The_Capt

Thanks guys. Guess who got tagged to do a Future of Joint Warfare piece at work? Yep, the guy who won't shut up about it. If Steve was particularly profit driven he would charge a membership fee for this thread.

Quick call for assistance from the community - in the massive stream of videos and link being posted on this monster thread, there was one that showed a UA company/bn attack from planning to execution - drones being used while HQ is directing. Can someone re-post that link for me as a favour because I have no idea how to find it in the stream. It was maybe last month, or even Aug? Doesn't matter really, just need one of UA doing a deliberate attack and how they are doing tactical C2. Please and thank you.

I think no small amount of the dis/mis Information Age we live in is because most people do not know how to vet and apply critical thinking with respect to the internet. Younger generations seem better at this but is digital refugees tend to lack some of the basic skill. We grew up when information was pumped at us through a box. We believed it, to a point. Then the information world blew up. In an ocean of information, anything can be made true. Connecting dots - even ones that were not there- became too easy. We gorged and got sick on it. Then we got scared and went back to listening to one or two channels on the box. Problem was we all seemed to pick the channels we liked and not the ones we could trust because we did not know which ones to trust. So we wind up with information being provided based on what we want to hear as opposed to what is actually happening. The monetization of mainstream information channels did not help (although one could argue it was always monetized) but they adapted and began to tell truths they could seem to a market...not the actual truth. It was all fun and games until politicians started doing it. Now everyone else but my sources is “lying”, in an age that lying should be impossible. The truth became relevant. Again one could argue it always has been but the distance between relevance frameworks grew and diversified as we all sought certainty instead of truth. I can only hope that young people are growing up far more digitally cynical and can smell “fake” much better than we can. Of course with AI, “fake” is simply getting better as well.

I think of these three, #2 was the most viable but now after the war went all sideways where is the internal political threat? If there were frictions and divisions that drove this pretty extreme course of action, then why have they not exploded in the mess that followed? It only matters if the calculus that started the war can give insight into how to end it. But so far I have not really seen any definitive explanation - we might never get one. My best guess is that military and security forces were not ready until Feb 22, so that may explain “earlier”. But it does not explain “why not later?” Maybe Putin is feeling his own mortality. Maybe there was an internal forcing function that somehow went away after the war dragged on. Maybe the plan was to go later but Russia got wind that US intel had picked them up and they had to go before support to Ukraine started to build.

I still do not see the forcing function. Subversive campaigns can take a decade or more. How long did Russia play silly buggers in Ukraine before 2014? I think it is pretty obvious that he tried because he thought he could pull it off. The plan was to hold Kyiv, install some puppet, leave some occupation support and a helluva lot of security forces to solidify control (see that RUSI reports on Russian unconventional warfare, the level and detail of planning is staggering). The West would make quacking noises and toss on a few more sanctions at oligarchs but was too addicted to cheap energy to really unify. It would all settle down and Russia would really be no worse off than they were in 2015. Ok, but why Feb 22? Worst time of year weather wise. No crisis in the Kremlin - that we know about. No looming NATO entry - hell the vast majority of westerners were entirely consumed by the pandemic. You got a Rules Based Order guy in the White House. I mean Jan 6th 2021, sure makes a lot of sense. 2022? The smoke had cleared and the US actually had a moment to breathe. It is the timing that gets me. Putin could have waited another 24 months and hit in the middle of the US election. NATO and the rest of the west would have been left wondering who to bet on. You do this special operation in Nov or Oct and Europe would have had a whole winter needing more gas. I get the motive, it is the opportunity space that really does not line up for me.

There is a threshold of due diligence. Otherwise one could carpet bomb neighbourhoods while trying to hit a single military target. Whoopsies happen but it is on the targeting commander to demonstrate that all reasonable attempts to mitigate civilian casualties were made. If one accidentally drops bombs on civilians but is found negligent on controls and targeting procedures they may face prosecution. I am pretty sure there is evidence of criminal negligence on the part of the RA based on the number of non-military targets hit.

