The_Capt

Ok, a little huffy but good talk. Dubious authority? I have 35 years in the military and teach at a national war college (among other things), but hey you do you.

Or attack somewhere else. I guess this is my point. Ukraine got pulled into a tactical battle of attrition of Russia's choosing and then Russia went and created massive defences elsewhere. To my mind that is not a win no matter how much the RA of Wagner lose in that initial battle, unless it can break the Russians overall. It clearly did not. So I think we are trying to make a virtue out of circumstances that were not optimal. Now how the UA got pulled into this? - e.g. Bakhmut but unable to attack anywhere else. Is a major question. Did they over extend last Fall? The UA needed to defend Bakhmut and attack to disrupt the obstacle mess the RA built. Better yet attack elsewhere along the line to pull the RA laterally and cause direct stress. If they could not do that while the RA could do the inverse then there is a deeper problem here. Russia can continue this cycle until they have locked up the entire front, and then still pick and choose where to attack. This also does not track as we know that both forces are roughly the same size in country.

I gotta be honest after Severodonetsk nothing the RA has done resembles an operational level offensive. They spent tens of thousands of troops trying to take "a town". A town of no real operational value. There is no evidenced that 20-40k more troops would have made a difference. It just would have turned them into Bakhmut. That is assuming they could have coordinated the move of them in the first place. I mean it may come out after the war that there were some near run actions but more troops has not equaled more results in this war, at all. As to tackling those minefields....what were all those sexy UAS doing? Maybe EW was working for the RA, but then you HIMARS the EW platforms, they are pumping out a lot of EM. We did not see a single UAS strike on rubes laying minefields last winter. It takes remarkably few infantry to get eyes on a minelaying op...they are not subtle. Aggressive patrolling can disrupt it.

You prove my point for me as you embrace your central premise. So Ukraine, a second-hand Volvo military of corrupt Soviet era equipped and trained gaggle, held off the Russian military - which has higher defence spending than the UK even accepting corruption. Held them off when facing 12:1 odds north of Kyiv and multiple enemy axis of advance, some penetrating over 200km into their nation...and that was before we started training them? So the sum total of your position is that "we are fine, nothing to see here" because Ukraine Sucks, but Russia really sucks? Your statement about basic training essentially demonstrates your ignorance. Basic training is likely the most critical and intensive training requirement for any force generation effort. Taking that load off is 1) enormously important to sustaining the war effort and 2) set the foundations for follow on training. Considering the incredibly shortened timelines to getting these soldiers to the front, basic training is likely THE most important training they will receive. You also miss the fact that we have been training those poor simple Ukrainian officers in western staff colleges and schools for nearly a decade. Their doctrine is our doctrine. So wait a minute...we have a saying where I come from too, "sucking and blowing at the same time". So the absolutely terrible "second hand Volvo" Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to field a layered IADs system to deny the airspace of all Ukraine pretty much from the start of this thing? I mean, ok, I could buy the RA and RuAF, they invest billions and Ukraine had a pretty small Air Force to start with. The failure of Russian airpower is now down to Russia Sucks, but somehow Ukraine Sucks at everything but creating a global class networked IADS in days? They could do that but somehow the mystical dark art of combined arms manoeuvre eludes them? We can debate the future of AD and airpower all day, the blunt answer is "no one knows" but we need to figure it out. My sense is that like other technologies the entry levels are lowering. Creating an IAD system out of distributed lighter and cheaper but connected systems going to happen. Why? Because they can Deny air superiority. They are much more difficult (and with MANPADS, basically impossible) to fully suppress....that is a their main feature and why people will invest in them. And here we land on it. They can spot the tank out at range...everyone can. Here is the thing that most armchair generals completely miss, it is not about the platforms, it is how you pull them together. The Ukrainian military is linked into the US and Western C4ISR, they can see everything. They have an integrated ISR system, from Tac UAS to satellites. That is why nothing flies or drives or crawls without getting lit up. Hell even the RA has enough ISR to deny Ukrainian mass we just saw that this summer. That Ukrainian infantry platoon can see those tanks, after being cued by operational level, from 10kms away with their own UAS systems. As to infantry support, I read a RUSI report that said a Bn would need to clear 25kms of linear frontage in order to "get between enemy infantry and tanks". That is impractical and nearly impossible. The enemy will see that F35 when it takes off. It will get picked up by someone's cell phone. That will cue other systems and voila, you get 20 UAS. Conjecture on "tomorrow". Another armchair general trope. In Force Development there are levels of technological maturity used to determine how close these technologies are. UAS are Tier 0 - they are already here en masse, in mass production and evolving fast. UGVs are pretty much Tier 1 - into commercial production stages and already being fielded - there are social media feeds coming from Ukraine on how the UA has already fielded some. Something like Nanotech is Tier 9, lot of conceptual but not even prototyped yet. So that is not optimism, it is facing realities. Here take a look: https://odin.tradoc.army.mil/WEG/List/ORIGIN_china--people-s-republic-of-d6ee02&DOM_land-53d795&DOM_infantry-vehicles-0a6516 That is the US Army's TRADOC site, btw - before you go "pshaw" again. What he said. If you really want to learn about where war is going head on over to the Black Sea thread and get an eyeful of where things are going. Track it for a few weeks and then come back and we can discuss. Feel free to come on in and tell us all how it is....

