The_Capt

It is kinda like listening to William Shatner cover an Elton John song (I…am….a…Rocket, man). I mean the words kinda match up but what the hell….?

So it is still going below zero C at night around Kyiv, which means those troops are going to be running their engines to stay warm. The longer that "convoy" stays there the more gas it uses. If it stays too long, now you have to re-fuel a 64km parking lot full of empty vehicles and cold troops. A good plan would be to harass the convoy to keep them awake and focus on hitting the "resupply to the resupply".

Not pure conjecture in my opinion. The Russian military, particularly its ground forces still have the roots of Soviet doctrine in their makeup. However, they have adapted somewhat in the intervening years. At the operational level (so the wiki map), that is a very Soviet style attack plan. It aims to overwhelm an opponent with multiple axis of advance in a single very mass based push. A series of objectives in depth and avoiding cities and urban combat where possible. A the tactical level, however, things get a little weird. Russia abandoned the MRR/TR model in favor of the BTGs which a far more combined arms integrated, looking more like western Battlegroups. Even with these new structures the Soviet system would see a series of echelon attacks along this major axis, that did not happen. In a lot of cases the advances just appeared to have stalled (e.g. the long lines of vehicles along single roads), tactically what we are seeing does not have the tempo or velocity of a Soviet style attack.

It has been discussed, but it is tricky and there is just so much other stuff out there.

Look, fair point that it was a complex system collapse but I am not really buying that Russian domestic pressure had nothing to do with it. At a minimum the Russian public stood aside and let their empire collapse; however, I think that there was pressure and permission in Russian society for this change to happen, as you say at the end of quite a long process. The real point is that Ukraine, and the west, had better hope pray that the Russian CoG of domestic pressure works, or they will have a lot less options. If the Russian people honestly believe that this whole thing is existential to them and not just one Charlie Brown looking autocrat, then Ukraine will definitely lose this war, the only question left is how? Western support will continue but there will be no M1A2s rolling in to drive the Russians out, or no fly zone or anything beyond what we are already seeing; that train is not coming. Why? Because the west in not ready to re-set civilization over this unless Russia uses WMDs first at which point the Ukraine becomes irrelevant and we finally get to see if a nuclear ware is really winnable or not.

I work hard to keep my worlds apart but this question is being asked at strategic levels in just about every nation in NATO right now.

I am pretty sure that is not true. A quick search on the links between Afghanistan and the Fall of the USSR produces a lot of contrary evidence to that effect. https://faculty.washington.edu/aseem/afganwar.pdf https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/180/ As examples.

It has been a long while since I flexed my combat engineering muscles but that is a professional job right there. The fact they bagged a tank on the bridge (which is the only thing that makes sense here) is pretty rare.

If Russia is going for Marshal Law, it is a concrete sign that there is significant instability on the domestic front. Putin may not be able to go all in if he needs those forces to hold onto power. There is also a point when the Russian military is going to say “nope”, this is not, NK Putin does not have an ideology to hold this together. No ideology means no real control on perception or agency beyond legal frameworks.

I can take a shot at it. The 5 axis plan should have been the first warning light in my opinion. Without WW2 troop levels, complete air supremacy, info supremacy and an epic logistics plan, something this big and complex as this “solution” is nuts. Even with all that you are still taking risks as there are only so many roads and rail in that country and you assume the Ukrainians are going to fix that. 5 lines of advance, all over 100kms, some over 200kms and that only gets you half the country, we are talking Barbarossa-level here. If you need that many axis to try and ensure a quick and cheap war, you are fighting the wrong war. They will be studying this failure for years but I suspect there is a complete disconnect between political objectives, strategy and operational/tactical level of warfare here. Politically this was a demonstration. A flexing of power in the near abroad to bring the Ukrainians in line and show that the west was weak and divided while Russia is strong like bear. Strategically it was quick and cheap. Built on a whole lotta bad assumptions this whole quick roll-over war was not aligned with the political as it was very risky and could actually demonstrate the opposite of what they were shooting for. Operationally - the 5 axis plan to create the quick and cheap strategy. What insanity led any of the Russian brass think “5 axis assault = cheap and quick”? I can see them trying for quick here but cheap?! Finally all the operational scene setting and enablers are missing, got dropped to keep the bill down? Tactical - whatever the hell this epic fail is calling tactics. We have seen armoured pulses, then infantry leading in some weird recon in force thing. Flailing airmobile ops, some amphib action for those with that kink. City smashing which is going nowhere but bad. And an air campaign that is so tepid it borders on non-existence. This whole freakin thing feels designed by committee to be honest. So the real question is “how do you demonstrate quickly and cheaply, with the forces you have and acceptable risk?” There were options but it sure wasn’t this.

