How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Kinophile]

Ref drones - wave of the future:

"ion powered" drone. Not a fan of the name but ok, easy to market.

Low lift capacity but will eventually have a very long loiter time.

https://www.redsharknews.com/ion-powered-drones-could-be-the-future

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, holoween said:

youre making an assumption without realizing. You assume its impossible to defend against fires. To go with your comparison to naval war why hasnt the surface fleet been made obsolete even though long range anti ship missile exist and why do they still move as formations rather than far dispersed over the entire ocean? Simply put because their ability to shoot down incoming munitions especially with layered mutually supporting defensive fires.

Well let me start by saying we are all making a lot of assumptions here kinda the biggest hint we are in a disruptive time.  I think you and I are looking at different envisioning of the near-future battlefield and both of us are probably wrong.  However, it is also possible we are both correct, just at different points of time.   To your point above, conventional land warfare combat systems unable to defeat both the ISR and kinetic effects of long range, highly lethal smart unmanned systems is not an assumption it is a fact - one the Russians are living with every long hard day in this war. 

Right now every western (and no doubt eastern) military is having a "huh?" moment.  And they will no doubt suddenly escalate spending in defensive systems to try and re-create a level of symmetry in order to preserve the conventional systems that they have already invested trillions in for defence.  Frankly this is the wrong reason to do this as they should be investing in what will work better in defence but welcome to military procurement strategy.  

Very good point on naval power and an awkward one to be honest.  The last time we had a fleet-v-fleet action outside of a video game was during WW2.  So we really have no idea what that would look like and likely why every modern navy has tried desperately to only face 5 Somalis in a fast boat armed with RPGs as the high water mark of counter-fleet actions.  If a US carrier group were to face off against a Chinese NTG we have no idea how that would actually go down.  Would they be able to "shoot down" with multi-layered systems against hypersonic?  Smart, multi-munitions?  Or simply the weight of missiles one side could put in the air?  Theoretically we want to say "absolutely" because if you think we invest a lot into land systems, all that floating hardware is too "big to fail"; however, the real answer is really, really scary and could quickly include tactical nuclear systems. This is largely why naval power has been relegated to where it can easily establish sea control and project/support operations ashore.

3 hours ago, holoween said:

1

Surprise

So important here to understand which "surprise" I am talking about; surprise for conventional mass.  Like land based full spectrum area defence, the ability for ISR to reliably detect small dispersed infantry, all armed with said smart unmanned, does not currently exist.  Light Infantry, or in the case of Ukraine - hybrid infantry, with smart weapons are the submarines in our naval analogy.  They have the asymmetric capability to still be able to move and fight without being detected easily.  Conventional mass, down to the tactical level cannot.  Why?  Because with a highly illuminated battlefield trying to hide tons of hot steel and the system to keep it "hot" is impossible to hide...even from satellite.  This fact alone may be turning land warfare on its head at a pretty foundational level. 

And no, we did not have "perfect drone cover" in Afghanistan, not even close.  In fact our COIN experiences underline the above reality as well.  In Afghanistan it was very hard, almost impossible to surprise the TB.  They were asymmetric in their ability to hide amongst the people and we were tied to out big lumbering IED-magnets.  The only time we could effectively surprise them was when we 1) got actionable intelligence from locals and 2) used SOF or something fast and light in the dark, or a drone strike/artillery/air.  Our conventional mass was nearly useless.  So yes, ambushes did happen...they happened to us and the insurgents didn't even need drones to do it, they had unconventional anti-mass.

3 hours ago, holoween said:

3

Id argue the exact opposite. Mass will become far more important.

