I appreciate his input. He was right in the fact that he called this war a decade ago, and I think that makes him worth listening to to some extent. Also he makes my favorite game. I'm literally on here begging to give his company my money.
I can understand not wanting to release the BS module in light of current events. But what does the war in Ukraine have to do with the Soviet Union? The country doesn't exist. So I'm curious as to why has all of the work stopped on Red Thunder and Cold War? When's the module coming out for Final Blitzkrieg?
So when are the modules coming out now? I imagine if we put all the bull **** in this thread and translated it into cm code we'd be on engine 17 by now.
I am confused. Are you saying that it is impossible for Russia to capture Mariupol so we should stop worrying about it. Or, are you saying that all the intelligence that you have is better than everyone else's so that you can ignore what other sources eg WSJ - hardly an apologist for Russian behaviour - are saying. Looking at the small picture - ie about winning all the military battles, but ignoring the large picture implications - like losing the war is what happened in Vietnam.
What I have been posting about is that there are much larger issues here than what territorial gains Ukraine may or may not be making. It would be unwise to assume everything we are being told is 100% true by either side. We keep being told that Russia cannot continue the way it has, and that is agreed. Russia can change its strategy and is doing so.
At time of writing, Europe is still paying Russia millions to continue buying Russia's oil and gas. In addition, Russia conspires with China and other nations - among them Iran, India and other middle-east nations which have refused to sanction Russia, to replace the USD as the primary international currency. That is what the war is about and the major global problem we in the west need to address in order to have any chance of a "win".
This is exactly what I am talking about. "No need for us to worry because...Russians suck and we don't"
There are a lot of assumptions here, and I am always cautious around assumptions at times like these. We do have better C4ISR but spotting and engaging a two man team out at 2+kms is nearly impossible if they don't want to be spotted, we found that out in spades in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are very spottable at 2+kms. APS, sure, and so long as every logistic truck and re-fueler has APS, every infantry vehicle and every command vehicle, every artillery piece and every engineering vehicle. APS is what we have but I am not sure how it performs against a Javelin-like system or a Switchblade and I am pretty sure the Chinese are figuring that one out as I type.
Tactical movement, again I am not sure what that means anymore. We can spread out in our formations and use the terrain but we would still be spotted and engaged at long range, I am not sure spreading out will matter in this context. And, again, our LOCs are just as long and vulnerable.
Look, we are not "ok" until we know we are "ok". And right now we do not know if we are ok. The Taliban choked out the best the west could send with a whole lot less than what Ukrainian defence brought to bear, took a lot longer but I shudder to think about a western intervention against an asymmetric foe armed with the Chinese equivalents for Javelins/NLAWs (or whatever comes next) and cheap unmanned systems and munitions.
It is not my "only" take but it is the most prominent one that is in my mind. @Battlefront.com and @Combatintman have described both the differences between Russian BTG and Western BGs, which has to do with the framework under which they operate, along with qualitative internal aspects. Further, the one major sin that I have not seen mentioned is the lack on ISR sharing between BTGs, normally done in a centralized ASIC (or pick your name) at the Brigade/formation level. This means that each BTG is likely only seeing their world in a small patch in front of them.
Ok, I think we got it: Russian's suck.
My issue with this is that we have seen multiple assessments on this all over the place (no fault on you personally for posting, my frustration is with the mainstream military analysis) to the point they have become a self-reinforcing echo chamber in the making, all designed to explain why the Russians have failed, and likely will continue to fail. Why this is dangerous:
- It creates a very convenient narrative that what we are seeing is "all on Russia doing it wrong". There is truth here, do not misunderstand me on that point; however, it completely misses the fact that the Ukrainian's made the Russians do it more wrong.
- By limiting the analysis and assessment to how poorly the Russian tactical and operational forces are not doing, we are risking the creation of a schadenfreude bubble that conveniently pins the phenomena we are seeing all on the Russians while risking some potentially incredibly significant implications on what the Ukrainian defenders are doing.
- Further this sets us up to a post-slide into "well of course the Ukrainians won, we trained and equipped them". This further sets us up to feel really good about this whole thing and avoid confronting "what really may have happened".
We have seen this sort of effect repeatedly in the past. The US Civil War, particularly towards the back end saw the mergence of trench warfare as more modern weaponry made manoeuvre much harder, particularly for cavalry. European observers went "well, sure but these are backward colonials who are doing it wrong." Then again during the Boer war with smokeless long range Mausers chopping up British (and Canadian) formations at range - "well those are rabble, who lost in the end". WW1 Austro-Hungarian complete failures - blame the ethnics in the ranks....the list goes on.
So What Happened?
I am not sure and will likely spend a fair amount of time over the next decade trying to figure it out but there are some alarming trends that western militaries cannot avoid:
- Russian had the mass, Ukraine did not. Not saying the conventional UA sat out the first phase of this war but a 1300km frontage was largely defended by a hybrid force built on a foundation of irregulars...and it just butchered Russian mass. To the point of operational collapse. The Russians had knives, Ukraine had pillows, and Ukraine won; this is not small.
- The Ukrainians appear to have done something to friction and might not even realize it. Through a combination of information superiority - built largely on civilian infrastructure no less, and a shift in weapons effects, they were able to hit the entire length of the Russian forces, all the way back to the SLOC nodes. All of this using a lot of unmanned, which we have discussed. More to the point, they appear to have projected friction onto the Russian forces (already brittle for reasons presented) to the point that the Russians collapsed under their own weight.
- Russian concepts of mass are not that different from our own. We still rely on roughly the same organizational concepts. We call them "tactically self-sufficient units", Battlegroups etc. And yes they are set up differently, but I am not sure that would have made a difference, our tanks need gas too (and gawd help us if the RedBull supply is cut). But we have pursued Adaptive Dispersed Operations at the tactical level as well (awkward crickets) - "oh but we would do it right" - would we? Our LOCs are just as long as the Russians, our armour just as vulnerable and out combined arms concepts not too far distant. "Well the Russians didn't know what to do with their infantry...we do". Ok, so our Battlegroups do not have that much more infantry than a BTG and those Javelin systems really mean that your BG screen now needs to sweep every bush and henhouse out to 4000m(!) along the BG frontage or you are going to be trading burning vehicles for every km you advance. Surprise is pretty much dead. Unmanned is likely going to be everywhere...the list goes on. This is not another "tanks are dead" issue, it is "is mass as we know it dead?" issue.
- Information. There will be new fields of study created in military education based on this war on what just happened with respect to information in this war, from tactical-to-political. If I had to pick one factor that tries to explain a lot of this it is information. The implications are, again significant, to say the least.
And all of this is based on what already happened. The Russians and UA can redo Kursk down in the SE, and I am sure many in the west will go "well there is the war we know and love" but shocking stuff has already occurred in the first 45 days we cannot un-see.
I get these are early days but I see an "easy out" bubble forming, and it is dangerous in more ways than most understand. That is what I took away from that thread.