First step, sealing of urban centres and countryside. Russia would have to commit it entire professional ground force (208k) and then call up reserves and do conscription to even look at sustaining it - we are talking about a country the size of France. Also what do you do about the other nations you are trying to menace? Harsh language? Because everything is now tied up In this operation without full mobilization, which creates enormous domestic resentment. But you are all in. Second step. You dig into firebases/FOBs whatever to try and control the ground. This is setting yourself for continuous attrition, now with reserves and conscripts as your professional forces can only go so far. Now you start taking a steady stream of dead and wounded with spikes and horror stories, compounded by you own troops war crimes and massacres (see: sustaining resolve of the west for the long term). Because you never really break the will of the nation to fight and in reality you only control the FOBs and about 1000m from them and insurgency has got all the room. Your LOCs are the stuff of nightmares, ambushes and captured troops. Troop morale is a total mess and discipline will follow. Step 3 - Go on the Offensive, search and destroy and all that good stuff. Here you even have fewer troops as this is very dangerous and specialized work. But you are all in, you got all the sigint firing, you are working humint and even doing nasty infiltration stuff (you do speak the language), you get some wins but this takes a very long time and for most of it especially early on you are coming up empty and losing people…and ever time you screw up you deepen resentment and resolve of locals to fight. You never get enough intel to really swing things your way. You bag some insurgency leaders but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. You kill the #2 insurgency leader, 17 times. Step 4- Wasteland. Ok, so you give up search and destroy and go all Rolling Thunder, start breaking things. Short of nukes this will take a mountain of ordinance and money you no longer have, and this whole time you are still bleeding. By this time you might even start seeing terror tactics in Russia itself. But you are now starving people, so mass migration for many, for others nothing left to lose. You also cannot stop all supplies, these cities and countryside are just too big, so there will be a network of Selensky trails over the parts you control better and pretty much freedom of movement where you don’t. Ok, so you have spent let’s say 18 months now, entrenched in FOBs barely controlling your own LOCs, bleeding daily so some really big numbers start adding up, focused on a single operation so other nations are getting cocky, you are really going broke, you have not broken the will of the Ukrainian people or at least enough of them and somehow you have not had a domestic revolution. So let’s add up the bill for what you would need to make this work: - a new economic system because this semi capitalist one Russia currently has will not survive the plan. Something insular and self contained. - a completely new and huge internal security mechanism to keep domestics in line backed by even more military to back them up. - an ideology that somehow glues it together to try and win the hearts and minds of your own people. Well we have just re-invented the Afghan War and the communist system to try and sustain it…and it still failed. Except this time the Ukrainians have the entire western world onside backing them with weapons and support, no yellow jugs of homemade crap, no we are talking EFPs and next gen autonomous stuff. You say the Ukrainians should not base a strategy on domestic Russian pressure, why not? It worked very well for Vietnamese and Afghans (twice) and is the strategic centre of gravity for the Russians. By the approach above you have elevated “killing Russians” as a new Ukrainian religion so their will is solid, the domestic home front is where it always fails in these messes. The fundamental change in calculus that needs to be made here is that light fragmented forces that 1) are armed with some very advanced western equipment and munitions, 2) can sense, connect, communicate and synchronize in near real time and 3) is motivated, desperate or just really pissed off, are not “light or fragmented”, they are distributed warfighting mass resting on a foundation of home field support. They can, and have, won in the long term without #1 and #2, they really only need #3. And Russia would need to go full Genghis in order to try to shoot their way through that, which neither their own population or the west could tolerate.

