Combatintman

I suspect it would be an IMINT/SIGINT/ELINT lashup. SIGINT will tell you what callsigns are speaking to each other and which nets are active. As a simple illustration, if you have three callsigns on a regimental net - one will be the RHQ and the other two will be subordinate battalions/BTGs. Easier if you're getting the raw voice transcript. ELINT will be able to geolocate the transmitters which then allows you to cue up your IMINT sensor to collect at the geolocated areas. Your IMINT will tell you what is physically there.

Not disputing the general thrust of what you're saying but the 22 x BTG figure, according to Jomini, is sourced from Ukrainian and Western/NATO intelligence so this is not a case of Russians adding 'HQ flags' to Putin's Kremlin bunker map.

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So running from buildings that are being shelled is actually a RL thing ... Lots of people and threads on this forum appear to have disagreed with this notion in the past ...

Simple answer is I don't know. The consistent figure across the reporting is 22 x BTGs up there. Both Jomini and UAWar appear consistent about the formations up there. A lot I think depends on which 22 x BTGs are being counted - if you track from Verbivka to Sievierdonetsk you arrive at 22 x BTGs. If you look at the formations and work on the widely held view that that a regiment/brigade is capable of generating 1-2 BTGs then the 8 x regts/bdes in the area Verbivka-Pidlyman translates into eight to 16 x BTGs maximum there. Given the information that people are working from I would say that what we're seeing on the UAWar overlay is as accurate is its going to get accepting that the numbers are going to be out by one or two here or there. Given that Russia seems to be trying to expand that bridgehead to the west and concurrently push south to Dibrovne and Slovyansk it is trying to do too much with too little and dissipating its combat power. Whatever launches out of Izyum seems doomed to fail unless the Ukrainian Army up there decides to have a 'let's fight like Russia day.'

I'd remain ignorant - he's a crank who seems to think the M-113, which he insists on calling the Gavin, is the solution to every tactical problem.

Here: Jomini of the West (@JominiW) | nitter or here: UAWarData: Tracking the Russian invasion

Yep - those were my thoughts on AA3 - it has the easiest starting position.

On to the ground piece regarding these new developments around Izyum and Keminna. AA1: Izyum-Kramatorsk. Reasonable manoeuvre terrain, pockets Slovyansk. AA2: Izyum Slovyansk. Poor manoeuvre terrain which forces the attacker into a frontal assault on Slovyansk. I have already assessed that the drive to the city could consume at least 2-3 BTGs and an attack on the city will require 4-5 BTGs. AA3: Keminna-Slovyansk. I haven't analysed this in detail yet, but I don't need to spend hours cross-hatching a map to see that of all of the AAs, this is probably the worst for manoevre and it is impossible to avoid a fight for Lyman should the Ukrainians choose to contest it. That will consume at least 3-4 BTGs then there is the water and woods obstacle between Lyman and Slovyansk. Then Slovyansk itself. True to form it appears that Russia has chosen the least favourable/most difficult AA if Slovyansk is the target. AA4: Severodonetsk-Kramatorsk. Reasonable manoeuvre terrain which pockets Slovyansk. Personally I would be going with a COA to pocket Slovyansk by aiming at Kramatorsk along AAs 1 and 4. Still chipping away at the terrain analysis - here is the latest map army file: BAE.milxlyz Map Army link: MilitaryMap - Plan your Mission

Hopefully not looking for cats which was a thing with the media a few days back.

Au contraire - I just felt that with everyone going on about the war winning capabilities of half-decent NCOs, it was worth demonstrating what we bring to the party. Anyway - I've got some more map colouring in to do ...

Yes it is enough of an obstacle in many places - hence the 'Severely Restricted' marking in many places. Severely Restricted in IPB terms = cannot be bridged by an AVLB. I haven't finished doing that river yet but a lot of it is 'Restricted' which means that it can be crossed by an AVLB and some stretches will be 'Unrestricted' which is 5' gap or less (1.5m ish in new money). Russia needs tactical bridging whichever Avenue of Approach is used and will likely need a lot of it.

