The_Capt

This is the power of open source and crowd-sourcing. I do think it needs filtering and vetting (thank you @BFCElvis, long may you reign) but the ability to pull in expertise from so many different corners to make sense of extremely complex problems is the future. How we avoid echo chambers and self-reinforcing bias is also tricky but for those that think we are vulnerable here try spending some time in a 5EYES ASIC - we have to hire red teams just to let some air in. If anyone is hunting for material for a graduate thesis on the future of collective thinking there is about 1000 pages just sitting here.

That is not how military operations work...even in the Russian military. You never have enough of anything, no matter how much. Russians have a lot of old ammo stockpiles - a lot of that ammunition is very questionable and I would love to see the dud rates for Russian arty right now. However, that is not what is important, it is their ammo production capability in relation to the burn/output rate. In a longer war, which everyone is concerning themselves over, we are really comparing an ammo production competition between Russia, and the entire Western World. Russian stocks, no matter how big, cannot sustain middle-chain attrition such as we are seeing for very long. And this middle-chain attrition makes the production competition much harder for the Russian side as the West has no such interdiction in its supply chains - beyond the "knee shaking" at the political level. The military operations are highly complex but the equation is pretty simple: the West needs to keep out-producing, out-supplying and overmatching qualitatively compared to the Russian military until it breaks, the only thing standing in our way...is us. The Russians are employing old-school iron mountain logistics, and once again demonstrating a major weakness in concentrated mass on the modern battlefield (Sburke...no!). Iron mountain logistics has enormous redundancy built in but it relies on being far enough back, hidden or shielded enough from deep strike (see: air superiority). On a modern battlefield where tactical weapons have ranges we used to rely on aircraft for, and ISR to the point that it is impossible to hide anything...well you see the results: 1 missile = 1 ammo dump. We, in the west, have been moving to "just in time" logistics to try and remove the iron mountain concept, but that is highly sensitive to disruption...which again is almost a guarantee on the modern battlefield. In short our concepts of mass are in just as much trouble in a near-peer environment because - logistics. All that talk about tanks is just noise, it is the refuelers, ammo trucks, depot system and maintenance that makes mass of just about anything but light infantry particularly challenging. "But we will have APS and C-UAV!" Sure, but you now need it the entire length of the operational system (e.g. every fuel truck), and even then we are not close to re-establishing the conditions we have been training and operating in since the end of the Cold War. Hell, this does not even look like the conditions we trained for during the Cold War. We have just scratched the surface of unmanned (UGS anyone?) and modern ISR looks like it s choking out at least one principle of war. This is going to be one crazy ride.

I would say that if the Russians are forced to employ existing underground parking lots as the backbone of their logistics plan, the UA is already winning. If we start seeing this it is a clear indicator that the deep strike campaign is working.

Did you try “political warfare” “active measures” and “subversive warfare” from the era. A guy named Ofir Fridman wrote a really good book call “Russian Hybrid Warfare” which does cover some of that period. Those search terms and Fridman lead to more academic treatments than spy stories, if that is what you are looking for.

You really should quote the rest: “However, these reserves amount to less than 3 percent of Russia's total natural gas reserves (PDF). And though Ukraine theoretically might have considerable shale gas reserves, they remain largely unproven, and Russia currently has no experience or technology for shale gas production. For shale oil production, Russia has historically relied on Western technology. However, this reliance has been seriously impeded since 2017, when the United States introduced sanctions to ban American companies from providing shale oil extraction technologies to Russia. If Russia grabbed Ukraine's gas reserves, the same sanctions would almost certainly be imposed on shale gas production technologies.” The oil and gas “real Russian objective” never really adds up either. A 3% gain in natural gas reserves is not worth the damage being done to Russian power across all its dimensions. Russia had no need to bolster it natural gas ownership, it is already the largest in the world (while Ukraine ranks 26th): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_proven_reserves So Russia’s plan all along was to feint towards Kyiv and destroy about 20% of its ready land forces, then swing to the Donbas, grind there like a horney teenager for months - basically getting nowhere. So that it could then bounce off that offensive and grab most of eastern Ukraine and seize a fraction of what it already owns, and have to pay to rebuild the shattered infrastructure, find professionals to work/invest there. All the while somehow evading massive Western sanctions and not getting totally screwed by China and India. Look this isn’t as bad as black bio-sites but we can see it not too far in the distance.