So I already covered why dispersed small units have an advantage but let's unpack the collective area defence argument for a second.  I am not sure what this would look like to be honest, you seem to be pointing at a sort of land borne B17 formation mutual defence cover concept.  Ok, maybe?  I mean it is not a bad idea and may turn us back to mass being able to better defend than dispersed offence can attack.  However, there are several problems with it.  First, is it possible?  I mean we are not just talking missiles, which are bad enough, but ground based systems can cover a suite from direct fires, to minefields that can get up and walk.  I am not sure how one could build a full defensive suite to counter all that, but let's for argument sake say we can but it is only effective when mass is in formation, like the good old days of the Roman testudo.  Well second, is mobility.  Staying together for collective defence will hamper mobility, already does, but it may mean greater restrictions on formation which is going to cause problems.  Third, LOCs.  You would also need that mass all the way back to along your logistical tail, which now needs to be an iron pipe.  This further restricts mobility and flexibility.  Fourth, Cost.  I am getting the sense that to trick out current APS, all one needs do is tinker with a Javelins software, whereas to do what we are talking about with respect to full collective defence is going to cost an enormous amount of money.  In the end, we might wind up with rigid, slow moving and incredibly expensive mass that in the end minor tweaks to the offensive systems could sidestep.

3 hours ago, holoween said:

2

Manouver warfare is even more important than before. Because with both sides being able to see where the oponent is roughly the one that is able to move faster can create strength vs weakness engagements or avoid being put into them on the defense.

The current manoeuvre warfare theory states that one can move-to-exploit by outpacing/tempo an opponents ability to cover their vulnerabilities and/or exploit you own.  This assumes that we cannot see the entire battlefield when it comes to conventional mass.  The UA is absolutely making effective use of this principle right now but they are doing it by employing "anti-mass" in combination with mass.  So in the future manoeuvre warfare is still going to be a thing but how we do it will likely change.  We will need anti-mass that can attrit the snow globe to the point of collapse and then we move in with conventional mass to finish...this is pretty much what was seen in the NK War, except the Armenians did not have a snow globe to start with.  Essentially our current understanding of manoeuvre warfare will need to shift under this sort of battlefield, particularly if we adopt the wide and powerful area defence systems you are describing.  Those will need to be defeated in order to create the conditions for manoeuvre; we no longer move to exploit vulnerability, we create vulnerability to move.

3 hours ago, holoween said:

Again id say the exact opposite is true at least for terrain. Anyone moving in the open better have serious defensive capabilities or they will get quickly eliminated because they will be seen. Get into a city and suddenly not being seen from drones becomes trivial. For forests the drones have to come a whole lot closer and with proper camo it might still be impossible to detect stationary targets.

Again, for conventional mass.  For unconventional/hybrid/anti-mass they are still very hard to detect even in the open.  Terrain will still matter for mass on mobility; however, less so for fires.  We will no longer really have dominating ground as a conventional land formation would have effective ranges well beyond LOS.  Urban terrain is another excellent example.  It is toxic for conventional mass, while anti-mass can thrive in that space. So this builds on the asymmetry theme.

Finally, I am not saying conventional mass is dead as its ability concentrate force will likely be decisive for years to come.  How we generate and employ that mass is looking more and more like it will undergo major revisions.  Will we see anti-mass in layers out in front of mass in some sort of very intense Recon battle?  What does snow-globe war look like?  What vote will defensive systems cast?  If tactical surprise, let alone operational, is dead for conventional mass, that alone is going to mean re-writing great swaths of land warfare doctrine, and frankly I have no idea how far that rabbit hole goes.

Hey I am glad you appear firm in your convictions.  I have been in this business for over three decades and I am frankly freakin out a bit here, which is inexcusable because the signs have been on the wall for awhile now.  I am sure we will go to immense effort to try and ignore/wish away/justify/ what we are seeing in Ukraine right now but the evidence is mounting to an uncomfortable level here.  The inconvenient truth is that the Russians are fighting our fight.  We still think in terms of Battle Groups and TFs sweeping across the field to create shock and paralysis in an opponent.  It worked in '91 and '03, all that COIN stuff was State Dept's fault.  Russian performance in 2014 just underlined that smart mass was the was to go.  NK, reinforced it, all while we missed some obvious implications. 

So here we are with a war where Russia should be crushing a much smaller - dispersed force and is failing gloriously.  We are falling back in "ya but Russians suck" (which definitely has some truth to it) but everyone in the business has to be asking themselves "ya but what if we had to fight the Ukrainians right now?  We have big fat formations with very vulnerable LOCs as well...huh?"

