Livdoc44

I think game developers need to really look hard at drone vs drone actions.  It won't solve for tanks as we can see very far and by other means but freedom of movement on the future battlefield is going to require an ability to achieve air-superiority below 2000 ft, even if temporarily.  I strongly suspect the best thing to kill a UAS, is another UAS.  UGVs will go the same way.  This will mean a combination of front edge unmanned swarm systems battling out, while manned forces are trying to kill each other over the horizon in the initial stages.  Then someone's unmanned cloud will collapse, ISR advantaged will slide violently and the losing sides manned systems will die very fast if they cannot run away.  Big, slow hot will be a liability in that environment.
Arquilla's three rules:
Many and small beats large and heavy
Finding always beats flanking
Swarming always beats surging
The_Capt's Axiom - Mass beats isolation, precision beats mass, mass precision beats everything.

Has the potential of becoming an iconic photograph of this war. Showcasing the bravery of individual members of the AFU, back when much of the world already wrote them off as having no chance of defending their country.
 
 

As I understand it,  It's a common misperception that land wars function separately from naval campaigns.
Both domains reinforce the other, providing unique services and support that one domain does not have but the other does. 
Fundamentally, every naval campaign is about the protection/denial of sea trade, because nothing else but ocean going ships can move the same volume and quantity of goods and material. Trains are simply not equivalent
But ships need bases, so land warfare is need to protect/acquire those. The naval bases and trade ports can intake a huge amount of material (because ships,  above) which can allow for large scale supply of an inland campaign. Think Pusan,  cherbourg etc. 
Sevastopol serves the same function,  even more so with the Kerch bridge in play. 
I suspect the bridge will be the last bit of Russia to go.. 
 

My hot take is that they have sent everything that would move under its own power to the front, and pulled the barrels off of everything that wouldn't. And when those barrels are used up, the next batch is coming from where exactly? This also gives a pretty good estimate of what percentage of one of these outside storage parks is vaguely usable.

The threatened government shutdown is a hostage situation where the hostage takers don't have a clue what their backmail demands actually are. Its a performative farce. If the House is going to put on an annual pantomime they should be obliged to dress up as Punch.

Wow. This is by far the most incomprehensibly stupid thing I have heard in this war (edit: from anyone outside of Russia) so far (and I do not throw around words like "stupid" lightly. They are really going to need to explain how the concept of an "exit plan" applies to this war. The US doesn't need an exit plan, because US forces aren't in Ukraine. Ukraine doesn't need an exit plan, because why would Ukraine want to leave Ukraine? Russia is the only party to which an exit plan might apply. But their objective is to conquer Ukraine and make it a permanent part of Russia. An exit plan would be an admission of defeat.
The United States needed exit plans for Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, because we were foreign forces in those countries that had no intention of permanently conquering those countries (in other words, our forces would eventually need to "exit" those countries).
I haven't been watching the regular news or paying much attention to how the average American views this war. But I wonder if this is part of a larger trend of assuming that every single war is like Iraq or Afghanistan. This is not the first time I've heard objections raised about this war that were applicable to Iraq or Afghanistan, but not in any way applicable to Ukraine. Some conversations I've had with some of my coworkers have left me with the suspicion that Iraq and Afghanistan are the only frames of reference they have for any war.

Just to give some topographical sense to those village names near Bahkmut we're hearing about lately (many thanks to @Haiduk for the Poulet Volant connection!)
Basic GMap view:

Satellite view

Basic GMap terrain layer:

Note Odradivka on the dominant N-S ridge...
Poulet Volant's tactical map

Klishchiivka originally, looking North-West (3d view)
https://www.google.com/maps/@48.5277713,37.9579843,3a,75y,311.84h,90.5t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipO2PHVOcznzIZyPRktdiN_mlnoDQl42dkYzqBxf!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipO2PHVOcznzIZyPRktdiN_mlnoDQl42dkYzqBxf%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-20-ya3.0000002-ro-0-fo100!7i8192!8i4096!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu

Looking East

The liberation photo was taken at that corner, marked red


No GMAP photos available near Andriivka but we do have this from  previously:


 

Hilarious 
 
 

