered based on even a modest take on casualty figures. I mean we could always push more indirect fire and, of course ammo. Of course if the sole driving logic is "kill more Russians! Damn the consequences!!" A combination of chemical weapons and a deep biostrike would pay fantastic dividends in that department - a little bit 'o' sarin at the front door, a dash of anthrax in the back. Here is a crazy idea, modern militaries have forgotten more ways to blow off legs and kill people than you can imagine; however, at some point they become totally counter-productive - like getting into a barfight and pulling out the other guys eye and eating it, it sounds cool and definitely has an effect but your friends are not going to share a cab ride home with you. My point on AP landmines is pretty simple: the political cost will not be offset by the battlefield gains. If you find that frustrating, well try fighting an insurgency with a hand and three fingers tied behind you back and come back to me.

So there is a long held myth that the Revolutionaries fought like the natives, while the dumb old British stood in their straight lines, and that is why the American's won - this is, of course, not true. While some elements of that war did fight like an insurgency - there have been elements of Cossacks/partisans etc in every war - they had nothing to do with the decisive battles such as Yorktown. Light Infantry and axillaries had a recon and infiltration role but they never stood up to major British fighting formations One of the reasons was technology - the musket rifles were best employed en masse. Small groups hiding behind fences etc could never muster the firepower. More importantly, I argue, was that the Americans needed to be recognizable. They relied a lot on French support and in order to be credible they had to look and fight like a European military, or risk that support drying up. Ukraine is facing the same problem. One of their constraints is - look and fight western, or they risk resolve and support splitting. So while the use of AP landmines is actually not outlawed by the Geneva Conventions (it is restricted in employment) - there is that nasty Ottawa Treaty that Ukraine signed onto, and so did a lot of supporting nations. Ukraine had, and still has leeway here, particularly from its biggest supporter, the US - who did not sign the Ottawa Treaty; however, they likely want to avoid actions that become political liability. Ukraine could pull out of the Ottawa Treaty, they have plenty of cause, but it would likely split its support. US would pressure and call in a lot of chips but it would likely cause problems domestically. So I am thinking millions of AP mines are off the table, at least for now. The fact that we have no reports of the UA turning the Donbass into the inner-Korean border with minefields is a good sign that they are not close to desperate yet. Mines are being use; however, so far they appear to be AT, which are perfectly legal and outside the Ottawa Treaty - so are DPICM, as Ukraine never signed onto the Oslo convention. Finally AP minefield are not some magic forcefield - they are porous and can be breached by many means. Covering all those minefields is going to be resource intensive, as will putting them in and I think the UA has higher priorities. Now what will be interesting is when/if we see massive Russian minefield efforts, that is a clear sign they are going on the defensive.

Hmm, yes and no. The primary advantage of the pontoon is crossing speed and weight - it is pretty slow driving but still faster than a ferry, and you can traffic more vehicles continuously as opposed to discrete crossings. As to survivability, the ferry is likely better as it is moving and can traffic from multiple sites, the pontoon bridge is fixed. They both use the same sections, which are not really designed to take too many hits before bad things start to happen. This whole effort by the RA shows that the strikes on the existing bridge infrastructure have been effective - in case anyone was wondering. They have sighted the pontoon bridge very well, butted up against the existing concrete bridge superstructure gives it a lot of anchors against current (which is pretty slow) and some indirect fires. They have also set it up correctly, on the downstream side of the bridge, so if a section gets hit too badly they can disconnect and let it simply float downstream, and replace. If I were the UA I would wait until it had some decent traffic it on it - knowing the Russians they will be sloppy in crossing management - and then hit it with DPICM. You will likely bag some vehicles, which will have to be cleared and do damage all along the length of the bridge. This significantly raises the repair and maint bill while also stressing the entire structure. Alternately the UA have already demonstrated what they can do with PGM artillery so simply hit the thing along its length - the RA will run out of pontoons before the UA runs out of ammo.

