The_Capt

It is not a question of "can't or can" it is a question of comparative "can". Is it easier for a UAV/UGS to find their targets, be they kinetic or ISR? Or is it easier for C-UAV/UGV systems to find their targets? Right now the former is proving more true than the latter. We should not, and there is growing evidence that we cannot, simply wish away the realities of unmanned systems on the battlefield, or that they are here to stay. I get the sense from some corners - and here I am talking military professionals- that they want to sweep the UAVs from the field in a "real war" so we can all go back to normal business. The alarming trend in all of our observations, at least since 2014, is than we cannot. Finally technology trends are on the side of unmanned systems. More miniaturization, greater processing power, smaller better cameras, longer and lighter battery life leading to increased endurance, more potent explosives technology meaning higher lethality in smaller packages and, the big one...decreasing comparative costs per unit. Everything that is giving one a slimmer, better cellphone is driving unmanned systems farther and faster.

This seems to be the common sentiment; however, this is not an easy ask: - To jam one is dumping very high amounts of EM energy into the air. This is very easy to see, fix and kill in a contested environment. So there is no big red "EM" easy button. - Modern militaries, well good ones, use al sorts of frequency hopping, field networks, satellites, LOS systems and bunch of classified tricks to ensure we have data feeds...they are kinda important. So again, no magic "jam" wand. - Semi-autonomous, means that jamming doesn't mean the UAVs start falling out of the sky like cherry blossom leaves. The current generation is vulnerable but future ones will be pre-loaded with enough AI to return to base, or try and evade jamming without a human being in the loop. In fact there will likely be a race to fully autonomous for this exact reason. - Military spec stuff is already built to survive EMP and a lot of this stuff, so again "wave the wand Harry-mischief managed" is not a realistic expectation. One safe prediction I will make is that UAV/UGV, C-UAV/UGV and C-C-UAV/UGV development are going to go into overdrive after this war and will likely continue for some time to come.

So now we enter into the inevitable hybrids and cross-design era that occurs every time these shifts happen. Steam-sail ships, MG bicycles/armored clown cars. Whatever that Light Attack Concept was back in the 80s. I have no doubt the MBT will be on the battlefield - we bought a whole bunch of them, but it may very well not be the concept of a "tank" or more importantly "armored warfare" as we understand it. Just because we stick a 120mm gun on the TAC CP doesn't mean "ah well there we have the tank". A tank is a sub-system of an entire armored system that is purpose built to do something and deliver an effect. Once we pull those components out, they become something else. An extreme example is sticking a kitchen in a tank, is it a tank or an armored kitchen with a gun for self defence - or worlds loudest dinner bell? And then we will get into the parochial hand wringing that always comes with this much like how the Cavalry went from "decisive shock action" to "tip of the spear recon in force" to "hauling wagon/ logistics" to "expensive heritage pieces" in a couple centuries. It will be a highly negotiated transition is my point. That, or someone comes up with the "AI Lobotomize-Ray" that can sweep unmanned systems from the battlefield and this whole thing has been nothing but an anomaly. This is the problem with major shifts in military affairs, they are really hard to see until they are already over.

Absolutely plausible; however, at that point we are no longer talking about an MBT. We are talking about a heavily armored TAC CP that employs a suit of semi-autonomous unmanned systems as its primary weapon. I really like the tactical land-carrier strike group as some sort of "Grandson of Iron Dome" will also likely integrated. The implications of large scale adoption of this are not small. We will no longer "manoeuvre-to-attrit" we will have to attrit-to-manoeuvre" for one. We also are redefining military mass, these are fundamental principles. Jury is still out but it is looking more like "when" than "if" with every war. A lot will hinge on counter-unmanned, which in the end may very well simply be "more unmanned" as I do not think one can push out enough EM energy to effectively counter and not die in seconds on the modern battlefield.

