The_Capt

Add to this arty assets. The other thing Oryx does not show is the wear out attrition. There have been reports of RA guns wearing out, but basically nothing in combat has a long shelf life without maint and refit. Just simply driving tracked vehicles causes all sorts of issues over time (worn parts, gun sights get knocked out of whack, comms burn out). The UA does not even need to kill this stuff, just keep it in operations without proper maint and it will simply die on its own. Given the state of the RA, I have serious doubts that they have been able to sustain upkeep let alone refits. As to backfill production, well once again it is what is missing - does anyone think that if Russia was rolling stuff off lines at a great of knots that they would not be flashing that to the world? "Look at our mighty war machine!" We have not seen it because it is not happening.

Well there was that pretty long stretch of standing in a line with pokey stuff and stabbing each other but the overarching principle is sound.

I mentioned this before but casualty ratios are only one metric (and frankly a squishy one). The question is one of combat power attrition. So in Feb we saw tallies of RA logistics, C2, engineering etc. This is stuff Russia cannot get back easily, while the UA is being pushed this stuff from the West. I expect the combat power attrition is still acceptable to the UA, hence why they hold onto Bakhmut. As to counter-attacks, why waste the effort in Bakhmut, which is now a grinding wasteland and the RA main effort. The counter attacks should be operational offensives to the east or west. I mean this is why I don't really buy the political symbolism argument, the UA is not counter-attacking at Bakhmut because it is simply not worth it, bleeding the RA is. They are marshalling offensive combat power in the backfield, why waste it on Bakhmut? Frankly it is what the RA should have been doing as they now have lost time to prepare defensives with all those troops they got killed at Bakhmut (time is an attritional metric as well).

Silly rabbit, all roads lead back to CMCW.

Given the suppressors on the on the rifles these are likely specialized troops such as Recon, or a photo op.

Whatever happened to that “1:1” attrition ratio claim from last week? Did anyone follow up with details? And of course was that straight casualties or combat power attrition?

Ya so this guy is a SAMS grad apparently, which is about as high as one can go on the “smart guy but not command material” career line. So he has the background and training to know what he is selling is pure BS, which makes this worse. So we are to believe that Russia is waging a limited war - after Bucha and criminal missile strikes (I have no doubt he is denying both of those points despite overwhelming evidence) - and accepting attritional bleeding approaching major war levels because…reasons? If anything his narrative makes Russia even darker and more irrational. According to him Russia could end this war in a week but is not, and therefore dragging the suffering on both sides out, for some sort of weird “winning the peace” long game restraint? (He has been selling that one since this thing began). The guy is a traitor to the military profession…as to the rest, well we will likely have to let the courts decide. In other news, found another interesting RAND piece - this is a western assessment of Russian assessments pre-war: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA100/RRA198-4/RAND_RRA198-4.pdf Really big and complicated power analysis and assessment models throughout but don’t let turn you off. What is interesting is that Russia is entirely wired to see the world as a threat space - the entire thing is threat orientated. Further, Russia sees itself as anything less than global 1 or 2 as a threat in itself. This is bigger than NATO or Eastern Europe, it is a society that has to be on top or its existence is in question. Historically that stark calculus never went anywhere good. What struck me is the underlying end-game dichotomy - “we know we will never dominate the world but we have to dominate something”. There is a tone of insecurity and compensation for that throughout. This is beyond all the social and physical metrics rubbed all over everything, it speaks to the Russian certainty. It is too easy to simply write this off as “duh, see Russia”. It speaks to something we spoke about earlier, the theory of Russian defeat. So how do you get a nation that is built on that certainty to renegotiate with itself peacefully?

