Lessons Learned From the Russo-Ukraine War

[Ivanov]

An interesting read. Please abstain from the politics.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-XtqipVYF7HenJlUXAzYXdlZ1U/view?pref=2&pli=1

[Abdolmartin]

Overall it points out interesting things, but I have a feeling that it is rather exaggerating Russian capabilities. The fact that Russia has contingency plans to invade Poland are... well, do they prove that Russia actually can do that? I don't think so. It's effectively trying to portray today's Russia as a resurgent USSR, which it is not.

In the last slide, I fail to understand some of the points in red. "Copy Russian FCS"? "Electric armor on Lt-Veh"? What does Electric Armour mean?

[Ivanov]

57 minutes ago, Abdolmartin said:

The fact that Russia has contingency plans to invade Poland are... well, do they prove that Russia actually can do that?

Sure they do have a plan. An integral part of it is nuking Warsaw. It was rehearsed for the first time during the joined exercises with Belarus, called Zapad 2009.

It's impossible to tell if the estimate of Russian capabilities is exaggerated or not, but I think that the report is to signal that there are some areas where the Russians made some important advancements and that US Army would need to look at them and address them. Underestimating a potential opponent is never advisable.

Edited March 29, 2016 by Ivanov

[Kinophile]

Very interesting.

Re electric armor, Google is your friend :)

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

Going to be "short" by my standards and thunderous because I'm at an awesome confluence of getting ready to start a job/my step daughter is visiting/I've got National Guard stuff all weekend so I'm a bit busier than usual.

Re: Overestimating

I'd contend it's not just overestimating and more that the author is inflating them to some degree to make his case.  This is entirely common with all thinktanks everywhere because they're all competing for attention time and funding, and no one is going to care if you publish a report that says the US merely has parity with Russia, or Russia has a slight advantage.  It needs to be total overwhelming doom and gloom or it's going to get filed away (see pretty much every report on the Soviet Union circa 1989).

Broadly speaking:

Russia is vastly inferior to NATO in terms of combined conventional warfighting abilities.  It's equipment is less effective unit per unit, and economically Russia would not survive a war.  Russia also suffers deeply in that it lacks a cohesive counter-narrative to the west.  Not to wander too far into politics, but simply no one supports Russia's actions, and their reasoning for those actions is widely held as invalid.  This will put them on the receiving end of diplomatic and political repercussions, and undercut their ability to dismantle eastern Europe piecemeal.  We saw this with the Ukraine, a country that means very little to the rest of the world, triggered a pretty heavy backlash, and the fig leaf of "we're not really in the Ukraine!" did not carry at all.

Russia is not weak, but there's a school of analysts that tend to view them through the lenses of the Soviet Union as we saw them, that the Armata exists in any state carries more weight that the state of the Russian petrochemical industry.  And you can't remove warfighting from greater nation level strategy.

Less Broadly speaking:

Re: EW

Electronic Warfare is interesting simply because we have not seen American EW flex on the conventional end of things.  We do have the ability to mount jammers on virtually every AFV we have that'll shut down pretty much every signal emitting system that isn't yankee imperialist for a few hundred meters (at least), but we know them as counter-IED systems vs a "hey look a Russian drone, shame it just lost telemetry."

Which isn't to get into the weeds of capabilities and counter-strokes.  It's just Russia has shown what it's capable of, US EW has been somewhat focused on other targets, or has not been exercised in so full of a view of the world.  

Re: DPICM

Think our getting rid of it was a mistake too.  Not sure it's quite as world ending as stated though, especially when paired with home on jam seeker systems, or other precision tools.  Also while Russia has a lot of artillery, it's still not especially nimble or integrated in the wider battlespace sense.  It's really easy to be good at artillery-ing when you can park it in Russia and shoot with impunity.  

Re: DIVARTY 

Maybe.  I think more HIMARs or MRLS would do the job well enough, or at least without a 15 year building cycle.  Long term heavy artillery will be interesting.  Have to wonder if that won't be the first US Army tactical rail gun though.

Re: Heavy APCs

By Russian-Ukrainian standards, the M2A3 IS a heavy APC.  Light vehicles are certainly vulnerable on the battlefield.  But they're also the only reasonable way to get forces in theater quickly.  A two-tiered system of heavy (both prepo and longer deployment cycle) and lighter will be essential, and its important to ask how we give light forces more teeth vs simply stating that they're vulnerable.  Some sort of light tank to give IBCTs and SBCTs a better direct fire platform would be nice though.  

Re: Rotary Wing

This one was just silly.  US rotary wing appears to fly high, because most of where it can be filmed there's some sort of minimum altitude for administrative purposes.  Reality is much different, and the stand-off of late model hellfires plus the longbow radar is something that is well into the realm of tank ruining.