Hmm, well I know nothing of the good retired Gen but I am sure he has his own calculus upon which to base his opinion. Personally, given the data and information I can see, the Russian military system is sick. The devolution in tactics, the loss of anything that resembles operational offensive - they never really came out of the "pause", and them now dancing to Ukraine's tunes around Kherson are all symptoms. Right along with reports of low morale, poor support, flailing targeting and other indicators of system failures (e.g. baffling suicidal OPSEC violations) point to an eroding Russian military system. Russian option spaces have shrunk to the point that it appears all they have left are WMDs, "holding on" and tactical nibbling - they appear to have exhausted all others, if they have another gear they should have dropped into it back in Jun. Of course Russia can lose, any nation can lose a war...I think we have demonstrated this enough times. I suppose the question is "how much is enough?" All war is negotiation - and sacrifice. So in these sorts of things definitions become incredibly important. "Russia cannot lose" - what does that actually mean? Because by any political or strategic goals metrics, it already has lost this war. From a selfish western perspective, stepping back, one could argue that 'we' have gained- - Ukraine - there is no other end-state to this thing other than Ukraine in the UE and NATO - Putin and his cronies can quack and blather but that ship sailed after March. - Finland and Sweden. - NATO defence spending commitments for the next decade. - A clear demonstration to the globe that we are willing to defend the current global order to any and all revisionist states (kinda) - we have re-established a certainty. Our opponent, on the other hand, has gained about what 60-80k sq kms of destroyed, largely empty countryside? [Aside: no there is not mountains of resources in the area they control, we covered that one already] A crushing economic trajectory that will put them in the 3rd world if it goes on long enough. A Europe that is literally re-wiring themselves away from Russia's one trump card. A pretty much destroyed military - in both physical and more importantly psychological domains. And a historic loss of global influence and credibility that will haunt them for the rest of the century. Doesn't look too bad on paper...however, it leaves a nasty unresolved feeling doesn't it? The single largest problem is that we in the west have never defined our war goals, our strategic and political endstates. We went from "oh crap, ok so let's figure out how to support an insurgency", to "oh crap, ok so let's how to support a defence", to now, "oh, crap, let's figure out how to support an offence". We have been stuck on, "let's make sure Ukraine doesn't lose" that we never figured out what it means to ensure that "we win...enough." The west's victory is directly tied to Ukraine's outcomes in this war - all stop. So what does that look like? I have opinions but it is really up to our political leaders to lead and determine what "that" is, or is not. The absence of this is apparent in a lot of the narratives such as Gen Dannatt's where we are very nervous about a run-away war in intensity or duration - especially duration because we have all had our fingers burned recently. I think the impulse to re-establish certainty is overpowering, particularly within the large establishments of power such as government and militaries - they are the very definition of positive capability. Russia as a scary global power was a certainty, people built entire careers on it, trillions spent on defence for it. The global order as we knew it, another enormous certainty, we built everything on it. This entire war has been one enormous global uncertainty, and it is offensive to our sense of order - there are parts of the world where this sort of behaviour is expected, Europe was not one of them. So victory is directly tied to "how much certainty is enough?" And here is the thing, victory does not simply 'happen', which is very disconcerting trend I am seeing in the west - Ukraine+snazy weapons and support = "victory happens"...what it is not happening fast enough....happen faster!....hmm, maybe they should negotiate.... Victory is work, it is built, it is earned. And we are back to sacrifice. If we cannot define what we want, we cannot define what we are willing to spend to get it - which makes our negotiation position largely in the blind - more an act of faith and hope than a deliberate extension of collective human will to re-assert our certainty. I guess my question back to Gen Dannatt (with respect) and the mass of the mandarinate ( @LongLeftFlank that is a brilliant word btw) - "What is our certainty?" "What are we willing to lose?" Until someone can answer that, then we really have no idea if this war is worth the continued effort from a western interests point of view. Personally, I think that if we keep doing this for a decade, it will be time and money better spent than other adventures that were far less central to our certainty - but "how much?!", "how long?!" https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2022 But what about the "recession" and my gas prices?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007–2008 My advice - we are in this thing until Russia is back in their box and we have a gang of thugs in power we can actually do business with - we will then risk manage that train wreck of a nation, we have dealt with worse. We are in it until Ukraine is re-built into a shining example of what western national building really means. We are in it until we can demonstrate what western collective resolve looks like for the rest of the world into the 21st century, and that while we may have to renegotiate what world order looks like, my grandkids will damn well have their hands on that pen. But I am just some guy on the internet.

