The_Capt

Well I would not write off quality entirely. Compared to what an average conscript in the RA receives I suspect that UA at the ground level are getting much higher quality training. But this is more than content, it is stuff like resources and facilities. As to staff level, well I am sure there is some training support happening here as well but 1) we do not really have experience in running Div/Corp level operations in a high intensity conventional war - we have theory and doctrine, but how well that is working right now remains to be seen. And 2) Staffs need more than individual training, they need time to gel and click, that is not something we can really "do" for someone without going in and taking over. This is all part of a much larger force generation problem that the UA is supported by the west in solving. But it is not like we are wizards who are teaching them magic. More like running a bunch of basic training courses that will allow them to stay alive longer than their RA counter-parts.

The primary challenge, as I understand it, with the UA is mobilizing a bunch of civilians and turning them into coherent fighting forces. So we are really talking Company and below. Basic stuff like weapons handling and drills. Fieldcraft and hygiene. Patrolling, offensive and defensive drills. In short, “the basics”. That is an enormous challenge, let alone more advanced stuff like crews for vehicles, specialist and weapons crews. Above this is stuff like staff at formation level - we normally get people at 15-20 years in their careers before we teach them operational level staff stuff, obviously the UA does not have that time. The whole “bottom up initiative” culture is great in a professional force but much harder to manage in a group that were civies 20 mins ago. In some ways the genius of the Soviet template is that it could churn out millions of troops all dancing to the same tune. We always tout “initiative” and good ole “gumpshin” but in reality a bunch of inexperienced people doing their own thing under fire is in reality bad. Military machines work very hard to beat uniformity into people to get them to fight as a unit…in the old days we called it “discipline”.

Gawd, who wants them? Expensive and likely useless. Last military to try old-school Soviet mass in the modern context was Iraq, and we all know how that worked out.

I do not use the Ignore function often but in this case may I recommend it. “Real men do not fear the bomb” is just dumb. It was during the Cold War and dumber now. If some people want to wrap themselves in dumb and feel all safe and warm, well there are entire social media platforms dedicated to that.

Absolutely. But I think it is the enablers to those “3” that are the prize right now.

So I suspect this is what the UA may be building up to. It would be the culmination of corrosive warfare. We saw “infiltrate-isolate-annihilate-repeat” last fall to significant effect so the question is scale of this approach. One thing missing from the academic criticisms is “why?” The UA has demonstrated the ability to run two simultaneous operations, 500km apart, last fall. “But over Xmas they forgot all that and are now penny packing Coy nibbles…silly Ukrainians”? This is why I am convinced this is shaping. By employing this probing and poking strategy they are obviously doing so for a reason. Most likely to draw out RA HVT such as artillery. These small scale nibblings are not designed to yield breakthroughs, they are designed to stress the RA system until a dispersed mass operation can be set in motion, which then may enable a more traditional mechanized breakout. Ukraine is doing extra steps because that is how the battle space works. As to the West, well the Taliban demonstrated that we are really no better than anyone else once you take away our advantages. I suspect that warfare itself is evolving away from the advantages we had in many ways and we need to rethink things. We do have the high ground on C4ISR for now. However if we do not solve for force protection, particularly AirPower at all altitudes, we may find ourselves in serious trouble as other redefine the battle spaces.

This actually proves my point better. It wasn’t just “competence and training” at Kasserine or Cusader. It was learning. Much like this war the theories that militaries went into WW2 with did not survive contact with reality. Almost every military thought in terms of WW1 doctrine going into WW2. So even the best trained and experienced staffs and line commanders were experienced and trained on the wrong doctrines going in. We saw the same before WW1. My point being that it is less about “training” because who trains for the war unfolding in front of us? It is not about sharing experience because no one in the west has fought a war like this in over 60 years. We can hold onto the basics but the level of shift in warfare can even impact those basics. More plainly, we could stick a US or other NATO nation in the exact situation the UA is in, with the same constraints and limitations and I do not think we would perform any better. In fact we would likely perform worse as we have become far to dependent on all those things the UA is working without. The next question is “which of these constrains and limitations are unique to this war and which are now universal”. So, no, I do not believe that it is a case of both the RA and UA lacking “training” because there is no training for this. Experience can only be earned over time but the UA currently has the market on contemporary conventional warfare experience, not us. Hell the RA has more experience than the US in high intensity conventional warfare right now - despite their baffling inability to learn from it. Combined arms in this context is off the freaking map and I strongly suspect as this war progresses that aspects of it may be off that map to stay.

https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN18010-ADP_3-0-000-WEB-2.pdf Says same thing. Has not been refreshed but likely will soon.