Re: Anti-Tank

Also silly.  The only real modernization I'd argue for would be in the short term, a TOW-Javelin hybrid, basically the size/range of a TOW, the seeker and attack methods of a Javelin.  Bam.  Bradley and Stryker ATGMs just got super-scary.  Tank muinitions and man portable systems are about spot on already.  Long term might make sense to look into something like what the Germans did with their 120 MMs in regards to longer barrels, or reviving STAFF because that'll make some Russian engineer have a fit.  

Re: NATO is not prepared for losses

It isn't, but it's not like Poland is going to fold and the Germans will withdraw after they've taken 20 KIA.  In the event of a high intensity Russian invasion of an Eastern European country, it's not going to be a hair splitting moment of "well, Russian domination of Poland is okay!" The war will be traumatic and a terrible thing that leaves deep scars on Western Europe.  But that won't stop NATO from showing up.  

This also gets back to what I said about lacking a counter-narrative.  Russia can't present a reasonable justification for its actions to the greater non-Russian world.  If it could, it might hope to split Western European opinions, but even in the fairly limited Ukrainian situation, Europe generally responded with increasing hostility and there's precious little support anywhere for being "nicer" to Russia.  You can't split NATO if your actions unify it and give it purpose.  So until Russia can articulate why it's really the victim, or Latvia really would welcome Russian overlords, it's going to be a hard sell for political disruption measures.  

Re: Special Forces

Totally 100% agree with this one.  My encounters with the SOF/SOF-like or even just light infantry community have been supremely frustrating in how little they seem to understand in regards to fighting a full spectrum conflict.  IBCTs are starting to get mauled at JRTC and NTC though, so hopefully this leads to some sort of wakeup.  

[AttorneyAtWar]

48 minutes ago, panzersaurkrautwerfer said:

Re: Anti-Tank

Also silly.  The only real modernization I'd argue for would be in the short term, a TOW-Javelin hybrid, basically the size/range of a TOW, the seeker and attack methods of a Javelin.  Bam.  Bradley and Stryker ATGMs just got super-scary.  Tank muinitions and man portable systems are about spot on already.  Long term might make sense to look into something like what the Germans did with their 120 MMs in regards to longer barrels, or reviving STAFF because that'll make some Russian engineer have a fit.  

This has to be a thing soon.

I also am lobbying for a VLS Javelin missile Abrams, capable of saturating the battle space with 100's of javelins!

Edited March 29, 2016 by Raptorx7

[Kinophile]

This article includes Arena and Drozd - these were actively used on the T90s in the Donbass?

Also, what is that Ukrainian IFV on the left, the camo painted one? 

The green one looks like something out of a modeler's mashup of different box kits...

[Kinophile]

Speaking of the Russian EW advantage, I'm curious what UUKR is doing to mitigate/counter/account for?

My instinct says that a stronger, mission-oriented (rather than the soviet order-oriented) style of training would prove more survivable and adaptive, tactically, to loss of the EW spectrum. 

i.e. "empower" lower level units with tighter, more capable combat groups of about a company in size, with their own augmented organic support and armor.

 

In fact, anyone want to fight a quick battle in this mode? You, strong RUS attack with heavy arty support, me UKR with heavy EW effect, no air but also decent arty.

[Abdolmartin]

2 hours ago, Ivanov said:

Sure they do have a plan. An integral part of it is nuking Warsaw. It was rehearsed for the first time during the joined exercises with Belarus, called Zapad 2009.

It's impossible to tell if the estimate of Russian capabilities is exaggerated or not, but I think that the report is to signal that there are some areas where the Russians made some important advancements and that US Army would need to look at them and address them. Underestimating a potential opponent is never advisable.

Russia is not so stupid as to nuke any country. The fact that they've tried to cover everything up in Ukraine shows that the Russians are aware of their rather precarious position in the face of the international community. In addition, this is no longer the Soviet Union, centered around ideology. Russia is ruled by Oligarchs who are, above all, concerned about their money and security. A nuclear war is out of the question for these guys.

Don't get me wrong, Russia is surely trying to regain its lost position as a global power. And I don't disagree with everything in the article (and frankly, I lack the knowledge necessary to refute most of its points), but I was talking about the general theme of it. Using Armata's IFV in an argument is like arguing how the PAK FA will wrestle air supremacy away from F-22s and how Russia will be able to afford thousands of them while the USAF only has ~200 F-22s.

[Haiduk]

25 minutes ago, kinophile said:

This article includes Arena and Drozd - these were actively used on the T90s in the Donbass?