Critical shopping malls and apartment buildings. No way to dress it up, the Russian “strategic” deep strike campaign has been a flop. It caused a lot of misery and committed a lot of warcrimes, but that just amped up support for Ukraine and painted stark lines in this conflict. It did not drive Ukraine or the West towards political dilemma in fact it did the exact opposite. And it did very little in supporting strategic military goals. A really skeptical part of me thinks there was a movement to sell Russia as more dangerous than it was for various reasons. Turns out Russia was a pretty sad and sorry bear - but even as such we are still dealing with capacity and preparedness issues. Basically Russia set the bar pretty low and we are still finding out how hard it is to jump over it.

Yeesh, that report did not age well: “The key military tasks of the unified strategic operation are all related to engaging targets beyond the range of Russian ground forces and artillery. These tasks are long-range conventional strikes against critical military and civilian targets; electronic warfare (EW) to disrupt command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR); counterspace actions; and cyberattacks against critical infrastructure.” Russia could not get a unified operational level operation, let alone a strategic one. We were expecting this at the opening of this thing and instead got whatever this missile lobbing exercise has been.

To this add the UA upward trajectory. We are seeing more and more next-gen weaponry showing up on the battlefield. Force generation is going strong in the backfield. The UA is definitely taking losses but they are replacing them with better trained and equipped forces. Ammo is the only real concern but I am really not sure how close the the actual line we are with respect to reserves. Further, as the UA leans heavily on PGM they do not need as much ammo to get the same jobs done. The RA is the one who was using WWI levels of fires to try and overwhelm defences - they had better saved some for the counter-attack.

Precision of precision guided? First precision guided was this thing apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_X Abstractly one could argue that assassins were really the first PGM, but that might be stretching the analogy. As to unguided precision well it was probably the spear itself. Hammers, clubs and even axes rely on broad swing arcs, the spear is focused on a very small point. As to ranged, the sling is good candidate or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower What is really interesting is less the technology itself but what it did to combat (well hunting first, then combat). Once we could focus energy down to a narrow point and project it, everything changed.

Given likely state of Russian maintenance I would be more optimistic.

Not bad at all to be honest. I think they will one-two split as well. Not sure as to sequencing as it could be conditions based, but if your force is in good shape while theirs is stressed, and you can maul there LOCs from afar, putting stress at two points makes sense. Creates dilemma and forces your opponent to swing quickly from one AO to the other - this is playing to RA weaknesses. It copies the model of Kharkiv and Kherson but it works and what is the RA going to do about it? If they slack off in the east they are looking at getting supply lines cut from the North, if they ignore the middle they get the land bridge cut and now have two non-contiguous theatres to contend with. Grinding directly back towards Donetsk in the Donbas is a waste of time. They could try a bold river crossing south of Kherson but that is a tall order and risky. And then we get into wild amphib and/or airborne type stuff but the UA is likely not there with the specialized stuff. I think Haiduk is onto something with the idea of leading with current inventory and then break out with western kit - they gotta use it and show the world they are using it but they also do not want to trash it.

Well I am not a big proponent of predictions but since we are being compared to Kofman and crew, let me make one. The RA is building up to another collapse - when and where are pretty much up in the air but we will be the first to know. How is getting clearer by the day. The only question is, "will it be a full strategic collapse or another operational one?" My bet is on operational. The RA is going to hold onto Donetsk and Luhansk (the cities) until the dirty end. Crimea we have talked about. But I know Steve has been aching for a strategic one for some time now, maybe his day has dawned. I am saying this because we are getting a lot of signals coming out of the RA war machine that it is starting to creak, and they sound a lot like last fall - in many ways worse. Meanwhile the UA is getting breaching equipment, next-gen UAS and loitering munitions, and freakin JDAMs.