I just threw the arrows in from the south because theoretically there are forces available there - as I said, I haven't deep-dived the Russian laydown yet, but my initial read of what's going on there is pretty much on the same page as you. The COAs are one or the other, even with my limited look into what is on the ground I know that there are definitely not enough forces to pull off all three COAs concurrently although the push west as part of COA3 could be employed to support COAs 1 and 2.

I'll see your Flight Simulator and raise you map army ... MilitaryMap - Plan your Mission I've been noodling around this one as well and am miles off finishing but I've done enough to work out in terms of ground alone that a Russian attack is going to be a big ask. The images above are different map/imagery sets of the same area with the red line being the approximate FEBA as of a few days ago. The area shown is basically Izyum-Slovyansk-Kramatorsk. The broad COAs for Russian are basically: COA1 - Deep Envelopment. COA2 - Medium Envelopment. COA3 - Shallow Envelopment. Of the three COAs - COA1 offers the best opportunity for manoeuvre and is the preferred COA. COAs 2 and 3 both involve moving through severely restricted terrain and a battle for Slovyansk. As a guesstimate, moving through the woods to Slovyansk will swallow up a minimum of three BTGs if the Ukrainians choose to disrupt the advance on the approaches to Slovyansk. Slovyansk cannot be bypassed which means that if it is going to be defended, it will require a minimum of 4-5 BTGs to subdue. A number of 22 x BTGs has been banded around for the force assembling in Izyum meaning that COAs 2 and 3 will expend nearly a third of the available combat power in Izyum covering the first 35km. That is assuming that Russia can knock Slovyansk over easily for which there is little evidence to suggest that it is capable of doing so should it be defended. It will also probably take at least a week to clear out the defenders which means that COAs 2 and 3 stand little chance of achieving a face saving "victory" by 09 May. In fact COA 2 will definitely fail to deliver on that timeline. Map Army Files are below if anybody wants to rummage around the detail bearing in mind this is WIP. BAE.milxlyzRussian FLOT 10 Apr.milxlyz

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Theoretically Russia could spare the troops. The Taliban and Islamic extremist threat is over egged massively by both Russia and Tajikistan. A couple of months back the Tajik President came out with the outlandish figure of something like 6,000 Islamic militants active in Afghanistan's north east which was 'confirmed' by Russia. In reality the numbers don't even come close to what's up there in Afghanistan's Badakhshan, Takhar and Kunduz provinces - maybe 2,000 at best and even that would be an optimistic assessment. Coupled with this is that the Taliban are keeping a lid on these guys. However, it plays into a good narrative of being strong on terrorism and allows Russia to trumpet the CSTO as well as find good reasons to station its forces in non-Russian territory.

A useful contribution from a smaller NATO nation might be a C-17 load of yellow tape then?

No not quite - I have yet to meet a commander that admits they have enough ISR assets for a starter. I don't doubt that the coverage is there but there are the issues of whether: The coverage is persistent or time limited. There are overlapping and separate sources reporting. There is information overload in the analysis cell. The analysed product is getting to the right people at the right time. That leaders make the right judgements based on the product. Khafji in Gulf War 1 is a good example of how surprise by the Iraqi Army was achieved in the face of pretty good coverage by a headquarters that vaguely knew what it was doing ... "Throughout 28 January, the Coalition received a number of warnings suggesting an impending Iraqi offensive. The Coalition was flying two brand-new E-8A Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) aircraft, which picked up the deployment and movement of Iraqi forces to the area opposite of Khafji. Observation posts 2, 7 and 8 also detected heavy Iraqi reconnoitering along the border, and their small teams of air-naval gunfire liaison Marines called in air and artillery strikes throughout the day. Lieutenant Colonel Richard Barry, commander of the forward headquarters of the 1st Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Intelligence Group, sent warnings about an impending attack to Central Command. CentCom leaders were too preoccupied with the air campaign to heed them however, and so the Iraqi operation came as a surprise." Sure the Iraqis got booted out a few days later and the attacking force suffered on the way down to Khafji but the attack was still a surprise even though this was an advance over a piece of ground not well endowed with hiding places by an organization not known for its prowess against a Coalition led by a nation which had trained and equipped itself to be probably the most competent executor of conventional manoeuvre warfare at that time. That said, I doubt that Russia will be able to achieve much in the way of significant surprise in where it decides to strike to the extent that Ukrainian forces will be unable to recover. Likewise, the thing with surprise is that you need to capitalise on it by rapid exploitation, maintaining the initiative and thus ahead of the Ukrainian OODA loop. The Russian Army has done nothing in this conflict that suggests it is capable of this.