This really makes no sense.  If a “tank” is simply the most lethal vehicle then right now an infantryman with an ATGM or artillery with PGM are “tanks”.
A tank provides a combination of three things: survivability, lethality and mobility.  They are all uniquely high but come at a high cost to produce and sustain in the field.  The core issue is that Survivability is pretty much in tatters in this war.  Tanks are highly visible and are being hunted into extinction.  Too many things can see and kill them or their support system to easily.  Mobility - see 1) minefields and 2) denial of the tank by long range systems that can see them and kill the at greater ranges than the tank can respond.  Lack of tank freedom of mobility is a freakin hallmark of this war.  Lethality - maybe the only thing the old girl has left but it is being replaced by precision artillery, missiles and UAS.
Dress is up however one likes.  Apologize for no air superiority all day long. Blame the Ukrainians and Russians for “not being combined armsie enough.” That equation up there is not going to suddenly swing back in favour of heavy expensive metal moving forward.  We may even see a major armour breakout in this war but that won’t validate their existence, it will be a swan song.
Finally from a strategic perspective other factors come into play but the biggest one is that tanks are just too damn heavy…blame gravity.  They are hard to move and mount.  They are very costly to support.  Problem now is that an opponent can move and mount the denial system for the tank much faster than we can mount and move heavy forces.  So What?  Every time we deploy the armoured fist somewhere, cheap and many lethal systems to counter it will have been there for weeks.  And the technology behind those system is going to be an extremely high priority because they can deny what is the core of our current western military ground force …they watched the Gulf War and Iraq 03 on tv same way we did.
So add it all up. Tactical, Operational and Strategic - the whole thing does not look good for the entire heavy system.  Lighter, faster, cheaper, deadlier and unmanned is a wave of change that no one is going to be able to stand in front of.  In my opinion we are watching the re-definition of “combined arms” unfold in front of us daily in Ukraine.  The re-design of what combat power means and warfare itself is going to be fundamentally changed.

Various tidbits I can point out:
- There was a "flying wing" drone that fell within the city limits during the recent attack near Yevpatoriya. It looked undamaged (downed by EW?) and fell right next to the main office of RNCB bank (biggest bank in Crimea that uses old Privatbank infrastructure). The drone fell less than 1.5km away from where I was at the time.
- The morons cannot scale their production of propaganda BS school books. They've issues orders/laws that cannot be implemented, yet again. It is said that it will take years to print thier new "unitary" schoolbooks. Imagine them trying to switch their economy to the "war footing" as some want ;D That would be even funnier.
- There's a special, dedicated NDA they force upon people (first responders?) after missile/drone strikes that starts with words "becasue of the current geopolitical situation" that prevents them from talking about anything.
- The fuel prices continue to rise locally, and people are really noticing. There's quite a lot of rambling about it, and even some organized (and, strangely, authorised) street protests. Did not see much details yet about the latter.

The silovik state operates under a system of understandings. Those will have to be renegotiated as the old ones will go into the ground with Kadyrov. Putin will be forced to let someone else into his inner circle, competitive forces will be released within the Chechen system, etc. It will be yet another complication, yet another distraction and likely a further reduction in state capacity emanating from Putin's office. I don't expect something dramatic to change at first but more like increased systemic drag. 

I feel like we should be celebrating more that Kadyrov is very likely dead. 

It was suggested by an Austrian Military Channel to use Leo1 for infantry support. He was using the word Stug the Centurion 20PDR was also used for this role in Vietnam. Interesting the new US 105 mm system is just introduced the specs at first look surprising similar to the Leo 1 same weight and same gun.

So basically older capabilities took a long time to die?  And yet they still died.  I know the myths of Agincourt but in the end cheap mass won out that entire argument.  And kept winning it right through to about WW2.
The fact that cavalry held on by fingernails in WW1 is not proof that they somehow were still a viable arm of manoeuvre.  In fact the narrowing of cavalry over the centuries could be what we are seeing in armour in much quicker time.
Firing line formations died at the Civil War, and yet militaries held onto them (and their ridiculous bayonets) for decades (we already argued this on that other thread).
One can “whatabout” it all one wants but military capabilities clearly have a failing trajectory.  There are elements of cost, effectiveness, utility and decisiveness at play in that calculus.  Large armoured cavalry as an example.  Its decisive role began to fade, arguably, in the Middle Ages.  Its utility was definitely compressed by the 19th century and by early 20th century they had been relegated to logistical support and flank security.  By mid 20th they were pretty much only logistical and after that ceremonial.  
You can trace any obsolete capability along similar tracks.  They take time to die…but they do die.  Cost effectiveness is a significant factor and cheap that can kill or deny expensive is on the right track to render it obsolete.  However, it is not the only factor at play.  Tanks look to me like they are in the beginnings of a death spiral, particularly if we are talking long term attritional warfare.  They take too long to produce, and cost too much for what they are able to deliver right now.  As Steve notes, they are also being supplanted by a lot of other things that are a lot cheaper to manufacture.
”Well infantry are easy to kill and have not gone obsolete”.  Well 1) they are a lot cheaper than armour, 2) they are actually really hard to kill.  They may be soft squishy humans but they are like sand and get into everything.  Hard to find and fix, and extremely replaceable. 3) They are also nearly impossible to fully deny..see sand, and 4) they have not been supplanted, in fact they have been dramatically augmented with modern UAS and ATGMs.  
Tanks on the other hand are really expensive, getting more so just trying to keep them alive. East to spot…big lump of hot metal and ceramic. Easy to deny.  Hard to replace at scale.  And now they are being supplanted.  However, like a lot of military capabilities they will take some time to die.  On could argue that have been dying since the 80s but I am not so sure.  This war has definitely not been good news for amour or mech and everyone knows it.  In fact it has not been good news for manoeuvre warfare itself.
Now modern militaries have a couple choices: adapt or hang onto legacy capability for “reasons”.  We are really good at that last one.

