The_Capt

That makes no sense to me. I am struggling to find a historical example of this and am coming up empty. One can do well tactically and still fail to translate into Strategic gains but book ending failures around Operational and somehow calling as successful makes no sense as far as I can see.

This is an interesting microcosm of the entire war at this point. The Russians have lost 1 - confirmed and 2 - damaged (how bad?) MBTs at a cost to the UKR Army of 2-4 men (assuming they did not get away). My sense is that this is what is going on all over the place. Been a lot of discussion on the Russian Grind but things like this make me wonder who is "grinding" whom? Tactically I have to go with the idea that the Russians thought this was a secure area and this is an admin move (e.g. column, mounted/no defile drills). Problem was (and still is) is that the "frontline" is wherever a Russian is standing on Ukrainian soil at this point. The Russians might adapt but in this case that means dismounting infantry and clearing every defile along that highway. And now a "defile" is any cover out to 4km on either side of that road. Once they do that they slow down significantly and then infantry become the targets of snipers, mines/tripwires. It takes a long time to train build a tank and train a crew, it probably takes a day to train up someone on the UKR side to do this sort of action. Worse it is a matter of time until the Russians go "free-fire zone/Mongolian" on this whole thing and just start shooting at anything that moves, further losing ground on the narrative as these incidents wind up on Twitter. There is nothing in this equation that favors the Russians at this point.

[From "elsewhere", apologize for repeat of some terms - I only have some many clever turns of phrase in the bank] Can Russia win a war of attrition? I think that is the question the Russians are asking themselves right now. My assessment is "probably not" based on a couple dimensions: - Quantitative - Russia is quickly coming up on 20% of declared invasion forces lost. As of this morning, Oryx is reporting 18 BTGs worth of tanks gone from the Russian side, they cannot sustain that indefinitely. On paper Russia has 12500 tanks but some serious questions as to how much of that fleet is actually in any state of readiness need to be asked. Russian assessment is 200 BTGs in total or there abouts, so they likely have between 2-3000 actual battle ready tanks or 25% of their total fleet. I would think they may have another 2-3000 they can spool up, but from what we have seen about corruption I am willing to bet half that 12500 are basically wrecks maintainer-wise or museum pieces and will not be seen in this fight. This extends well beyond tanks obviously and the Russian logistics losses are even worse, in what was already recognized as a weak system. In the end it comes down to loss ratios, right now assessments are somewhere between 3:1 and 4:1 with Ukrainians being the "1". In infantry numbers the Russians and Ukrainians are near parity in trained troops and Russia is upside down in manpower numbers once you take into account Ukraine has conducted general mobilization (listed as high as 900,000) while Russia has not. Equipment wise, Russia has the recognized advantage but that is rapidly diminishing. At those loss ratios Russia will likely lose it advantage as an offensive force (e.g. trying to keep 3:1 in their favour) fairly soon, the may already have. Either way they need to reduce that loss ratio substantially to quantitatively have a hope of attriting the UA to the point of collapse. Further if you look at the Oryx page an even more disturbing trend appears to have occurred, the Ukrainians have made a "net gain" in MBTs since this war started. They have lost "46" tanks (and here we only have social media which is likely tightly skewed) while having captured "83". So even if the Ukrainians have lost double what is being reported they are still at something like 9 tanks as a net loss. This skews the loss ratios into crazy directions. This is not just for MBTs, it carries over to just about every vehicle system. - Qualitative - the Russians need to learn and "get better" faster than the Ukrainians and there is very little evidenced of this. They will learn and adapt, war is Darwinian that way, however, the Ukrainians are producing veterans and evolving as well. The question is what is the competitive equation? The Ukrainians came in with a serious advantage (e.g. home ground, western backing) and appear to be learning very fast as we see integration of UAVs with ambushes etc. Russia may be learning but it is much slower. As late as yesterday we see complete cluster-f#$*s in Russian columns as they get hit, best thing for that one Russian unit on CNN was the commander getting killed. In the logistics battle the Russians need to learn faster and better than the Ukrainians are learning how to kill Russian logistics, again not seeing it. Looking at those two pieces together, it is not looking good. I mean Russia can keep conducting zombie muscle twitches for some time but tying those into some operational gains is a long shot. As to "grinding", I think this is actually going the other way, Russian will can only be sustained off the power of one man for so long, especially one that does not have an ideology on his side. Everyone keep wondering if Russia is willing to "double down" or "go all in", when in reality the Ukrainians are already there. So when we get to attrition of will, the thing that really matters, time is also not on the Russian side. Things are in balance, but I go by "follow the options" and right now Russian spaces are compressing while Ukraine is sustaining theirs, and in some places expanding. The real battle of attrition is in that space and one of "how long can the Russians last?"