COMBINED ARMS 3-54. Combined arms is the synchronized and simultaneous application of all elements of combat power that together achieve an effect greater than if each element was used separately or sequentially. Combined arms integrates leadership, information, and each of the warfighting functions and their supporting systems, as well as joint weapon systems. Used destructively, combined arms integrates different capabilities so that counteracting one makes the enemy vulnerable to another. Used constructively, combined arms uses all assets available to the commander to multiply the effectiveness and efficiency of Army capabilities used in stability or defense support of civil authorities tasks. THE WARFIGHTING FUNCTIONS 4-19. To execute operations, commanders conceptualize capabilities in terms of combat power. Combat power has eight elements: leadership, information, mission command, movement and maneuver, intelligence, fires, sustainment, and protection. The Army collectively describes the last six elements as the warfighting functions. Commanders apply combat power through the warfighting functions using leadership and information. (See chapter 5 for a discussion of combat power.) https://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/publications/ADRP 3-0 OPERATIONS 11NOV16.pdf

Operational “combined arms” is really “joint” and about integration of domains/dimensions. Even operational land warfare is about joint integration. Combined arms is a land domain term that essentially integration of land effects into a framework that offsets weaknesses of each arm and maximizes strength. Problem is that I think that what that used to mean has changed for a number of reasons. As to why the UA may be nibbling vice chomping, this likely goes back to “what is happening with mass?” Obviously concentration of forces without air superiority is dangerous for both sides. The RA learned this the hard way, which we have seen many, many, examples. I suspect the UA has too. With “63,000” US trained troops, even with the frontages we are seeing, should allow for something larger than a battalion or company raid, somewhere. So the UA is likely not doing this for a very good reason - concentration of mass without setting conditions is suicidal. The “learning” is determining what those “conditions” actually are for any given scenario.

So in this scenario UA ISR does not see a few tanks/BMPs tens of kilometres out? - which they would because a bridgehead is very valuable real estate. And then hit them before they can even get near the infantry bridgehead by any number of systems that can do so at tens of kilometres (PGM artillery, Switchblade 600s etc)? For the Javelin it range seems to depend on the CLU. The lightweight CLU can hit out to 4,000 m and the terrain, plus UAS can support those shots. If the UA knows “sending a Coy tanks over a ridge is a good way to lose a Coy of tanks” then why are the rules different for the RA. In fact from what we have read and seen the most likely involvement of RA tanks will be as mobile indirect fires. You could do this scenario in CMBS right now. Just beef up the Blue ISR and give them all the UAS, and see how it goes.

You mean like they had north of Kyiv when they stopped them cold? Have we seen an actual “armoured counterattack” in this entire war? That and as soon as the RA formed up to make that c-attack they would be lit up by ISR and pounded. I suspect the issue is not RA armor but RA fires, enabled by ISR that are the major problem. Likely why the UA seems intent on killing as much RA artillery as possible. It is looking more and more like a cat and mouse game with the Russian guns. I knew they looked tepid from what we could tell, and hoped it was a sign of systemic failure, but perhaps they are holding them back.

