The_Capt

I know we are in early days here but this whole thing has a half-hearted feel to it. I am left wondering why Russia is going through all this theatre when it can simply draw new lines on the ground, shift the goal-post and come up with whatever fabricated "victory" it wants, just like Putin did in Mariupol. Re-draw the lines on the map and declare the DNR/LNR as "free", point to this strategic land bridge as a major victory and come up with some BS narrative that "this was the plan all along". I also suspect that the Russian higher-ups already know this hence the somewhat tepid start to this whole thing. I don't think Putin is in a corner on this, he is just trying to figure out where to paint the arbitrary line of "victory". This has been a failing on the western analysis side from Day 1, we continue to see this war through our own lens. What this operation should look like in western frameworks must be what Russia is doing - big sweeps, dramatic deep operations. What victory looks like, again in western terms, and projecting it on the Russians. I am getting the sinking sense that all Putin needed to do was get into Ukraine and shoot up the place, and he could spin it as the greatest victory since the Great Patriotic War.

Further, progressive unreality means that the framework they built at the outset became rigid, likely due to political pressure. So when the RA met initial resistance they saw it more as "isolated anomalies" of disjointed resistance that once eliminated would still lead to Ukrainian collapse with some residual internal resistance. By the time they realized that the defense was not "isolated or disjointed", it was too late.

I am not sure I agree but if they weren't going to use them anyway you do have a point. Of course why embrace a de-aggregated BTG model if one does not embrace "alternative planning"? The Russian forces structure points to a need for "more recon" not less, especially if you are planning to invade a country the size of France. Well 51 days in and I think it is clear that Russian "planning" clearly suffered from progressive unreality here. These BTGs look like they were prepared for a internal security operation and not a conventional war. This goes a long way to why none of the math adds up. Now I can see how they might go that way, as on paper the Ukraine was not set up to defend this amount of frontage simultaneously - I saw one comparison that the length of frontage was the same as the distance from Minnesota to Washington along the US-Canadian border, if one throws in the entirely of the Belarusian border too. But the Ukrainians re-wrote the "on paper" part....whoops. I think the Russians assumed complete operational freedom and then the entire battlespace got sticky...bad sticky. Then I think the Russians realized they brought the wrong military to this war and are hastily trying to fix that.

Tell her not to worry. The Russians could not have picked a worse battlefield and that is saying something. Unless the UA folds for some unforeseen reasons, the terrain is very much on their side along that axis.

This matches Oryx. I count a grand total of 8 BRM-1Ks, 1 x BDRM-2. They also have MRAPS and the Italian "Rys" which could qualify as light recon vehicles in a pinch. So not a lot of recon spotted in the KO lists. So yea, really good and not gotten hit (very doubtful because...recce), they did not push them and just let the Inf Coys try and do the gig because they clearly have too much infantry, or they have been using non-specialized vehicles and they are just buried in the heap of dead IFVs and APC. Could explain why the Russian tactical units deeply resemble a blind dog trying to hump a football to death. Just another weird oddity of this whole thing.

Is that what those 6-9 BTR looking things are north of the AT Company? Ok, that makes a bit more sense, I assume they have radars and UAVs in that little cluster. So the BTG has close recon support, it is the Russian formation recon that I am not clear on, nor have we seen a lot of "recon battle" in this fight, or at least I have not noted it.

I think maybe the Russians were reaching for some western concepts here but wound up with an unholy compromise. Decentralized and dispersed, highly empowered tactical units are theoretically capable of rapid exploitation and accelerating decision cycles but they come with significant costs. They need a lot of ISR support and integral enablers. They also cannot avoid the realities of a long logistical tail, or you employ them as one-shot fire-and-forget but have a whole bunch more in the operational magazine. Further, this also greatly increases the load on the operational level to make sense of what all these tactical units are doing and provide clear and concise task command when needed (everyone forgets this in the warm liberal glow of "do whatever feels good" mission command - which is not that either]. That is a lot of C4 architecture to plug everything into and a significant training bill to make sure everyone knows what they are doing. It is like the Russians built an impression of this but did not understand how all the parts fit together. That, or they were shooting for something else entirely and I am not seeing it.