Well the first thing to remember when looking at UKR forces is that there are layers here. Unlike the Russian forces who, for the most part, try to control where they are with LOCs back to Belarus or Russia, these are horizontal forces and relationships. The Ukrainians have vertical forces and relationships in addition to horizontal ones. So take any map of the conflict: This one from wikipedia - So the interplay of red and yellow with tac signs is horizontal. And from this it does look like the Russians are trying to do some operational pinching which would normally point to some trouble for the UA. The reality is though that the map is really three dimensional. Vertically there is a foundation of local and regional support and combat power in the form of an ever growing resistance (I hear a lot of western experts say "insurgency", I think I even used the term early once and this is inaccurate, a resistance is really something else from a lot of directions). Further, for every day that the Russians bog down, that vertical resistance gets better armed, better organized and better prepared. So what? Well from a Russian viewpoint that vertical layer underneath means two very bad things: support and friction. Ukrainian force will be able to draw support from that layer in the form of manpower and logistics. This means the Russians are now force to make those "pinches" air tight, which is extremely labour intensive. For example, locals can push fuel and ammo into a pocket, through all the backroads and farmers fields, which they know very well, and continue to supply fighting power to seemingly cut off troops. The level of control required for that is extreme, as the US learned in Vietnam. Second is friction. Having even low tech resistance everywhere is exhausting in terms of constant attrition and morale. Every move you make is watched and reported on, every road move is like the freakin Memphis Bell mission over Germany - someone is going to get killed and we are all hoping it isn't us. Logistical lines need to be iron-cladded. And this will inevitably lead to over use of force on civilians which does nothing for the information war. So in this sense it is really hard to judge where the Ukrainians stand by using the pins on the mapboard. They have already gone hybrid. For example, how many major tank battles have we heard about? There have no doubt been clashes but the Ukrainians are already fighting like Comanches with drones right now offensively and it is working for them. Defensively, again layers, they can dig in and be very difficult to dig out, and even if you do, you still have a deeper resistance to deal with in the civilian population. My assessment matches what we have been seeing all over mainstream. The Russians have stalled...bad. This was not a consolidation or re-org or clever trap, it was a significant stalling an a systemic level going all the way back through those LOCs. The Ukrainians have created so much friction on the Russian advance that the war machine looks like it broke. They are now staging local c-attacks and very visible attrition actions from what I can see. The question the remains is "can the Russians re-org/re-boot and somehow regain the operational offensive?" This, particularly around Kyiv. Or are we going to see what I call "zombie muscle twitches" as formation commanders try and look busy to get the heat off them that is coming from Moscow? These can even seem dramatic but they do not translate into any real operational gains. Don't know, a lot of opinions out there for either side. Few things I do notice: - Russians are not even talking about Western Ukraine anymore. If the aim was to take the whole perogy, Kyiv is more symbolic. In order to do that "entire Ukraine" thing, one has to cut off support from the West. Which really means that all this prom-night groping in the East - so sweaty but not really going nowhere - is missing the point entirely once we accept that Ukrainians will very likely keep on fighting both conventionally and unconventionally even after Kyiv falls. Why there was not a very sharp attack from Western Belarus at what it the real strategic Center of Gravity in all this, Lviv, to seal up the western end of Ukraine, including the Carpathians, was the first sign that the Russians did not think this through. - Operationally, the Russians have still not established pre-conditions and we are over two weeks in. Air, info, electronic, cognitive/decision and logistical superiority have all been a hard fail. For example, Russian Air Forces should be hitting logistical resupply from the west 24/7 - an air campaign for the history books- and they are largely tepid and absent. They need to work on that or this grind is going to be much longer, to the point they very may well not be able to sustain. - Operationally, the Ukrainians are not showing signs of buckling in all those pre-conditions areas. There is no doubt erosion but they still can find, fix and finish Russians and even do local offensive actions. All the while they coordinate and communicate effectively and are still able to push support in from the West as they get better and better prepared. So in summary, keep an eye on that vertical Ukrainian dimension because it is decisive and something needs to demonstrate the Russians are even able to set what should have been initial conditions and I may start to buy in on the "Russian Grind" strategy. Until then we are at Balkan-No-Step, everyone digs in and tries to influence the negotiation table, or Death March to Moscow as the Russian military simply quits. I mean the Russians do have the numbers for the Russian Grind but that is on paper and looking at the horizontal dimension only. This is unfolding like a European version of that anecdote from Afghanistan, "Russians have all the fancy watches but the Ukrainians have all the time".