Well yes, and no.  Cheap bowmen rendered very expensive knights obsolete.  Not sure the cost of muskets versus pikemen.  A single machine gun has to be cheaper than a squadron of cavalry.
The question is less “can it be killed” and more “how much value does it render before it dies”.
The cost equation is one factor.  In warfare things become obsolete for what appears to be at least two main reasons:
- Denial.  The capability advantages of the thing are denied to the point it becomes a liability - see Battleships v Carriers.
- Replacement.  The capability advantages of a thing are replaced by a capability that is not denied - see Battleships v Carriers.
The modern tank is currently being operationally compressed…significantly.  It has become very apparent that one can wage Defence and Denial without tanks at all.  The big question is, “can one wage Offence?”  The modern tank is definitely seeing Denial in Ukraine, however, as an offensive weapon we are not seeing a replacement, yet.  I personally do not think the tank is entirely dead but it utility is definitely on a one way trip.  The role of the tank is becoming much narrower - currently a rapid, well protected indirect fire system.
And this is bigger than tanks.  We are not seeing a lot of IFV/AFV success either.  We do still see them in infantry support roles, however, they are also blunted.  The entire mechanized portfolio is currently getting compressed into a capability with a much narrower role.  
So where do we go from here?  It is weird how in times of disruption in warfare we always seem to fall back on basics.  In this war it has been infantry and indirect fires (including UAS etc).  These are two capabilities that still work.  Both sides appear to be wrestling with the fact that the other elements of mechanized combined arms are not working - armour/mech and engineering.  The modern battlefield also appears to be denying two major principles of war - concentration of force, and surprise.  This is not small.  
I suspect UGVs and some sort of Shield capabilities will be combined to break the deadlock, and get Offensive manoeuvre via mobility back on the menu.  We are far too deeply invested not to try and buy our way out.  My sense though is that others are too deeply invested in taking away the cornerstones of the western way of ground warfare.  So in the end the tank will become obsolete because there is a lot of incentive to make it go away.  Then the race to master whatever comes next will be on.

My day job is developing wargames for the USMC, and I wanted to address the bolded part above. Computer simulations are great, but they do not answer all the objectives of professional wargames, in fact many time the result is not even that important, many times the discussion and insights learned from going through the process are all that we are after. Computer sims also have a way of stifling this conversation, trust me when you have 50 professional Marine, Army, and/or Navy officers in a room, a table top game is the best tool for the job if you want to invite conversation and in-depth topic discussions.
There is also a dopamine hit players get from the tactile nature of a map and counter wargame and rolling dice that you rarely get from a computer simulation. That also has a value to get player buy-in, interaction, and enjoyment.  
Simulation based professional wargames are great when the results are important, testing a new tactical organization, weapon system integration, etc., but they usually turn into a series of in-depth planning sessions with a simulated vignettes occuring for flavor. There is also a stovepipe mentality with these types of games with different player cells huddled around their machines that is absent in table top games.
I've seen it all and there is value for all types of wargames in the professional setting and which is used depends on the objectives and research questions we are trying to answer. Table top games in professional wargames will not be going away anytime soon.
Bil

What air defenses? ;D
Apperently, there's less and less of them. BBC was pretty quick to report the local (my hometown) events, so you may wanna check that out.
No air raid warnings, no nothing. Nothing is happening, as always. Just bavovna and smoke. Even the announcer at the train station skips the usual "be observant and careful, careful and observant" this morning. How come, I wonder?
 
ps: I'm okay, and the windows are fine, for now.

copy paste from subsim hq

I like to think its at least partially due to their proximity to 'CM Pro' 

It's not a mist of suspicions....Musk has quite clearly demonstrated that he will take his own interests into account before any national interest. He has actively promoted the idea that Ukraine should surrender territory to Russia and that Taiwan should submit to the PRC. Elon Musk is *not* our friend. 

