Centurian52

Geographically it's smaller than Feb 2022. But it might actually be larger going by troop numbers. I don't know exactly how many troops are involved in this operation, but we know that both armies are larger than they were at the start of this war. The Ukrainian army in particular is much larger than it was at the start of this war. The Russian invasion in Feb 2022 supposedly involved 150k-190k Russian troops against about 120k Ukrainian regulars + 100k Ukrainian TD. Currently I understand that the Russian army in Ukraine is about 300k while the Ukrainian army had ballooned to over 700k the last time I got any numbers for them a few months ago (no idea how large the Ukrainian army is right now). So the question of whether this operation is larger than Russia's Feb 2022 operation comes down to what proportion of the Ukrainian Army is participating in the offensive. Considering how many places they are attacking, I'm guessing it's a decent chunk.

Ok, so what I've seen of a couple of your posts leads me to think that you may have taken some of the inter-service rivalry rhetoric a bit too seriously. There are/were fewer differences between the US Army and the US Marines than you think. The Marines also adopted the M16 in the 60s (same decade that the Army adopted it, though the Marines may have received their new M16s a bit more slowly). The Army has also only ever had one automatic rifleman on each fireteam. And here's the real kicker. When Marines and Army infantry face off against each other in exercises, they tend to perform pretty similarly to each other. Sometimes the Marines win, and sometimes the Army wins. There is no strong evidence that the infantry of one branch is significantly better than the infantry of the other branch. The main difference is that, while both the Marines and the Army theoretically consider everyone to be an infantryman first, the Marines take that far more seriously, while the Army prefers their specialists to focus on specialist skills. So Marine non-infantry will be far more competent at infantry stuff than Army non-infantry. But us Army POGs might make up for that by spending more time gaining competence at the specialist tasks that we are actually expected to contribute to the fight.

It's all relative. I'm used to studying WW2, so I'm conditioned to think that only losing 54 tanks is pretty light for a single day's fighting. But 54 tanks is also around 1/3rd of what the Soviets lost in the entire 10 year war in Afghanistan. So if your starting point is Afghanistan, then losing 54 tanks in a week is massive. WW2 and Afghanistan are the two extremes. For this war, losing 54 tanks in a week is just a hair above average.

Why does that sound so familiar? It's almost like there was a major war last century in which the losing side blamed their failures on the cowardice of their troops.

Except that at Kursk the Soviets were the ones that were more capable of absorbing higher casualties. I don't think that's the case for the Russians here.

So it sounds like, despite the difficulty of breeching operations and the slow, grinding progress, Ukraine is still inflicting disproportionate casualties on the Russians. That is very encouraging.

Where are you getting that number from? I specifically remember having it drilled into my head in the Army that the max effective range of the M16 is 500 meters (550 yards), though we only trained for up to 300 meters because almost all combat was expected to take place within 300 meters. IIRC pretty much every rifle which uses iron sights maxes out at around 500 meters, because that is roughly the maximum distance that a human eye can resolve a human sized object.

Oryx is still adding Russian tank losses, so I'm guessing they still have tanks. The Ukrainians definitely do not need new ammunition in order to kill T-72Bs and T-80BVs, which are two of the most common types of Russian tanks in Ukraine. Although new ammunition would probably be very helpful for killing T-72B3s, T-72B3Ms, T-80Us, T-80BVMs, T-90As, and T-90Ms.

Now there's a terrifying idea. What was a difficult operation becomes nearly impossible using current techniques. You may need to shift your thinking from trying to clear a lane through the minefield to trying to destroy the whole minefield.

Is APS widespread yet in western armies? The last time I checked in with the latest western equipment we were making sure things had the option of adding APS later, but we hadn't gotten around to actually adding the APS yet.

I wouldn't consider two platoons of mechanized infantry and a tank to be a big unit