Mr S continues to drop the good questions. The old DS answer was a big gun dressed up with mobility and survivability. Now I am not so sure. Direct fires - we need this but do we need 120-125 mm of it? Most of a tanks direct fire is to kill other tanks. If other systems are doing this better, further etc, then do we need a big AT gun? Ok, let’s say no for arguments sake. The we still need direct fires for anti-vehicle, anti-material and suppression. Does a big gun do this better than cannons, GLs, now drones with all sorts of hell attached, and/or missiles? How about a direct fire system made up of all of those, along with indirect fires? Are indirect fires becoming so precise that they can step in for direct fires? Mobility. Well all the candidates to replace that big gun are actually more mobile because they are all lighter. Which also means they will use less energy and lighter logistics loads, not too mention infrastructure loads (bridges etc). Gotta give this to anything but a tank really. Survivability. The church the old tank built. Nothing beat big bad armour…but didn’t we just point out a bunch of flaws in this one? Visibility is a big negative. Protection is unbeatable, except for everything that wants to kill the thing. But you cannot deny the thing can take a punch. So what is the new tank concept? Is it even a single vehicle anymore? If you pull the tank apart and disaggregate it across multiple cheap capabilities, would that work? My personal assessment is that I am not convinced the tank as a concept is in fact dead. I think the old concept of what a tank means may be. I suspect a heavy unmanned system will replace it, along with other systems shouldering the capability offloads. I also suspect it’s employment range will also be narrower, however not necessarily less critical. None of this solves the much bigger issues we tackled today though, the whole conventional mass problem on a fully illuminated battlefield is going to take some time to crack.

I have thought a lot about this. Keegan was ornery old crank but I find myself more often than not in his camp. I think it is a question of orientation. A military (army, navy what have you) is a macro-social construct, one within a larger macro-social construct of government, within one larger than that, the state. None of these are natural or organic. We did not spontaneously come up with this as part of human natural social bonds, we constructed them. The problem is, and always has been, how does one get a young man (and now person) to re-orientate towards the desired ends of an artificial macro-social construct versus the one that he (they) are born into? And then how does one make that orientation stick under the pressures of warfare? A military going back to antiquity is an exercise in social engineering; however, it is always in tension with that natural organic micro-social structures we are born into. [Aside: this all came up with the realization that we had in fact been fighting within micro-social constructs and losing around the world because we had completely missed the context in many cases] The exact same dynamic exists for both parties in this war but with very different effects. Ukrainian micro-social construct have been galvanized and energized into singular purpose in this war - this is fairly rare, but an existential war definitely will do it. Those micro-social structures are aligned with the macro, or at least better aligned than one would normally see. Russia is almost the exact opposite. They went into this war completely misaligned. Macro structures like military and government want one thing, micro-social (i.e. "back home") is nowhere near as homogeneous - see refuseniks etc. For a military to have a real hope of sustaining warfare, it needs that micro-social alignment, or things like desertion, officer fragging and other counter-productive behaviour begins to move to the fore - in other words the army starts behaving like a crowd. The difference between a soldier and deserter is orientation. A soldier remains orientated towards the macro-social structure of the army - even when it is his buddies. A deserter is orientated towards micro-social structures - "screw this I am going home". So back in early days when we saw more and more abandoned vehicles and really odd (and often abhorrent) RA soldier behaviour the damage of misalignment became clear. And they have done nothing to fix that, in fact it has gotten worse with every deep strike and visible loss. So when people say "Russian mobilization" as if it is the boogyman, I really am not too concerned because it won't matter how many troops the "make" if they don't fix that root problem, in fact more troops can make it worse as sub-cultures form. What is really weird is that we live in a time when it is possible to directly target, with precision, at the micro-social level. This has kicked things like Influence Activities into high gear.