That "Roma caravan" is likely due to the fact that losing nearly 600 logistical vehicles is not a "minor" inconvenience: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html

There it is...moving the goal post. I have avoided getting into "well here is how the Russian's could have succeeded" discussions too deeply as there is still a real war and it is kinda disrespectful to people still fighting and dying but maybe we are far enough along to offer a few ideas. If Russia had made the Donbas and the infamous "land bridge" to the Crimea to sole operational objectives of this war, they may have actually achieved, or at least had a better chance at their strategic and political ones. If they had focused their main efforts to 2 main axis of advance with a limit of exploitation pretty close to what we are seeing on the maps now in the SE, along with "shock and awe" strikes across Ukraine they could theoretically have: - Achieved their objectives much faster by concentrating their combat power and logistical capability. This would have prevented or at least mitigated the UA build up and influx of western support. - They could have simply dug in, took Mariupol and the land bridge and declare "mission accomplished". Russia would have demonstrated its "immense power" to the world. A shortened war (and I am not talking 72 hours but maybe a couple weeks) would have lessened western resolve and shaped the negotiation table. - A short hard modest successful demonstration would have left a lot of "doubt" on the table for the West and Ukraine. This would have made a threat of "further special actions" much more effective on the calculus on the West. It also would have kept a lot more strategic options open as compared to where they find themselves now. - It may have fractured the west more than fused it. If Russia could demonstrate restraint and humanity in a "internal border dispute" it immediately call into question the economic sacrifices the rest of Europe will be making in what has become an economic war with Russia. Further, it would play on the ever widening political divides in just about every western democracy. It would have kept China very happy, without risking becoming one of their provinces. - If Putin really was a "genius", his play would be to immediately call for UN Peacekeepers in a ZOS once he had gained what he needed to. Not western troops but Malaysians or Brazilians, a crew he could keep in his pocket. We would have crumbled into a hot burning mess if Russia, backed by China and India, called on the global collective diplomacy and security body to intervene...it would have broken us. If we say "no freakin way", then who are the warmongers who are pushing their agenda and supporting a massive military industrial complex? If we say yes, we are in for years of negotiation and diplomacy, likely false but we built the system now we have to use it, all the while those sanctions start to go stale and erode. But here we are on the possible threshold of some really scary stuff, led by an insulated and deluded madman surrounded by yes-men, who decided that he could pull off a modern land invasion on the scale of the Fall of France with a couple hundred thousand poorly supported troops and complete failure to establish pre-conditions or align his strategies.

Doctored explosions or not, these videos are showing far more than poor ammunition handling. Up front one has to admit this could be isolated incidents but they track with a lot of other battlefield indicators we have been seeing pretty much since Day 1. This shows a seriously lacking NCO corps, I can hear the rage of eons of Sgt Majors echoing across time. It shows a lack of training and training standards. It shows a serious lack of expertise. It brings into question "what else is happening?". In the second video, the one with a truck that is going to drive over those rounds scattered all over the ground, I immediately wonder when the last time it had a 1st line maintenance check? If the crews are comfortable tossing live ammunition into a pile, what else have they neglected? So back to the Capt's qualitative rants, it is incredibly hard to get troops to consistently and reliably get the basics right. Particularly as combat systems have gotten more complex. We drill it into them and then have to keep drilling it into them to do the essentials and basic combat skills to keep a very large and complex war machine in operation. Then when one goes into a warzone or combat arena, you have to work harder as everyone starts to get distracted by stuff, like getting killed. Weapons maintenance, vehicle maintenance, sanitation and hygiene, mental maintenance, TTPs/Drills, SOPs, reports and communications are an entire set of skills that anyone in these situations needs to master before we give them specific training within their chosen trade. We spend billions on this annually and it is the unsexy reality of 90% of the effort to create and sustain a modern military. It appears silly and "overdone" to most people but if you have lived the life it is essential. Example, I had an SSM back in the day, who insisted that the troops empty their mags and stretch the loading springs out every week. Lotta eye-rolling and grunts but it was pure genius. First off, if you leave the rounds packed in a mag for 6-12 months, there is a chance the spring will compress and you might see misloads at the back end of the mags. But the genius was it got the troops to actually pay attention to their weapon on a schedule by forcing them to go through the boring chore of loading and reloading their mags. Further, the SSM insisted the troops adopt a 2-8-2-8-2-4-3 pattern of alternating tracer - ball (everyone had a proprietary system). This engrained that pattern into the troops heads so that when they did get into a dust up they knew the tracer indicator counts by heart. So when I read about how the Russians can muster "millions of troops" and smother the Ukrainians and I see videos like this, I immediately think "smother will millions of corpses more likely". You cannot take a teenager and turn them into well trained and disciplined troops in 90 days anymore (I am not sure we ever could...thank you WW1 and WW2 mobilization myths). You can however create uniformed and armed "dead men walking" where your best hope is that the Ukrainian Army will run out of ammo in the process of killing them.

