The_Capt

Couple problems here: - Russia is not winning, so whatever these tactics are, gamer or evolutionary, they do not appear to scale upward. A CM match is fun but in war if you cannot tactical upscale then there is no real point - at least in theory. - This is drastically narrowing the role of the tank, to in-effect sniping TD. So what is filling the capability that a tank used to have? If the answer is nothing than Russian conventional warfare is broken. This is not gamey, it is all they can do. If the Russians are forced to hide their tanks behind buildings (or in the churches of sburke) to “pop up” shoot and move, they are not able to mass direct fires - which is kinda important cause it is pretty central to any form of manoeuvre. Russia may be fighting like a CM player; however, it is one on the worst end of a ROW tourney and can’t think of anything else they can do.

1. The answer in this was seems to be information superiority. A steady stream of micro-victories (T72 hole in one’s) all over social media punctuated by high profile tactical explody shows. It look like you only need sell that we are killing “them” a lot does the trick. However not sure if we can take that to the bank. 2. Tough one. A strategy tailor made for negative decision was subversion, which was Russia’s A-game right up until 24 Feb. I am not sure how else one could do it to be honest. Exhaustion and annihilation are kind of central to war. The only other one is extermination but that is the nuclear option which is also suicidal. 3. Textbook answer is C4ISR, but I am beginning to suspect it is a lot more than that. We may need an entire system overhaul if this gets big enough.

Now that is one helluva theory.

Whelp my work is done here: better put than any of my previous attempts. My best guess is that strategies of exhaustion take priority until one side or the other collapses. The culmination of negative decision becomes a positive? This is my best working theory based on Phase I of this war. Ukraine defence was about as negative decision as it gets. They undecided Russian material and capability superiority, to the absolute shock of all parties. They then created null decision and made the entire northern front go into paralysis. The RA stuck around getting mauled until they had enough and left - very much a positive decision. What is weird is that Ukraine did it without use of decisive battle (with the possible exception of Hostemel). Ukraine won Phase 1 - and in reality this entire war by simply not losing. They appeared to have done something with friction that I have never thought of, they projected it. The projected it all along the Russian operational system...until that system collapsed. And they are still doing it, this would be why WW1 level of artillery were buying the Russians very little, and now as we enter Phase 3, Ukraine is going onto the offensive. But here again, I do not think they are looking for decisive battle as we understand it. I have used the term fog eating snow, which is basically a series of small tactical undecidings that add up to the point that the Russian system collapses inward once again. At least that is a working theory. Landing on this I just get to more questions like - why can the UA do it now? Have we seen this before in conventional warfare eg outside of insurgencies etc? This is beyond defensive primacy and is starting to look like something else.

Lot to unpack here but I do not see this part. Why? UAVs are eyes in the sky and I can see how armor and large vehicle formations cannot hide, but what about two guys in a tree line? Why are two guys in a tree line having to stand off the extra distance, beyond the fact that they can? Given the biggest threat to infantry with ATGMs is arty, the extra couple kms is not going to help. Agree and disagree to some extent. Some of this is unique, and some is building on a trend we have been tracking for some time now. None of this is about tactics, those are just symptoms of shifts. What we are seeing is collision of capabilities that are driving shifts in tactics. Now some capability issues are simple, they are local and scenario specific - eg Russian military sucks and never really had the capability anyway. Some are not and are more universal - see unmanned systems and integrated ISR. For me, I keep seeing things that do not jive and the challenge is trying to figure out which are local and which are universal. Tanks hiding out in urban areas (which is just so crazy I can't believe I typed it) is an observed phenomenon, pretty widespread by your research. So if it unique to this war, well we can learn from that. If it is based on universal capability shifts...well that is something else. At this point, there is no definitive answer....at least not yet. That much we can agree on.

Disagree and we need to be very cautious here. I have been reading a lot on Pre- WWI and the signs were up front and readily visible that warfare had shifted to the defensive as early as the US Civil War. European powers talked themselves out of it completely by seeing all those examples as "aberration". Second, Ukraine has been employing the same methods throughout. Even in the Donbass, Russia was pounding away WW1 style, advancing by 100m per day because Ukraine could still find, fix and finish any mech armored manoeuvre while it was forming up, while HIMAR-ing (yep, it is a verb now) the RA logistics chain. It is the same problem, the RA just tried to solve it a different way, and it still did not work. Now we must see what Ukraine does, but there have been plenty of signals that their offensives will look very different.