The XM7 and XM250 have already entered service, first batch of both to be delivered late this year. It's happening. So the decision has already been made. For my part I go back and forth on whether it was the right decision, but it's worth understanding the arguments for it. I may be covering some ground that you already know, but I think it's worth covering in order to fully spell out the arguments for this cartridge (plus this might be new information to someone else). We are going back to the old argument of which is better, full power cartridges (normal rifle cartridge by WW2 standards (something like 7.92x57 Mauser, NATO 7.62x54, or Soviet 7.62x59)) or intermediate cartridges (intermediate between a full rifle cartridge and a pistol cartridge, something like 7.92x33 Kurz, NATO 5.56x45, or Soviet 7.62x39 or 5.45x39)*. A full power rifle cartridge was the default rifle cartridge up until WW2. It has better penetration and a longer maximum range than an intermediate cartridge. The downsides are that it is larger and heavier, so you can't carry as many rounds, and it has more recoil, so is not controllable in full-auto for a small shoulder-fired weapon. An intermediate cartridge is smaller, so you can carry a lot more ammo, and has a softer recoil, so is controllable in full-auto for a small shoulder-fired weapon. But has a reduced maximum range and inferior penetration. The argument for switching to intermediate cartridges in the first place was basically that while full power cartridges may have a longer maximum range in theory, both intermediate and full power cartridges have identical effective ranges. Because telescopic sights were not universal, the effective range of a rifle was limited by the limits of unaided human eyesight, not by the ballistic properties of its cartridge. In addition, body armor wasn't really a thing back when the decision to switch to intermediate cartridges was made. So penetration meant barrier penetration, not armor penetration. A higher percentage of tree trunks will be thick enough to stop an intermediate round, but any soldier who is actually hit by an intermediate round is as sure to be a casualty as if they were hit by a full power round. By switching to an intermediate cartridge we gained the advantages of greater ammo capacity and controllable full auto, for absolutely no cost in effective range, and an acceptable cost in penetration. But the dynamics have shifted since that decision was made. Every soldier today has body armor, and every soldier today (in most armies) has an optic on their rifle. Optics on every single rifle means that the reduced maximum range of an intermediate cartridge, which was only a theoretical cost 60 years ago, is now a real cost. And because body armor is universal, penetration now refers to both barrier penetration and armor penetration. A hit on an enemy soldier with one type of cartridge is no longer equally likely to produce a casualty as a hit with the other type of cartridge. Do those changes mean that a full power cartridge is now superior? No, not necessarily. But it does mean that we need to re-asses. I think that 60 years ago there was no reasonable case for a full power cartridge, while today it may be a much harder choice. It seems that the US DoD has made their assessment and decided in favor of switching back to a full power cartridge. The switch from the M4 to the XM7 (presumably just M7 now that it's no longer experimental?) was explicitly meant to penetrate body armor, and to allow riflemen to take full advantage of their optics to achieve a longer effective range (about an 800 meter effective range, so I've heard). We may not know until the next war whether or not it was the right decision. *As a side note you might notice two distinct generations of intermediate cartridges. The first generation only shortens the cartridge, but retains the same caliber as its full-power equivalent (7.92x33 and 7.62x39). The second generation both shortens the round and reduces the caliber (5.56x45, 5.45x39).

The single muzzle flash isn't a red flag to me. I rarely saw our M16s flash when we went to the range, so I don't expect visible flashes to be very common during daytime. I'm more curious about why it would have flashed that one time then why none of the other shots resulted in a visible flash. Perhaps there is someone who knows more about gun physics? Perhaps there was additional gunk in the barrel that burned up on the first shot? For my part, except for the obvious question of why there was a drone present to capture the footage in the first place, I'm inclined to think the video is genuine. Why stage it? What message could it be selling to what audience?

As far as I know ATACMS is only slightly more capable than Storm Shadow (300km range vs 250km range). Storm Shadow is definitely good enough from a capability standpoint. But the key difference between ATACMS and Storm Shadow is that the US has thousands of ATACMS missiles, while the UK only had ~800 Storm Shadow missiles. ATACMS would, I think, eliminate any questions around the sustainability of Ukrainian long range strikes, and perhaps even allow them to increase the intensity of those strikes.

I think the answer to the question in your last sentence is "obviously no". But that, I believe, is where wargaming comes to the rescue. Obviously you do not want to fail in real war, because while it is very lucrative for the learning process, it is also very costly. When you fail in real war you pay for the information you gain with real lives, expensive equipment, and the strategic/operational value of the ground lost/not taken. That you may have learned a lot is a poor consolation for such losses. But wargaming allows us to get a portion of the benefit to the learning process (the better the wargame, the higher the portion of the benefit), without having to pay any of the costs of failing in a real war. In a real war you always want to do what is most likely to work, because you always have some objective other than learning, and the costs of failure are heavy. In a wargame you can say "ok, that run went well. Let's reset the scenario and see what we can learn from this other approach that probably wouldn't have worked". And of course not everything in the real world comes with costs for failure that are as great as those for war. While you should rarely, if ever, try to fail, perhaps there is reason to be less afraid of failure in our day to day activities (depending on how serious the costs of failure are for that specific activity). Edit: Not to beat our own drum too much

Admittedly, learning still does require conscious reflection.

