Hapless

Remember when infantry became obsolete when the first caveman hit another with a rock?

Vulnerability doesn't make things obsolete guys, come on.

So this was from this board on 26 Feb:
"Overall Summary:  As of the first 72 hours of the war, it appears that the Russian military has overestimated its own capabilities and/or the capabilities of Ukrainian resistance and has not likely met the timelines it had set during pre-war planning.  The assessment is that the next 24-48 hours will be critical in the outcome of this war and if Russian forces are not about to take Kyiv and inflict some serious damage to the Ukrainian people's will, their own strategic center of gravity will become more vulnerable. "
That was 2 days into the entire thing.
Since then we have heard a lot of pundits and retired military folks try and wrestle with this whole thing.  I am not surprised formal DOD, MOD assessments are showing what they are to be honest because pretty much from the start of the this war just about everyone has been using macro-quantitative calculus to try and predict/model what has been going on. 
On a CNN video just a few days ago Gen Petraeus was describing the situation in Mariupol and why it matters.   He did a pretty good job describing the drive for a "land-bridge" between Crimea and the Donbas and why the Russians are trying so hard in this area.  Then he slipped right into the old macro-quantitative thinking.  He outlined how once Mariupol was taken it would free up Russian forces to advance north and cut off great swaths of Ukrainian in the East.  I have seen various predictions of Russian "pincer moves" and the like.  This all makes perfect sense if one is applying conventional warfare metrics, all largely based on macro-quantitative calculus of force sizes/ratios and combat power.
What they are missing, and frankly it is not surprising to see it emerge on a wargaming board, is a view through a lens of micro-qualitative calculus; playing CM, in all its versions, has changed the way we see warfare.   All CM veterans see the signs of something different at a micro-level: abandoned vehicles, loss of high value assets, loss of high level commanders, videos of embarrassing Russian cluster-f#cks and evidence of UA successes just about everywhere.  A lot of these metrics are qualitative and when combined with the macro-quantitative they create a very different picture. 
Social media has allowed us to see a macro - micro-qualitative view as well; we can basically upscale our micro-view through very wide sampling.  By doing this, a lot of us have noted that the texture of this war is looking very different.  It is one, for the Russians, of extreme friction caused by the UA approach.  The Russians are fighting in an operational tar pit, the entire battlespace is sticky for them.  Some of this is by their own shortfalls, while in many places it is by design by the defending forces. I do not know who the military master-mind is on the Ukrainian side but he has clearly been reading about Finland, Giap and the Comanches.  The UA has not only stopped the Russian military, they changed the fabric of the battlespace for them.
This thing is not over yet and will likely continue to evolve.  I am not entirely onboard with the Russian collapse scenario, but we are literally a couple key indicators away.

Hey now, Col Macgregor said the Ukrainians were on their last legs, cut off and only capable of "pin pricks".  Then that slick haired SF fella, the one with the assault rifle said the Russians were only doing a "pause" to build up logistical hubs so they could resume the offensive....I am so confused!

ISW update it out: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-20
 
The two stand out bits to me:
"The Ukrainian General Staff reported for the first time that the Kremlin is preparing its population for a “long war” in Ukraine and implementing increasingly draconian mobilization measures."
and
"Russian forces face mounting casualties among officers and increasingly frequent desertion and insubordination."

I feel like those two things constitute a death spiral...

ISW update it out: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-20
 
The two stand out bits to me:
"The Ukrainian General Staff reported for the first time that the Kremlin is preparing its population for a “long war” in Ukraine and implementing increasingly draconian mobilization measures."
and
"Russian forces face mounting casualties among officers and increasingly frequent desertion and insubordination."

I feel like those two things constitute a death spiral...

Tanks. Or, a tank. Sorry for Reddit again.
What struck me most was the number of autoloader-ejected cases on the ground at both firing positions- they're clearly not playing shoot-and-scoot.

That's not necessarily an outright bad thing in the right environment, but it seems like a poor life choice what with the incoming at 1:02. Also looks like the first position is a prepared tank hole so maybe they're playing "Donbass Static" rules.

Potential footage of it:
Never really got the hypersonic thing, but if we're going to see more gimmicky weapon systems maybe they'll roll an Armata out so the Ukrainians can blow it up.