Further to this Russian jewel grabbing theory, like the oil and gas grabbing theory…the math does not add up. My bet is Russia may be somewhere north of 10% Ukrainian annual GDP (125B) in occupied territories (Kyiv is something like 25% of the whole nation but they “feinted” away that) but that is pre-war. People have left these regions and the Russians have blown up a whole lotta infrastructure. The cost to get the regions Russia has taken back up to pre-war GDP and re-wired to get around sanctions will cost billions and won’t see returns for years….time and money Russia does not have a lot in excess. [seriously do DNR and LNR honestly think Russia is going to pony up to repair the Donbas?] The West on the other hand had better have a Marshal Plan 2.0 in the chamber (looking at you EU) or there will be no point in supporting Ukraine now.

It is not all wrong, it is missing some context. Russians are slowly taking the Donbas, however, they are doing it too slowly to break through and threaten deeper centres of gravity. As such Donbas is neither operationally nor military strategically decisive (in any sense beside possible negative decision impact in the Wests resolve). Sanctions can be skirted but 1) doing so exposes Russia to exploitation as the weaker trading partner and 2) no where near enough to stop the damage (I believe Perun did a pretty good analysis of this on YouTube). US President - we have covered here before, US president is impactful but he/she does not rule the planet. It is highly doubtful that Trump himself or someone like him would withdraw all support at this point, the Lend Lease is an act that has already been passed. And then Europe with roughly $18T GDP may have to step up harder but we are not talking wholesale US withdrawal. Same with NATO, too much to lose in influence and arms sales at this point. The next US president will dance to the same war drums, but may have a slightly different beat. But this is a wildcard, so ok put that one in the “unknown” column. Ukraine in NATO, at this point I don’t think it really matters. The UA is better armed and trained with western weapons than some NATO founding states (Canada, anyone?). Further we are pumping so much ISR support into Ukraine, they may as well be freakin 5EYES. I think Putin and his cronies are definitely in for the long haul. And I think that a healthy slice of Russia may also be “all in” but how long and how firm is that support as the casualties stack up? Russia has not mobilized for a reason, in fact they have basically tied themselves in knots to sustain forces and avoid mobilization…why? Likely because a large slice of Russia is not “all in”. Russia is running out of time but we won’t know when, or if, until we see Russia no longer able to conduct offensive operations. We can and have gone on at length at the issues with the RA and whether or not they are going to have a systemic collapse, again. Steve definitely has some informed strong opinion that they will. I think they are very brittle right now and have devolved in the type of operational warfare being conducted as a result of qualitative erosion. This is a symptom of a war machine in trouble and still unable to establish anything near operational superiority. We spoke on how HIMARs are the last puzzle piece of a system that is currently delivering significant effects without any Russian counter-part. The trend of UA deep strike is definitely going upward, which may force the RA to devolve further. But hey, keep asking questions and validate, validate and validate all sources…even this one.

Replenishing BTG with what? A qualitative assessment is missing. Re: GDP by region, not even close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ukrainian_subdivisions_by_GRP Donbas in its entirety is about 6 percent of Ukrainian GDP. Even throwing in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia that number jumps up to about 9 percent. If Russia could take Dnipropetrovsk, which they have been pushed out of, they would jump to about 20 percent but the odds of doing that are just about zero as of today. It isn’t a question of “popular”, it is a question of facts. As to the rest, sanctions and US presidents - well we will see but time is not on Russia’s side in any of this, and they are slowing down, not speeding up. Once again, Russia does not say when this will end, Ukraine and the West does.

Ah crap. You lunatics are worse than Beetlejuice, one had to say his name 3 times, and the Candyman required 5. Peng swamp denizens need only a single whisper. For the newcomers, don’t ask, you do not want to know. Let us all just be happy that particular dark chapter in the human experience is closed for good.

Whelp, tried. Dunning-Kruger wins the day. FYI, we pretty much moved past the whole “it’s all about tanks” about 500 pages ago. The future of tanks is the least of issues on the board right now.

I would argue that there are a lot more lessons than that - this war is the first major peer-on-peer war of the 21st century and everyone in professional circles is watching it closely as to what it might mean to our assumptions. We have gone at length to discuss and analyze possible impacts of this war based on what we are seeing on the ground. We have pulled in expertise from many corners and view points, some directly in-theatre. Beyond that, this thread attempts to cut through the massive amounts of mis/dis information and make facts based assessments as they relate to the war, again very often pulling from open source information, which we try and filter through. As to ghoulish, well I think we try and avoid the worst of it, but a lot of the video streams of combat tell more than simply stuff blowing up and are a necessary evil at times. In the end if this is not your cup of tea - and I get the fatigue that can come from this thread - there is an entire forum to go have other discussions; I spin by CMCW to keep up with stuff. As to "conversation about CM", well a lot here will inform the next CMs, and for many a wargame is not the focus right now as the world has once again become a pretty scary place.