Normally the initial lanes are done by the tanks themselves after the engineers fire line charges if it is an explosive breaching. As to slow, well yes and no, very likely a hard no for the RA. A simple minefield can be pushed through pretty quickly but the lead plough tanks are very vulnerable, it is why you always do double breaches - as you note, straight line. It is when the minefield is complex (i.e. with embedded obstacles such as an AT ditch or dragons teeth). Then you need to do the breach with the tank, then bring up a specialized armoured dozer, clear the ditch or obstacle. Push through the rest of the minefield and then do the assault. It is one of the hardest operations to do, water crossings are likely one of the few harder. A professional well practiced outfit can do all that in minutes, but the RA has been anything but. The UA are likely training like mad on this sort of stuff right now because they are going to need it. On the modern battlefield you would basically need to create an EW bubble to keep drones and ISR away as best you can. Support with a lot of deep strike, likely program in feints and false breaches. It is near the high water mark for a modern force.

That is a nasty piece of kit. Saw what the 2000 pounder could do in person. The ER version can reach out to 74kms. That means you can launch the thing 20km behind your own lines and still hit an opponents operational rears areas. If they go heavy payload these things could be a nightmare for RA counter-moves forces during a UA offensive.

Exactly, the factors of erosion of a defence are really just symptoms of the defensive puzzle being solved. A defence is really a puzzle system, and in land warfare a fairly rigid one. Positions are built and sighted on terrain (approaches, LOS etc), obstacles are placed and trenches dug in. Counter-move forces positioned and logistical support linked up. The attacker has to solve for this. The doctrinal solution is to either isolate and bypass, letting the system choke out once the logistics are cut, or overwhelm with force. However each attack erodes the defence while also figuring it out. Finds the weak points, or it makes weak points. Figures out the counter-moves plan and adapts. War is competitive adaptation - it lies at the nexus of communication and negotiation, and both sides are trying to adapt better than an opponent. The problem with defence is that over time it cedes adaptation advantage to the attacker. Why? Because it is tied to terrain. So as to force ratios, well initial attacks can be quite costly with very high loss ratios. However, humans figure the puzzle out and once a defence starts to fail the losses start to stack up. Then if it fails completely the losses for the defender can skyrocket as all its puzzle advantages collapse. This concept applies to a platoon dug in, the company, the battalion and up to strategic levels. We have been pursuing how to break this dynamic for a long time. France 1940 demonstrated you could solve a very complex defensive puzzle with convergence (combined arms and C4ISR). The Gulf War demonstrated that you can solve a very large defensive puzzle with AirPower and GPS (AirLand Battle). Russia has demonstrated in Ukraine that you cannot, or at least their versions of these ideas. It is vague because I suspect it is still emerging. I also think we saw it during the opening month of this war. Ukraine essentially waged a non-linear adaptive defence during the initial invasion. It was highly hybrid and distributed and looked very self-synchronizing. It mirrored the defensives we saw within insurgencies but upscaled dramatically. So non-linear means that unlike traditional defence if you hit A you will not get a consistent B effect. You may get C or D, or X. I am not sure if this is really non-linear or simply very complex (jury is out on just how non-linear humans can be). Either way it makes solving the puzzle much harder as one has to build a new theory almost every time. Here the rigidity of the offence, largely due to logistical realities, failed the RA. Adaptive means the defence can adapt faster that the attacker, which means not being as tied to terrain. Ukraine traded 100s of km of terrain in the initial invasion but appeared to envelope those RA lines of advance. Further their defence had a crowd-sourcing element to it which suggests a lot of spontaneous action. All of this adds up to an unsolvable puzzle (or at least to hard for the RA). In the future I suspect that unmanned systems will shape the battle space more than terrain. A smart minefield with legs can deny vast swaths of ground and move. Flying swarms can deny large areas and also move. The only way to really solve for a defensive cloud is to bleed out the cloud (or change the weather…but that is later). So I expect the defensive may be re-emerging as dominant but it is not the defensive we knew and loved. Now the big question is whether this is transitory or a long term thing.

Maritime Special Operation

Having just read into this Nordstream thing, I kind of have the same question. A lot of moving parts here that pretty much point to a state sponsored job. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and blows up 8 meter stretches of concrete encased pipe at 300 feet ocean depth, in four separate locations while other ships with transponders off cover for you...like a duck. Then is was a bloody MSO job. I assume the hubbub is which state did it?