Hi guys, I've just come across this thread as I don't frequent this forum very much these days.
Firstly I'd like to say that I am very much still alive, the Union soldiers haven't caught up to me just yet!
Thank you for the appreciation of my AAR video's, it's really nice to hear how people have enjoyed them over the years. There are others out there producing great content, Usually Hapless has to be really commended for his commitment to the game and the high quality of his videos. I also enjoy the content of others, particularly Double's and some of the older channels like Rinald's, Ithikial's and his1ojd's.
So to give a bit of context to me, I started my own business in 2014 and it was a slow start which allowed me time to make AAR's of this amazing game. As you can probably guess it's a very time consuming process that took me around 2 months to play and edit each video. As time has gone on my business has taken off and in early 2020 it really started to take up more of my time to the point where I couldn't really commit to making vids. I've always really enjoyed war films ever since I was a kid, the main reason I played the game was to make the vids and recreate the battles from movies like A Bridge Too Far and The Longest Day. So as a result of not making the AAR's, I've also not played the game for 2 years.
I still believe that CM is one of the best games that has ever existed and I still follow it. I am still a member over at the Few Good Men but mostly play Field of Glory II & Medieval with some of the other members. The FOG games resolve much quicker than a CM battle and suit my current lifestyle better.
It's unlikely that I'll be able to make any more AAR's for the foreseeable future, maybe one day when retirement rolls around! (CM3 perhaps?)
So just wanted to say thank you and remove the mystery of what happened to me.
Have fun, and don't forget...War is Hell!!
 
 
 

Potential footage of it:
Never really got the hypersonic thing, but if we're going to see more gimmicky weapon systems maybe they'll roll an Armata out so the Ukrainians can blow it up.

Possibility 4: peace talks are actually gaining traction. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-warns-china-against-helping-russia-sanctions-mount-2022-03-15/

Assuming the aim of the Russian offensive is to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, the abysmal showing of the Russian Armed Forces in the past couple of weeks may actually have encouraged the Ukrainians that NATO membership is either unnecessary or a ball that can be kicked down the road out of the immediate future.

Potentially, Zelensky could compromise of NATO membership (on the basis that it's not needed), giving Putin the successful result he needs to pull the plug without losing face.

I am only really talking about military options.  Politically there are more and let's hope they exercise them.