Definitely. There will be f#ckery aplenty. The advantage of a soft freeze (slush) is that Ukraine can also reload and put in defensive works. Everyone points to Minsk 1 and 2 as gross failure but Russia did not invade between 2014-2022. The failure was the West not doubling down on Ukraine in the interim (of course there were other circumstances). I do not see us making the same mistake twice. Or at least I hope not. South Korea houses the US 8th Army, a similar situation needs to be set up in Ukraine, preferably with European nations taking stake. This puts a chip on the table. Russia can make duck sounds but what are they going to do? Violate Minsk 3? Like they were going to anyway. Russia has shattered hands right now. Beyond lobbing missiles and drones, and desperate tactical attacks to literally take a hundred meters. They do not really get a say about what happens in Ukraine anymore.

I forget about them because they fall under "Russian leg humping" and are entirely forgettable tactical twitches. Maybe the UA was spent, or maybe they are less inclined to mindlessly throw their people away. We may just have to face facts here. Denial/Defence has taken primacy in this war, maybe all war for awhile. Neither side can reasonably overcome this reality. Corrosive warfare may have delivered all it can given the conditions. This war may have already killed Russia, we just don't know it yet. Its zombie might even continue making sounds for a decade but the thing is dead as Marley, it just doesn't know it yet. Either way unless we some movement soon, I can see those difficult conversations kicking in by next spring.

Oh ya, no problem. Business as usual...nothing to see here.

Well here I cannot agree. The UA had just conducted two successful simultaneous operational offensives over 500kms apart. They were no doubt tired but setting up feints and pressures along the line is not unrealistic. I find it unrealistic to think the UA was only able to fight in one place last winter. They had already demonstrated they were more than capable. So this is where I go "I am not sure". Gains were made at Bakhmut, do not get me wrong. No debate there. But were there better options that would have 1) created greater operational stress and 2) disrupted RA defensive preparations? To me these are great unanswered question of 2023 - number 3 would be "what the hell was Priggy thinking? Shifting those human waves was no small thing. Or trying to sustain those waves in multiple locations. Russia continues to show that if left alone they will "attack!!!" Because their playbook has one page. But they are also nervous as hell about being attacked and outmaneuvered. Avdiivka happened because they felt like they sealed up everywhere else and could go back on offensives (attack!!). For all we know Russia would have chosen worse stress points. Now what also strikes me is why the UA could not do both? Grind at Bakhmut and conduct tactical spoiling offensives along the line to disrupt obstacles. To my mind this all highlights the fine line between Attrition and Corrosive Warfare. Both aim to exhaust and achieve victory through killing ones opponent. But Attrition does it at the front end, while Corrosive looks at the entire enemy system. Hit it on multiple points, induce friction and fractures. Then add pressure so the thing falls under its own eight. Attritional warfare won't likely work against Russia, it take too long and Russia has the human capital advantage. Corrosive warfare might work as it targets Russia capability to keep all that mass in the field. Ya, I am losing faith we are going to see a big win for Xmas too. Regardless of how we got here...we are here. The RA has ridiculous levels of minefields and are likely laying more (this region is going to be contaminated for a century at least). They still have EW and ISR, enough to interdict significant UA mass. And a long line of fodder that we can see no light at the end of the tunnel for. Without higher resolution it is impossible to determine if the RA is near failing. It is a big decision to decide to dig in and hold. Freeze the conflict and shoot for a Korean peninsula situation. Or do you reload and keep pushing...one more time?