1000 pages and 1M views, well safe to say that this thread has expunged the shame of the Peng Thread being the largest and mostest longest on the forum. This is now the Forum Thread of Legend...we well all be able to tell our grandchildren that we were here, and they will all think we are lying about it - which is the exact opposite situation with aforementioned Peng Thread.

Now that takes one back.

I knew this was going to get stupider. So the Crimea belonged to the Mongolians, along with most of western Russia, so should they hold a referendum to take it back? What I can’t square is this continuing narrative coming from Russia that they somehow have the power to do all of these threats - The Baltics, Poland, Finland, Sweden, London and now, for some bizarre reason, Alaska. I am sure it is for domestic consumption but I am starting to wonder if people in power in Russia actually believe it. Russia has its hands full taking a few acres in southeast Ukraine, and it is mauling them in so many dimensions - but hey, sure let’s go for Alaska…why not the Moon too, re-gin up the space race?

Interestingly infantry have had a resurgence in this war. For awhile they were looking to be relegated to constabulary in lower intensity conflict and local protection for larger weapon systems in conventional war. Infantry, particularly light infantry have done a lot of the heavy lifting in this war and appear to be one of the few dependable capabilities that can still manoeuvre on the battlefield. Unmanned technology will continue to increase, however, spotting a dog face soldier in a tree line will still be very hard when compared to armor or mechanized forces with their logistics train. Starship troopers here we come.

Guess it depends where the sides are at. It will hurt a UA c-offensive or further RA offensives, but mech really has not made an appearance in this thing since Feb-Mar (and it did not go well). As we saw armor and mech tend to get stuck to roads. This effects logistics as well. Both sides are going to need some really decent engineer support. Not sure when the leaves drop but that makes targeting easier - more for RA, as I suspect the UA has multi-spectral ISR in play. Defence in the mud is also hell but for different reasons. Non-combat casualties increase as during morale takes a hit. If the RA is in defence they will need to do more unit line rotations, which I am betting they have zero plan for. And past the fall we get into winter warfare…how nasty do Ukrainian winters get? Of course this might be over by then, depends how long the RA can hold it together and if the UA can upscale offensive effectively.

Interesting thing about game changers is that they tend to be the last piece of a puzzle as opposed to wonder-weapons on their own. HIMARs may fit this not solely because of the qualities of the system but because they are the last piece - delivery. I suspect the UA can already find and fix high value targets in depth , supported by western ISR and their own. They are only missing an ability to hit them - air power picture we discussed earlier. Two systems can take the boom the last 1000m, very long range indirect fires (e.g. HIMARs) and self-loitering munitions. HIMARs are only as good as that C4ISR system that generates targeting, but we know the UA system is pretty damned good.

Political interference makes sense, as political value rarely aligned with operational. I also like the “already here and stuck” idea. Either way RA wasted a month they really cannot afford, not to mention the resources they cannot get back to get a ruined city on the other side of a river…one they could have encircled pretty much like they have to now. Unless they pulled UA into Severodonetsk to weaken the line on that southern front near Popansa? Regardless, they have a tall order in front of them now. Unless the UA is in much worse shape than we thought, summer will be over before they can really threaten Sloviansk.

Which raises the question of: why did the RA waste the month of Jun at Severodonetsk? They were in Popasna at the end of May and instead of putting all this weight on that axis to do exactly what they are doing now, they smashed their face against Severodonetsk - which has zero operational value.

Very good natural feature. There is also a line of built up areas from Sloviansk to Kostyantynivka behind that feature that could be fortified. I strongly suspect this entire area operation is to draw in as much of the Russian forces as possible to open up opportunities elsewhere...but we will have to see if that long anticipated UA operational offensive actually occurs or are they also counting on good old mother-attrition.

Wow, thanks. This is one of Pete W's first maps for the title and the scenario just jumps out of it. Valley of Ashes occurs about 48 hours before the first battle of the US Campaign as the 15th TR crashes the southern axis of advance of the 39th MRD against the 11 ACR. The 15th then goes onto continue to push south along the Fulda - Hanau route (Rte 66) but runs out of gas and has to be overtaken by elements of the 57 MRD about 96 hours into the war. This one was really tricky but we felt it was a solid US scenario - a good one to kinda get into things. VoA is really hard as the Soviets, I think I have only seen one YouTube player beat it. On balance - definitely, and we have actually taken some hits on how we approached it. In most cases we took a look at the ground, the forces in play and started with - "ok what would the sides do here". Balance with respect to "gaming" was really secondary, and we had no problem making some very tough - almost unwinnable scenarios. We would tweak slightly but an MRR attack is an MRR attack at the end of the day. How much arty and air was the main negotiation point. I am very glad you guys are getting enjoyment and challenge out of these.