Yes, that is my sense as well. The Russian operational trend appears consistently to try and do too much with too little. Given the "typical" BTG construct: (Seen these pictures everywhere) According to the old frontage rules, this outfit could likely cover a 3 km frontage in the old 2 up, one back formation. The MLRS and I assume UAV support allows it to strike really deeply, it has some flank security and AD so is somewhat self contained (except recon but I will get to that). So with 16 BTGs, assuming they hold 1/3 in reserve means about 11 BTG up front, which translates to about 33, say 35 kms frontage. A rough eyeball of the Russian start line up there: Is roughly twice that frontage...at the start line. That frontage will expand in the advance, not even taking into account attrition. So either the Russians are using a very different force-to-frontage metric and giving that BTG a 7-10km front which is a lot to ask of 800-1000 pers unless you have got some next-gen ISR and precision lethality. Which leads me to the next big question? Where is the Russian recon? I have been looking around and in all this discussion I have not seen anything on how or where the Russian recon screens are laid down. There are no dedicated recon units in the BTG (unless I am missing them), I have to assume that the recon is held at formation. Given the environment that is not a small ask, to screen a 70+km frontage out to 10-20 kms. This is made worse as the UA method has put eyes with teeth everywhere so you would need detailed/close recon at least out to 4-5km in front of lead BTG elements (the range of the Javelin being 4+km) to even stand a chance. For historical reference: So that is a 10-25km frontage for an old MRD, with a recon screen out 50km in front. That MRD has 9 MRBs and 3 TBs with an entire TR in reserve (so 3 more TBs), for a total of 15 Bn-sized units...for 10-25km. And there would be another MRD behind it. To do what the Russians are proposing, in old Soviet terms would require 3-5 full up MRDs, an entire CAA at full strength. I get frontages have expanded with modern ISR and weaponry (or maybe they haven't on the advance) but this is asking a lot of fresh troops, let alone already mauled ones. Am I missing something?

Oh my, that is brilliant.

Heh, that definitely tracks. It is important to see the Russian successes for what they were and were not: - Russian demonstrated a lot of acumen in the "grey zone"/subversive/political warfare space. Their use of information (including dis and mis), leveraging, targeting with respect to influence activities, the use of political and social divisions as an inductive mechanism and general all around sneakiness did create a lot of strategic wins. The Russians were demonstrating a mastery of those null and negative decisions to effect, to the point that in west we were pretty much ready to tap out on the whole Crimea "unpleasantness" for cheap gas. - Russian doctrine on subversive warfare/active measures/Gibridnaya Voyna/Gerasimov doctrine has a long history going back to the Czars. They have employed as a strategic option space for centuries and have demonstrated a lot of successes with the contemporary form they were employing. So they know what they are doing and should be taken seriously on these margins. - Those successes, even hybrid warfare in Donbas in 2014 do not mean that it translates into "above the threshold" warfare on this scale. These are two very different games that require very different skillsets and capabilities. - One cannot "cherry pick" threats in this environment. These are threat systems and one has to address the entire system not just one small part of it that conveniently aligns with a particular funding line. We, in the west, learned this the hard way in all the COIN we have been doing, and then promptly forgot it when facing a peer state threat. So we saw conflation and disassociation simultaneously in order to build these warped arguments to "fund X". Unfortunately the Russians look like they got high on their own supply and also thought a conventional invasion on the scale of the Battle of France would be all easy-peazy...whoops. I am not sure why they did not stick with their A-game; however, I suspect that there are limits to what one can do in subversive warfare especially when you have basically galvanized micro-social structures within the target population. In short, I think they ran out of options in that arena and then talked themselves into a hard power option. Now the egg is on their faces and anyone who hung an argument on the "Looming Russian Bear". S'ok, I am sure they will be back in a decade and the whole China thing is just loaded with potential hilarity...and you want to talk about modern "systems warfare"....

Are the BTGs strengths accurate on that second one? I see 10 BTGs in that bulge west of Izyum, is that right?

I have no doubt there has been info sharing, I would hope it extends beyond NATO level by now. It should be past 5EYES for some stuff. No point in holding back now.

If I had to pick one thing to supply Ukraine with it would be high resolution C4ISR support. This appears to be one of the most lopsided information wars in history, and it needs to stay that way. C4ISR that can render high resolution information, not only where the Russian's are but where they are likely going to be, up to and including remote support staffs in NATO HQs. This means that the entire Russian system is visible in real time, all the time. This will mean that UA targeting will be much more efficient, rendering a higher kills per munition ratio. Their own manoeuvre will be well out ahead of Russian mass. Critical nodes like Russian C2, logistics, arty and engineering are seen and targeted. The UA can see the "time and place" for conventional c-attks as opposed to trying to feel for them. This all creates a feedback loop to the strategic information/narrative war, which then reinforces the western support. It is not so much the hardware at this point, it is the software. I mean, of course we keep pushing munitions but major platform shifts are for after this war or unless this war last years, which I am not betting on.