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by The_Capt

[akd]

VDV in Moschun near Kyiv:

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by akd

[womble]

Currently, drone employment seems very largely to have been in the reconnaisance/spotting role, and the direct ground attack/bombing role, rather like the stringbags of 1914 and early '15. While the reconnaissance data and effectiveness of the ground attacks has been worlds advanced from WW1, we have yet to experience the "Fokker scourge" and advent of specialised, effective and widely-employed anti-drone drones. There are a few "suicide" types out there, but actual scout/fighters seem rare. Will this change, soon, given the lessons that the UA are teaching? What are the issues stopping the deployment of such security/intel-denial assets into the battlespace currently and going forward?

[Haiduk]

Probably the second captured TZM-T loader for TOS-1A in Husarivka

 

[Haiduk]

This is not apocalyptic movie, this is Rubizhne city

Edited March 27, 2022 by Haiduk

[George MC]

2 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

This is not apocalyptic movie, this is Rubizhne city

Jeez oh…

[BeondTheGrave]

Few interesting tidbits today:

The last one really, IMO, ties into the discussion @The_Capt has been having about ISR. Its one thing to dominate the 'sense' space. Totally another to hand your opponent totally unprotected communications 

RE: The FSB, this story reminds me of a book I read about the 1948 US election (dont worry Elvis, I dont think this will veer into the realm on conspiracy theories). Many decades later we learned that the US had totally broken the Russian diplomatic codes and were reading about 50% (or more!) of all cables sent between the US and Moscow. This was known in the FBI as the Venona project Well apparently in 1948 Russian intelligence had tried to introduce a spoiler campaign through the use of some (probably) useful idiots. Thats not really as interesting. Whats funny was that this intelligence effort totally failed for two reasons. First a bunch of Russian agents in the US got their bags of cash and started filing false reports. "Oh yeah I recruited 3 new members to the cell comrade, citizens x, y, and z." But when the FBI checked those people out they couldn't even establish that the handler had met those people! Probably then they were pocketing the cash and not talking to anyone. The other big issue was that the KGB agents weren't informed of GRU activities and vice/versa. So those agents who were active ended up largely trying to recruit people who were ALREADY on the take for the other organization. They would spend all this money wining and dining GRU agents just to find out, oops, youre already in on it.

Often we get really fixated on intelligence successes, where it seems like something really astonishing or impressive occurs. But behind the scenes Russian intelligence was just as clueless and bumbling as the military. 

edit: oh and by the way:

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by BeondTheGrave

[danfrodo]

4 hours ago, TheVulture said:

One quote from that that stood out to me:

That means that while old engineers were dying and retiring, too few capable youngsters came to learn from them. So many competences of old engineers died with them. As then deputy minister of defense Makarov pointed out Russia lost Soviet technologies of producing a tank barrel

 

The whole thread makes it sound like a late 1930's Japan scenario.  The US thought it was fighting an economic battle with Japan.  Japan looked at the same situation and saw an existential economic threat,  and so turned to a military solution as its only hope to change its predicament before it was too late.

 

Hence Pearl Harbour.

 

The West figured it was punishing Russia economically after Crimea, Donbass (and Georgia etc. ). And much of the talk in the Western press is about how little effect sanctions have,  and the ways in which they are circumvented to continue to trade with Russia. This twitter thread on the other hand portrays it as having a serious effect on Russia's military, and put them in a "do nothing and die slowly,  or try and change the game entirely" scenario. But like Japan, by the time they did something it was already too latel

 

I've no idea how credible his analysis of the effects of sanctions on the Russian economy is though. It might all be obviously bollocks to sometime who knows what they are talking about. 

Interesting.  And brings up a point that would seem to be obvious to someone actually trying to solve problems for their country -- why do dictatorships always decide the "only choice" is to double down?  Japan decided their only choice was to double down on war, same w Germany.  Russia could've said "hey a way to reduce sanctions is to negotiate something w Ukraine that could get us out of this mess but still save face for us.  Crimea and the Donbas really aren't worth the cost we're incurring."   Or, of course, one could simply choose to make all the problems worse by several orders of magnitude by doubling down on more war.  yeah, brilliant. 

[A Canadian Cat]

16 hours ago, dan/california said:

So if a captain is commanding a motor rifle battalion the MRB in question has already lost its original command group, and it's back up command group.