The problem is artillery. High quality infantry are not artillery proof and with ISR doing what it is, employing infantry anyway except dispersed or under the cover of WW1 style artillery (literally see that chart Poesel posted.) seems problematic. I am not sure how the best infantry in the world deal with being spotted from kms away and hammered with high precision artillery, all the while their logistics train is also being hammered by precision deep strike. In order to manoeuvre thru that one needs to solve for a lot. And even then, a small two man team can kill and MBT at 4+ kms with 80-90 percent accuracy after having the target handed off by satellite and tac UAVs. Crazy days.

Heh, depends which part of the military one finds oneself within...we are not all - "simple". Well I can say what the effect in the West has been - "hey it looks like Ukraine might be winning this thing - let's send them more support cause Russia sucks at this." so despite whatever wicked/upside down internal security calculus is being applied they probably should have considered that one.

Could very well be, the RA has been noted as pretty tepid on infantry. Problem I am having is that I am not sure more infantry would solve the issue, at least not how we have employed them - it is the ranges. So a "deep well armed screen" in the old days meant 1-2 kms. Now I am not sure how to deal with highly accurate ATGMs and UAVs that can hit at 4kms+, let alone PGM artillery. We have not even seen Ground Unmanned yet, which ought to be interesting. Current mech infantry are still wed to their vehicles, which like tanks are highly visible - and none of this solves the bigger logistics problem. Dispersed Light Infantry seems to still work but they are slow. Somebody has to be thinking Starship Troopers in DARPA right now.

S'ok, he had it coming for the whole "Russian Mass" running gag...I am quite confident he is waiting in the tall grass and my time will come.

Been out for a couple days but this car bomb thing is all over main stream media. Not sure it is worth overthinking. The overall effect has been that Russian internal security integrity has been undecided, much like the airfield and ammo depots in Crimea. The perspective from the west appears to be “well someone is hitting these Putin cronies, good”. If it were an FSB “false flag” it was an exceeding stupid one as it makes the reach of Ukraine appear endless, which kinda makes me want to send them more stuff. But “smart” and Russian security apparatus have not been on speaking terms for some time now. So recall that diagram I posted awhile back…what is the Effect - Decision- Outcome here?

This. Tanks are designed to be used en mass, in fact they are the very metric of military mass, that would be why they show in so many info graphics. The snipey-peeky-pokey tactics of some CM scenarios is not the foundation of modern all arms doctrine…or at least it wasn’t. Now there must be a forcing function that is driving Russia in this direction. My guess is a combination of ISR, infantry smart-ATGMs and PGM artillery. In phase I of this war it became obvious that mass was in trouble based on it vulnerable logistics trains. Now in phase 2 it might be more straight up lethality of the modern battlefield. How this is solved for in Phase 3 is going to be critical.

Seriously? The MBT is now relegated to hiding in parking garages? That is not an effective strategy. First off they are now extremely limited in LOS (ie 2km from parking garages). Second they cannot manoeuvre from said parking garage, so have become glorified parking garage pillboxes. Third, infantry have a serious advantage in finding and hitting tanks in the parking garage. Fourth, if that all fails, we already know where the parking garages are, thank you Google, so JDAMs for all - God keep this parking garage and all tanks who huddle in the parking garage. Just reinforces my point.

Sniffed around where, if you don’t mind me asking? I ask because if your assessment is accurate then something has definitely gone wrong with RA armour. The problem is that I don’t think we know if it is uniquely a Russian problem (eg not enough infantry) or indicative of a much larger shift. 2km can longer be considered “long range” in a war there 250+ kms is in play. In fact I am not even sure it is medium range when a man-portable ATGM can hit out to 3+ kms at a reported 90% accuracy. Using tanks as some sort of mobile armoured long range snipers “from urban” areas as opposed to a fundamental component of combined arms manoeuvre is a major break from conventional land warfare doctrine. One, that if confirmed, likely has to do with the nearly 2000 Russian tanks lost in this war, which is starting to rival Iraqs losses in the Gulf War. Further, this is beyond the vulnerabilities of logistical support and more in line with a front end impact. Keeping sniper tanks gassed and fed ammo will still be a challenge - perhaps less so than offensive manoeuvres- but using tanks as mobile AT guns in what sounds like a purely defensive role is a devolution as well. As to the cover of buildings, NLOS ATGMs have already done their job if those tanks are huddled behind high rises. PGM artillery can finish the job from there as we have learned that there is nowhere to hide on this battlefield - at least if you are Russian.