The Switchblade 600 were rumoured as the bulk of the package has the Javelin warhead onboard and has an 80km range one-way, that is the one that can shred Russia arty and engineering vehicles. Whelp I guess we will see how things stand in 24-48. My guess is the Russians will make gains but will likely bog down quickly as they get strung out. This might be a micro-remake of the larger opening phase, multiple axis of advance trying to overwhelm, that get soaked up and stall. If the Russians do encircle/link up, then the question will be, can they consolidate quickly and exploit it, or will they spend all their combat power just executing the “big push”? Given the prep time, operational enabler/conditions superiority, and brittleness of the RA, my money is on the UA.

Looks like the Russians are sticking with what they know and love, massed dumb fires and the good old frontal. COAs and nuance, what were we thinking?

Alright, let's see where this goes. Could be a poke, jab or all out offensive. Or the Russians could be feeling around, any indication of what their recon is up to? That is a weird spot to try and punch through though as it is right through closed terrain with more chokepoints. Could also be a setup and a suckers pull to shift focus eastward while setting up for the push down from the north.

With all the hand wringing on the future of the tank I am surprised that the idea that air superiority is also “in trouble” has not sparked the same discussions. Tac Aviation has also been demonstrated as extremely vulnerable in this war as next gen AD evolves.

Jomini would be proud, this is very much in his "let's take geometry to war" type of thinking. It is also one of the reasons Clausewtiz did his thing as a counter-reaction. So frontage is a pretty complex beast. It is, in land warfare, what you can physically control and influence at the front edge of ones land (and air) power. Note I say "physically" because once you introduce multi-domain concepts we get into cognitive and conative frameworks which transcend inches and feet. So how that land power is packaged is incredibly important when discussing frontage. For example, the RA is using what I have called "dim mass", this means they are relying on masses of people and equipment to try and generate and project that land power (and air, but that is different). They do this to "hold ground", which is, as you point out, really a 3 dimensional construct on the battlefield. This will drive them to have to have a force-to-space metric of effective density in order to defend, and another to attack. This is again really complicated as we get into C2 and logistics architecture, as well as Ukraine's road infrastructure but the terrain basically soaks up so many troops based on how those troops are trained, equipped, commanded and supplied/supported. For Russia that metric of troops-to-space is going to be higher, likely much higher than the UA. They have not demonstrated wide spread effective integrated ISR, their logistics are a mess and air power is really disjointed. They do have a lot of artillery though [aside: this is where the term "force multiplier" comes from] but can they integrate it? So what? The UA has: a lot of ISR advantage due to their overall approach and western feeds, a much more distributed logistics infra, intimated knowledge of the terrain, much better equipment and training and far better force integration. So, so what? Well the RA is in a asymmetric frontage control situation, they need more troops to try and influence a chunk of physical space than the UA. So the last thing the RA should be doing is attempting massively long frontages, it is a bad "combat power" economy. They will need to pour more and more troops in just to try and make that line controllable, while Ukrainian defence becomes offense and can attack all the holes in the Russian line to isolate and chew up the defence piecemeal. What is clearly missing in Russian planning is that their metrics are broken and have been since day 1. They thought that X-thousands of troops/equipment could do A, when it turns out it could only do Z. As to my "work", oddly, land warfare is more of a side gig and vestige of a misspent youth. I work in "other spaces" now but this war has forced me to dust off the old land war shelves and work some dormant muscles.