Heh, well I am glad you are very confident, because a whole lot of us are not. Manoeuvre warfare is not "being able to move" - although it is part of it. It is the ability to out tempo an opponent and exploit their vulnerabilities before they can recover. In a fully illuminated and high friction battlefield that is proving nearly impossible. This is not about "counter-drone", that is a gross over-simplification, this is about counter-ISR - at least for the Russians. For Ukraine it is about counter-mass. SEDS - interesting term. This is not about APS - everyone points to it as the magic missing bullet. APS wont stop precision artillery nor UGS, nor will it make force invisible. If a side cannot achieve surprise, they cannot do manoeuvre warfare and right now the only route to surprise is through attrition. The Russians have mass and a lot of it, which is also proving to be a good blunt for UA information superiority, at least so far. This has been a defensive dominant war and how, or whether anyone can solve for that is still very much an outstanding question. UAS - the civilian ones being pushed into service, to significant effect, are not the ones I am worried about. It is the mil-grade ones that everyone is scrambling for right now that will be designed to offset any "weak sides" that Amazon did not account for. Unmanned warfare is just starting and what we are seeing is...disconcerting.....

I gotta be honest, I am not sure how much was "unintended". Economic is a dark art and, like military affairs, what the public actually know is not anywhere near how it actually works. Most people see sanctions as "not giving them money = hurts bottom line = coercive pressure". Which makes perfect sense from a "you or I" personal finances position; however, is not really how modern economies work - caveat: this is not my field, so follow up anything I say. Nor do I think Putin and his crew understand it either, as they stuffed a whole bunch of rubles in the mattress before this thing, thinking they could weather the storm. This is not "taking money away" as much as it is "decoupling globalization" and I suspect there are folks that know exactly what this is and can do. As I understand it, globalization creates enormous pressure to further integrate economic systems in order to remain competitive. Autocratic nations always try to be more independent so that when they "do naughty" they are harder to coerce. This might work for a small African dictator but a major global economy cannot exist in the modern world in isolation, and remain a major global economy. We have been seeing the damage decoupling is causing already, for example the hi-tech industry in Russia is tanking - and before this war it was a emerging light. I suspect there is a lesson here with respect to China, but I am not entirely sure what it is yet.

Double.