Ah so "Ukraine Sux" Those "few battalions" are actually around 60 thousand troops by now and the main criticism has been that we are the ones "out of date". But hey if everyone sucks and we don't we are just fine..right? https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-russia-training-nato-west-military/ Lot more of this out there. To be fair "only" about 36k were ready for the summer offensive - that is about 10 brigades, give or take. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/politics/ukraine-military-training.html Maybe you should spend some time on the Ukrainian thread. The Starstreak MANPAD has a ceiling of 23 thousand feet for starters so "leisurely" flight altitudes are no longer what they were. It will be a matter of time until someone sticks that system on a UAS and then all bets are off. Sure IADs are still in use, and will continue to be, but they do not explain why tac aviation has to stay 10+km back from the front line, along with the tanks. The levels of mutual Air Denial are insane in this war and no small amount has been delivered by cheap very accurate portable systems. None of this solves for the unmanned problem, or the C4ISR problem. Most amateurs start by trying to defend platforms but were are talking system level changes that run much deeper. This has created an asymmetry that we have not seen for some time. No point on arguing "if it is real" because we have to take it as real until proved otherwise, the risk is far too high. If we want to succeed we need to essentially accept that we are behind the curve until we can prove definitively that we are not. If we sit back after this war and go "ya but" a few thousand times, we are dooming ourselves to serious failures in the future - would it be that we never did that before (insert rolleyes). I started this war like everyone else. I had assumptions and suspicions, based largely on what I had seen in Iraq and Nagorno-Karabakh. But hey I come from conventional warfighting schools and was ready to start thinking long run western supported insurgency -might be nice to be on the other side of that equation for once. Then as we saw more and more evidence mount. Force ratios did not add up, even accounting for Russian "sucking"; they could still marshal and project mass (they reached WW1 levels of fires at Severodonetsk). Then we began seeing insane stuff like tac UAS chasing RA soldiers around trees to kill them. It is just adding up too much and too far to be theatre specific. The reality is warfare has shifted, it tends to do this, and we need to determine what is an anomaly of this war and what is enduring. My sense is that this is WW1 as far as those shifts - half baked and last gen technology. What comes next is far more impactful. UGVs are just getting started. Fully autonomous is happening right now. ATGMs and self-loitering are seeing insane lethality rates at insane ranges. A platoon can now hit at operational ranges with weapons like Spike LR. That precious F-35 is not going to be beat by a superior Russian aircraft or multi-billion IADS - it is going to be blown out of the sky by 20 unmanned systems carrying cheap missiles, that all together cost a fraction of that the F-35 does. That is if we can even keep the airfield it needs safe from whatever deep strike system that flies at bird levels, taking breaks to re-charge along the way. Here is what I suggest. Take "Russia Sux" and "Ukraine Sux" and put them to the side. Assume that they do not actually suck. Now go spend some time at RUSI and ISW, and then come over to the Ukraine thread on the Black Sea forum. Once you collect enough evidence and observations you will likely see that neither Ukraine or Russia "suck enough" to explain what has happened in this war...let alone explain what will happen in the next one.