Right a bit more on topic and I was lucky enough to see Sir Anthony Beaver being interviewed by James Holland at "We Have Ways Fest" this weekend and he was being asked about the research into his Stalingrad book.

An excellent interview and might be on line at some stage. Some points that caught my attention that tie into the current war.

He mentioned that during his research at the Russian archives that he stumbled upon all the reports back to Stalin and that Stalin had demanded to know the whole truth warts and all... This was a gold mine for the book and gave a pretty good view of the reality of the situation to Stalin.

I wonder if x years’ time will we find that Putler is being told the truth warts and all?

Did it really help inform Stalin’s choices? We think Putler does not know the truth and he might do things differently but maybe now he knows the truth but he can’t change his choices and as noted is doubling down in the hope things will change…

Sir Anthony also mentioned how poor the food was at the canteen of the research place – his Russian researcher used to say he was too spoiled. But what he did get a laugh from is that he used to get excellent hot dogs from a certain person who fell out of the sky a while ago… That was a name we were not expecting to pop up in a Stalingrad talk…

Sir Anthony also made a big point about the Soviet brutality and how this really has not changed from WW2 to modern times. He talked about the feral starving Russian kids that were tempted by Germans for crusts of bread to go and fill their water canteens at the river. The Russian snipers were ordered to kill the Russian kids….

Quite a few other horrific examples were given and nothing has changed in Russia in regards to brutality…

A couple of tankers Waitman Beorn and Hamish de Bretton-Gordan gave at times an interesting talk and touched upon issues in Ukraine.

On a WW2 note a (then)18 year old Tank driver by the name of Richard Aldred gave a very entertaining talk about his experience in Normandy driving a Cromwell…

One to try and find on the WWW when it might appear…

Here is a newspaper article about the veteran...
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/history/day-cornwall-veteran-aged-98-7472744

 