Happens all the time: https://www.royalengineersbombdisposal-eod.org.uk/individual/prescott-j/ There is mountains on the UXOs in Kuwait after Gulf War and I knew people who did this work. Munitions do all sorts of really weird stuff when one is throwing that much iron around. You can get damaged ordinance and stuff that literally looks like someone just dropped it gently.

Having a truck blow up next to you has to lead to some performance anxiety. I mean hell, I have trouble peeing with people watching.

Could be an abandoned vehicle kill...doesn't matter. Fact is a Russian tank got all blown up. It could be staged, could be real (e.g. no one got out because that all were killed inside) There is drone footage everywhere, so what? In fact if that was an abandoned Russian tank being "snuff" killed, that actually makes it worse (see: why abandoned vehicles is a bad sign). Of course the Ukrainians are doing their own info-ops but two things stand out 1) how easy it has been for them to get all this kill-porn and 2) how well they have managed to get that information out to the world. One big thing Trent missed is the fact that the Ukrainians can take these shots and still broadcast them globally, which is a major win on its own. It also highlights a complete failure by the Russians to gain any control of the information domain.

Seriously..W...T...F?! How do pieces of Russian equipment that are right near the top of the JTL wind up being abandoned because they fell into a ditch?

Not sure how much is causality and how much is correlation to be honest. I hear a lot of western analysis scratching their heads on why the Russian Airforce have not - now entering week 2 - swept the skies, destroyed the Ukrainian AF on the ground and started doing SEAD. Of course the bigger question is "how does one do SEAD against MANPADs?". That UK Starstreak can reach to 23,000 feet, so the old dynamic of having mid altitude air superiority once you take out SAMs could be in trouble. Further, now drones look to own below 20000 feet. Either way, I think we can agree that more Mig 29s for Ukraine is a good thing operationally and tactically, strategically and politically it gets dicey hence the hand-wringing.

