The_Capt

Fair points and not picking on LLF, opposing views that challenge should be welcome. That said, I think the issue is that we in the West have not faced this type of war in some time and are not well equipped to deal with it, let alone assess it. Any multi-star general serving today or recently retired joined up in the 80s and since then we have seen the Gulf War and Iraq 2003 but both of those were no where near the sustained intensity we are seeing in Ukraine. Further we also had all the superiority and pre-conditions, so they were really "near-peer" and that is being generous. All the crappy sand-coloured wars we fought were "small" and while entertaining also lacked the same calculus we are seeing here. In my own experience this matches what I saw in Yugoslavia but way upscaled. I talk to generations of young officers who experienced dust ups and IEDs but when you talk about experiencing massed incoming artillery, they draw blanks. And as bad as central Bosnia was during that war, it did not have UAVs and airstrikes but it was high intensity peer-on-peer warfare. Ukraine is more akin to WW2 in scope and scale, and it boggles my mind that it would have been a minor action in WW2, let alone the scale of massacre in WWI. Maybe Vietnam vets saw some action like this at Tet, and a few in Korea but even in those wars high intensity armored warfare did not happen a lot. So we collectively lack a framework to draw upon beyond historical theory and best-guesses, and I mean all those experts who show up on mainstream to forecast and predict...based on what? The only people that really understand this type of war, at this scope and scale with these level of stakes, in the West (with some notable exceptions) are pushing 90+ right now. So we do what they did, keep our nerves tight, try to see the forest for the trees and learn what we can.

Whoa there! So I have taken a few days away because this great Russian offensive has taken on all the glam of watching a blind goat wooing a virgin armadillo. So we are talking about that 7km "blitz" and a couple UA TD outfits bailing, right? I mean did I miss the fall of Lviv or something? So, I disagree that this is "strategic", hell it probably is not operational but we will see if the RA can actually advance more than 20kms before it runs out of gas. We have been here before. There was the terrible Izyum offensive that was poised to "pinch off and crush the UA defenders" in some sort of Failais Part Deux, which petered out to whatever that melanoma looking thing has become. Then the imminent crossing of the S-D River, which turned out to be a catastrophe. And now the Russians take 7km and we are at the End of Days? "Imminent collapse" - how many times does this need to happen before people get the point? The RA has already collapsed twice, strategically and operationally - even if I grant that the UA may have "collapsed" tactically at Popasna. First was the RA collapse of an entire front in the North, we still remember that part right? That was likely the turning point in this war and was a collapse by any standard. Then we have seen another operational level collapse around Kharkiv, my understanding of military theory is that when you are the invader and have withdrawn until the enemy is at your border, things are not going well. So the real question here is "can the UA do operational offensive?" And the jury is still out to be honest. That operation around Kharkiv (a much higher priority than the villages in the Donbas) demonstrated that the UA can re-take ground and pretty quickly. How well the RA was dug in, how the UA did it and is it repeatable are the unknowns. We have talked at length about the Russian problems defending a line approximately the same length as the Western Front with a fraction of the troops needed. The line density is something like 100 men per km with what they were showing, and that is stuffing the line with replacements straight from the recruiting depot. I don't care what the Russian grandfathers were good at, there is a force-space reality here that is going to be impossible to make airtight without another 1 million men and the equipment to arm them. Meanwhile Ukraine has a 3 month head start in mobilization, I personally think that the UA has more combat ready troops than the RA at the moment and everyday they are getting more with better equipment. While Russia continues its downward spiral economically and militarily. As to post-ceasefire (if it happens - Ukraine is signaling the other way, and losing a few dozen kms in the Donbas is likely not to break a nation who had guns within range of its capital) - we had better be ready to pony up and re-build Ukraine a la Marshal Plan, or there was no point in the sunken costs. Re-building national infrastructure will likely sustain the Ukrainian economy in the short to middle term, in the long term private industry will show up because they are a greedy bunch and this is a market filled with US greenbacks for reconstruction. We need a functional and well defended Ukraine very badly right now because it will mean the "global order" won this war, and we are willing a pay a lot to ensure that happens (or should be). We need a bright and shiny Ukraine as a demonstration that the Western based global order still works. This needs to be a lesson for Russia, and more so for China that we will not let the pen that writes the rules go easily. If we fail, then we deserve what happens next.