Damn forgot the urban angle. So Kofman and those guys are taking the position that the RA who: - Have been seen using human wave attacks with poorly trained and equipped troops - Lacking artillery support, which has been noted as burning out and faltering by Russian troops. - Combined arms integration - Lacking ISR (or at least any notable improvements) - Have been essentially doing frontals into an urban defence against a prepared defender who has owned the terrain for months And pulled off a 1:1 attrition ratio....?....! Ok, well first off they are going to have to prove that beyond "we went to Bakhmut". And if it is true something very odd is happening, which we definitely want to keep an eye on.

I have to wonder if this is so cheap why Russia did not invest in it. I mean UA ISR is a column from the ground to space, while the RA are foundering. The few notes we have gotten from RA space capability has been extremely low refresh times - they would do better buying the data from commercial systems (but whoops, sanctions). I suspect the Geo stuff is for Sig and ELINT, which is probably more important than visual. Some of the US stuff is extremely classified so hard to say what they can see or detect but based on the UA targeting of deep strikes, it appears pretty damned good. Now as I have said before, I am not worried about fighting Russia, I am worried about fighting someone enabled like the Ukraine.

Ah and I found academic corroboration as well - https://www.usni.org/press/books/nato-and-warsaw-pact-tanks-cold-war I have a copy from an online library and Green says on page 283 "1976" as first introduction into East Germany. Outstanding, so the T64 is on the menu for BAOR from the start. It will effect rarity but there it is.

Oh, I love this kind of stuff. I see the entry for T72s but where does it say they were T64s? Or was this the event mentioned in the CIA doc?

I think it is actually more simple than this. If I could boil down the problem for the defender it is to become unsolvable. Every defence is a military puzzle whose biggest problem is human learning. If attacked, poked and probed enough, even the most vigorous defence can be solved given enough time. The game is to make the cost of solving it beyond the bank account of the attacker. Even back in WWI the extensive trench systems, communications, rapid firing artillery and railways all conspired to make trench warfare unsolvable. Sides adapted, inventing airpower, tanks, tunneling and storm troops, all as way to solve for this defensive warfare. In the end one side simply was exhausted but someone would have solved for that type of defence eventually - we know this because the Germans did in 1940. So in order to become unsolvable, a defence must become non-linear, adaptive and dynamic. Big problem in land warfare is that terrain does not work that way. Problem in air and maritime is that the physics of fluids work that way too well. I strongly suspect that unmanned systems, particularly ground systems could change this. Defence/Offence on land may start to look more like that in the sea - at best one can gain temporary control. Land warfare may be evolving towards denial of ground, the trick will be the right peice of ground at the right time. Within small wars we see this sort of thing "amongst the people", similarities between people and oceans are interesting. But unlike oceans, people appear to be able to suddenly freeze from the inside out as opposed to external factors. But this is another topic entirely. As to Bakhmut, well currently the UA defence is still not solved. It is solvable, however, the question is how long and at what cost. The RA bizarre inability to learn is very much helping the UA right now, but no party last forever.

But it only gives one coverage of one slice of the planet at a time. You get "global coverage" but only of the same spot once every 12 hours. Assuming you load that orbit up with enough satellites you get a continuous slice of the planet as it passed beneath. In order to get real-time continuous, one needs to either load up on geosynchronous, or build multiple solar orbits to get full coverage - I do not even think the US is there yet. So in order for China to be able to get ISR on Ukraine, it will get a snap shot every 12 hours with those solar orbits, but a lot can happen in 12 hours. I would bet all the peanuts in the bar the US has got eyes on that part of the world 24/7 using a bunch of platforms, including geosynchronous. China also has most of its assets pointed regionally so in order to build up a full picture, we are still talking re-vectoring assets away. So how much does China really love Russia in all this because even trying for half decent parity over the AO is going to cost them. We know this is not happening, or at least there is no evidence it is - such as Russians suddenly getting a lot better at targeting.