Ah yes, the "Russia Sux but We Don't" argument. I don't buy it to be honest. Russia did over extend but we are seeing far too many symptoms of something fundamental changing that cannot be explained by "Russian's simply do not get it". And then there is the uncomfortable reality that if Russia doesn't "get it", then this Summer has shown that Western trained and equipped Ukrainians "don't get it" either. That is far too many "not getting its" to make me question our high ground. Read Kill Chain by Brose, he concisely points out that we walked away with some very bad lessons out of the Gulf War and Iraq 2003. We learned in those wars that if someone tries to employ Soviet era dumb-mass against modern western mass, while we also can establish air supremacy, we will win, easily. We merrily went on investing in bloated defence projects to buy slightly better versions of the military we already had. Problem is that warfare itself shifted. The lowering of entry costs for precision/lethality/range and ISR meant that anyone can project massive Denial in the modern battlespace. A collection of dispersed MANPADs working via social media platforms can do what a multi-billion dollar IADS used to do. Unmanned has essentially broken what we understood as military mass. The largest shift has been C4ISR. Ukraine created a home grown version of JADC2 in weeks. Battlefield Illumination is so high right now that tanks and heavy hot vehicles have to disperse or risk being hit at very long ranges. One cannot employ surprise or tempo of one cannot mass before an opponent can do anything about it. This is a significant problem for all conventional militaries around the world. So looking ahead, our problem is not fighting Russia, it is fighting a force built and set up like the Ukrainian Army. Our LOCs are exposed because we have to project a looong way. Sustainment of our traditional manoeuvre forces is very expensive and vulnerable. Even if we do find a safe haven, we are hot heavy and very visible. Here I will give you a tactical problem and you can please demonstrate how US superiority is going to play out. The timeframe is now. You are a Bn commander who needs to cross a water obstacle. You are facing an opponent in a 3rd party nation that is fighting hybrid, is supplied by Chinese modern weaponry and is plugged into Chinese strategic and operational ISR. We tried air supremacy but it was impossible because modern A2/AD systems are far to small and portable...the best we can achieve is local air superiority for short periods...over 5000 feet. Below 5000 feet it is the Wild West - Chinese fully autonomous UAS are immune to EW that cuts the operator link. They come in all sizes, each one carrying a DPCIM round. The Chinese have supplied your opponent with the HJ-12, which is basically a Javelin knock-off with better range and killing power. They have also provided them with long range artillery and rockets that look a lot like Excalibur and HIMARS. They can see and hit you from beyond your range of conventional air cover. They can see and hit you from tactical air cover we cannot stop. And they will see you. Now go be "mechanized manouevrey". If it sounds like a problem, well with the exception of "fully autonomous" it is exactly what the RA is facing right now. Russia can't solve for this. Ukraine can't solve for this. To assume we can because "we are 'Merica/NATO" is extremely dangerous.

Given the state of the RA last Fall I sincerely doubt that it was able to counter the UA better faster. By accepting an attrition battle the UA ceded initiative to the RA and played to Russian strengths, not weaknesses. It comes down to operation stress. The RA was highly stressed last Fall, evidence in the two operational collapses at Kharkiv and Kherson. The RA operational system could not sustain itself so it buckled back to a lower energy state that could be sustained. The UA had several choices to continue to put pressure on that system. The one they chose was a tactical attritional battle at Bakhmut. The theory is that if you grind up tactical forces the operational system has to strain to keep replacing them. [aside: we also should not discount the fact that at Bakhmut the UA was still conducting deeper strikes against operational targets, but let’s come back to that]. The problem with Wagner was that it was an ersatz tactical capability. It was entirely self-contained, “Priggy’s Boys”. So while the UA was attriting Priggy to dust they were in fact doing two counter-productive things 1) giving breathing room for the RA and 2) eroding a force that could be an internal threat to Putin, as we saw in Jun. Further the operational stress they were looking for was likely reduced not increased. The RA/Wagner, did not care about resupply of troops who were going to die anyway. All they needed was trucks, a few bullets and cannon fodder. None of those troops got high end support from logistics or C4ISR. I am a personal fan of direct operational stress, not indirect. If the UA had kept the initiative and forced the RA to react along an 800 km frontage, they would have induced enormous logistical and C4ISR stress in the RA. The “simple” act of relocating 10k troops a couple hundred kms, repeatedly, is going to create more operational stress than simply killing them in one concentrated locale. It exposes nodes and connectors to deep strike. Causes wear and tear on forces/capability. And creates opportunity. The game in this war appears to be to project friction father and faster than your opponent can react. Based on the human waves lost at Bakhmut it was clear that Wagner and the RA could sustain in Bakhmut. Now we do need to wait for more facts and analysis to come out. And I do not want to armchair quarterback the UA as there were likely a lot of other factors we cannot see. But my sense - fear perhaps - is that Russia pulled Ukraine into a Verdun situation. Politically there was pressure to make a point. Externally wave after wave of dying Russians is excellent for the strategic narrative. Problem was/is western attention is fickle. We all sat back and went “hey look at the UA crushing it”…quickly followed by “holy crap those Russians really want this”….followed by “wait, you mean minefields still work?” And now heading towards…”hmm, now where are those exits”. Now I honestly hope that the RA collapses today. That the cumulative effects of all that attrition reach a tipping point and we see another collapse. But if this were a staff college exercise I would tell students “well you now have two choices: winter offensive to create collapse. Or winter offensive to buy time and space for deeper Ukrainian defences in preparation to freeze this thing in the event we start seeing a weakening of western support….what are we going to do?”

Oh that is fine. We can smoke cannabis too. We just can’t defend him on the internet….it is a law, got Royal assent and everything.