Ah, good one. I believe the technical term is complete Force Generation failure…but yours works too.

A core tactical failure point - of course the Russians made massive gains in phase I initially Some of those advances are over 200kms long. The UA and Ukrainian resistance did not defeat that by nibbling away at the front end in ambushes, they hit the entire columns in depth, right back to SLOC entry points when they hit those ships at the pier on the Azov. That entire Northern front did not collapse because of ATGMs alone. They definitely stalled them, but so did running out of gas, which eventually killed them: the lesson being that if you want to stop an enemy with overwhelming material superiority hit them along the entire length when you have the ISR to do so. I disagree that this was entirely self-inflicted by the Russians and I am not sure more infantry, afvs, tanks or arty would have made a difference. They may have gotten to Kyiv and maybe even made it to the siege stage but their over stretched LOCs were highly exposed and more importantly entirely visible to western ISR. It wasn't ATGMs, it was UA deep strike, done by many means, that crippled that, but the whole thing does not work unless they can see exactly where the Russian are, and are not. My point is not that they were not stopped by Ukrainian resistance, it is where and how that resistance was delivered. I don't care how much extra F ech capability one brings along - super tanks with super APS, it is not going to matter if your opponent can see and hit the logistical lines those big sexy beasts need to stop becoming a paperweight in about 3 days...and in this Russia totally failed. The biggest failures of Russian planning and execution (in my opinion) were: - Complete failure to establish operational pre-conditions - make UA C4ISR go dark, cut off avenues of support from the west and establish air superiority early and keep it. - Complete failure of joint targeting integration - that many missiles should have crippled the UA but they seems all over the map (literally) - Complete failure to match force-space-time to a coherent plan, and having zero contingency if Plan A failed - Complete and utter loss of the strategic narrative. - Complete failure to align military and political strategy.

Taking a deep breath... @BFCElvis warm up my "quiet place" Not aimed at any one individual, more a collective of migrant commentators who continue to spin in here and do largely dislocated and highly opinion-based drive by posts that range from supporting their own precious cows to attacking this entire thread itself, for "reasons". They never actually bring facts or links to data we can use, they just cause disruption and continue to demonstrate not only a paucity to make positive contribution, but a propensity to an inability to learn anything. Given the incredible effort of many contributors, some in the warzone itself, to this thread who have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to contribute, discuss and even disagree all the while supporting the overall integrity of this effort - which is to try and understand this war better, not win an internet argument - I have normally let nature take it course and poor unsupported ideas/arguments simply die away; however, something in this last exchange I find particularly odious is that we were actually in the middle of a really good discussion on the possible future of conventional warfare that was going somewhere before it got derailed by a useless argument about the future of a single military platform. I will not point fingers nor make things personal; however, let me just say that some of the recent contributions that fall into the category of "loud useless opinion" are making me want to fall to my knees and beg @sburke for forgiveness for my disparaging remarks on his parking lot citadels idea; at least that had a kernel of valid contribution.

Go back through Oryx and the pages on this thread from the early war and a complete collapse of the Russian operational system is exactly what happened. Completely broken on the Northern Fronts - casualty percentages of 50-60% for BTGs pulling out. Count the logistical vehicles. Count the abandoned and captured. Ukrainians did punch the front end and bloodied it, plenty of evidence of that, but it was the deep strikes which created enormous friction along the overstretched Russian system is what broke it. The entire Russian system of conventional mass collapsed. The RA then devolved into WW1 tactics to try and re-establish an airtight operational corridor to make very small gains in Donbass. Incredibly costly and was not decisive in any sense of the term. Then Ukraine looks like they did it again in Donbass when they got HIMARs as the Russians never got out of the operational pause. Now Ukraine have pointed the whole thing the other way, taken the initiative and are starting to setup for an offensive, or at least that is the consensus.