This gentleman, and I am sure he is scholar, is absolutely correct...if this was a conventional war. He is talking about a war long gone and the calculus makes no sense here. Conventional Ukrainian forces in this sort of war are difficult to "cut off" at all because everywhere that they wind up, they are in friendly terrain. So lets take that example up in that thread. Say the Russians manage to pinch off from that fat bit on the Dnieper and link up at Horlivka trapping that "pocket". By conventional metrics the Russians should be able to wait 72-96 hours and any Ukrainian force should be out of supply, cut of from C2 and ready to surrender, brilliant. Very slow...damn near glacial, but nice and Soviet. [Aside if you look at CMCW Soviet Campaign, the Soviet MRR is supposed to cover 50km in about 48 hours. This is straight out of the manual for a breakthrough battle scenario. In the original plans the Soviets wanted to be on the Rhine in seven days so in game terms they had 5 days to go down past Frankfurt and capture Rhine crossings at the end of the Soviet Campaign. That is a distance of about 200km. The deepest penetration I can see for the Russians (wikipedia) is about 150km along two very narrow corridors and we are heading into day 8, they have stalled...calling it] But! This is already not a conventional war, the widescale arming of civilians and all those Molotovs was our first hint. So if the Russians do create that southern pocket, they are looking at roughly 20000 sq kms of hostile civilian country that now have Ukrainian force integrated within them...and no air superiority. The UA will have any and all gas it needs from the locals for a lot longer than 72 hours (not every town had a gas station in 1941) but eventually it will run out but not before it really messes thing up with what armor it keeps. Further it is not like this has been Pear Harbor, the Ukrainians have stockpiled caches and planned for this exact fight. So local support in the form of food and gas, ammo caches, medical support and recruits...and 20000 sq kms to hide in. Further, the Russians seem incapable of shutting down internet (and with star link they might not be able to at all) so these now hybrid forces are not only connected back to HQ, they are connected to each other. That is a nightmare occupation scenario if there ever was one. One can draw red lines on the map all day long but they are just that, lines. They do not represent the actual situation on the ground by a long shot. If one uses WW2 metrics, sure it looks bad but we are very far from that. Finally this is in the south east in what was supposed to be a "soft" area from a support point of view, so it may actually work here if the locals opt out and start turning in UA, maybe. Once you get west of the Dnieper, forget it. You can pinch and encircle all you want but you are lying to yourself...you are the one who is encircled, unless you are willing to create camps and do mass evictions, which just makes your strategic situation worse (see: domestic support issues). I have watched a few experts drawing lines like this was the Gulf War and unless the will of the Ukrainian people breaks on a massive scale (and there are no indications it will, in fact it has gone the other way), encirclement is a really bad idea as you now stretch out your forces along very long LOCs, surrounded by hostiles. In fact this whole 5-6 prong attack was dumb, it looks like one of those "power point" ideas that the political level loves: "We will hit them along all those axis and create a shock that will break their will", brilliant, clapping. Old Afghan Veteran "Wait a minute. You want 5-6 axis of advance, all having about 100-200 kms of hostile territory to cover in...sorry did he say 72 hours? And then we have to hold those LOCs, right? Oh, sorry, of course they will surrender their cities and not engage in urban warfare so we won't need those LOCs for more than 72 hours...hmm. And how long was the air campaign? Oh, about 24 days...well that makes sen...oh, you said 24 hours...wow, that is a little light, no? And of course we will hit them with cyber attacks to cripple their C2, comms/internet instead...huh...ok, but what about social media...oh, right the total surrender thing. Well for something this ambitious we must be leading with our best shock troops...oh, 3rd echelon who we aren't going to even tell what is going on...ok....well, good luck with that." In short, if the Russian government worked as hard on this operational plan as they have on trying to hide their money this thing might have really been over in 3 days.

If it walks like a duck… I have seen a few of these “wait these crafty Russians are using some obscure 1930s doctrine, that is why we are seeing this sh$tshow”. First off, they may be using Cold War tactical doctrine for C2 but they are no where near operational doctrine. The Soviets worked in the objectives-waves style of operational manoeuvre and that is not what we are seeing here at all. They have shifted axis in some places but in Soviet doctrine that was supposed to take hours not a week. If they are going to go with “dumb-tactical mass/ genius operational manoeuvre” then where is that second one? I seen plodding and painful operational manoeuvre at play here, stalls and zero coordination between formations. They are starting to try and fill in gaps but way too late. Any Ukrainian forces in those pockets have had a week to either block or get out. The idea that Russian mass has tempo that is outstripping their opponent is laughable at this point. No they are in a prom-night sweaty awkward grope of a land war right now with a frat house wrecker party (music by Huskavarna chainsaws) as their back up plan.