You are on a forum of a game company that the VDV stole screenshots from for their manuals. We gotta thousand problems but weird is not one of them.

That is just nuts. A weapon system that can kill a tank at that range, with those stats.

You know when I see this, I think O’Brian (is that his name?) might be onto something. Battles may be better viewed as symptomatic of the collision of war, not the primary mechanism thru which war happens. I wonder what the UA destruction rate of that stockpile is?

Hey respect to this guy for his time in, but that was over 35 years ago. It is a small community so he likely kept in touch, but his clearance would have been pulled (unless he did some contracting). That said, a lot has changed in the last 35 years, particularly in the area of ISR and explosives technology. Hell under the right conditions this could have been cyber - but not likely in the airfield case. Even then, as we noted, he is not wrong on the DA - unless we get some more evidence. Now as to whether the UA can keep this up is an interesting question.

Given the paranoia displayed from the political level, one would think the threshold is an ability to fend off a NATO "attack". But given the mixed and contrary signals coming from the power bases, who knows if the Russians actually believe that, or are just going to rely on the nuclear option. More pragmatically, the threshold should be the level when they can no longer sustain defensive operations in the areas that have taken since 2014. They will be well and truly screwed if the primary mechanism they have to keep the UA from invading Russian territory is the nuclear equation and diplomatic pressure from the west, especially if they start playing fast and loose with nuclear power plants.

Looks like solid evidence that precision beats mass. Ukraine has not only stopped Russia dead in its tracks they have wrestled operational initiative away from them utilizing a fraction of the firepower.

I would exercise a lot of caution here: -Someone says they are SOF - it is the internet buyer beware -A SOF operator has expertise but does not have all the expertise. In the west we have elevated these guys well beyond their actual jobs and skill sets. The internet is filled with “bros” with SF tabs spewing a lot of garbage but because they have “SOF Combat Veteran” in the splash title page so they “must know all about logistics”. -BDA is a multidisciplinary activity, the US military has an actual trade occupation of “targeting”. I would put far more stock in a targeteer assessment than a door-kicker. - The fact that this was not a Direct Action (DA) mission was obvious from the start. The idea that the UA sent in a 30 pers ground team that deep behind enemy lines, well out of range of support, in broad daylight is nonsense. Further, the idea that they humped 1000-1500 lbs of HE is insane. However, none of this eliminates the use of SOF in this, or any other attack. - If this was SOF (and I say if, I do not know one way or the other, but I have a suspicion), it was likely a black bag sabotage job, or a complex attack. If it were sabotage then they would have infiltrated the airfield, could have been local workers or even RA. They would have placed and wired the charges onto large warheads - this is technical btw- and then either had a timer or an LOS controlled detonator. The initial warheads hit very likely had enough NEQ to do the craters, and then set off the secondaries. Again, IF, very hard to tell from Sat photos posted on twitter. -This could have very well been ATACMS, a SOF/partisan loitering munition or combination of all that, without detailed assessment of the crater this is impossible to rule out. - The lack of missile or drones on video streams for any of these weird “cigarette missions” is telling;however, also not definitive. All we really know is that some very high value targets are being prosecuted beyond what we - and more importantly the Russians - thought was the maximum range of UA capability…and that is all good no matter how it happened.

Russia has 13 nuclear power plants, at various stages of operation by my count (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Russia). Yeesh, this could get ugly.