I guess my problem with the whole “combined arms is their problem” narrative is that it misses the overall trend lines. The RA was noted at the beginning of this war as failing to properly conduct combined arms. This was a little odd as the Soviets essentially invented combined arms at scale and the RA was constructed around combined arms doctrine and concepts. But we all agreed that “Russia Sux, LOLZ” and watched war porn streams with glee while yammering for “more Leopards!!”. Now the UA on the offensive is also “failing to coordinate combined arms at scale” after extensive equipping and training by western forces. So to my mind either two completely separate militaries coming at the problem have both mystically failed to grasp and execute the essentials of combined arms. Or there is something fundamentally changing about the concept of combined arms itself. As to armchair quarter backing the UA in mid operations, well sure anyone with a podcast and a half decent academic background can nitpick. It is called friction and it has always been in every war, forever. Why? Because human systems are filled with nasty human agency and perception, and error. To point to a slow operational offensive “because units missed timelines” is weak and amateur analysis. The biggest problem with trying to get professional assessments is that those able to do them are in the game and not going to speak publicly about what is actually going on. What that means is that the calculus of this war remains opaque until the thing is over for a few years and we can get access to what actually happened - “How Did This Thing Get Hot?” thread coming hopefully soon. The rest is academics and pundits trying to promote a bunch of angles. We heard the same stuff at Bakhmut, Kherson and in the early days. The fundamental questions are more along the lines of “can the UA translate corrode to breakout without air power as we knew it?” “Has Defensive Primacy actually happened (again)?” “What the hell is happening with mass?” This is not pro-Ukrainian copium either. The reality may be simply that offensive operations in this war do not work anymore. We could be looking at the beginning of a frozen conflict line a la Korea. But why offensive operations may not work is not because a UA unit had their map upside down anymore than when the RA stopped using their tanks as tanks and made VBIEDs out of them. That all said, my own assessment is that this still feels like shaping. I nice little feel up before heading to paradise. It lasted for at least two months at Kherson. I suspect we have the rest of the summer with this weird Grade 9 gym dancing until something gives and the UA drops the hammer and goes for it. In fact we have not seen a full scale formation offensive yet - as has been noted - the reason is more likely because conditions have not been set. Now another big question is “are the UA shaping or leg humping?” Well given the C4ISR differences between the two forces my money is still on operational shaping, but we will have to wait and see.

So would not this: Be a result of this: And why they are doing this: ? Also, why would the RA be rationing artillery ammo? Finally, does anyone think that maybe the UA is fighting in a more distributed manner (pretty much from Day 1) because that is what works on the battlefield now? Large concentrations are highly visible from way back and can be hit so they are in fact a liability. The RA is the low bar of precision in this war but it looks like they are still able to disrupt UA mass even with the sub-par ISR and dumb artillery mass they have. This is not a coordination or training issue it is a modern warfare reality - precision beats mass, mass precision beats everything.

Bag of flour with a kicker charge + slight delay incendiary in an enclosed space = BFB. Seriously one can blow up a concrete bunker. Now if you really want to ruin someone’s day get some aluminum powder.

Here you go.