Also, what is that Ukrainian IFV on the left, the camo painted one? 

The green one looks like something out of a modeler's mashup of different box kits...

This is BMPT-64 heavy IFV demonstrator on the base of T-64 of older modifications. Exists since befor war times, but still remain like experimental to this time. No money for further development... Green thing is custom heavy infantry support vehicle of "Azov" regiment. Its has round defense of Duplet ERA and armed with two RWS with ZU-23. Developed for infantry advance support in urban combat. 

"Arena" and "Drozd" didn't use in Donbas. Some schemes have incorrect conclusions or data, but never mind...

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

20 minutes ago, Abdolmartin said:

Russia is not so stupid as to nuke any country. The fact that they've tried to cover everything up in Ukraine shows that the Russians are aware of their rather precarious position in the face of the international community. In addition, this is no longer the Soviet Union, centered around ideology. Russia is ruled by Oligarchs who are, above all, concerned about their money and security. A nuclear war is out of the question for these guys.

Don't get me wrong, Russia is surely trying to regain its lost position as a global power. And I don't disagree with everything in the article (and frankly, I lack the knowledge necessary to refute most of its points), but I was talking about the general theme of it. Using Armata's IFV in an argument is like arguing how the PAK FA will wrestle air supremacy away from F-22s and how Russia will be able to afford thousands of them while the USAF only has ~200 F-22s.

1. Unrelated, preteen/early teen targeted programming is frankly terrifying.

2. Abdolmartin gets to the point of it a lot faster than I did.  There's things to be learned from the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.  However it's much closer to learning what limited warfare looks like in the modern era.  Russia is still unable to conduct an overt war against Eastern Europe, and it's still debatable if anyone, east, west or otherwise is capable of a major full spectrum conflict involving a near-peer threat*.

*Or perhaps, initiating an offensive war against a near-peer threat.  Russian/NATO forces are obviously more than adequate to preclude an effective invasion against their respective nations. 

[Kinophile]

6 minutes ago, panzersaurkrautwerfer said:

1. Unrelated, preteen/early teen targeted programming is frankly terrifying.

Kill the Cable, man! Our demon-spawn only sees select disney/pixar movies and maybe the Big Bang Theory, streamed from the PC. 

No ads of any kind, ever.

Edited March 29, 2016 by kinophile

[Ivanov]

1 hour ago, Abdolmartin said:

Russia is not so stupid as to nuke any country. The fact that they've tried to cover everything up in Ukraine shows that the Russians are aware of their rather precarious position in the face of the international community. In addition, this is no longer the Soviet Union, centered around ideology. Russia is ruled by Oligarchs who are, above all, concerned about their money and security. A nuclear war is out of the question for these guys.

Don't get me wrong, Russia is surely trying to regain its lost position as a global power. And I don't disagree with everything in the article (and frankly, I lack the knowledge necessary to refute most of its points), but I was talking about the general theme of it. Using Armata's IFV in an argument is like arguing how the PAK FA will wrestle air supremacy away from F-22s and how Russia will be able to afford thousands of them while the USAF only has ~200 F-22s.

I also strongly believe that Russia is not going to attack any country. Let alone a NATO country, while nuking it is absolutely out of question. It's all about posturing and sabre rattling. And the Russian nuclear stick is huge. If you look at the  history, the potential and hostile intentions of USSR were also vastly exaggerated during the Cold War, but a lot was done to counter the potential Soviet aggression. Similarly, if US and NATO want to remain credible, they need to closely observe in which direction the Russian armed forces are heading and think of ways to counter them, with a healthy dose of realism and common sense.

Edited March 29, 2016 by Ivanov

[Battlefront.com]

I haven't had a chance to read Karber's latest (perhaps only updated?) report on the Russo-Ukrainian war, but it is important to note that the last report he put out was attacked pretty hard.  I know I had more than just quibbles with what he wrote.  Others were not very kind:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/19/say-it-aint-so-phil-ukraine-russia-open-source-analysis/

The basic gist of his last report is similar to what has been said here... basically OK, but he goes outside the bounds of what he can support with facts and does seem to be aiming this towards the fear mongering side of the spectrum of reporting.

Steve

[Kinophile]

https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/VeronikaValdova/area-study-ukraine-part-ix-military

 

[Kinophile]

error post.

Edited April 3, 2016 by kinophile

[DMS]

Intersting source, minimum propaganda. Thank you!

Expendable,Infantry,

Mercenaries,(Chechens,&,Cossacks),

Local,dratees & "Zombies"

Zombies

Hm...

Edited April 3, 2016 by DMS