I am pretty sure that has been the foundation of every argument Putin has made to date, so we are already there. I totally agree the repurcutions of this are significant and I still suspect that tactical nuclear weapons and chemical are the most likely course if they go down this dark path. However, the Russian-ification of near abroad is not new in the Russian calculus and as per ISW assessment, it does line up as internal justification - I don't think Russia cares, understands or has a strategy for external normalization right now, this whole thing looks and feels like crisis management. The release of tactical nuclear weapons or other WMDs comes with all the escalation risk we have laid out here. I suspect if the UA attacks the "new Kherson Republic" that Russian escalation will result in a western response. If they do so in defence of the Crimea, I am not so sure. We were already soft on Crimea before this started and I honestly thing western sentiment is not to risk a strategic exchange over it. Either way we can see a possible really dangerous game of chicken happening here. This leaves us all hoping that someone...anyone...takes Putin and his cronies out of the equation. Use of nuclear weapons of any type is in effect ripping off ones own steering wheel. As to a lot of the other western non-military threats, I think Russia is well past caring (except maybe China). UNSC - seriously, who cares in Russia? Economic Embargo - sure, not sure how much worse or faster it will hurt the Russian economy. Direct Subversion - we should already be there, however, these things take time to set up, let alone execute and as we found with Saddam, sometimes they do not work. All Putin seems to care about at this point is hard power, zero negotiation and keeping Putin in power , which means polishing this turd of a war until it gleams. I guess in all this the question really is, "what is our collective red-line here?" We have not been good at these in the past.

Of course one thing no one is talking about is that the UA will have to attack across this river as well. What does UA engineering look like? If they stick to the Light playbook you can get away with a lot less logistically, so even rope ferrying will work.

They just need a transcript of this entire thread from Day 1.

So something to think about here. I have been wondering in the question of Crimea. If the UA can effectively translate its methods to operational offensive, and the actions around Kharkiv suggest they can. While at the same time the RA is nearing a form of collapse. Then what happens when/if the UA decides to re-take the Crimea by force? That is, from a Russian POV, Russian territory and Sevastopol, the port of the Black Sea Fleet, and major economic hub. They, according to their doctrine, could justifiable employ WMDs in it defence. It looks like the Russian may be signalling that they are thinking about doing the same with the current occupied territories via annexation: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-annexation-occupied-ukraine-putin’s-unacceptable-“-ramp” Now ISW is not perfect, they got it wrong on the May 9th mobilization but there is a lot here that matches what we have been seeing.

I think it was a zombie-operation. There was a plan and the big red button was hit. Those executing the plan were not told to stop, even if everything else did, and went ahead with "the plan", likely not even knowing the situation until they got to the site and then went "well crap...orders are orders are orders". You get something like this in motion, it can be really hard to stop.

Just going to leave this right here for people to muse on. No political spin in it, just history: https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/marshall-plan-1#:~:text=The Marshall Plan%2C also known,Secretary of State George C. So that is roughly $218B in todays money: https://www.officialdata.org/1945-CAD-in-2018?amount=1#:~:text=Value of %241 from 1945,cumulative price increase of 1%2C357.74%. Likely one of the biggest nation building/reconstruction efforts in modern history which led directly to this: https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-country-and-region/countries-and-regions/united-states_en But people gotta figure it out for themselves.

Its on the to-do list. Right after "combined arms" and "logistics", and slightly in front of "do not try the same water crossing more than three times [baby steps]"

Hey, we found the boats! They do not look so well.

I have no doubt there are errors at Oryx. Over 3500 Russian vehicles to date will very likely mean that there are some mistakes and double accounting. But, having watched them from the beginning there numbers have consistently matched western intelligence assessments (when released). They are below UA estimates and well above Russian ones and tend to land pretty much on or near the mark of both UK and US assessments, particularly as to overall percentage of forces lost. I was tracking Oryx to assess the RA losses at about 20% before the Donbas, and sure enough a few days later the mainstream news released the same number. If you dig into the photos most are indisputable, and many from the same social media feeds we are seeing. Based on the sorts of losses the Russians had on that river crossing, I suspect Oryx does not need to make stuff up, it is all over the freakin internet. If someone had a better site, let’s use it; however, I can only really trust what has been accurate to date and Oryx has been.

