The_Capt

Well yes and no. The problem with green lighting deep/strategic strike is gauging what you want it to do. If you want to harass or disrupt something specific, we could be talking a workable solution. If we are talking broad scale strategic corrosive warfare, well that is essentially a systematic campaign at things like Russian industry, energy and transportation infrastructure. Go down that road and I suspect things would spiral out of control quickly. The working theory is that Putin only has so much support for this thing - we were just talking about this. Start hammering every railyard, airfield, power generation and military factory in western Russia and he may very well get green lit for some really crazy responses. In many ways it could play into his hands. So from a US perspective it is risk vs gain. What are a few longer range systems really going to do? Ukraine would need a lot of systems to break Russia through strategic corrosion. Not as much as say WW2, but still a lot higher than anyone is comfortable to go with right now. So we are back to military operational victories in Ukraine strung together. Closest we came to strategic disruption of Russia was back when Priggy made his thunder run. But the poor dumb bastard fumbled to ball and balked, and we all know how that ended.

It probably was, but the vehicle loss count is at battalion level (eg 45 or whatever). A formation has around 300 F and A1 ech vehicles.pm give or take. Mauled the hell outta whatever went through there but it wasn’t the loss of an entire brigade.

Disagree with that last part. Ukraine has already PGM'd its way to a victory. Pushing the RA back to the point they can no longer conduct offensive operations is a massive victory. In fact it PGM'd a victory no one thought even possible. Reading the last RUSI reports and Russia is trying to copy Ukrainian precision indirect fires as a result of how well PGMs have worked out. (https://static.rusi.org/Stormbreak-Special-Report-web-final_0.pdf) The question now is how much can current precision offer? Can Russia come up with counters...they are working on it. The pounding of the RA to a lower energy state and keeping them there is one for the history books alone. My sense is that the UA needs to set conditions to switch this whole thing up for a game shift: manoeuvre. The RA is so degraded (as you note) that any effective manoeuvre would break them. Problem is, how does UA create conditions for manoeuvre? Well, I think it is happening in front of us - nibble and bite until your opponent thins out somewhere enough to make a go of it. That is a lot of frontage, and the UA can see pretty much all of it, so I expect there may be method to this madness yet. Or alternatively, we have gone as far as current levels of precision and erosion can take things? Or is manoeuvre essentially dead as we know it? You may be correct, the RA may be already corroded to the point that all they can do is throw troops in holes, and mines in other holes - but it might be enough. Ukraine would need to escalate to strategic corrosive warfare in order to break this, but that sadly remains off the table - might not for next major war. Or Ukraine needs to change the game. Question really is, "can they?"

Battalion. Not Brigade. Of course the loss of an entire Battalion is going to seriously impact its parent formation.

Heh, you guys were warned. The Soviet campaign is not to be taken on lightly. It was designed to be brutally realistic. If a player can pull “fun” out of it (and they have), well good on them. I think one has to be a special masochist to really enjoy some of these fights, but they are extremely realistic. We pulled straight from Soviet and US doctrines, and period plans. Eirterfeld is straight out of a staff wargame from back in the day. We knew the CM crowd was not “casual” to begin with so catering to the upper end of challenge was a design decision early on. I saw one video of someone actually completing the Soviet campaign, respect. So if you did not enjoy it, well that was kinda expected. The US campaign is much more forgiving. The NTC one is pretty kind as well. The Soviet one is basically the CM version of Punishment mode, especially March or Die. We knew this when we built and tested them. Trust me, we dialled them back off historical difficulty. Soviet tactical forces did not get a lot of time and space to plan, So if Div or Regt Recce failed, and by the halfway point of a fight they would, then lead tactical units - who by this point are 2nd ech - were going to be driving into a lot of fights that look like this one. S’ok to hate the Soviet Campaign…it can take it.