UA will definitely gone on the offensive so this would be a test for the RA to see is if a stalemate is even possible. It may, it would turn this war into a longer grind that Russia will still not be able to win but of all the bad options of the “we gotta stay here and die because Putin says so”, a narrow frontage to try and hold that land bridge is the least terrible. With enough mass and digging enough holes and they may be able to pull off something. The UA will likely start isolating and chewing up that defence piecemeal but it will take time and be costly. The Russian LOCs will be shorter but still vulnerable but this might (and I stress “might”) buy time and a position at the negotiating table. Of course having committed a lot of atrocities and warcrimes means that the Ukrainian position has likely hardened well past a “victory with honour” exit point for Russia (well done, idiots) so they are more likely to be in for long war that for a lot of previously posted reasons Russia cannot afford, even if this strategy were to work. And let’s not forget the very real possibility of a complete RA collapse as attrition piles up and replacements with less training, less kit and almost no time to integrate become the “backbone” of the occupation force. I am with Steve on this, Russia has lost this thing on both a political and military strategic level, that part is done. Operationally they still can try things that may stretch things out in order to dress up this up enough to call it a “win” in order to avoid or at least delay the looming domestic crisis back in Russia.

Heh, he just couldn’t resist showing up an officer. Trust me, if it comes down to believing me or @Combatintman when it comes down to intel analysis, go with him every time.

COA 1 may be most dangerous from a UA perspective but that is a long haul with pretty exposed flanks. The terrain is more open but that may not be a good thing as we discussed, and it is not as open as it may look. That is a lot of ground for things to go wrong and for a UA c-attack. Dunno, they all kinda suck to be honest, I would not be biting this off at all based on the condition of the RA right now. Take Mariupol, maybe snatch a few hundred meters of ground and try to dig in. You get that land bridge and the remains of a major city, which is something. I would abandon that whole northern frontage around Izyum (call it another feint) and try slow grind from the south. You cut the frontage down to about 400-500kms and have very short supply lines to worry about - but they will still get mauled by UA deep strike. Based on the condition of the RA big bold sweeping maneuvers just don’t seem reasonable, particularly after they have given the defenders weeks to get ready. My hope is that the RA realizes this and pulls out, returning to pre-24 Feb conflict lines. That is the best military course of action for the RA right now…go home and sit in a corner and think about what you have done. But I think we all know that is not likely to happen.

So ATGM, Drone and "EW AAA Light UGV Tank" are all the same species...unmanned systems. My guess is that we are finally at the emergence of the unmanned RMA. It is a misconception that RMAs happen suddenly, we get surprised by them because they evolve to a tipping point and then break. Every RMA in history has taken decades and in some cases centuries to build up. The reason for this is that they often rely on a combination of technologies and the doctrine of employment of those technologies to coalesce into the phenomenon. So "unmanned" is pretty old as a concept. Wiki says 1849 at Venice with "incendiary balloons" but Genghis used "flaming swallows", the Romans had flaming pigs and the Egyptians had freakin "war lions". Then there are legions of "human unmanned systems" which span the gambit from "local partners" to "colonials" to "Indigenes". This is not a new idea is my point. So ATGMs are really just an evolution of "unmanned" which has evolved to "unmanned that carry and fire other unmanned" in the form of UAVs and UGVs. So what? Well unmanned, up until now, has never been able to combine autonomy with range, lethality and ISR that we are seeing in this war. These systems are going to get better in all these factors but the most important is "autonomy". Fully autonomous systems do not need a continuous communications link back to a human to do their job. One cannot cut that link because it is not required except to send ISR data back, which has work arounds. So the first thing we will likely see is a race to the bottom on autonomy because "more, better autonomy" will win. Here AI/ML and CPU technology will be critical in creating unmanned advantage, all based on the ability to miniaturize processing power and create the software. Range and lethality depend on energy. How much can a system carry, how far and for how long. Energy production and storage technology also continue to accelerate, as does explosives technology. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-29880-7_3) So what? Well it means that lethality will weight less and the energy systems that power carrying it are getting more efficient, so more lethal, longer and further. Roll into this materials technology in both strength, weight and manufacturing costs and you now have a system one can mass produce easier and cheaper than a human based one. "No, Capt...so freakin what?!" Well that one is hard. The actual impact on the battlefield is really hard to guess because a lot of really smart people have not fully played all this out. My guess (and it is a guess) is that warfare is in for a major shift at a texture level because you are basically changing a building block component; this is right there next to the impact of the changing "bullet". Accept this time it is not the kinetic penetrator, it is information processing. What might that look like? Well I think it will look more like a knife fight in Frank Herbert's Dune but at really long ranges. Each side will know where their opponent is; however, what is competitive is the resolution of that knowledge, higher is better as it allows for better precise targeting. One will need precise targeting in order to know what and where to have the first stage of this kind of fight, "unmanned battle". This will be highly attritional as it is hard to manoeuvre against unmanned systems in the classical sense because they cannot be shocked or scared. So we will likely see and exchange of long range unmanned systems, all with high precision capability being counter with other unmanned defensive and offensive systems. This may very well occur over the horizon before "people" even see each other. So back to the Dune knife fight, land formations will still have to manoeuvre quickly but it will be to positions of advantage for the slower body shield penetration battle (unmanned attrition). Once one side buckles then we may see second stage forces, likely a combination of manned and unmanned close in quickly for the positional kills we are used to seeing in manoeuvre warfare, so fast finishing thrust once inside the body shield. And for anyone taking notes, there is a spectrum between these two conditions so it won't be simple or predictable...this will be why we still need a human brain on the field, and that brain will need to be "forward enough". The "follow-ons" to all this are significant. Mass and speed still matter but now mass has to be "dynamic mass" in ways we have not seen. Systems have to be able to de-aggregate and aggregate much faster than the human based land warfare systems we know and love. Slow mass is dead on the future battlefield, and I do not mean linear forward movement, I mean how fast it can change its nature. So we will still need hammers, but before they become hammers they will have been wire-feelers, pliers, spears, arrows and hornets, all on the same axis of advance. This requires a different military mind-set, far more inductive reasoning and frameworks than we currently employ or select for. It will require a new logistics model, C4ISR enterprises that now include a concept of "AI/ML superiority"...the list goes on. So you can see how there is a lot more at stake here than the venerable old tank.