Normally I would agree that this sets up some sort of Air Denial effect; however, Russian Air Force is pretty tepid and somewhat absent, so not sure as to change in calculus impacts there, and Russian risk acceptance is very different from what we have seen, so I am not sure we could count on Ukrainian airpower having as broad of an effect as it would have on us. But hey, definitely worth trying, give them air-to-ship missiles while we are at it and try to shake up that dynamic. So on the topic of "what hard power the west can bring to bear" which seems to be confounding a lot of people I would offer: - SOF, special forces were made for this kind of work, so going in covertly into Ukraine to collect intelligence and provide AAA is no doubt on the table - Posture on bordering NATO countries. Already things are ramping up but there is room here for more shows of force that may make the Russians nervous...we can do exercises to. This may force Russia to rethink putting all its ground forces into Ukraine - Black Sea. NATO has naval forces in the Mediterranean, is there an option to put them in the Black Sea (they have done it before) either in Turkish or Romanian waters. This is definitely an escalation but perfectly legal. - Back doors. Bering Sea and the Arctic. These are all within reach, capability and legal frameworks for NATO/Allied demonstrations of force. -Space. A lot of unknowns within Space. We have signed laws not to weaponize space but there are also grey areas one could drive a trick through. Russia has space based assets that are vulnerable to cyber, at least, these could be on the table. - Sharp Power. The US and west can do political warfare as well, along with Cyber efforts to erode and subvert Russia from within are likely back on the table. These actions tend to be hard to attribute so there is a lot of space here, biggest problem is that based on history one can not build these in a hurry, they take time and effort to set up. All of these are measures short of no-fly zones or direct confrontation. They are all tricky and could easily end in confrontation but could be on the table as strategic manoeuvre room. Some are likely already happening. My point being that escalation is a nuanced space, not digital. I see a lot of frustration from may corners that the west is not simply "rolling in" but there are still a lot of options on the table before we get to that. Of course what really sucks if civilian dying all the while the west comes up with some sort of compression and "fixing" strategy on Russia.

We have avoided talking about the Dragon on this thread but maybe it is time to broaden the discussion. I personally think that the only real potential “winners” in this war are NATO and China. NATO has just gained what it so badly needed, relevance. Unless we are talking a total collapse of Russia, NATO will have a job out to the 22nd century thanks to Putin. China is the other potential big winner. This war will likely push Russia into Chinas orbit-ack the historical trust but in order to have a semblance of an economy, Russia will swallow all that because, money. That puts all of Russia’s resources in Chinas hands, as we just cancelled them, and for cheap. This will continue to feed Chinas massive ambitions with the means to do it. My thinking is that China is many things but normally they are not stupid, so a overt military action could totally screw up the good deal they are staring at for now good reason. Like Ukraine, Taiwan is not a existential emergency for China but also like Ukraine we do know nations are very capable of acting irrationally. So I think it comes down to a question of China remaining smart and quietly making major gains while we get all scope eye on Russia and Europe.

Absolutely, I suspect we are already seeing an erosion of our doctrinal concepts around big expensive platforms as Ukraine seems to be waging the first smart-missile defensive war, of this century at least. The use of a Mig-29 is more likely an information win, they nail a few Russian birds or get some really “Wow” strikes that go all over social media but the heavy lifting is being done by small missile teams and good old infantry dug and slugging it out.

What is interesting about this is that the US and Europe are likely already contributing the most dangerous thing they can, ISR. A lot of those Russian tanks that are getting "blowd up" are likely a result of ISR feeds be given to the Ukrainians from the West, particularly satellite. The problem of crossing the Rubicon in these scenarios is to make sure you know where it actually is.

I am stretching to remember a time where thing were this tense during the Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis was the only time that US and Russian forces were literally in confrontation but it stayed Cold. If you recall the lead in scenarios for movies like The Day After and Threads or any books for that matter, they started with an invasion of a country by the USSR and then a collision with US/NATO troops in that country leading to an escalation. We have that first condition, and I think everyone is working very hard to avoid the second one. I think what has changed is the BMD equation. I have no idea what the US has been working on for over 30 years but the thanks to NK, the ability to hit incoming ICBMs is no longer zero in the US (not sure about the rest of the West). And what had to be keeping Russian leadership up at night is just how high above "zero" that number is, because it breaks MAD when it gets high enough. We do know it is not 100% ability to stop nuclear attack or there would be NATO involvement in this war, and it would likely be over.

I was referring to your previous post and commentary on the "average citizen". My point being that it matters just what one does before a crisis as it does what one does after has occurred. Our track record on the latter is solid, but our performance on the former abysmal at times, including the current one. My underlining point being that while we have been wrapped up in our own nonsense we clearly lost the bubble on this one and should reflect on that moving forward. Or we could just go back to ignoring it and risk it happening again.