The question facing military professionals everywhere out of this war are: - "What is unique to this war?" - "What is universal to all future wars?" We had a whole thread going on the General Forum on development of warfare over the 19th century and I believe modern militaries are facing a similar conundrum. "How would NATO do in this war?" Well it depends which side we are going to be. As Ukraine against Russia we would likely have seen a shorter sharper war but the costs would have been a serious shock to the western world. [note: let's not get dragged into another nuclear equation discussion, we can just put that one to the side] We are talking likely tens of thousands of casualties and a lot of expensive kit lost. Why? - Air superiority. I do not know what this means in a modern context. A2AD capability is rapidly becoming distributed and highly portable. We may have been able to gain air superiority over 20,000 feet but below that we would have been taking serious losses as there is not such thing as SEAD for MANPADs basically everywhere. Modern MANPADs and IADs can operate independently all over the battlefield. Further they can deny airspaces at much higher altitudes and higher ranges. Why? Because while we were stonking Iraq, Libya, Serbia and a bunch of dirt farmers in Afghanistan competing states were taking notes and investing heavily in the tech. Take away our air supremacy and the western way of warfare is immediately in trouble. And, shocker, places like Iran really don't like us and do not want to be invaded. Below 20,000 feet it is the freakin wild west right now. I do not care how many lasers we strap on every tank, IFV or truck. I do not care how much EM is pumped into space - birds f#ucked up for the next 20 years. Unmanned systems are 1) cheap, 2) highly effective and 3) everywhere. Whether they are doing ISR or strike they have changed the fabric of warfare between about 3 to 20,000 feet...and they are just getting started. Air superiority below 20,000 feet does not exist as a concept right now. Hell we lost it below 2000 feet in Iraq to freakin ISIL, who were basically the lowest bar one can get with respect to conventional warfare. If we were fighting the RA the UAS problem would be extremely costly...as in freakin nations pulling out after losing too many people, costly. Can anyone imagine if the Taliban got their hands on this tech and started dropping old cluster munitions right on our heads back in the COPs and FOBs? I slept for weeks about 200m from a 50,000 gallon fuel bladder that was resting under an open sky ...let that sink in. So what? Well "wither goest Air Superiority" is one of the biggest questions of this war, and as you can see it is a multi-dimensional one. - C4ISR. Russia does not have a world class C4ISR architecture. But even with what they do have the principle of "making them go dark" to establish C4ISR superiority - far more important in this day and age then any domain superiority - is also in question. With everything being a sensor hooked into crazy comms and networks - hell with hotspotting everything can be a node in a comms network. So I am not even sure how to make an opponent go dark anymore (see unmanned). I am sure we got people working on it but the fact that an even poorly armed opponent can see me tens of kms out makes me nervous. Worse, they can see my logistics train as well. The fact they can record all this and stream it all over the planet in real time turns really concerns me. A half decent opponent would be broadcasting every screw up and horror show, which makes sustainment of national will a big problem. - PGM. Artillery, ATGM...insert whatever nightmare comes next. No one is ready to face this. I cannot begin to imagine trying to do an obstacle crossing when my opponent can hit me at 3-4kms with an 80% success rate with ATGM. "Oh that is ok, we have APS"...fantastic, right up until someone comes up with workarounds like sub-munitions or EFP. And even if we do magically put bubble wrap around ourselves, nothing on earth can stop artillery round that can land directly on my head. Oh and this is while I am still trying to deal with old stuff like mines, and new stuff like UAS. All of that adds up to some very disconcerting calculus. As in "is combined arms dead as we know it?" type of calculus (someone is going to try and answer this, someone always does...just don't bother. I do not post my mil quals for some very good reasons but trust me when I say no one has this figured out yet). Now here is the punchline: this is all if we were fighting Russia. I, frankly, am far less concerned about fighting Russia - now more than ever. I am very worried about fighting Ukraine. If we get stuck on the wrong side of a proxy war and our opponent is armed with C4ISR, PGM and A2AD like Ukraine is right now, we are in very serious trouble. "Well we just won't fight those wars." Ya, that is not how it works. We don't get to choose the wars we decide to fight, gawd that is a post-Cold War perception that needs to die, and fast. This is the nightmare scenario and I do not know if you guys have been paying attention but we kinda been doing a lot of expeditionary operations in all sort of places to push the brand. What happens when Chinese space based ISR start lighting us up? We wind up in a hybrid fight with the other side armed with HJ-12s? I do not know. This is a big reason when [insert talking head] says "Ukraine needs to do this" "We need to give them that"...and the war will be over in a week. My advice is to stop listening. No one in the west has been in a war like this since Korea and the freakin needle has moved miles since Korea. I say this without hyperbole, we are going to be spending the rest of this century trying to figure this all out as things like UGVs start coming online. Tell your (grand) kids to get into the sciences of killing because it is a major growth industry. For now, the best we can do is watch and learn. Both the UA and RA are feeling their way through a war unlike any we have seen before.

Typical academic - "be more combined armsy!" Ok great, hey Sergeant Major go tell the guys to be more "combined armsy"...what? No seriously, that is what I got.... You threaten to retire at least once a week, you know its a job you love to hate.

This is a cop out line that gets tossed when people cannot think of anything else to say. Training can always "be better" and combined arms "better coordinated", this applies to any military on the planet and you are going to see it in AARs almost universally. Problem is that it is essentially meaningless. So what is the training standard that will guarantee UA success in their current situation? "Well more until they succeed..." I also suspect it misses the new realities that the UA (and RA) are facing, instead clinging to a superior way of western war that has never been tested in the environment these two forces find themselves within. These narratives completely miss the trees because all they can see is forest.

Very solid point. In the biz we call it “culmination” and the UA is not even close yet. It would be premature to start thinking about a sideways exit until the UA offensive has fully developed. If they achieve their operational objectives, double down and keep going to next phase. If it fails…well then the harder conversations will happen.