Heard this multiple times here and elsewhere so I think it is time for us to have a Pause talk.  We pretty much know the Russians have pretty much halted operational level offensives and are stalled, that is all over the place and even mainstream media has picked it up.  So the theories on what is happening to the Russian forces now are roughly assembling around 3 possibilities:
- Stopped, cannot start so digging in for a long haul, which will see broad operational defensive operations with limited tactical offensive actions designed to terrorize the population.
- Stopped, will never re-start and are heading towards total collapse.
- Stopped, conducting an operational pause to consolidate/re-org before re-starting the massive offensive to surround major cities and begin the Russian Grind strategy. 
I am going to leave off the first two and focus on that third one.  A military war machine is a really big system built in layers, we do this for both C2/span of control and sustainment reasons.  Normally a modern military will lay itself out in echelons of some shape or size in depth, the Soviets had a really organized system for this, the Wests was a bit more fluid but we all are set up to fight in what are essentially structures waves since the Roman legions (somebody google the opening of the HBO Rome series and you can see it in action).
For arguments sake let's go with the rule of three and say the Russians are setup in three tactical layers (the West kind of does it as well with "2 up, 1 back and the last one as "Reserve", bit more of a pyramid scheme).  The first tactical layer will be given main objectives and then some stretch ones, unless they are using mission-command then it gets a bit more opportunistic, but the concept is the same; whistle blows first wave into the breach. 
That echelon/wave is expected to be able to fight for a certain period of time based on a lot of factors like attrition, distance, logistical consumption; however, the old rule is that in human based systems you can get about 72-96 hours of action (i.e. little to no sleep) before people start to break down ("beware the 5th day" by Moltke (I think)).  So that first wave can theoretically do up to 4 days of intense action before it needs to be relieved by the second wave.  This can change based on conditions but it is important to understand that it can get shorter but not longer because we are still fighting with human beings as the basis of the system.  So no matter how tough the guys might think they are, or how many chin ups they can do, after 4 days without sleep their brains start to shut down (trust me, been there and done it).
Then the second wave is supposed to conduct some sort of passage of lines and process continues for another 72-96, and then the third wave (if you have one).  While the second and third are doing their thing the first wave is supposed to be going through a tactical consolidation which include resupply/reinforcements/replacements and reorganization.  This is also when things like vehicle and weapons systems maintenance happens because vehicles will break down like people.
Now that whole system, which for arguments sake we can call the "operational system" is designed to be able to keep this up for weeks to months.  However after a certain amount of time all the losses and wear & tear start to add up and you need...wait for it...an operational pause.  [Aside: eventually, all these operational pauses add up and you see a strategic pause but that can take much longer].  This pause is basically an entire system overhaul to do all sorts of things that look like refitting a ship.  Replacements, rotations and re-organization of tactical units.  Planning and boring stuff like orders.  A lot of logistical and ISR scene setting for the next phase, and lastly...don't let your opponent know you are doing an operational pause until it is over.  So you will still see tactical action such as feints, tactical offensives but with short small gains - more jabs than actual punches - are often employed to try and make it hard for an opponent to figure out that you are in fact pausing...why?  We will come back to that.
Ok, so how does that apply to the current situation.  Let's accept that this is an operational pause for a moment and the big nasty Russian Bear is just cleaning the blood out of its fur before going back to ravaging Ukrainian bunnies.  Well first off it was not a planned pause, it happened too quickly.  Based on the big maps and overall tempo, it appears like the Russians were really advancing hard for the first 3-4 days.  We did see a likely echelon flip on the next 3-4 days as they pushed depth forward but by about day 10 of this thing everyone was starting to notice that the big red blotches on the map had stopped moving.  So let's give the Russian the benefit of the doubt and say they actually managed to use all three echelons effectively, well what likely did not happen was that 1st wave reloaded while waves 2 and 3 continued.  Remember formations are designed to be able to do this for weeks and out to months if the situation allows. So having the whole operational system come to a stop in 10 days is a very good indication that this was not in the plan.
10 days into this war was 5 March, a week and half ago.  Even the most uninformed journalist (and here I cast a baleful eye at our own CBC because it is harder to find a more uninformed bunch when it comes to warfare) is getting the drift that the Russians are not moving.  Now remember when I said "don't let your opponent know you are pausing"?  The reason for this is that you do not what them to try and grab the operational initiative, it is bad if they do because you are now on the defensive pretty much by definition.  Now if you plan for this, you can do all sorts of clever things like pull you opponent into over reaching etc, not sure I see a masterful design on the Russian side here.  But the UA has shown more offensive actions and c-attacks.  We have all been talking about a big UA operational strike, not sure if it will happen but the Russians are leaving the door open to one because of this pregnant operational pause. 
So to summarize, the Russian operational pause: 1) came much earlier than it should have, why?, 2) has lasted the length of an Old Testament reading in modern warfare timelines, and 3) is handing initiative over to their opponent.
So what?  Well if this is a Russian operational pause (at this rate, and with rumors of those other 40 BTGs it could be strategic) it is not a good one.  The conditions that led to that are very likely really poor pre-planning, ample evidence of that, and systemic failures that happened very quickly.  This speaks to a brittle operational system that they are having to almost re-tool from the ground up.  I have serious doubts that the Russians, who have lost some of their best troops, can come out of this as a new "super-force" able to mass joint effects and cut through the UA in days.  The types of planning and quality organization/preparations, from logistics to C4ISR, that a military force needs to do in order to pull off what the Russians are attempting takes years to prepare and build.
So if this is an operational pause, it is probably a master class in "how not to do this" and I doubt it will solve much for the Russian forces who are now coming up on two weeks of time they have given their opponent to prepare, supply and continue to hit them as they are pausing.

Definitely fuzzy pictures but I am getting more confident by the day on some things:
- Russian forces have stalled operationally.  Will they get it back? Dunno
- Operational pre-conditions were not met in air, info or logistics.  Russians are likely trying for some of these but have little to show for it so far. 
- By all metrics and analysis the Russians have lost a significant amount of men and material.  Further the nature of those losses point to system failures in the Russian C2 and logistical system.
- The Ukrainians have exploited all three of those points above and continue to a level that is starting to lead to some questioning some of our fundamental theories of how war is supposed to work.  Early days but we will see.
A lot of these observations are not based, at least on my end, on what I am seeing through the heavily filtered lenses, it is what I am not seeing.  Or still seeing that should not be there.  These negatives tell as much as the positives on social media.

Excessive casualties at the tactical level, grandiose operational planning but limited actual gains, no strategic endgame... is that the ghost of Ludendorff looming over the Russian General Staff like it's 1918?