These terms have caused pretty significant debate among western militaries, especially in Canada.  The issue is really one of identity and culture, which of course has come under significant scrutiny in the post-Afghanistan, post-Iraq era.  For some it is no doubt a bit of macho flexing, for others it is holding onto core identity for very important purposes.  Up front, I personally fall into that latter category - but also recognized people are going to have differing positions.  So to try and break it down more simply:
- The term "warrior" [aside: 'warfighter' is in reality an attempt at compromise on warrior and largely has no other point of reference], has been mal-adopted and appropriated into toxic sub-cultures within modern militaries.  Of this fact there is little argument.  The most recent scandal in the Australian SASR and many examples of a warped or toxic use of that term are well documented.  People adopt all sorts of crazy ideas as to what a warrior means and how they behave.  This has to do with the fact that a modern warrior concept has yet to truly evolve so people look at history which was an entirely different context (eg we don't scalp anymore).
- The actual term of "warrior" has deep roots within indigenous cultures around the world.  In many it was a class of citizen with a clearly defined purpose.  You can read a lot on this but the most common and prevalent definition was in line with "One Who Does War" on behalf of their people.  A person whose role within a society is the function of warfare.  In most cases it became part of a cast or class system.  In some cultures this was seen as a sacred duty-to-protect bordering on a pseudo public service.  The recent bashing of the term has drifted into colonial insensitivity in some cases as it really reads like "white folks screwed it up, so now all 'warriors' are bad" when in fact indigenous cultures have employed the concept for millennia and many, like North American natives, still hold it sacred.
- The term is important because it incorporates a key pole of the two-worlds problem.  Militaries are not armed humanitarian aid agencies, or slightly better armed police forces.  Some nations have tried to go that way but they tend to be geopolitical anomalies.  The role of any military is state sponsored and legitimized homicide.  Dress it up anyway one likes, call it "self-defence", "use of force" or whatever helps one sleep at night but the core role is "murder for effect.  The second a military culture, or the society that pays for them, forgets that reality very bad things happen. 
- Militaries that get watered down for various social or political sensitivities tend to do several very dangerous things: 1) They forget themselves. This can lead to significant collective shock when war actually happens and generations of military officers and NCOs have basically become bureaucrats.  When that culture runs head long into warfare it is never pretty.  I lived through such a time in the 90s and trust me it is really bad. 2) Societies go into armed conflict with eyes closed.  Sanitization of war and its consequences becomes very easy when one scrubs out what it actually means.  This can not only dangerously shape political calculus, it can create major flaws in military advice to policy.  The reality is no matter where you may be in the kill-chain, there is blood on your hands. That is a serious burden. Those that forget it can start to make very poorly informed decisions quickly.  3) You cannot order identity.  Troops in combat or preparing for combat are going to adopt an identity and culture that will provide them survival advantage and cope - find me a war where that did not happen.  Problem is that if leadership does not define that identity, troops will do it themselves and sub-cultures form.  Those sub-cultures can become dangerously toxic very quickly.  So bottom line is, ignoring warrior reality comes with significant risks.
- Many like the term "soldier" better.  Feels more civilized.  The term it self actually comes from solidus or coin and refers to mercenaries.  The major historical difference between a solider and warrior is that a soldier stops fighting when they don't get paid.  Warriors keep fighting because they don't need to get paid, they believe.  There is an element of righteousness (and I do not mean in the religious sense) in the role of a warrior. Righteousness being a higher ideal held sacred (all war is sacrifice..."to make holy") by the people who sent you to fight for them.  Soldiers by definition live on a more transactional contract with society.  These are deep and important distinctions that often get lost in the noise.
- To your point, "machoism".  The problem we have with "warrior" is that we never actually define it.  It gets tossed around because it sounds cool but as an identifier we do not unpack it and then teach it to people when they enter the service.  It is all over the place, the US Army uses it all the time:  https://www.army.mil/values/soldiers.html.  Likely the closest I have ever seen is the US Army's Warrior Ethos:
I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
https://www.army.mil/values/warrior.html
Not bad, but not quite there either as it lacks definition of role as an extension of American society and elements of righteousness.  
So without a clear definition, the term gets hijacked into a macho "ra-ra" tag line.  The reality is far deeper in speaking to balancing our two worlds - war and peace: home and away.  As military we live within and are part of our own societies.  I have kids, bills and go to the same grocery store.  I watch the same shows and play the same game.  But that is only half of my existence.  The other side lives out in a place of conflict and warfare.  In many ways I did not get this until after my first war.  When I got home I realized that part of me would always be in those hills (and then years later, in the desert). 
As I see these young guys fighting and dying in Ukraine, I see them all fighting and dying in the tradition of the warrior.  They are the Ones Who Do War on behalf of their people.  To them it is more than a tag line and will be for the rest of their lives.
So we definitely need to develop a modern definition and concept here and build a concept that not only better fits modern society but resonates.  If we, as modern militaries do not, then we will get hijacked.  I have already been in discussions where terms like "aggression" are being scrubbed out of our ethos by academics and civilians.  If a modern military cannot define itself, someone is going to do it for us.  And they will very like not understand the two-worlds problem.  We are The Ones Who Do War and we need to get much better at explaining what that means in 2023. 
 

Pet peeve (and not at all aimed at you, or at Kevin, who you were quoting).
I really do not like the pervasive use of the terms "warriors" and "warfighters" that many, mostly in government or the military upper echelons, refer to service members. Statements like "We have to give our warfighters the tools to do their jobs" (which is another thing - sounds like we are talking about carpenters or plumbers).
It's like some macho thing to me. Maybe I'm an old fogie (I guess I am at this point!) Maybe it's just me and I'm the outlier, but it seems much too belligerent for a country that supposedly uses its military for self-protection, and the aid and support of other countries. 
I have no idea if this is common in other countries, but I find it very grating. 
Dave

Some information on the Leopard 1 training in Germany.
- done by Danish, Dutch and German instructors
- basic course lasts 6 weeks with 6 days of training per week and 12 hours of training per day
- its the fifth rotation in its fifth week of training
- there were multiple gunnery runs this day. within these runs multiple states of equipment failure where simulated e.g. aiming with and without stabilization or worst case hand crank everything using the backup optical sight and try to score a hit while moving slowly
- Ukrainians stick to 3 tanks per platoon
https://www.youtube.com/embed/NdpHjoPkS8M
 
English subtitles are available


 

Incredible footage. Honestly looks like something you would see in one of Dice's Battlefield games or a Hollywood movie.
I do appreciate that this is neither a video game or a movie and the Ukrainians in that video have balls of steel.