So sure NATO could play politics or lawyer with article 5 - "well technically, and so forth". At which point how fast do you think NATO will evaporate? "Oh welcome to NATO Ukraine but we are not really going to do anything about a NATO nation being hammered by an adversary illegally...oh look Russia is firing missiles at Latvia...well technically". Deterrence only works if one can clearly demonstrate that you intend to follow through with either punishment or denial. So "yes" basically if you illegally attack a member "we all declare war and march against you". That or NATO stands for nothing really and then it all falls apart. This reality is likely why we are avoiding an Article 5 about as hard as Russia is at any given moment. They do not want it coming back at them as in their current state we are talking very rapid escalation, possibly out of control. And we don't want it because it might fail and the Emperor's doodle is out.

So this is the rub. By saying "Ukraine, no NATO until war is over", we have basically incentivized Russia to drag this war out for as long as possible to achieve on of their key strategic aims - halt NATO encroachment into their Near Abroad. Of course we are in a dilemma in that if we took Ukraine in now, and they immediately declared an Article 5, we either go to war or the whole freakin scheme falls apart. So political leadership did what they always do...risk managed, push to the left and choose bad over worse. Ukraine could absolutely cut the occupied territories loose and we all redraw the lines of recognized "Ukraine" - they are lines on a map. Further they could dump the occupied territories on the international community and say "Ok UN, now they are your problem to negotiate with Russia." As has been mentioned more than once, there are not likely many actual Ukrainians in some of these areas and a whole lot of people who do not see themselves as Ukrainians which is a potential post-war issue. The biggest reason to not push any of these buttons yet (and yes, this would be a form of diplomatic escalation that we do indeed control) is that we are not sure who is actually in charge in Russia right now. So trying to assess agendas and calculus is extremely hard. Maybe those behind the curtain actually know what is going on but sitting in the cheap seats it is become just bizarre.

So I think we mentioned before that this sort of thing is an indication of stress and strain on the RA military system. The question remains “how far and deep” does this go? Militaries are funny things, big collective organisms. And like any complex collective organism failures can be isolated or cascade into something bigger. Two thoughts on this: - Militaries are not symmetric. We strive for uniformity but every unit is different, every echelon is different. So we might have units refusing orders for different reasons. The only thing they can agree on is that “this ain’t working”. It is a serious thing to disobey orders, an offence under military law. One can go to jail and in extremis face capital punishment. So for this phenomenon to be seen widespread is a clear sign that something is not going well with the RA at a genetic level. Further, the thing about systems is that they are also interdependent. So we could have an entire battalion that is still raring to win the war but if the supply/transport company says “no way” the thing still falls apart. So what we are not seeing are the cracks and fissures between RA sub-systems which erode trust and overall effectiveness. At it worse entire militaries will simply mutiny but I am not sure we are there yet. - Corporate learning turns into corporate culture. Some very good lessons on this from Vietnam. Basically old timers teach how to “dodge and avoid to survive” to newcomers, who then pass on when they become the old timers. This sort of corporate culturalization is incredibly hard to root out as it tends to take root within informal leadership systems which do not show up on a chain of command diagram. I suspect that after over a year and half of desperate and high loss warfare the RA has adopted aspect of a survival culture and this is an example of it. One can fire generals all day once this ting sets in but it won’t make a bit of difference, troops will have elevated shirking and dodging to an art. Usually the only thing to break this sort of thing is a massive win or loss. A massive win tends to change the salinity of the social waters, while massive losses get everyone killed and you basically start from scratch - one hopes for that first one. If verified, this report is way bigger news than that explody bridge.

(Assuming not a post production effect) Technically no: https://www.advancedplasmasolutions.com/what-is-plasma/#:~:text=Source The core of plasma,its electrical properties and behavior. https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/49/103/49103575.pdf So plasma come in at around 11000 F and an HE explosion (they used datasheet) is around 3100F in the center. This effect appears on the outer edge of the explosion where is cooler. My guess is an incendiary flash following the shockwave. Something got blow up and away with the initial shockwave and then flashed up behind it.

V1 is back baby!!! Can’t keep a good doodlebug down.