Going to speak out of school a bit - I have other jobs than just military faculty at a staff college. I few years I came out of some higher level meetings with my boss - she is a simply brilliant civilian international lawyer type who is destine to run this country one day. She had just got into her new job in our outfit so we were still getting to know each other. The topic of discussion is not for here but it centered on how dangerous the world was becoming and how antiquated our Canadian theories of how it all worked were in the face of it. Me and another military guy in the shop were going round and round on the unsolvable riddle that is Canadian Defence and Security. Our boss broke in and said straight-faced "We should think about a strategic nuclear weapon program." I think I peed my pants a little bit. The old rules are buckling. New ones will be needed. The use of hard power, military power, as an extension of diplomacy is back on the menu, and that is not a vegan dish.

I find a lot of this sort of analysis wrt escalation as "easy to say, very hard to do." I do not think people fully understand what is at risk in widening this conflict. The standard justifications are: - Russia will never go nuclear. - Russia will back down - they are full of BS. - We got all the guns, what are they going to do? Ok, I will buy the first one for arguments sake. A functioning Russia will very likely not use the nuclear option unless we are talking foreign troops invading Russia itself. (a broken Russia is another story) Russia may even back down. They definitely talk a good game but so far those red lines have been pretty mobile. And we do have a lot of military power within NATO...but herein lies the rub. It only works if it is unified. Professionally speaking, the single largest risk of escalation with Russia is a Russian response - controlled or otherwise - that triggers a NATO Ch 5. We have already had errant missiles in Poland that became Ukrainian ones pretty damned quick. If Russia starts lobbing them at a NATO nation in response to significant escalation within Russia...what happens? Well, we essentially move to a NATO Ch 5 escalation, which will get out of hand pretty quick. Or more likely, NATO falls apart. An Article 5 could actually break NATO. It could nations deciding that maybe Poland, or Estonia, or Latvia are not worth dying for. We have had a single Article 5 declaration in the history of the alliance - 9/11. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm#:~:text=NATO invoked Article 5 for,the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And most of this was intelligence sharing and overflights/port usage permissions. NATO stayed out of Iraq in '03 completely, GWOT as a concept was not sold in its entirety in the least - even given 9/11. ISAF in Afghanistan did not come into play until much later in that war, and a lot of NATO nations kept their forces out of combat...and that was the Taliban FFS. I am betting that those in power have already done this calculus and know exactly how vulnerable the alliance is right now. A lot of people on this board have been asking "well why don' they just do X?" "It about ATACMS stupid!" Well it is likely because they know what is actually at risk and a lot of these capabilities are just not worth those risks...at this time. In fact a lot of those capabilities value right now is as a threat to Russia as opposed to actual use. This war is not simple, and there are no simple solutions. If anyone starts believing that there are you are likely missing something.

Welcome to my world. Even crazier - killing the right civilians = legal. International law allows the legal targeting of anything directly tied to the war effort - less hospitals and humanitarian stuff (obviously). So if you are a janitor working in a power generation plant that is feeding production of tanks...guy with mop goes boom. Kill that janitor while he is dropping his kids off at school = warcrime. HVTs are even more messy. At what point does a person themselves become intrinsically linked to the war no matter where they are? Political leadership, military civilian leadership - easy. Defence scientists? Ideological figures? Influencers? There is a reason we have damned lawyers in the kill chain. But trust me, this is better than taking the cuffs off the Red God entirely.