Hey don't apologize for loving CMCW...tell your friends! Seriously, you have just articulated the modern military problem of the day, at least as far as air power goes. No one really knows how to do this at scope and scale. Almost all AD systems have been designed from the ground up for larger manned aircraft from treetops to 60000 feet. There are C-UAV systems out there, but these little beasts are really small, some are near impossible to pick up on radar because they are made from composites and they are incredibly cheap compared to a modern AD system ammunition. Big stuff doing higher altitude strike is going to get got (I have no idea how the Ukrainians still have those Turkish ones in the air), but it is the massive amounts of smaller systems that make "blinding" near impossible and shielding from nasty small strike also hard. These are the equivalent to the knives the Spanish used on the Peninsula in 1812, every where, sharp as hell and a thousand little cuts. The real challenge for Ukraine will be to keep an integrated C4ISR system these little bastards can plug into but right now that is looking like Twitter, which will do in an insurgency. The US has spent a lot of money (think B dollars) on this problem with everything from jammers, to direct energy lasers to small c-attack drones. Gawd help the Russians if the Ukrainians figure out swarming, then all those tanks become death traps without a next gen C-UAV system, and I have not seen the Russians cover the more advance concepts like "basic logistics" so I am doubtful they have C-UAV covered.

That Switchblade system is man-portable and made for USSOCOM so idiot proof...snicker...seriously, it is idiot proof so that they can do exactly what they are going to do with it, train really angry civilians whose country just got invaded by a world class tool to use it to make life a living hell for invading forces.

Sure, it started back in Iraq to be honest, but we also saw signs in the reports coming out the 2014 Donbas fights. The definition of air superiority is ""degree of dominance in [an] air battle ... that permits the conduct of operations by [one side] and its related land, sea and air forces at a given time and place without prohibitive interference by opposing air forces" (NATO definition, we all got one but close enough) So it comes down to the semantic definition of "prohibitive interference", so subjective. There is no real global metric for this as every nation kinda makes up their own. Most go with an ability to move, communicate and support/enable without major disruptions from enemy air power. So there is wiggle room here but in the end the modern democratization of airpower through UAVs and self-loitering munitions means that no nation can really achieve this, at least to the levels we used to plan for. Anyone and everyone can do ISR and we are talking hi resolution stuff and strike is also a big problem as we saw ISIL strapping mortars to commercial systems and dropping them on Iraqi vehicles. So in this war, without serious C-UAV capability, the Russians are not going to be able to get control of the air (as demonstrated aptly by all the drone footage), the question will remain "at what altitudes?" If the Ukrainians get some really high-tech kit/support it could include above 10000 feet. If the Russians are smart -and we are seeing that is not really their thing right now - they would also be using UAVs everywhere, they did in 2014 and then the Ukrainians also do not have air superiority in any real sense. So this would be technically static air parity but even that says you can establish air superiority locally but not operationally. I am not sure we have a word for what a bunch of UAVs flying past each other as both sides have ISR and strike from the air everywhere: Air Chaos? The disadvantage is for the Russians right now, in that they are the ones moving very large hunks of metal all over the place/ Now they will not be able to hide them or protect them from...well...death, and that is not good for morale. This will likely be a fully illuminated battlefield by doctrine standards, unless someone has an EMP we haven't seen.

And all the while your opponent is using stuff from Amazon as airborne ISR...the thing air superiority is supposed to remove. Who are we kidding the Ukrainians are going to be getting Class 1 and 2 systems with strike capability too. Up until this goat rodeo I would have bet Russia had this covered with some hi tech C-UAV stuff but after watching them throw up all over themselves for a week now, I am less confident. Bottom line, I do not think there will be air superiority for either side in reality and that is really weird. Follow up: Or this nightmare: https://www.avinc.com/tms/switchblade-600

Well they should have sent a memo to our guys in Iraq because we kept losing it below 2000 feet. In the case above, I am thinking the Armenians were playing by the old rules, I am pretty sure the Ukrainians are not.