Found this interesting: It hits on how the UA is fighting better and less on how the Russian's suck.

You are more forgiving than I am on this one. First those F ech vehicles should have been able to bounce back across, or worst case dismount and swim back - Ukraine is littered with abandoned Russia equipment since Day 1 of this war, so that was an option. Second, a pontoon bridge is a divisional level asset, no commander should be willing to sacrifice it for a tactical unit. That is harsh calculus but if it was the situation, then it applies here. Finally, and most bafflingly, suitable crossing sites on any obstacle are finite and one has to assume your enemy - whose home turf you are invading - knows that. These are like doorways and if you get caught trying to come through one, it is a really bad idea to follow up by trying to come through the same door you know is already covered - that is how you lose important assets, and the better part of a BTG, apparently. On military engineering. In my assessment, military engineering is one of the biggest losers in the sort of war we are seeing waged here in Ukraine. An ability to "hide" was always a challenge for battlefield engineering but now it is made worse by "eyes everywhere" and the ranges of weapons systems is also making very hard to establish things like bridgeheads. So assault engineering, or close support, is likely impacted the least, however, armored engineer vehicles are easy to spot and hit. But sappers supporting infantry, close and personal, is not the issue. We have seen mine warfare; however, I am not sure at what scale. I suspect this will happen as the lines stabilize and the Russians try to dig in. But here minelaying vehicles and troops are going to be very exposed without a very effective screen. Support engineering must be nearly impossible. The F ech stuff can bounce crossing employing amphib and snorkeling, almost all Russian equipment is built for that. It is the logistics and artillery that need LOC bridging and major obstacle crossing in order to keep the big machine in motion and here military engineering is in real trouble. Unlike logistics, which has thousands of vehicles and redundancy, support engineering equipment is always a very low density capability. No army has thousands of pontoon bridges readily available, in fact any commander will complain that like ISR, there are never enough. The other major problem is that support military engineering is in fact "mobile transportation infrastructure". It is big, heavy and highly visible. I bridge train can run dozens of vehicles and site prep and maintenance is highly visible. In the old days, we would conduct a combat crossing in phases, establish a bridgehead far enough out to protect the crossing sites and then bring up the heavier stuff to get things moving again. The bridgehead and c-batty, along with air superiority would ensure a safe-ish bubble for the bridges to be built, cross over follow on echelons and the offence resumes. Problem now is, as we have discussed at length, ISR and range. The enemy can strike with numerous systems, some man portable, at ludicrous ranges. That and ubiquitous ISR. The enemy already has an idea of where you can and cannot cross, assuming they have done recon, so now trying to bring up large, heavy LOC bridging, in the face of satellites, UAVs, self-loitering and really long range arty/missile systems is starting to look like a suicide mission. We would need bridgeheads of 50+kms to secure a crossing, but we need the crossing to get enough forces to secure the 50+kms...another dilemma. The only way around it that I can see is a lot more self-sufficient F ech...and we are back to mass vs light.

That all points to them losing the boats and having to go with backing-on the pontoons, one is at the mercy of the current. It does look like they tried 3 crossing attempts here and only the first one is straight, so it likely had boat support. The other 2 are some sort of weird attempts, that also went all to hell.

So this is the definition of insanity. They probably lost the boats on the first try, which explains the diagonal attempt as they were backing on the pontoon, and got hit, again. So of course third time is the charm, or not. This is what I mean by micro-view, those are formation and above assets being thrown away. This first hit is the cost of doing business, the second and third are entirely on the Russians as trying to do a crossing on a site that has 1) ISR on it and 2) dialled in for arty, is freakin insane. So what? This tells me that for this crossing, at least, this was amateur hour (see my post on zero bank prep) from a technical perspective. My bet is that this whole mess is a result of higher HQ pistol waving “I do not care about reality..cross or be shot” because no engineer would do this. That, or they tried getting non-engineers to do the later crossings.