We call them assessments in the trade and yes it is possible to achieve surprise. There will always be gaps in coverage and there is the issue of sorting out the wheat from the chaff and then getting that recognized picture to the people who need the information. Additionally the vehicles do not necessarily have to start moving to be able to work out the Courses of Action available. It is fairly easy to narrow down the courses of action using processes such Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) and once you narrow those down, you can task your ISR to look into areas where they might travel and when they might travel through their areas. Ideally you cover areas where the enemy has to make a decision, called a Decision Point in the trade and if you get it right, you end up well ahead of the enemy's' Decision-Action cycle which allows you to trigger counter actions or strikes as necessary.

The BTG discussion has been interesting - I did find it strange that people leapt on the US BCT vs Russian BTG study because it is an apples and oranges comparison. As has emerged during the links unearthed during the discussion, the BTG in terms of its look is really no different to a standard NATO Battlegroup or Battalion Task Force. However the less obvious things are those that matter. BTGs were a compromise based on the fact that Russia could not man all of its regiments/brigades so just allocated those combat, combat support and combat service support bodies they had available across the regiment/brigade to either a single or maybe two BTGs. It is debatable whether these BTGs had any form of collective training before they crossed the border - the ones that went to Belarus should certainly have given the amount of time they sat there before this 'special military operation started.' Anyway it is a moot point because most of what we have suggests that either the training didn't happen or was insufficient. Then there is the C2 aspect. Most of the Orbat diagrams that we look at show that conceptually the BTG can deliver a heavy punch - for instance they are not short on tube or rocket artillery but they have been unable to bring it all together. Those same diagrams illustrate why in physical terms alone - not many command vehicles in the HQ being the obvious indication. To add to Steve's point in the quoted post above about parent brigades or regiments. The revelation of the last week (or so) that in the absence of a Supreme Commander or even a single Land Component Commander to run the whole operation, divisional commanders were just told to do their own thing until an overall commander was appointed a few days back. This will have compounded the difficulties further down the food chain for any BTG commander who found themselves in the brown smelly stuff - who do they call for help? where are they? what help can they deliver? etc ... Then there's logistics - which has been done to death, but worth saying again - the CSS slice for BTGs was not up to the task and Russian Army reforms of recent years weakened CSS in the Russian Army from top to bottom.

Indeed ... illustrated perfectly here ... Ok - I get its a cat and not a human but @TheVulture is bang on. I recall remarking very early on in this thread during the first 24 hours of this conflict that all I was seeing on MSM was journos on the rooftops of hotels in Ukraine miles away from the shooty-bangy end of the conflict bumping their gums about nothing that added any value regarding the shooty-bangy part of the conflict. My analogy is it would be like coverage of a football match where 90% of the footage and commentary is about who is in the crowd, the dressing room, in the carpark outside the stadium etc and the final 10% is Liverpool won 2-0 and here is footage of the goals. They need to give their heads a wobble.

It depends on the ability of the countries housing them. Doctrine for non-combatant evacuation operations (NEO) emphasises moving people to 'a place of safety' which does not mean repatriating to the home country. Now I appreciate we are not talking about a NEO here but the principle applies of moving to a nearby safe place rather than somewhere thousands of miles/kilometres away. If Poland, Hungary etc have the resources to look after them and are suitably safe then they should be the preferred option due to proximity rather than moving them to the UK/US/Canada etc etc.

Err ... not quite - unless every geographical neighbouring country now means 'maybe 50% of the geographical neighbouring countries at varying times on a transactional basis.' I could go on - I watched it fall apart from Kabul, where I am currently sitting, for the greater part of last year. Anyway - thread drift ...

Pretty much how I played it when I tested it as the Soviet - smash the place with indirect and direct fire weapons and air and aviation assets.

Took me three weeks to make that map ...