Ok, my next question then is, what is driving that threshold of Russian volunteerism? Putin knows he can pull 300-400k you dumb young men out of society and push them to go die in a useless war. Why not 500k? Why not 1M? There is a reason there that make the risk too high...what is it? As to precision v mass - well we are back to corrosive warfare. The theory of corrosive warfare is essentially rapid, precise attrition that surpasses an adversary's system resilience, and ability to adapt. So it is not about killing 20 guys in a hole with precision...it is which 20 guys. By hitting key nodes that comprise an operational system - C2, ISR, enablers, sustainment; the entire systems ability to hold up its own weight begins to fail. This is different than front end attrition where we kill 20 guys until they run out of of guys. In corrosive warfare we kill 20 of the right guys in the system chain. We kill them faster than an opponent can deal with. Now does the theory work? Good question. It has in the past but this is a competitive space.

I think we may be missing something important here. If Russia has a bottomless supply of manpower...why the restraint? Why have they not simply mobilized 1 million or 2 million men? Based on attrition rates 325k is enough to keep current manning levels, allowing for some troop rotations. It is not going to fundamentally shift the mass calculus at the front in a direction where dumb mass may actually start to work again. Why? Quality control in the RA? We know that isn't true. The RA is giving these guys pretty rudimentary training and stuffing them in. Replacing trained veh and systems crews is going to remain a core problem - Russia does not have China training 60k troops for them. As to collapse. Loss numbers are likely too low. I am not sure strategic collapse in Russia based on body count was viable, at least not in a shorter term. We went through this before - Russia would likely need to lose around 1-2 million men before everyone in that nation loses someone in their personal circle...and even then that might not be enough. The reason to kill Russian's is to trigger operational systemic collapse, which then sets up for military strategic collapse...or at least withdrawal. People are a core component of military capability, a critical means if you will. Erode that and the system will fail. Operational failures build up and eventually lead to strategic ones. Ukraine's problem right now is engineering another Russia operational failure. We are seeing the collision of Denial and Precision. Ukraine is challenged to upscale enough precision to create positive forces multiplication, while Russia relies on good old dumb mass Denial to sustain theirs. I stand by my theory that the only way may be for Ukraine to open up another offensive in a sector the RA has pulled from in order to sustain the fight in the middle. If they can do that, they may be able to engineer another operational collapse. But can they do this? Can they leverage surprise in a highly illuminated battlefield? Has Russia cut a deal with China to get strategic ISR? - oh my, there is a shoe to drop. Most people are squawking over tactical systems but Russia being plugged into a Chinese C4ISR backbone would fundamentally shift this war. We won't see that on X or any other platform, but we will see its effects. I personally do not see China as that invested. To take capability they have to protect and project in their own sphere would be no small thing and a significant escalation. We ain't done yet but the UA needs to pull something off soon or we are going to see things lock up. RA may try to pretend it is on the offensive again, but I think that part is done. They will dig in harder. Plant more minefields over the winter. And then we may be looking at some hard choices. Or they could break tomorrow, leading to cascade failure in an already mauled and fragile system - it goes slow until it goes fast.

Ah Bahrain….my bad, I read it as “Bagram.” Bahrain was out of theatre. We had a similar base in UAE near Dubai. It was a place we turned our guns in and went shopping. Shouldn’t be giving ammo to anyone in Bahrain unless they are an MP.

I am way better looking.

Two mags in nowhere near enough to get out of a pickle. The standard was the ability to defend yourself for about 20 mins until guns and/or air got into the game. 20 mins of sustained fire, enough to keep their heads down and not advancing on you turned out to be around 8-10 mags per person. So upwards of 300 rounds. Infantry going out on offence carried a lot more. Best line I ever heard : “Where is the front line in this damned war? Wherever one of us is standing.” Outside the wire everyone is infantry…to a point. If you are not, you are a liability.