I have always found the "tanks have always died...so they are fine" argument stupid. Right next to it is "there will be a tank until something can replace it." You could say the exact same things about cavalry before WW1...and then the cavalry was done. It happened when the lethality of the WW1 battlefield negated the capabilities of cavalry, there was no mitigation and cavalry could no longer deliver effects. So for the modern tank - - Lethality of the modern battlefield is clearly a problem for the tank system, maybe not as extreme as cavalry, but it has had an impact as demonstrated by constrained employment (and downright failure on the RA side) on both sides. - Mitigation measures are either not in place, or do not exits. At least not enough to counter the current environment - Tanks are also clearly unable to deliver the effects we build them for in this war, right now, but I am not convinced it is a "never again" situation.

And we keep coming back to this...hence the drum: it is much larger than the freakin tank. We just had GrigB describe how Russian tanks are basically being employed as mobile sniping TDs at longest ranges possible. Nor have we seen a single battle in which armour was decisive. Tanks play what important part? Since Phase 1 (and we saw how that went) there has not been a mechanized breakthrough on either side yet. Hell we have reports of Russian leaving their tanks and mech behind and advancing with infantry under massive indirect fires...but "hey tanks are just fine"? Let me state this as clearly as possible - conventional mass has been broken in this war on both sides. The tepid employment of tanks is only a symptom of this, not the cause. Why? Because surprise is essentially dead. We probably have the most illuminated battlefield in history here on both sides and anything big and gas-hungry is a liability right now. Why? Because not only is their survivability in question through modern lethality, there ability to move, and more importantly manoeuvre has been challenged to the point no one can really solve for it. Both sides, particularly the UA are hitting with precision and depth that is neutering conventional mass - at least anything that looks like modern warfare. It is not about killing tanks - it is about neutralizing the entire tank system before it can deliver any results. It is neutralizing it by being able to see and hit it at metrics we have never seen before by the capability levels of either side. Airpower is also getting the yellow card in this war but I suspect the jury is still out. Now before everyone in the "tanks are fine" camp hold up their stuffed Pattons and start screaming - I have no idea if the tank is obsolete or not, in fact that may be the least of the problems indicated here, but by all means go sniffle and flip through your Janes books to make yourself feel better. Or, here is crazy idea...stop doing Reddit style drive-bys that only reinforce Dunning-Kruger and go get some facts we can actually use.

I think this is Steve's point. If you have to do this to protect a tank...do we really need a tank?

Again, not consistent with this war so far. Artillery is, again, doing most of the damage. Infantry are now becoming as much ISR as anything else in this. Ok, well I am not an expert but having a next gen smart-ATGM able to evade or by-pass APS does not really sound like much of a challenge when with current technology the UA is basically spelling out graffiti with 155 shells on bridges. Here are some ATGM ideas, for free: stand-off EFP, sub-munitions, dual or multiple attack systems...and this is not even my field. Ok, so silver lining. But none of this solves the core problem - the visibility of the tank system. This is not about the tank, it isn't even about mech/armor - it is about the entire operational system that can project mass. It is too easy to see and hit from multiple vectors. So you are proposing that we load up a heavy formation and in the O Group say "you can make great gains until you run out of gas, then best to abandon your vehicle and try to fight as infantry"? Cause that is what is going to happen...just like in this war. It solves nothing, it only means very expensive equipment and well trained men can die deeper in enemy territory. And this would be why everyone is paying so much attention. I am pretty sure APS will be on the board but anyone who believes that it is going to somehow put warfare back into the box we knew has their heads in the sand.