Excellent observations and questions. Like a lot of things about this war - we simply do not know, let alone understand a lot of what is happening, let alone why, air competition is just one more. A lot of this was has been about denial, in fact it often looks more like a competition of denial than anything else we recognize at times. Denial - a defensive strategy designed to make it prohibitively difficult for an opponent to achieve objectives (https://www.britannica.com/topic/denial-military-strategy), which is a sub-strategy of the broader strategy of exhaustion. Ukraine has elevated Denial to a strategic level, in a modern context, and frankly we are still trying to figure out the implications. How did they do it? That is the first question. As far as we can tell from the evidence, my guess is that they quickly adapted C4ISR and the benefits of the modern weaponry they had to create very broad denial effects across the Russian capability portfolio, while the Russians have relied on traditional mass based systems, which are extremely expensive but can create a Denial effect for the Ukrainians as well. Ukrainian defence has leveraged some major changes in modern technology on a broad scale and that applies in the air as well. Suppression of Enemy AD (SEAD) - so this is more than a single capability, it is an entire system. It encompassed a massive C4ISR effort, air platforms that rely heavily on stealth, and even integrates SOF; it is a lot more than HARMs and Growlers. In many ways SEAD is an entire specialized operation in itself, aimed at clearing and sustaining clearance of Integrated AD Systems (IADS). IADS is an umbrella term; however, it leans towards large multi-layered integrated systems that link C4ISR to a network of AD systems designed to cover from the ground up (even into space). The issue modern IADS have is UAS. IADS were designed with large manned aircraft systems in mind form tac aviation to higher altitudes. UAS bend these systems that by being extremely small and hard to detect, able to "pop-up" without any infrastructure needed to support them beyond two guys and some batteries, and low cost = every-freakin-where: we designed IADs to hit eagles, not sand-flies. The most powerful thing UAS bring to the battlefield is ISR. Strike is nice but the ability to extend the range of tactical ISR, and then integrate it into an operational system is one of the key takeaways from this war: seeing beats flanking. Further, the RA reliance on concentrated mass makes them very vulnerable to this because it is very hard to hide a BTG. The last brick in the wall are MANPADs. A lot of the next gen MANPADs are passive and as the name suggests "man portable". The reality is that MANPADs were always a problem for SEAD, no military has a baked in capability to counter two guys in a bush with a Stinger. This is where air-land integration was supposed to come in, the land forces could support the air through control and sweeping of MANPAD threats (little threats), while air supported them by hitting the big stuff - a mutually supporting system. Within SEAD, MANPADs were also a managed threat. The theory was that if you blinded an enemy IADs system and took out the big radar guided systems, MANPADs would be minor nuisance, largely isolated and with limited range and altitude (5000 feet). More something for tac aviation to worry about, and why we up-armoured stuff like Apaches. So UAS and real-time space based ISR and communications on the back of redundant civilian systems (including space based) makes the "blinding portion" really hard, maybe impossible. I have no doubt in Ukraine we have distributed forces with UAS seeing CAS much farther out, handing off to others which then link back to MANPADs who can now position to wait for the aircraft - this is not even considering satellite based stuff being fed by the US. And then MANPADs did not get the memo on "5000 feet", some of these systems can hit up to medium altitudes (e.g. star streak = 16k). Finally, those traditional IADs are still integrated but not how we thought. A higher altitude capable SAM that employs radar can now hide in silence, wait until the distributed C4ISR system picks up the fast movers and turn on at the last minute....like a big ass MANPAD. Note that the above is what I think we are seeing in the UA system. The RA is relying on traditional AD but the UA does not have a lot - so this is really air self-denial by virtue of very limited Ukrainian air capability. So What? Well we have air parity, largely through denial on both sides. Ukraine has far too little, and generating massive airpower takes years. Russia has significant capability but it was never set up for this environment, no one was. I am not sure NATO could handle what is happening to be honest. We would make something work but the costs would be much higher than we are used to and we would have to accept loss of air superiority at some altitudes as a basic assumption going in. The Russians could likely achieve local air superiority above 20k right now but it would be very costly. Going below 20k feet is very dangerous as we have flooded the UA with MANPADs, and the C4ISR thing I was talking about. I expect they are saving it for an operational emergency or for the UA to put enough density in one place to make the effort worth it - trading a fighter-bomber for a single tank is not a good equation. As to offence-defence. Well Ukraine made defence offensive in the first phase of this war as Russian over-extension collapsed in the north. I think they are doing versions of this right now in the Donbas as we have entered into an attrition-based contest. Russia's answer to this has been to devolve in terms of warfare, falling back on a very old form of over-mass. The only report of the Russians stopping the UA unmanned-indirect fire- infantry system has been in Severodonetsk, and they did so through extremely high concentrations of forces. That mass of Russian EW did nothing against space-based assets, so we do not know how badly they got mauled, nor Russian artillery. Russia did show that if you push enough into a small space you can advance by inches - we do not know what it cost them nor how long they can sustain it. This leads to some fundamental and big questions: What does modern mass look like (sburke, don't do it!)? Is manoeuvre warfare in trouble? Is offence in trouble? Is a principle of war - surprise, dead? What does modern C4ISR really look like? Hell, we are questioning Mission Command because in this environment higher commander may very well know much more, in higher resolution, than lower commanders. Nothing is definitive, but a whole lot is on the auction block right now and implications are pretty big if even a few of them are confirmed. I would close that the Russo-Ukraine war is an indicator of change but it is likely showing the tips of icebergs. For example, we have not really seen what self-loitering can (or cannot) do in this war. We know the US sent the smaller Switchblades, but I have seen no reports of significant numbers of the 600 series which can hit and kill with a Javelin warhead at the same ranges as the HIMARs. We have not see NLOS ATGM or anti-vehicle systems like Spike. We have not seen military grade micro and small UAS. Sticking some grenades onto a few commercial drones is one thing, a swarm of military grade micro-drones that cannot be jammed, all armed with precision DPICM is something else entirely - and we have that technology right now. Same goes for C4ISR, this is what Ukraine could do with a fairly ad hoc civilian backbone, some of the stuff being developed is truly impressive - and we have not even started to see the effects of AI/ML. The Crimean War of 1854 is often referred to as the "First Modern War", well history is a circle, and I suspect the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022 will likely go down in history as the "The First Future War".