At least the X guy had the decency to admit he is a novice. His analysis is a bit of a mess. The objectives he lists are really all over the map (literally and figuratively). I think it has been termed “The Death of Expertise”. Social media, and now AI, has lowered the cost of information to the point that one no longer needs to demonstrate proof of work. The problem is that information is not knowledge. The ability to take information, or as we have gone on about - negative information (things that should be seen but are not), and synthesize it into knowledge based understanding is not something one can do with a Twitter account. It takes years of study to create the critical analysis frameworks and foundational understanding that allows one to take new information and understand it in context. We see this “college boy, eh?” type of thinking in vulnerable sectors of society. Those that were not afforded the opportunity to gain expertise can now appeal that condition. Further expertise can be wrong - that should probably be the first rule of experts. In fact an expert will know they are wrong before anyone else. Being an expert is not about being right all the time, it is about understanding what we know, what we don’t know and why. So we have people who are facing enormous uncertainty and are compelled to try and solve that. They form information spheres they trust and then use that to try and understand better…to be more certain. It is what we have been doing here since Day 1 - world went nuts, we seek certainty in community. Problem is when a community is built on biases or skewed perceptions. We have walked that precipice on more than one occasion on this very forum. In the end, it is not about “shut up and take what I say as gospel”, in fact any community that is doing that is probably toxic. It is about clear and objective analysis of facts, due diligence in self-monitoring and correction and proof of work in making analysis and synthesis happen. Everyone and anyone may contribute to this community, but it must contribute. Signal not noise. Not for me to judge noise, the meritocracy of the community (and moderators) do that for us.

You do realize you just violated the principle of my initial post? “Oh hey look everyone, THH149 did ‘national intel selection’!”

Oh goody, that kid showed up. Russia is “still there” because they dug in behind minefields and won’t leave, hardly the high water mark of military performance. The UA defeated the initial invasion. Created conditions for a Russian operational collapse, twice. And are now working on a third. Any chance you could be curious somewhere else if the sum total of your contribution is questionable, incited claims and pointing out that Jesus wasn’t really born on 25 Dec? Asking for a friend.

I am willing to bet half the guys on this forum have, or had clearances. Let's just all agree to not go there in here.

After that last US leak on Reddit I would like to say that professionals know better, but there we go. If you know "stuff" one does not go around saying "I know stuff but can't tell you"...you just don't say anything. Simply saying you have access in a unsecure open forum is risky. Could be window dressing, or maybe the young fella just doesn't know better.

Right?! Neither nation is near a human capacity threshold in this war, so the hands flapping is premature. This is now a force generation and sustainment fight...and I like Ukraine's odds.

Ugh, this whole discussion line is starting to sound like info-nihilism, "we can't possible get any truth." Which is almost always followed up by "so I will insert my own."

Too early. That is a really tough one without being inside the UA staff and knowing the details. Of course there was political pressure, we were talking about a UA offensive months before it happened. But there were also military factors. How long do you let the RA dig in? How long to replace losses from their failed winter offensives? What was the force generation trajectory for UA reinforcements? How are sustainment and enablers holding up? My guess is that 1) the UA knew the RA was pretty badly mauled, 2) was creating a Putin line of defence along their most likely axis of advance, and 3) they were in about as good a shape as they were going to get. Alternatively, perhaps the UA knew the offensive would take much longer to yield results and wanted to get to those benchmarks before Winter. The UA tried a western style larger push at the beginning and they all got blunted pretty badly. So they switched to Kherson style small bites, which also would have been programmed into any options analysis. Finally, the rules of war are all up in the air. I am a broken record on that point. Take any metrics you may have about how war is supposed to work and throw them out the window. We have never had a war operationally like this one since Iran-Iraq in the 80s. We have not had one strategically since Korea. We did learn that minefields, ATGMs and stand-off tac aviation still work for the RA, even if their arty has been degraded. It appears that even basic tac ISR is working for the RA in holding a line. The RA are leaning on what they are good at…lots of troops dug in. What is surprising is RA morale. How on earth they are holding it together after last winter is beyond me - I guess that Russian steel is still out there. They have also managed to keep an operational system floating after horrendous losses. As we discussed, the bar is much lower on defence, but still… So here we are, waiting for something to happen. Or not, which is still something. Can the RA still break? Definitely. Can the UA fail and lose initiative? Definitely. Is you favourite pet platform going to make a difference, probably not, but we should probably keep pushing it anyway.