Oh and no bank prep is another bad sign. They should have laid down either planking or aluminum trackway. They need to do this before you put in the bridge and I see none. This is bad, as the entry and exit turn into soup on that ground after 50 vehicles or so. Then you get bogging and traffic jams, that are ripe for artillery or UAV strike.

You could try to winch the home-bank side but the bridge will likely dig into the bank. Either way, this crossing site went very bad. And they were still trying to cross F ech which got, got.

Maybe, or it might have been where the F ech bounced. They would have been under power so could have made a straight crossing. Of course you are supposed to do a bounce crossing in combat formation not in column, which is what it looks like they did. Or there was another bridge, which, if it got hit, trying a second crossing on an already sighted position is just insane. Normally one needs to make 2 crossing sights to secure one, per Combat Team. They should be spaced out of arty footprint of each other so 500m+. Looks like they tried for two pontoon bridges which is not a good idea, for obvious reasons we see here. Sure you can get more vehicles across but if you get spotted (which you can count on in this environment), you lose two bridges. Of course none of this makes a lot of sense to be honest.

Can’t jam what is not linked…not surprised in the least. We will definitely be facing something like these next go around.

No from the entry and exit tracks they laid it diagonal, which means they likely did not have a fast boat to push into place to anchor it. That means that the either did not know what they were doing or their boats got dead, or stuck in traffic. You can get away with this in a pinch but it is sloppy. Exit bank will get some really weird ruts over time, so when it rain you have problems. And you risk warping the connectors on the sections, which means the pontoons are locked and you cannot pick that back up...which apparently was not a problem because the UA blew it up anyway - Bright Side!

Actually scratch that, I see possible craters now in the zoomed out shot: So maybe was just good ol HE? That is the weirdest crossing site, the bridge was diagonal? That does weird thing to the exits and stresses the bridge too.

Based on how many of those vehicles caught fire and cooked off, I am betting HEAT and DPICM could do that, theoretically. That or a whole bunch of Switchblade 600s. Or an air strike, but again no crater. Obstacle crossing is one of my areas of expertise and at some point I do want to jump into that conversation.

DPICM? On that first one, I think I see small impacts.

No I am envisioning a light screen outfitted very much like the UA SOF/Light. Armed with a lot of drones and ISR to do the infiltration, high resolution fix, and tight finish ops at points of breakthrough- a break in battle if you will. This done broadly provides opportunity for formation level breakout - that mass. One can ride that until it gets friction-ed up by an opponent and then we are into rinse and repeat. I am not so sure about that last para of yours. We had a lot of that and it showed particular weakness for light infantry armed with a lot less than what we are talking about for over 20 years. Now if a peer-adversary were able to put out a light screen of their own...and we are back to unmanned battle. I suspect against a highly trained and capable opponent in defence a combination of mass and precision will be required for the breakthrough. Remember they can see and hit to our depth as well, if we were to try and form up mass to do the job, we would likely get hit back in the assembly area. So there would have to be a blinding phase up front, and we are back to precision. The more I look at this precision and mass are mutually supporting, or should be. At different points the virtues of each will be needed. On the other axis will be manned and unmanned. And on a third it has to be information. Victory will likely be to the ones who can manage these axis the best depending on the point in time in the battle.

Yup, I think you have arrived at the same place but from another direction. To do a trench clearing as you describe will require a lot of precision up front. You need so have very high resolution to drop all those bomblets right into the trench onto defenders. In depth, you need to neutralize artillery and reserves, likely a combination but precision, particularly stuff like NLOS munitions would come in very handy here. Once breakthrough is created, back to mass to exploit it, and then as an opponent forms up a precision DLI (really like that term), you are back to precision to eliminate, until conditions are back to being able to employ mass. Trick here, and always the party pooper, will be logistics. You need it for the mass, and you need to protect it from your opponents precision weapons coming back at you. This is basically a new spin on tempo but now precision and mass are the driving factors.