I guess I am a little sceptical that a 40+ km convoy that hasn’t moved for 5 days and is in the open on the road behinds bare to the sky in an air parity situation, is really a coiled steel spring. I mean if they were organized they would be in hides and assembly areas with cam nets up and all around security. Russian may be trying to grip their logistics problems but everyday they don’t the worse it gets. Vehicles will start to break without maintenance support, fuel tanks run dry from running in the cold and troops run out of food, there is ample evidence of this happening. I guess I am not seeing the same FOBs (a concept that really doesn’t work here) or a logistics hub system yet. The Russians have lost 15 BTGs worth of tanks and a CAA’s worth of logistics vehicles if the open source stuff is accurate. That is a bit more than a SNAFU and starting to approach operational damage it is hard to recover from. I am not calling the Russians done yet but they can see it from where they are, they need to re-start serious offensive action, achieve the preconditions they should have two weeks ago and get on with it before Ukrainian forces chew up their logistics system while they are setting it up.

Isn't that kind of fatalistic shrugging what got us here, right now? By that logic, we could say, "Well ya Russia invaded a sovereign state, happens all the time. Someone will figure it out over there in Europe...where is Ukraine anyway. Change the channel, those kids getting blown up is disturbing." The world is a turbulent and dangerous place and I am not sure apathy about it is the best strategy. It sure wasn't for global terrorism, and it really hasn't seemed to work in this case either. At best this is kicking crisis down the road so our kids can deal with them, at worst we find ourselves in a mess and have no idea how we got here because we were to busy fighting over the deck chairs. Having read a fair amount of history and previous generations didn't seem to go "meh", not sure we should either.

Not if you fly them from Polish airfields, quietly. This will no doubt get Russia all hot and bothered but 1) Article 5 and 2) Russians have been basing in Belarus so the seal is broken. As to their utility, well that depends on Russian air control, which has universally been...uneven. If the Russians cannot establish air superiority then those MiGs start making a lot more sense. Failing that you base them as far west as you can and use a lot of hasty runways and the like, tricky but doable with enough support and that is assuming Russian ISR can even figure out what airfield to hit, it has not been very good either as far as we can tell.

Not really what I am talking about. More about the global order and how it is failing while we are to busy either arguing with each other or chasing some nonsensical visions of the future. Humanity is a harsh place and if you want to stay on top you have to earn it. We in the west forgot that somewhere along the way.

So much bigger than equipment. For too long we have sold Canadians on "better kit = better military" we are past that. We need to look at military reforms that cut across the entire institution, hell our mobilization model is based on WW2. 2% GDP is no good if it means we just "buy more wrong".

I think mistakes were made, to say the least. In reality this is going to likely go down as a massive Russian strategic failure, possibly nation breaking but we would be remiss not to look in that mirror and recognize that it is also a western failure writ large. We collectively run the planet (casting nervous glance at China) and as such this mess that took 20+ years to happen has to come home to roost on our decision making. As to the NATO argument, I guess what sticks is that every former eastern bloc nation who has joined NATO did so of their own free will and for very good reasons. What happened is akin to watching a man with three wives he abused for years beating the one who stayed behind and blaming the other two who left. Yes, technically he might have just spread the abuse more equitably but how on earth does that equation get right?! The US was using the same strategy that won the Cold War, enticement and Russian response with a strategy of bombing or threats of bombing, followed by more bombing cannot compete, and that is not on us. I think we in the West do need to take a long hard look at how we basically went past "letting it happen" to "enabling because we like cheap gas and were to busy with our own crap". I am Canadian and frankly the lines we fed ourselves for over 30 years of a utopian liberal humanistic new world order, and kept smoking right up until Feb 24th meant we lost sight of just how nasty the world was really getting and failed to do anything about it. I hope that some lines are re-drawn as a result of this and we try and realize that things like freedom and democracy come at costs that every generation must pay, not just the ones in the movies.