Excessive casualties at the tactical level, grandiose operational planning but limited actual gains, no strategic endgame... is that the ghost of Ludendorff looming over the Russian General Staff like it's 1918?

From the other side of the hill. Translation of Mikhail Khodarenok’s article about the course of a possible Russian war on Ukraine - spoiler he’s rather scathing of Russia’s chances   Published before this kicked off  
https://russiandefpolicy.com/2022/02/07/mass-fire-strike-on-ukraine/
 

Hi everyone. Nikita here.
I'm still in Crimea. I have to be careful with every word, especially after being detained on 24th by police and FSB, so I will be brief. I am literally shaking as I type due to adrenaline, but we all need to be strong these days.
1) Ukraine will be free. The bastards will fail. I can clearly see it.
2) We witness an insane amount of heroism. Which is truly inspiring.
3) Thanks to Steve and other people from here who were kind to me in the past and took time and patience to communicate with me. It made a lot of difference in the end and made me a person who I am today.

I'm ok. I just too tired about all these news monitoring, so I havn't enough energy to write here. Today I tried to depart my wife from the city to her parents in more calm Cherkasy oblast, but we can't reach to railway station. Municipal transport stopped on the left bank of Kyiv, though on the right it works like and subway. 
All day from my balcony, wich exits to Obolon' and Vyshhorod periodically heard a sounds of shellings. Now I heard outcoming shots of our 2S7 Pion guns, located in 5 km from my house close to city limit. They fire somewhere to the west, where Russian troops concentrates to attack on the city. All day there were periodycal clashes on the line Irpin'-Bucha-Vorzel-Hostomel. There was attempt of Russian tank attack from Chernobyl zone through Ivankiv on Kyiv, but because of we had a time to demolish the bridges through the Teterev river, they halted. 

Not going to weigh in here on @Free Whisky's tactics I will leave that to the rest of the group.  I so want to highlight somethings that jumped out at me though as I watched this excellent AAR.
First, CM is really unique, or at least one of very few, in that it is a game about 'managing chaos' or in this case "surviving chaos".  Free Whiskey had a plan going in, it met an opposing plan and not a small amount of just random acts of tactical turbulence in that collision.  
Second, clicks per minute are not going to save you.  In CM, it more likely that "re-thinking per minute" or re-strategizing (e.g. 4 Plans) faster and better than an opponent is going to carry the day.
Points 1 and 2  are in constant dynamic competitive motion, forcing players to constantly make decisions.  These are what makes CM realistic, in many ways beyond its contemporaries; not the vehicles and weapon systems, they are the means to the end.  I play other wargames (I can hear the gasps) and in a lot of RTSs it is about clicks and strategy is very attritional (i.e. how fast can I throw more stuff in that direction).  This is not to say they are not without merit, and they can get the blood pumping but one does not get the same "combat chess on a ship deck, in a storm" feel.
So when I look at what Free Whiskey did right, I see a lot of adaptation of "the plan" and improvisation with limited resources in the face of an opponent under the same conditions.  His ability to re-think and adapt with what he had (e.g. Toothless) is the real stuff and frankly what led him to a solid draw.  "But how could he have won there Capt?".  No idea, in fact in this QB, on that map, maybe there was no way to win.  But I do see those skill sets that need to be nurtured and enhanced that will lead to more wins than losses.  
I also see bottle madness as the red god laughs his ass off, and that is simply outstanding.   

Hi all, I uploaded a video AAR of Combat Mission Cold War to Youtube. I thought I'd post it here so you can all tell me what it was you believe led to my demise 😉
 
https://youtu.be/qxLCkSFYq2c

Soviet doctrine may or may not work in CM, just like it may or may not work in real life... but like we go over in the video: I didn't actually use any, so the series doesn't say anything about it.
Hapless lost most of his tanks early because he did daft things with them. I did a whole video just about Turn 10, where I suffered the most casualties, and turns out while I was unlucky in the play-through the problem, the whole (avoidable!) situation was the bigger problem. There was also a crack M60 staring at a T62 at near point blank range for 40 seconds that never spotted it, so clearly M60s are blind too.

So changing it at Btn level alters the base vehicle type for the whole formation. The US vehicles can only bring Bradleys, but individual vehicles can have different bits stuck on (ERA and APS).

The Russians have different base vehicles, which you can only change at Btn level (BMP-2, BMP-2M and BMP-3), but only the BMP-3M has any sub-variants with addons that you can change at individual vehicle level (ARENA, ERA, Shtora).