So what I picked up on was - Obvious comms issues leading to all sorts of OPSEC failures - Logistical issues “no gas, food or water”. - No air support or serious lack of integration. - Morale issues - At least two possible warcrimes. - A lot of C2 issues, confusion and disorganization. Anything else?

Anyone posted this? First if genuine this is really impressive open source work. Second, holy crap.

Been watching this thread since it started and we go through cycles. When things really appear to start shifting on the ground (via social media) we get really focused on "what is happening". Then when lulls occur in the newsfeed, we start to splinter off into sidebars and the like. One could probably create an information overlay based on our activities that could tell a lot about how we saw it just based on the conversation threads. For example, if the Russians suddenly surrounded Kyiv, or signal a major collapse we will get very focused and the side chatter will likely stop.

Is it sexist to want that guy to be replaced a fabled beauty of Kyiv?

I was wondering about this. None of the videos show a large primary detonation which would suggest a large single warhead. So that makes it likely as cluster munitions or a smaller munition of some sort. But it is hard to see, but I cannot make out ICM in the video, they usually have that "sparkles" signature when they hit. So maybe a smaller PGM of some sort, which does match the TB-2 loadout?

Wow...just wow. So this would be like the Iraqi military being able to hit a port in Kuwait from Basra. This is at the interface of the SLOC and operational LOCs. This demonstrates that the UA can find and hit the entire operational logistics chain of the Russian invading force. In fact it calls into question security of other SLOC nodes in Belarus and Russia itself, of course there are likely political constraints when getting into those.

Yes, 4.75 km from a vehicle mount. Error in my post, Switchblades 600 has an 80 km range (not mi).

The Switchblade 600 carries the same warhead as the Javelin and has a range of 80 miles. There is no “business as usual” with that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade

Ah so a guy with a bookshelf of tank books and tank models thinks “tanks are fine”…not exactly surprising. This is starting with a conclusion and going from there, a lot of bias from that start state. “Not enough information to draw a conclusion, so the one I started with is safe”, is a conclusion. I am not sure what is going on beyond there is something going on. I get not being able to draw firm conclusions but this whole war has defied a lot of conventional logic. Some of it is Russia performance but that under-assesses the performance of the UA. For example, most Russian tanks on Oryx have been abandoned (and some towed), so one could argue that had nothing to do with smart ATGMs or UAVs. However, if this occurred because Russian logistics were cut to pieces, by ATGMs and UAVs, the implication is that something is going on with logistics security. A T90 is just as much a paperweight as an M1A2 if they are out of gas so, no “the tanks are not fine” if we now need to rethink our logistics concepts. In short, something has occurred that impacted the entire Russian system causing it to fail in its objectives, stall, and now starting to fallback. How much if that is Russian incompetence, and how much is being forced upon them by the UA methods and equipment is a really big unknown. The role and value of the entire MBT capability is in question at the moment, at least until we can figure out what happened. Same can be asked of fast air and mech infantry as well. The worst way to go into trying to understand impacts and implications when encountering a disruptive event is with pre-set conclusions. This is a serious problem for military developers as one has to switch to inductive logic, something militaries are not really good at. We start with a framework “a real war needs tanks to work”, make an observation “tanks did not work for Russia” and deduce “this is not a real war”. Inductive logic builds a framework based on observation, the framework becomes negotiable and starts with “What the hell just happened?”

Heh, and what do you think our brains are? And like our brains AI and Machine learning are just code that can change itself to better fit an environmental problem. We are carrying around AI in our brainpans right now, it just took a lot longer to program.