Interestingly I have just begun to really get into pre-WW1 and have been reading The War That Ended Peace by Macmillan. It looks to me like 1905 and 1917 are so intrinsically linked that one could argue that the entire period 05-17 was one big revolution - given the level assassination and bank robbery campaigns (see: Stalin) going on, it is a solid case. Regardless, I contend that no human organization is airtight. The stiffest cults have splinters and internal divisions. Outliers, exiles and apostates are an endemic human social condition. No social construct is not without friction, tension and accelerants. Some are in deeper stasis than others, however they still exist - hell the Last Supper had a splitter FFS. We also should recognize that there are some serious risks here. I have talked about a broken Russia with 6000 nuclear weapons rolling around on the floor. I honestly do not think another Russian civil war is a good idea, and I have been personally burned on the whole, “we need only enable them and their inner democracy will simply bloom” narrative - nonsense. Best case is Putin dying in his sleep, a bunch of gangsters and villains we can do business with, and enough of the old guard offered as a sacrifice to restabilizing the global order. Everyone can blame them and Putin, turn the gas back on and we can re-build Ukraine with a westward facing - sorry Russia you blew that one. China takes notes on the lesson, we in the west get over ourselves and realize that the wolves are a lot closer to the door, God does not “have our back” and we need to get our sh#t together.

Hmm, not sure this matches observed history to be honest. We had a conversation awhile back on Russia culture and it influence on this war and obviously there are some very strong opinions. I don’t think it is easy to paint any culture in one monotone colour, internal divisions and stressors exist in far more closed cultures that Russia (eg NK), it is human nature. We in North America have a proud tradition of lemming [I know it is a myth but just put that aside: insert Marlin Perkins meme] behaviours. Ours come from religion and sub-cultures - we convinced ourselves that slavery was a good idea and that God supported it- that have been just as restrictive as any autocratic government. In fact these “norms” can be more tyrannical than any one leader - plenty of evidence of that. Also there is the fact that Russia has had 2 major revolutions and a pretty nasty Civil War in 20th century, so I am not all onboard that they are “sheeple”. I do believe that Russia appears to have a bit of an addiction to autocrats, democracy has never really stuck in that nation. We discussed this previously and I don’t think there was a consensus as to why. I suspect Russians are a product of their environment, so a weird collection of outsiders who have been invaded repeatedly likely has a role to play in them embracing strongmen leaders. Regardless, based on history the Russians can definitely “awaken” and pretty violently. The real question is “what will it take for that to happen?”, followed by “does this insane war qualify?”. And then finally, “do we need to help that happen sooner than later?”

Well yes and no. NATO is a defensive alliance that is designed around the idea of collective response to an attack. NATO has played a role in UNSCR Ch VII missions, which were essentially military interventions; however, this was done under UN mandate and UNSC blessing. As the US demonstrated very aptly in 2001-2003, a NATO nation may act independently in its own defence - there is nothing in NATO restraining a nation from defensive action. But here is where it gets trickier as diplomatic pressure is normally applied to try and keep a nation in line - this just happened with Turkey and the whole Sweden/Finland thing. Further all of the weapons and training support to Ukraine has been done bilaterally, or multilaterally (I.e. 5 EYES), there is no named NATO mission in that country (plenty around them in the Baltics). So what? If Poland decides that it is directly threatened by Russia, it can 1) go independently or with a “coalition of the willing” outside of the NATO framework and engage in direct military operations in it defence against Russia, or 2) declare and article 5, and we are likely looking at WW3. The level of pressure to prevent Poland from doing either of those things will be very high because neither are going help keep the war contained. A release of radioactive material, which is basically weaponization of nuclear power, would likely cross that threshold. My fear here is that Russia has demonstrated a baffling level of lack of awareness of the situation. In the old hybrid warfare mentality the release of radioactive fallout against your opponent and then creating enough doubt around it (see: The Capt’s rants on null decision space), that one’s opponents become paralyzed is straight out of the play book. Problem is that Russia does not realize that it is no longer in Kansas anymore and basically if I stub my toe getting a glass of water in Europe right now, I am going to blame the Russians. This is where miscalculations can get out of hand very quickly. Normally a self-aware nation would see that in Russias position escalation is not in their favour. For example a massive radioactive release could easily lead to Ukraine receiving an order of magnitude more HIMARs and ATACMS along with the “fill your boots lads” blessing from the US to start hitting Moscow….whoops. Or a nuclear power plant in Russia suddenly experiencing a workplace “cigarette” accident. Normally I would assume that saner heads will prevail and the grown ups in Russia would put the kibosh on this whole idea, but Russia has displayed the strategic acumen of a spoiled teenager so far in this war. We shall see.