Not how it really works. Mainly because “the law”. The international community has never passed laws on the use of nuclear weapons. Restrictions and limitations on their use are all managed by treaties. The employment of nuclear weapons is essentially off the legal map. As JonS pointed out, striking a large dam that would lead to massive civilian casualties is against the law. Fellas can we not drift into “let’s do warcrimes because XYZ?” C’mon, we are supposed to be the adults in an internet of children. No, we can not condone warcrimes because Russia did them (and oh we made a lot of noise when they blew that dam down by Kherson). We cannot condone them because “back in WW2 everyone did it” - doesn’t freakin matter, take a look at your calendar…what year does it say. Most international law on warcrimes were written after WW2 because everyone was doing them. WW2 was an example of what a total war looked like when everyone sat around after WW1 and did nothing. So we decided that was a bad thing and passed a whole bunch of laws to prevent it from happening again. We do not do war crimes for some very good reasons: Unity. If Ukraine (or anyone else) starts playing fast and loose with unrighteous targeting, we risk splitting the coalition of support for Ukraine. Canada for instance would lose its mind and likely start turning off the taps. Escalation. Ok, we take out a dam, kill a bunch of civilians. Russia potato-in-the-exhaust-pipes a nuclear power plant. You see where this goes. Post-war justice. You want criminal prosecution for Bucha? Might want to skip committing warcrimes of your own. Utility. It won’t work. A mass killing of Russian civilians anywhere will very likely drive enormous active support into Putin’s arms. We will wind up with a stronger Russian Will, not a weaker one. So can we please skip warcrimes week…again?

Go left.

Meh. Beyond social commentary, which does have some truth but also those fratboys appear to have built the most powerful economy in human history (now how long it survives is a very good question), this war is all about expectations. If your expectation is for Russia to fold out a la Afghanistan, well that war took 10 years of bleeding. For us it took nearly 20. If your expectation is that Ukraine preserve its political freedom and independence, well that bridge was crossed a long time ago. Given the events I cannot express how unlikely the reality we live in now is - Russia on operational defensive while we wrong hands at pace of Ukrainian offensive. Given what we knew on 21 Feb, no one honestly thought Ukraine stood a chance of survival, let alone being critiqued for advancing too slowly. Ukraine is not going to tap out and roll under Russia at this point. Russia’s last major advance was Prigy driving on Moscow while Putin ran away in Jun. Many are sweating Russian ability to freeze this war…well Ukraine definitely can and as such will survive. As long as we support them, even just simple money. If we fail in support or walk away, then it is not Ukraine that loses this war, we do. So glass half full…?

In the modern era, I disagree. C4ISR and precision means one can essentially unravel transportation infrastructure. Air superiority and supremacy likely don't apply either, you need only ensure you are not entirely denied. It is less about hitting rail -however if the RA had concentrated on bridges, which they could target from Google Earth, it would have been a start- it is about destroying systems. In fact EBO sprung out of the failures of the strategic bombing campaigns; don't hit everything, hit that one thing to get an effect. So you hit the entire system. Repair/maint depots. Line controls and switching infra. The individual trains themselves. Transport nodes. Energy supplies. Then you start targeting the people with the expertise to run the rail line, they are legitimate targets if those lines are part of the war effort. A snowstorm can cripple a rail line, so can a modern deep strike campaign. So I suspect the shortfall on the Russian side was C4ISR for precise targeting and "know how". I am betting Russia does not have a centralized operational targeting enterprise - a bunch of stovepiped and untrusting commanders all doing "something" to show the boss they are onside. I don't think they had the resolution to hit individual trains or precise targets. They had enough missiles and 18+ months. My concern is that these latest hits are demonstration of more precise targeting. Which means they got their act together, got lucky or someone is pumping them really high res ISR - could be all three. None of that is good news.

Of everything that is happening in this war right now, operationally this trend concerns me the most. I noted the lack of a coherent Russian deep strike campaign from the beginning of this thing. They bounced around, and for awhile looked like electricity infra was a thing. Yet they never had the ISR or precision capability to target operational/strategic transportation infrastructure. This is "only" a few trains, however, if Russia can actually put together and prosecute a disruptive operational strike campaign we could be entering a new phase of the war. I still do not think it will allow the RA to re-engage in larger operational offensives, my guess is that their backs are broken on this. But it will allow them to significantly disrupt UA strategic and operational LOCs. No before anyone get too excited, this would need to be several orders of magnitude in scope and scale to achieve that effect - why Russia wasted thousands of missiles all over the freakin place with no coherent targeting enterprise is a mystery of this war. So we are no a crisis point, yet. I suspect Ukraine is fixing these lines in hours. But it is still not a good trend.