Not entirely disagreeing with your economic points but before we go down the “Donbas and Crimea are the economic heartland of Ukraine”…they aren’t: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ukrainian_subdivisions_by_GDP_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ukrainian_subdivisions_by_GRP As for coal…well it was kinda on the way out anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_Ukraine As for the rest, see Reconstruction. Winning will mean rebuilding and re-wiring Ukrainian industries. Changing transportation of goods towards the west and that will take new infrastructure. We can prop Ukraine up but the end goal is self-sustainment. But your point is not lost. This war did no good things for the Ukrainian economy.

Gotta have a big globe with a bar inside it. Turkey Thursdays. And on Fri we pay hobos to fight each other for nickels.

The RA has clearly run out of grease.

Hey look, peace on Ukraine needs support. Entirely onboard with that for so many good reasons. Right now I am actually more concerned with the reconstruction support than warfighting. However, militarily Ukraine is not on the raggedy edge...they are freakin attacking and sustaining that offensive for months. This is not a sign of a military machine that is going to collapse next Tues. If the UA switched to defence, they could hold out for years on very little. Especially considering that Russia is a complete mess militarily. Does anyone honestly think the RA could somehow re-invade the North and take Kyiv at this point? US funding levels or no? In fact if they tried, it would probably re-activate US support. US support is the Achilles heel of Ukraine offensive war effort. The UA held off the best the RA had back in Mar 22 with a fraction, of a fraction of what they have been given to date. The only thing that could seriously risk the UA competitive military advantage is US C4ISR support and the US president would have to actively order that shut off. Even that might not do it as Ukraine has built their own JADC2 architecture and still has other support coming in from other nations. As to defence of Ukraine, you do know that landmines work for Ukrainians too? They could create murder fields with what they already have, even if the RA could still string together an operational offensive. Now if we do not fund Ukrainian reconstruction, we are totally screwed as we will definitely lose what happens next. If we fail to support Ukraine to the point they cannot even defend themselves, well then this entire discussion is a moot point because the political landscape will have changed fundamentally, and not just in the US. Should we support Ukraine to the hilt, absolutely. But if the party does end, it does not mean Russia "won" by any stretch. This is the major pitfall of the "Victory means the pre-2014 border or nothing" narrative. No, victory through denial works pretty well too, especially if it means you get to stay an independent nation. We not only need to be ready to accept that but then double down and make sure Ukraine can rebuild itself to the point where its defence is not reliant on western political whims.

Guys, gotta get out of your own heads. Russian strategic aims: - Full subjugation of Ukraine, pulling it in as a puppet state a la Belarus. - Division and weakening of NATO in order to give breathing room within Russia sphere - A united greater Russia under a new Czar I don't care if Poppy Orange gets in and cuts off the taps - that up there is not going to happen without the entire world abandoning Ukraine, and whole lot more to be honest. Could we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Sure, but it is a reach to see things failing that badly. Even if we do abandon Ukraine, it is a country of 44 million and really...really...p$ssed off right now. They will dig in and fight like badgers because they have seen what the alternative looks like. After Bucha et al, Ukraine is never going to embrace Russia. NATO has secured unity and defence spending for at least a couple decades because now there is a threat that isn't a few idiots in white Toyotas in countries we didn't even know existed. And Russia is a mess, and will likely remain one. There will be no western normalization with Russia after this, or if there is, shame on us. US Pol is not the driving factor in Russia achieving its strategic objectives (stated or unstated) in this war. It is a driving factor in how badly they lose it.

Funny you should mention it...35 years as a military officer; next 35 as a failing hack fiction writer (and part time game design guy)...that is the plan.