As a citizen of Canada who has been in the military for over 35 years and has worked all levels of tactical, operational, strategic and political. I can definitely say that any defence of LLF is not supported by my nation.

Maybe…but. The RA was (and still is) operationally hobbled. Lateral movement of 10k troops to cover obstacle prep or an offensive somewhere else would have taken time, particularly in the middle of winter. Granted many of those troops would still be breathing but there is a chance those obstacles would not have been as deep. The UA ceded initiative to the RA over the winter. To be fair, they may have been spent due to the Fall ‘22 offensive. And then there is also the reality that if it wasn’t Bakhmut it probably would have been somewhere else. As I said, I am not sure it would have mattered but it was a course of action. Getting pinned at Bakhmut paid off in dead Russians, but it also locked in those obstacle belts. There was a chance to at least do something about them with more troops actively hitting and sniping down south. The RA did not have much of a covering force in the center. Finally Bakhmut did not pay off enough. The was enough RA left to successfully defend over the summer. That is the brutal truth. We will see if the RA’s back was indeed broken but indications now are that they dodged the bullet.

My only concern/counter point is that Bakhmut also pinned down UA forces and gave the RA breathing room further along the line. While everyone was watching the slaughter at Bakhmut the RA was quietly laying minefields in depth. And that cost Ukraine the Summer ‘23 offensive (or at least on the surface). I am not sure if they had pulled back from Bakhmut and preserved their forces they could have pushed back along the line and disrupted RA obstacle preps. However, by getting pulled into Bakhmut they guaranteed freedom of action for the RA elsewhere. Best way to breach a minefield is to kill the guys before they can lay the damned thing. Based on the density I have seen the RA pulled off this damned Putin Line pretty much unmolested.

There, that is the belly fire we need.

I gotta be honest. I am not sure if the US Empire as a grand social experiment is in an irretrievable decline or we are simply suffering some transient heartburn, like that last time in 1861. I love the confidence but as an outsider I can see some deep flaws and rot in this whole thing that makes me nervous. I am not sure "well it was worse before" is good enough for 2023, it sure was not good enough back then. There seems to be two Americas- the Dream that points to global stability and cooperation, hope for us all. And the Nightmare that sees the baggage and inequality drag it all down. These are problems that I am not sure democracy can solve, in fact in some ways it is making it worse. This war is another example. As the Leader of the Free World, the US should be all over this thing. This is a great historic moment to shine. What do we get? Weird mixed messages and dysfunction, that is making everyone nervous. So yes, there is a choice to be made. Nations and power blocks are already checking exits. It is called Strategic Competition, not Strategic "Well-of-course-USA". We need an "In It to Win It" vibe but honestly are not feeling it.

Ugh, c'mon be a little bit self aware here. What can you do? What should you do? LEAD!! The one thing that drives me crazy about Americans is this weird sense of "well of course". Like it is so obvious. And then you get hurt when other people go "nope". Nicest, most powerful...and sometimes dumbest Empire in history.

And you guys are going to endure growth through immigration? Despite your history let's not pretend there isn't a dead cat stinking up the room. Hell we are growing one too. This entire grand strategy comes down to giving the globe a better choice as it comes under forcing pressures. But what if it is not better? Then what do we do?

Yep, looks like compress and contain are on the menu for Russia. Not a bad strategy, worked in the Cold War. Holds the fort down in Europe and then focus on the Pacific seems to be the play. Oh and try and forget the MENA, it was all a bad dream.

Aw, there is that smile that can light up a room.

My sense is that the sanctions are a long game. The real question is “can we keep them up?” Once this war ends we cannot simply renormalize with Russia until some conditions are met. But there will be money pressure to give in.

You forgot frogs. These things always come with frogs falling from the sky. Well every forum needs a guy with the cardboard sign portending “The End is Nigh”…

Ok, anyone have insight on the numbers he is throwing around? The inability to borrow rings true. What is the impact of only being able to borrow from China?

Forget it Steve. When a guy starts sounding like this only thing left to do is get him off the line and get him a job in the rear, or send him home. On the Russian economy: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/impact-sanctions-russian-economy/#:~:text=The Russian economy is shrinking&text=It is estimated that in,growth in 2023 (0.7%). https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/11/21/why-the-russian-economys-luck-is-running-out-a83165 (Anyone got insight on this “Moscow Times” site?)