This reminds me of one of the lectures that was given at the conference I attended this week. The lecture was on solving problems by searching failed attempts for new ideas. His point was that failed attempts are more valuable to the learning process than successful attempts, because failed attempts tend to contain more new information than successful attempts. The conference was on Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology, not developing and revising military doctrine, but some concepts are universal.

10 out of 109 M2 Bradley's, according to Oryx. Still a decent chunk. I definitely think we should have sent more. I don't like seeing these tactical level losses. But I'm pleased with the amount of ground the Ukrainians appear to be buying with those losses so far. It's early days still, and obviously there has been no dramatic breakthrough yet. But I'm feeling optimistic about the offensive. Besides, as my recent battles in CMBS have reminded me, even when you are grinding out the enemy at a rate of 2:1 in your favor it still feels like you are taking very heavy losses. And those losses are never evenly distributed across time and space either. You get periods of smooth sailing intermixed with isolated disasters. A stretch of time with no casualties brought to a sudden end with the catastrophic loss of an entire platoon mounted in their IFVs, for example (happened to me recently, but I still won with a favorable loss ratio). For all we know the Ukrainians are still inflicting disproportionate casualties on the Russians.

You can't always baffle the enemy's expectations. Often the reason they expect you to do something is that it is the only sensible thing for you to do. Should you do something which is not sensible just to defeat the enemy's expectations? I think we are seeing the real attack right now.

The Germans never really got air superiority during the Battle of France. Air parity perhaps, but not air superiority. And the line was able to swing dramatically back and forth for the first year of the Korean war despite UN air superiority. There was a whole century of warfare between the Napoleonic Wars and the combat debut of aircraft. You're hurting the Franco-Prussian war's feelings.

I believe it's more like day 5 or 6 of the offensive. I think the offensive started around either the 4th or the 5th. But there was no announcement and there's an information delay, which is why it only feels like day 2 or 3 of the offensive.

I'm a little disappointment tbh. I think it would have been interesting to see Leopard 2s covered in Kontakt-1. Still a good looking tank.

Sorry about replying to this so late. I was in a conference all day yesterday, and then was so tired when I got home that I went to sleep. I'm in Italy right now so the time zones are a little wonky. There have been professionals analyzing this war with tools other than raw emotion since day 1. Definitive is only really used in pop-history. The term has no place in a serious study of history. And an event being recent and traumatic does not prevent us from analyzing it in a balanced manner (what has ISW been doing all this time?). We won't get there even then. More information does become available after a war. And as the decades stretch on you will get fresh viewpoints and better analysis. The 50th draft of a history of a war is certainly more accurate than the 1st draft. But the fog of war never fully lifts. There will be questions about this war that we will still be arguing about even in a hundred years (I never fail to be impressed by the leaps that have been made in WW1 scholarship in the last couple of decades, but there are still things we don't know, and that war is just over a hundred years old now).

What's a definitive history? I don't think such an animal exists. Good scholars continually reassess what they think they know about a period of history. The process never stops. We don't even have the final draft of the histories of the two world wars of the 20th century yet. We are writing the first draft of the history of the Russo-Ukrainian war at this very moment.

I had read a pretty good book on battlefield psychology a while back. I can't find my copy to reference it at the moment. It was War Games: The Psychology of Combat, by Leo Murray. Obviously I'm not suggesting you try to rush through an entire book when you've got training just around the corner. But I think there are a few highlights that I may be able to pull from memory. An understanding of battlefield psychology is useful in two respects. It can help you to get the enemy to stop fighting. And it can help to keep your own men fighting. If you are giving psychological training to a bunch of soldiers then I assume you are primarily interested in the latter of those two, though the fundamentals are the same either way. IIRC there are four responses that a soldier might have to combat, three of which could make them stop fighting, called the four f's. The four f's are fighting, fleeing, fussing, and freezing. In the case of our own troops we want them to keep fighting, which means keeping them from doing the other three f's. In the case of the enemy we want them to stop fighting, which means encouraging them to do one of the other three (or, ideally, killing them or taking them prisoner). Fleeing and freezing are self explanatory. Fussing is when you become overly focused on small details or tasks that aren't important because you aren't operating on enough brain power to prioritize things properly. An example of fussing that the book gave was one soldier during a firefight in the Korean war rushing back and forth from the line to the rear to bring up ammunition. That was an important job when he started doing it, but he became so focused on it that he never stopped, and by the end of the fight his squad's position had a whole mountain of ammunition that they didn't need. So I don't know how you'll teach it to them. But I would think the goal would be to teach them to not flee, freeze, or fuss. Maybe teach them how to get the enemy to do those things if there's time (the book had some pointers on that which I've long forgotten).