<snip>

Any guesses on the combat effectiveness of that MRB? 

It depends on how terrible the previous leadership was. It could be an improvement.

[womble]

3 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

Few interesting tidbits today:

 

Heh. Maybe the decision to confiscate all the troopers' phones prior to crossing the border wasn't so clever after all. It might've stopped the torrent of Social Media posts (cos who can remember their FB password when they move to another device, eh?) but at least if they'd had their own handsets, the Ukrainians wouldn't have had such an easy time listening in... I'm sure they still could've, but it might've been harder to target the intercepts.

[BeondTheGrave]

Just now, womble said:

Heh. Maybe the decision to confiscate all the troopers' phones prior to crossing the border wasn't so clever after all. It might've stopped the torrent of Social Media posts (cos who can remember their FB password when they move to another device, eh?) but at least if they'd had their own handsets, the Ukrainians wouldn't have had such an easy time listening in... I'm sure they still could've, but it might've been harder to target the intercepts.

Ironically you may have gotten a more Rus neutral perspective. Imagine if this whole time wed been seeing UA prisoners and burnt out UA equipment. The information/opinion side of this war was one in the first 72 hours IMO, and was the result of total Russian info mismanagement. 

[womble]

3 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Or, of course, one could simply choose to make all the problems worse by several orders of magnitude by doubling down on more war.

I think it's because the survival of the despot depends on being seen to be "strong". Negotiating compromise solutions, and backing off from previously held positions are not seen as fitting that image. So "doubling down" is, in many cases, literally their only option.

Doesn't make it a better option, of course, but it can explain it. And sometimes it works.

[Lethaface]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

 Will we see anti-mass in layers out in front of mass in some sort of very intense Recon battle? 

In a 'peer' conflict that would seem logical to me.

Even in the CMSF2/CMB2 context and timeframe with limited drone capabilities compared to now, moving mass in the open in an area with plenty of Javelins (or AT-14/Skif/etc) isn't going to end well. Perhaps the only exemption is APS equipped mass against non-Javelins. 

So in PBEM QBs with all the goodies in play that's already 'how to play', imo. Turning up the drones, adding switchblades and giving every side APS defeating ATGMs would make 'armored trusts' even more risky.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

"ya but what if we had to fight the Ukrainians right now?

With or without the armaments provided by the west? Although I guess either way it wouldn't be a walk in the park at all.  

Edited March 27, 2022 by Lethaface

[womble]

2 minutes ago, BeondTheGrave said:

Ironically you may have gotten a more Rus neutral perspective. Imagine if this whole time wed been seeing UA prisoners and burnt out UA equipment. The information/opinion side of this war was one in the first 72 hours IMO, and was the result of total Russian info mismanagement. 

Perhaps, or possibly the superior info-management of the Ukrainians would have just meant more and more geolocated juicy targets got deleted, sooner than otherwise would have been the case.

I remain astonished, however, that RUS didn't have official reporters along, generating all the "favourable press" they could for worldwide consumption. I mean, they expected a total walkover, so they should've been expecting to need to promulgate TB of pictures of welcoming Ukrainian crowds and abjectly defeated UA personnel and captured equipment... Perhaps the very absence of this phenomenon suggests that RUS successes haven't been widely achieved.

I, for one, appreciate Haiduk's reportage of OSINT regarding UKR losses almost as much as the collation of UKR successes.

[BeondTheGrave]

4 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Interesting.  And brings up a point that would seem to be obvious to someone actually trying to solve problems for their country -- why do dictatorships always decide the "only choice" is to double down?  Japan decided their only choice was to double down on war, same w Germany.  Russia could've said "hey a way to reduce sanctions is to negotiate something w Ukraine that could get us out of this mess but still save face for us.  Crimea and the Donbas really aren't worth the cost we're incurring."   Or, of course, one could simply choose to make all the problems worse by several orders of magnitude by doubling down on more war.  yeah, brilliant. 