Act how? Apologize for what? “I am sorry I was not briefed?” “As CDS I don’t do full background checks on everyone who visits Parliament?” I call BS on that. We are becoming so apologist that those apologies do not mean anything anymore. One can apologize for sins of commission or omission, yet none of these really apply in this situation. The CDS was called to a special session of Parliament for the President of Ukraine. Some nitwit 20-something staffer in the Parliamentary Protocol office didn’t double check on another nitwit 20-something staffer in the Speakers office - neither of whom have looked at WW2 history since high-school (and even then all we ever talk about is freakin Normandy). The CDS stood up to honour a Ukrainian WW2 veteran, with everyone else, and then wound up wearing it when it comes to light that a 15 second Google search could have headed this whole thing off. He has likely been ordered not to say or do anything while the Prime Minister try’s to stop the bleeding - a Liberal appointed CDS apologizing for “something” is essentially admitting culpability that Gen E is not entitled to and would be highly politicized. So I am really not sure what the “Act” looks like in this situation. I guess he could re-iterate that we in the CAF really don’t like Nazis? Please do not apply for recruitment? Nazis were really bad and WW2 was pretty big and complicated so please use Google and stop relying on Saving Private Ryan as your sole datapoint?

Sure, if you actually have enough information to make the decision. If this whole thing had gone another way - like the guy had simply served in a non-SS unit, then the CDS would have been snubbing a 98 year old vet, which would have blown up another way. Given that he was not briefed on who the guy was - no one was, it is unfair to hold him responsible. Now if evidence comes up that changes that well then you can feel free to splash this photo all you like. But of course let’s compare the situation of the CDS in Canadian Parliament to a guy who was married to a Jewish woman in Nazi Germany in 1936: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Landmesser

Tough call. Not sure how much the CDS was briefed before hand (likely not at all). And the speaker never outlined Hunka’s service record in detail during the ceremony. He presented the old guy as a “Ukrainian veteran who fought the Russians in the 1st Ukrainian Division” if anyone should have known what that meant it was the CDS but pretty tough decision to sit on one’s hands during a standing ovation for a 98 year old vet based on what he was given. Not a good look but an apology from him would be taken as political and he likely has been muzzled by government at this point.

These are so politically weaselly. They are so badly put that they create an unassailable position. If Russia runs over the border tomorrow and peace breaks out, they can still argue #1 and #2 during reconstruction or any follow on that is not perfect (which they never are). If things stay bad, they can argue #3 - "we told you to do WW3, weak!" These are really stating risks as facts and building positions around them. Not a single solution other than - "ok, so what is the other political side doing? Ok, we support the opposite." The Biden administration could cure cancer and some of these people would march in the streets to defend medical jobs.

It will go some distance. Most young man don't believe it will be them - "the poor other guy" fallacy. Of course if the pay stops it includes death payouts. Not sure what the tipping point is but if only 1 in 10 families is getting paid out I can see enthusiasm fading. The bigger one for young guys is disability. Getting legs blown off and pooping in a bag for the rest of your life is hard to put a dollar value on. See enough guys like that on street corners and you are going to have problems with recruiting. Not sure what long term disability looks like in Russia but it would also be coming under strain.

Aww, crazy guy pet wants to be loved so bad he tried to come back. And Steve put him down again? You know, my problem with the old guys position - beyond being a pretty flimsy cover for “the opposite of whatever the other guy is doing” - is that he cries for a “plan”, “we are just throwing money away”, oh, and “we should think of the Ukrainians and end this war” (which is really upside down). However, being a very stable genius, he fails to outline an actual counter plan. I mean what is the alternate strategy for the US here? Withdraw from the world and let other powers invade whomever they want? How long do they think US supremacy will last as Russia (and China) grab up the rest of the planet? The “plan” is to draw back and stop spending money and effort? Sue for peace with Russia from a weak position? Yet somehow the US will retain its global power position? There is a giant logic hole in that thinking. Aw well, the world keeps spinning on.