Absolutely. This is very much how we use it now. We do staff wargames, CAX and all sorts of simulated stuff but it is to stress test our COAs and campaign designs. I would also add, it is very unlikely that we will see the "MAL 1000" able to tell us exactly what is going to happen anytime soon (although Dr Arquila had some pretty interesting ideas about that). We are more likely to see it rolled in as "staff support" that will be used as a sanity check. For example, in the future whichever staff came up with this insane plan might have an operational research model that comes back with "are you f#cking nuts?!", which should trigger a long second look. But I do not see use asking the "big smart machine" which COA we should choose anytime soon either. In the end it is about competitive advantage, that is the holy grail of military affairs. Why? Because Russia is demonstrating what can happen if you do not have it right now and every professional military lives in terror of this sort of thing happening to them.

Trust a Sgt to cut to the chase. So Conative Models is what we are talking about here aka Human Will. Based on all the effort and study into the fields of Marketing and Advertising the answer is definitely not "zero". Two side to this 1) understanding and shaping an opponents Conative framework, and 2) predicting how well your own will actually do on the battlefield. This winds up being another layer in the model overtop Cognitive and then all the physical layers...so complex. As to #1, I think we are a lot further along than we give credit. We have seen all sorts of big data groups being able to determine both collective and individual intent with very high levels of accuracy in everything from social media trends, spending/what they will buy, and who they will date. Applying those advanced models to a military collective is not really that far fetched, what is hard is getting all the data all those people are giving off. We have OPSEC and all that good stuff but we give off data like skin cells in the modern age [I heard one expert say that a switched on opponent could tell whether or not we were likely planning an offensive by looking at our waste water. Troops would bulk up on Red Bull and that crap before a major outing]. Pulling all that data in and applying it to a predictive conative model is really not too far out there. As to #2, well same principles but a lot trickier. How do you measure the effect of a Comds intent on an organization? It changes for every organization, Comd and timeframe. I would imagine it becomes a "pressure factor" in the model that will need to be continual monitored and refreshed to be honest. But how well intent is translated among human beings is the question here, driving how well we will likely behave in a manner that supports it. As to how one pulls that into a full up predictive analytics model, well I would not be on a government salary if I knew that one to be honest...such a misspent youth. Obviously the Conative framework would have to run up against Perception/Cognition as the two constantly interact. In reality I think plumbing some learning models may yield significant fruit as this sort of thing happens a lot in that environment. And then there is the physical predictive analytics layer, which is enormous and also filled with a lot of random effects. My best guess is any effective model would be a bit like meteorology, very accurate in the short term and less accurate the further out one goes. Then we get into a competition to see whose model can stretch further out in time, and we are basically in a form of temporal competition. This comes complete with c-measures and c-c-measures, which all make sense. So can AI/ML/whatever, understand and compute human context? Well the answer really is a solid "maybe". As was mentioned economic systems have not cracked it yet but I actually suspect they are much more complex than warfare.

Well you hit on a pretty important point here and one modern militaries are all watching out for...what happens when we can? Some argue that war is too chaotic and non-linear to ever be able to create effective models that provide predictive analytics; we do it now with a collection of human brains called staff, and as we see in the current example they can fail too. Others argue that war is "chaoplexic" and not truly fully chaotic because it is bounded by some hard rulesets and frameworks (e.g. physics) and as such the irrationality of human beings can also be smoothed out or at least made more predictable (e.g. Cambridge Analytica and Big Data stuff). Most of us in the business don't really know but we sure are interested if that second one turns out to be true. Why? Because the first side to take AI/Machine Learning/Quantum Computing and use it to create effective predictive analytical models that stand up, has an enormous advantage on the battlefield. The peace-nicks are all on about "kill bots" but this application of technology to warfare in predictive modeling has frightening implications that really give weight to the ideas of "cognitive superiority" as a applicable and measurable concept. Lotta skeptics wave it away as "never going to happen", which it might not. Then again there were a lot of skeptics on powered flight as well, and mechanized, and PGM, and smart weapons and cyber...so there is that.

War to the Knife

That is only because CM has not evolved an operational layer yet.