To my mind it we seem to be missing the fact that "it" has already happened, as in past tense. And by "it" I do not mean the death of the tank, I mean how we think about tanks, armored warfare and conventional mass. For example, tank is a core part of a capability, one whose job it is to translate energy into effects. Higher levels of warfare then link those effects into decisions, and decisions into outcomes; this is the language of the communication of warfare. That language has shifted. After this war we will not look at tanks the same way we did before it. Tanks, like battleships/dreadnought used to be a known metric of potential military power; a metric of land warfare, it meant something to say "we have 1000 tanks". After this war "we have 1000 tanks" as a metric of how well we can communicate war will mean something different. We cannot un-think that. All the remains is trying to understand what that after-meaning is or is not. I do not know, but I definitely will say it was not what it was on 23 Feb 22.

Nice. Disruption and dislocation through friction. How much of those "huge problems" are self inflicted and how many are a result of 1) losses in the first phase of the war (Oryx has 827 Russian logistics vehicles lost, while a lot of people are looking at tanks, that is the number I have been tracking), and 2) continued deep strikes on assembly areas and logistical nodes? This will be key to determining the range of operational level options left to the Russian forces. I have to agree, the longer this takes the more likely we are going to see very modest pincers attempts, to the point they may just try tactical-level "rubbing" to look like something is happening while never really going for decisive battle. This will, of course, cause them a lot of attrition. The only other play may be to use lower quality troops to do the up front dying while looking for an operational opportunity...so basically "hope" is their main course of action. Watched this too and it is too narrow. It is the entire "tank-system" that is in question, not a single force element. It is the vulnerability of the logistical systems, visibility, comparative replacement cost and front end asymmetry with next get ATGMs that has got the eyebrows up. Of course this is more than just "tanks", it also includes all mounted mass (armor, infantry and artillery with combat support). For example, the author of the video explains correctly that "ambushes have always occurred", well true but not at 40+kms with a combination of UAV and self-loitering munitions. What is happening is not "tank vs ATGM" that is too simplistic, it is a collision of systems, one we recognize, the other is something else. As Steve points out, the victorious system also points to emerging additional sub-systems that can rapidly manoeuvre, do not need the same levels of survivability or logistics (largely because they are much lighter and lack humans onboard), have as much or even more lethality, and are significantly cheaper. Don't get me wrong the "tank" or something like it will likely stick around but it may be a CP or hauling batteries and spare parts for the unmanned systems instead of being at the front edge.

I have considered this but I think the chance extremely remote. Also if any Russian command or staff are reading this then my advice is “quit now, surrender or mutiny and disperse”. You are going to need a decade without a crippled economy to build the military they need to pull off this job. Don’t do this job in the first place because it is a stain on the profession and historic disgrace. You are not defending Russia, you are assisting in its destruction. Get rid of the political rot in your government, they are driving you off a cliff out of greed, hubris and self-delusion. And please come back to this thread for more free advice anytime you like.