Youre thinking like a democrat (that is, someone who believes in democracies). Dictatorships are incredibly resilient to expected issues, but are unbelievably brittle when it comes to sharp unexpected shocks. Since the French Revolution in the West and the end of World War Two in much of the rest of the world, most people generally believe governments should reflect the will of the people. Were long past the divine right era here. Either you do that through some kind of elected body, or you do it through through one person's (or a small clique of person's) vision. In this environment, democracies and responsive governments are like a balanced diet of meats fruits and veg. Itll get you where you want to go eventually assuming things dont fall apart before then. A dictator, on the other hand, is like steak and potatoes and ice cream every day. "Let me lead" they say "and I'll give you exactly what you want, and tomorrow! Ill cut through the red tape, break the heads of the civil servants who tell you NO!, and make things work the way they should. I alone can fix it." If they cant, they get 'pushed' aside. If they can, like Putin, they stay in power. But then there is this message. "I alone can fix it." When the problems were inherited its easy. Putin comes in, he replaces Yeltsin's cronies with his cronies (or buys them off), and things get better. For some. But eventually the problems arn't inherited, or if they are are systemic and structural. Eventually "I alone cannot fix it, because I alone created it." And so you see stagnation. The dictator blames someone else for the problem, or ignores it entirely. And he prays that the day will never come when he faces something he cannot solve, because problems the dictator cannot solve or ignore undermine the "I alone can fix it" mantra. 

Russia faced systemic, demographic, and human challenges when Putin took over. Putin was able to, in the short term, solve those challenges by brining the system under his control. It allowed him to paper over the cracks in the structure. But now its on him. COVID was a huge problem for him because, lets all be honest, nobody the world over got it right. Putin alone cannot fix COVID, and quite frankly neither can the rigid system he built. So push attention somewhere else, those darn Ukrainians. A successful adventure there creates a problem which Putin can successfully solve. Except he ****ed up and made a bad bet, and now hes trapped. He cannot save face because this was a problem of his own making. He needs to look cool, in control, and powerful. Except at this point hes none of those three things. Russia is now twisting under serious unexpected pressures. And like I said, dictatorships are rigid. Twist them and theyre likely to shatter. We see cracks in the regime already, more are certain to come. Either they will shatter Putin's edifice and something new will come up to take its place, or they will shatter Russia entirely, or Putin will fill in the cracks with the bodies of his opponents and many innocent Russians and Ukrainians. I dont see any other options for him now. 

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, TheVulture said:

The West figured it was punishing Russia economically after Crimea, Donbass (and Georgia etc. ). And much of the talk in the Western press is about how little effect sanctions have,  and the ways in which they are circumvented to continue to trade with Russia. This twitter thread on the other hand portrays it as having a serious effect on Russia's military, and put them in a "do nothing and die slowly,  or try and change the game entirely" scenario. But like Japan, by the time they did something it was already too latel

 

I've no idea how credible his analysis of the effects of sanctions on the Russian economy is though. It might all be obviously bollocks to sometime who knows what they are talking about. 

I've been thinking along these lines for years now.  The claims that the 2014/2015 sanctions aren't doing anything is unlikely true.  Russia's economy is not very well structured and their domestic production capabilities quite limited in key areas.  Any negative pressure on sensitive points will have some effect and the effect is likely a compounding one over time.  Since the Kremlin would never, ever admit that sanctions were having any impact it's hard to assess their real impact.

This reminds me of a 60 Minutes documentary episode waaaaay back when called "In HARM's Way" (holy crap... I just looked it up and it was done in 1989.  How do I remember this thing!?!?)

https://vimeo.com/56396814

One point of this was some sort of semi-illegal work around to the "everything must be made in the US" requirement in the contract.  They traced critical component to a foreign source (I forget what).  The issue raised was that if anything should happen to that supply, for whatever reason, there'd be no more HARM missile production.  Since 1989 this situation has gotten vastly more pronounced to the point of it being almost routine from what I can tell.

Back to the Russia angle...

Sanctions are likely making some critical components more difficult, or even practically impossible, for Russia to acquire.  Not just for defense but for industry in general.  These sorts of things might not show up on economists' radar, but they matter none-the-less.

Remember the concept of the raid on Schweinfurt's ball bearings factory in WW2.  The story goes that the guy who dreamed up this raid was initially laughed at because the people setting targeting priorities did not comprehend the critical contribution of the humble ball bearing on all things military.  Nor did anybody grasp that taking out one industrial facility could grind nearly all war production to a halt.