So in the ol Capt's personal definition of war: a collision of irreconcilable certainties. The concept of a true stalemate is a near impossibility and the history of warfare backs me up on this. Let's take Korea. a war still technically ongoing and has been in stasis for nearly 70 years...this a stalemate by design. At a tactical and operational level, absolutely, everyone sitting on the line looking at each other. At a strategic level, not at all. We have seen NK develop nuclear weapons and cyber capability. SK has deepened it relationships with the West and purchased military capabilities. At the political level it has been anything but a stalemate as both NK and SK try to outmaneuver each other. Pick any great stalemate and you will find it really was not. WWI Western front, yep tactical and operational, and even in some ways strategic. But a lot of stuff happening elsewhere, not to mention the slow strangling of Germany that eventually decided the war. Cold War, nuclear equation created a pretty large stalemate framework but on the "margins" of proxy wars and political warfare, not even close to a stalemate. As in love, war will find a way. So what? Well in Ukraine, as Steve aptly points out the one thing that is not static is time. Right now, time is not on Russia's side by any stretch. All those sanctions take time but when they really start to land they are going to hurt, badly. At a military strategic level, one that cannot access full national mobilization, the steady heavy bleeding is adding up. The Russian system: 1) cannot win employing what they brought in terms of capability, doctrine or training, 2) cannot change the battlespace to favour what they brought - they should have started with that, and 3) cannot adapt fast enough to start fighting the war they are in, and not the war they wanted. A lot of discussion on how badly the Russian war machine is broken. I argue it is much worse than what we see on the battlefield, their very theories of this war are broken. Here history backs me up entirely - bring a broken theory to a war means you had better be a very fast learner. And I am not seeing that quality on the Russian side right now. I have had this weird thought in my head on this entire war, "where have I seen this before?" And I am going to recommend anyone really interested to read into the War of 1812 fought in North America. Read Donald Graves series, starting with the Battle of Chryslers Farm and you will see a lot of the same themes throughout.

So this was from this board on 26 Feb: "Overall Summary: As of the first 72 hours of the war, it appears that the Russian military has overestimated its own capabilities and/or the capabilities of Ukrainian resistance and has not likely met the timelines it had set during pre-war planning. The assessment is that the next 24-48 hours will be critical in the outcome of this war and if Russian forces are not about to take Kyiv and inflict some serious damage to the Ukrainian people's will, their own strategic center of gravity will become more vulnerable. " That was 2 days into the entire thing. Since then we have heard a lot of pundits and retired military folks try and wrestle with this whole thing. I am not surprised formal DOD, MOD assessments are showing what they are to be honest because pretty much from the start of the this war just about everyone has been using macro-quantitative calculus to try and predict/model what has been going on. On a CNN video just a few days ago Gen Petraeus was describing the situation in Mariupol and why it matters. He did a pretty good job describing the drive for a "land-bridge" between Crimea and the Donbas and why the Russians are trying so hard in this area. Then he slipped right into the old macro-quantitative thinking. He outlined how once Mariupol was taken it would free up Russian forces to advance north and cut off great swaths of Ukrainian in the East. I have seen various predictions of Russian "pincer moves" and the like. This all makes perfect sense if one is applying conventional warfare metrics, all largely based on macro-quantitative calculus of force sizes/ratios and combat power. What they are missing, and frankly it is not surprising to see it emerge on a wargaming board, is a view through a lens of micro-qualitative calculus; playing CM, in all its versions, has changed the way we see warfare. All CM veterans see the signs of something different at a micro-level: abandoned vehicles, loss of high value assets, loss of high level commanders, videos of embarrassing Russian cluster-f#cks and evidence of UA successes just about everywhere. A lot of these metrics are qualitative and when combined with the macro-quantitative they create a very different picture. Social media has allowed us to see a macro - micro-qualitative view as well; we can basically upscale our micro-view through very wide sampling. By doing this, a lot of us have noted that the texture of this war is looking very different. It is one, for the Russians, of extreme friction caused by the UA approach. The Russians are fighting in an operational tar pit, the entire battlespace is sticky for them. Some of this is by their own shortfalls, while in many places it is by design by the defending forces. I do not know who the military master-mind is on the Ukrainian side but he has clearly been reading about Finland, Giap and the Comanches. The UA has not only stopped the Russian military, they changed the fabric of the battlespace for them. This thing is not over yet and will likely continue to evolve. I am not entirely onboard with the Russian collapse scenario, but we are literally a couple key indicators away.

No that is the Silver Fox who did CMCWs developer/designer video on Slitherine prior to release. I will not dox him, but to know him is to love him.