They won't need to, the insurgency will have self loitering munitions (air and ground based) supplied by the west. The Russians at that checkpoint will get hit and then Anonymous will hack their pay so their families don't get anything, and then go after their credit ratings and mortgages (with 50% interest thanks to sanctions). I am old school in a lot of ways now that I am advancing in age: when you see your troops abandoning your tanks and walking away, while old ladies on the other side are standing in front of them and staring them down...you seriously need to re-think what you are doing. This is not rocket surgery.

That is not what I see. I see the growing suspicion I have had for some time now that air superiority might be a dead concept, which has enormous implications. Especially if you are trying to invade/occupy another country.

So I did a piece a long way back on the thread on how Russia's Relationship as a component of its power is collapsing, this is what that looks like. They managed to get Finland, Sweden and Switzerland to vote in favor...Jeopardy answer "how you know you are totally f#cked in a land war in Europe?"

I am starting to think we may have over estimated the Russian cyber capability. If they have got dark farms of hackers ready to collapse the western economic system, why can't they even turn off Twitter in the Ukraine? Right now the social media feeds and internal communication networks in Ukraine are doing as much damage to Russia as those Javelins. If anything the cyber war looks like it is going the other way.

So I think a lot of people (including some experts) are wrestling with this concept of what a Ukrainian victory might look like. The simplest answer is "existence". If, after all this Ukraine is still a functioning independent nation (even with redrawn borders) able to decide and chart its own fate, and recognized within the global community as such...they "win". Further, as in most wars the Ukrainians win if Russian "lose" and the definition of that is widening by the min; however, the Russians also have the added spin of the reality that they can "win" in Ukraine and still "lose", this is an added complication that invading militaries all face. Russia could pound a half a dozen Ukrainian cities into dust, massive civilian casualties and eventually the Ukrainian government resolve may fracture, it is highly likely that the resolve of the Ukrainian people, at least in some circles will outlast the resolve of the government, that is a the seed of an insurgency. Technically, if the Ukrainian government falls and an insurgency doesn't happen, it is still a Russian "loss". The reason, that level of blunt use of force, human suffering and likely war crimes will ensure that the sanctions we are seeing will stick for a very long time, to the point that Russia will not be "Russia" in a few years. Further domestic support in Russia is very likely going to crack and internal security issues are almost guaranteed. Looking at the strategic options space, Ukraine has many roads to victory left to it right now. They can lose Kyiv and major cities in the east but can create governments in exile and deny western Ukraine, at least, with resistance for a generation. There are options and off-ramps for them all along the way from here to there. The Russian strategic options space is compressing quickly and painfully. Right now, the only Russian "win" is to keep the pressure up and win at the negotiation table. If they do it early and reasonably the west may lose interest in sanctions in a year or two. They may get the Crimea (but man it cost them) and some concessions but these are very big maybes right now. Russian credibility has been burned for a generation on the world stage, it is done, they do not get that back. All other options available to Russia are worse that that option. They double down and do the medieval game, and they are a third world nation or satellite of China in less than a decade. Or the Russian population votes with violence, we are looking at destabilization of Russia in the short term and possibility of a Russian Civil war in the longer. I think it much more likely that Putin is retired well before this happens. In short, doubling down on kinetic sieges is akin to finding your arm stuck in a hornets nest and deciding to start smashing it with your face. Sure you will break the hive and if given enough time you will kill a lot of hornets, but you sure as hell won't be going out dancing anytime soon. And to make matters worse, you are guaranteed to have that on YouTube with a billion hits.

Ok, hey maybe they have got some people on staff but a few tours in the sand makes them experts at shooting people and maybe not so much on the invasion of an entire country. Now if they were on the Corp staff back in 03 or SAMS grads with some NATO time, ok. Based on their resumes this is akin to getting municipal planning advice from two fire fighters. Sure they are on the payroll but way out of their lane. Live and let live but I would be cautious and weigh their opinions accordingly.

I didn’t get a real “professional analyst” vibe off them. Of course it is the Internet so pick your own truth.