Ok, so there has been a lot of finger pointing at the US on what it, should have done, should do or not do etc. I think it is time to point that finger back at Europe on this point. Who thought it was a good idea to become energy dependent on a nation that has been causing ruckus since 2008, did a soft invasion of another European nation in 2014, has been pulling stunts in the backfield ever since then and now has demonstrated just how unstable it is? This is worse than US dependence on Arab oil, which they have worked very hard to get rid of, as Arabs can be jerks and support terrorism but they are not likely to invade with 100k plus troops. Can someone explain this one to me? Because the Euros that paid for that gas found their way to funding this fiasco and no one seems to be saying to much about it.

I think the major difference between discussions here and what I have seen from a lot of the "experts" is that they seem to focusing on quantitative assessment, while we are largely focus on qualitative. We can count up the losses and numbers as well as any right now but when linking that back to qualitative deductions one comes up with different conclusions. I mean one can see that about 10% of the Russian invasion force of tanks has been attrited. From a quantitative view that is not great but losses are to be expected in front line capability and it likely matches some other similar military actions. Then if one takes the remaining 90% versus big red spaces on the map, I can see how people are coming to the conclusions that they are. What is missing is all the weird stuff, like most of those tanks have been abandoned either out of gas or crews just left. That is a qualitative observation on how or why those tanks were lost beyond what was lost. I am not surprised that a forum of avid wargamers and students of history are taking a broader qualitative system view, and frankly the real experts/analysist who work for government/military are doing the exact same thing (with better data). In the end events will confirm or deny which viewpoint has been correct and the truth is probably somewhere in between. What has been interesting is that we here have been about 24-48 hours ahead of mainstream in a lot of ways. In the first couple of days we noted some odd signals and had pretty much decided that the "quick war" was a loss by the end of the first weekend. Then experts caught up and complimented "Ukrainian resistance", when it was in fact a pretty convincing military defence, and were stating that Ukraine may hold out for a couple weeks but the end was going to be the same. As things unfolded it became more apparent here that the Russian war machine had stalled hard - while mainstream media was pointing to the looming 64km convoy North of Kyiv - which turned out to be a parking lot and by now is likely turning into a graveyard. We began to wonder if the Russians might even get to the siege phase. Now most experts are still seeing a brutal siege phase and a long term guerilla war. Here in our little bubble it is looking more likely that the Russians will have to be halting broad offensive action soon and we could see this turn into a stalemate scenario...all largely based on qualitative assessment of 1) Russian inability to establish what should have ben pre-conditions such as information and air superiority, 2) very poor Russian logistical performance, 3) Signs of eroding Russian morale, 4) Baffling Russian C2, and 5) The increasing/acceleration of Ukrainian will and capability to fight. This is beyond the changes in strategic narrative from Russia, who went from "unconditional surrender" to "conditional surrender" in about 10 days. As well as the growing impact of what has become the economic equivalent to a nuclear war against Russia. We will see how close everyone is as this thing unfolds, we could be wrong or too optimistic based on a steady stream of what may be fairly isolated events but when strung together on social media look like a trend. The major shift I am looking for right now is signs of Russian defensive operations like minefields, major digging in and the like. At the strategic level we might start seeing less of Putin and the identification of a new "spokesperson", this may be a sign of a shifting power dynamic at the top. I recall back in 2014 the Russian Foreign Minister saying "if Russia wanted to, we could be in Kyiv in two weeks" or words to that effect, well that is Thurs and so far they can't even seem to be able to cordon Kyiv, let alone control it; there are strange rattling and scraping sounds coming out of the Russian War Machine. All the while Ukraine is waging an information war that is now the Gold Standard and a employing a hybrid operational approach that will be actively studied for a century at least. In another reality, if I were on the Russian Military Staff and had a golden Willie Wonka ticket to say whatever I wanted without repercussions, it would be "Get out, now. They are not surrounded, we are."

Heh, I have an already pretty active day job. Think of this as bonus customer service - check out the gift shop while you are here!