Don't underestimate the ball bearing analogy.

Steve

[acrashb]

27 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

why do dictatorships always decide the "only choice" is to double down? 

Partly narcissistic monomania, and party a conscious or other understanding that if the big gamble fails they're going to have a mysterious heart attach and a state funeral.  Because success is attributed to the Leader, therefore failure sticks to the same leader.  If success, as happens in societies with a large civil component, is distributed then so is failure - not so in dictatorships.  It's win or die.

I see that BeondTheGrave beat me to this reply, but mine is much more succinct

 

[danfrodo]

27 minutes ago, womble said:

I think it's because the survival of the despot depends on being seen to be "strong". Negotiating compromise solutions, and backing off from previously held positions are not seen as fitting that image. So "doubling down" is, in many cases, literally their only option.

Doesn't make it a better option, of course, but it can explain it. And sometimes it works.

Oh, I agree that's why they do it.  Ego and need to look strong.  And it gets back to the fundamental dictator/totalitarian/oligarch mode -- everything is about themselves, the country is just a pot of gold to be looted.  The theoretical best gov't is the benevolent philosopher king, but it turns out that what it takes to become king seems to be exactly the opposite of what it takes to be a good king.

On other items, I saw today that Chernihiv is surrounded?  -- any corroboration on this?

And that Odessa still possibly a target of an attack?  -- how on earth would this happen at this point?  I am not believing this one.

[dan/california]

We should start a pool on which regions have the first break out of hostilities. You can't pick Azerbaijan because 1) it isn't Russian  2) They have already opened the party.

[akd]

First one, Stugna-P “no LOS” operations.  Second one looks like it might be after and before, rather than before and after:

 

[danfrodo]

a good summary of recent fighting & ground gained. 

ALERT>  LIBERAL website, so if you don't like that just don't stray from this military summary page else you might be displeased w what you see

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/3/26/2088342/-Ukraine-update-So-much-talk-about-logistics-let-s-talk-strategy-today

 

[Battlefront.com]

12 minutes ago, acrashb said:

Partly narcissistic monomania, and party a conscious or other understanding that if the big gamble fails they're going to have a mysterious heart attach and a state funeral.  Because success is attributed to the Leader, therefore failure sticks to the same leader.  If success, as happens in societies with a large civil component, is distributed then so is failure - not so in dictatorships.  It's win or die.

I see that BeondTheGrave beat me to this reply, but mine is much more succinct

 

Reminds me of my younger days and thought of how the Third Reich could have won against the Soviet Union.  Many thoughts, obviously, but the primary one was to not treat the locals with contempt and violence.  Harnessing them to help in the fight against the rest of the Soviet Union could have worked.  After I became better educated about how the world works I understood that option was not available to a bunch of violent, racist, narcissists.  The very thought that they needed the help of Slavs, not to mention treating them as Human beings, never occurred to them.

Put another way, the reasons the Third Reich failed were the same reasons why it existed in the first place.  The two can not be separated.

Steve

[db_zero]

I never heard of this guy before but apparently he is a well know geopolitical strategist. He wrote a book that accurately predicted Russia invading Ukraine back in 2014 and even got the timing right (The Accidental Superpower).

Very interesting insights on population trends and why Russia had no other alternative and had to move now.

I don't agree with all of his conclusions and some are proving incorrect, but I still find his views interesting and enlightening. These are heavy into geopolitics, economic and over 1 hour each.

You can do a search on youtube to find the videos:

Peter Zeihan: The End of the World Is Just the Beginning

The Battle for Ukraine & Prospects for World War III | Peter Zeihan

Peter Zeihan | The Changing Character of War | Maneuver Center of Excellence

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by db_zero

[Rinaldi]

I used to think Tom Clancy was schlock and hokum, enjoyable, but schlock and hokum nevertheless. 

Now I'm thinking the man, God rest his soul, was on to something with his plot device in RSR where the KGB "present the best case scenario of an invasion" to the Kremlin in order to score some political points. I would love to have heard the intel briefings given to Putin throughout February. Or perhaps Putin was more like MacArthur, and just ignored what his intelligence types told him.