I really do not understand something here - and I am not pushing back or being confrontational, honestly puzzled. What is it about Russian society that somehow embraces these paradoxes? In the article the writer described a largely detached micro-social dynamic. No one is mentioning an ideal - no Mother Russia or greater purpose to defend and die for. The entire thing is "well now we can afford a toilet that flushes...totally worth it." Secondary we see peer-pressure and social values at play in a micro-sense. The little a$$hat of the neighborhood is now a Wagner war hero - guys like that will milk this for the rest of their lives. Wars bring bragging rights, tale as old as time and particularly impactful in a largely disenfranchised sub-set of society. All that, plus a largely transactional mercenary agreement does not scream "social resilience" to me. Why on earth would that neighborhood send its young men to die if the money runs out? Why obey a macro-social construct whose major benefit has been "gas, not coal" in the last 30 years? To my mind these are signs of an incredibly brittle society, held together by shared misery. Not something one can use as a foundation for a major war. "We" and "I" is a tale as old as time. It is why I did up that calc that Russia needs to lose around 1.5 million young men before everyone feels it. And based on this article I am not sure even then a lot of Russians will give a crap. I know this is one snapshot but it portrays a sprawled out and dis-connected society where apathy and quick monetary gain, not ideas or morality, rule. Of course mobiks can dig in an die. Surrender means PoW, which likely means "no money" and social shame - most teenagers will choose death first. This is not solely Russian in the least. The worst troops will fight like badgers when they have zero other options. Urban centers as far as I can see have 1) left the entire discussion, or 2) bought off and are all nationalistic. An over-simplification I understand. I can see no clear reason why Russia started this war (we have discussed this at great length and no clear theory has ever been presented). But I can even understand less how Russian society can sustain losing it for this long. This article really highlights a theme we have seen before - Russia is one big messy paradox: - Meh, I don't really care...but I will send all my kids to fight and die in Ukraine because Putin says so! - Meh, I am only in the army for the money. But I will die to the last man holding onto this patch of dirt! - I am dodging service like a madman, but I support the war, even passively. I have never seen such a collection of aggressive-apathy/apathy-aggressive paradoxes.

Very interesting on many levels. Couple things jumped to mind: - Rural Russia has not really changed since the Cold War. In fact many may well have had it better under communism. - Putin knew this and perhaps this is why the war happened in the first place. It gives this entire demographic hope and a level of redistribution of wealth. - It will work for at time but there are flaws built into the entire theory. First if one is sustaining a war with mercenaries - and the dynamic in this article is very much mercenary-like, no one noted once an ideological reason for the war - you are going to get a military that fights like mercenaries. They will fight but surviving to get paid is also on the agenda. Once the pay stops, the will to fight stops. This is a very dangerous internal transactional agreement for Russia. People will not likely rise up en masse, they will simply stop showing up to fight. Russian Will in this war is brittle based on this viewpoint. - So how long can Russia afford to keep the money flowing? At what point does the war become so lethal that no amount of money is worth it?

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/house-speaker-anthony-rota-resigns-over-nazi-veteran-invite-1.6577796

I knew that the whole AI thing was BS. Squirrels, genetically engineered highly intelligent squirrels. Flight Lts Scrunchy and Fluffer Nutter will be remembered. #10 Downing is in crisis mode, consultations with rodent community.

As much as I would love a "Let's talk aboot Canadian politics thread, eh?", a few points and then I have no doubt everyone will move on: - If the Liberals take Trudeau as leader into the next election, they are done like dinner. Canadians resent any leader who is office for too long. - Our conservatives are nowhere near as conservative as those in the US. I wish I could say that extreme right did not exist in Canada but it is very much on the margins, for now. We definitely have it in the DNA, but we are also addicted to our social programs and liberalist high ground. - With respect to this war, it won't matter which party gets into power the support will still flow from our end. Even the NDP (far left) would have to stay in the game at this point - they might balk at some weapon systems but... Which political party is in power is nowhere near as critical to support to the Ukrainian war effort as it is in the US right now (and frankly I am not even sure where the US would really go). Beyond looking like a bunch of disconnected rubes in this last gaff, we are very much a "Rules Matter" bunch and Russians invasion is just too far outside the global order for Canada to accept.