So changing it at Btn level alters the base vehicle type for the whole formation. The US vehicles can only bring Bradleys, but individual vehicles can have different bits stuck on (ERA and APS).

The Russians have different base vehicles, which you can only change at Btn level (BMP-2, BMP-2M and BMP-3), but only the BMP-3M has any sub-variants with addons that you can change at individual vehicle level (ARENA, ERA, Shtora).

Haha!  Indeed!  27,000 tired but motivated troops can be very productive. 
90 minutes is a long time.  I think, in soft ground, you could easily dig and complete pretty acceptable foxholes.

Fair point and accurate for the M60A1 series but if you check that pictogram I posted above (from dbsapps document) you can see that the overall assessment of optics and targeting gave the advantage to the M60A1.  This matches the accuracy of the range finding sights:

Now unless I am totally off, the T62 had stereoscopic sights for the commander
https://sturgeonshouse.ipbhost.com/topic/945-tankograd-t-62-khruschevs-bastard/ [Tank Nerd Site]
"As befitting his tactical role, the commander's general visibility is facilitated by two TNPO-170 periscopes on either side of the primary surveillance periscope in the fixed forward half of the cupola, and further augmented by two more 54-36-318-R periscopes embedded in the hatch, aimed to either side for additional situational awareness. Overall, this scheme was sufficient for most purposes, but was deficient if compared to the much more generous allowance of periscopes and vision ports found on NATO tanks."
Which matches this:
"Despite its range, the new gun was not a success mostly due to crude gun control, and firing on the move or on a moving target accuratey was tricky even at short range. Second-hit capabilities were limited. It was aggravated by a low rate of fire, very slow traverse for the turret, and limited depression/elevation (tradeoffs of the low-profile design) (a liability on a sloped terrain, as shown in numerous engagements of the cold war)."
https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/coldwar/ussr/soviet_t-62.php
While the gunner had:
"The TSh2B-41 is a monocular telescopic sight, functioning as the gunner's primary sight for direct fire purposes. It has two magnification settings, x3.5 or x7, and an angular field of view of 18° in the former setting and 9° in the latter setting. As was and still is common for all tank sights, it has an anti-glare coating for easier aiming when facing the sun. It comes with a small wiper to clean it from moisture, and it comes with an integrated heater for defrosting.
 
  "Like most other tanks of its time, the T-62 lacked a ballistic computer, but it was also unusually deficient in the rangefinding department. For rangefinding, the gunner had to make use of a stadiametric ranging scale embossed on the sight aperture. Compared to optical coincidence rangefinders, stadia rangefinding was terribly imprecise, but also much simpler in both production and employment, and much more economical than, say, optical coincidence rangefinding. In fact, stadia rangefinding is essentially free, since all that is needed are some etchings into the sight lens. The savings made from the exclusion of an optical coincidence rangefinder were enormous, amounting to many thousands of rubles. Ranging errors of up to several hundred meters is often the norm, especially if some of the lower part of the target vehicle is obscured behind vegetation or other terrain features. It isn't uncommon for the first shot on faraway tank-sized targets to fall woefully short or fly clear over."
Emphasis added because that is how militarily procurement really works - cheap as possible - lowest bidder.
While the M60A12 had the M17A1 rangefinder, which is a coincidence range finder:
https://books.google.ca/books?id=Z4OcF_VeEokC&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=M17A1+coincidence+rangefinder&source=bl&ots=fMPNLuzFki&sig=ACfU3U1CEbUUFvBmnaCMRCL4ud-avEZxPg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj0iOCPnPD1AhWVjIkEHXiaBxoQ6AF6BAg9EAM#v=onepage&q=M17A1 coincidence rangefinder&f=false
Backed up with a mechanical fire control computer (M19E1).
This is probably why in the Nordeen and Isby book they assess accuracy of the M60A1 as nearly twice that of the T62 at 2000m (pg 85 and 91) 44% for the US APDS round vs 27% for the Soviet BR-5 APFSDS.  In fact based on these charts, parity for gun accuracy (let alone all the other factors) does not start to occur until under 1000m.
Gotta say that no matter how one stacks it up, there does not seem to be a realistic 1:1 clash outcome between the M60A1 and T62 based on targeting alone, let alone all the factors of ergonomics and C2.  This is the part where the "Soviets are not well represented" club comes back with some counter-facts that may offset this, because I for one am a fan of the old T62 and in the right hands she can deliver.