How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Ya, whatever this thing is, it aint working.  It feels like an unholy compromise to be honest.  I mean if one beefed it up, layered a next-gen unmanned system and hooked into a integrated C4ISR system, one could make an argument for a more self-contained tactical organization.  One that when employed on concert with others could see daylight in the whole dispersed and distributed operations idea that the west has been toying around with.  Not sure how one solves for logistics as that is the tether that never goes away but you might be onto something.

As built the BTG looks more like a "medium weight" institutional cop out.  Looks good on a power point as one could argue it can swing heavy or light but without the formation-level enablers light is going to be tepid and heavy too slow and vulnerable.  It looks like the Russians experimented with distributed mass and did not land on it at all, in fact they managed to invent distributed-weak-dim-mass.  The UA on the other hand, at least in the defence, has clearly locked onto something with distributed-smart-sharp mass; however, we have not seen them able to translate that into large offensive operations either.  

Let's face it, this has been a Defence war.  Defence has had primacy pretty much the entire course of it so far, which kinda throws things for a bit of a loop.  I may even go further and say that this has been a Denial War, with most of the denial being inflicted on the Russians; a lot of null and negative decisions being forced on the Russians as they seem unable to solve some riddles here, while bleeding on everything.  This is ironic as heel considering a major political objective of Putin's was to undecide the outcome of the Cold War...insert ironic "wah, wah, waaaah" sound here.

You and Combatintman have already nailed this to our previous conversations, but I'm going to pipe in with the historical parallel.

Prior Soviet doctrine, especially in WW2, presumed that once things got rolling that communications would quickly degrade to the point of uselessness.  In WW2 it was in part due to a lack of radios, in more modern times more of a lack of redundancies.  Communications are brittle things in the best of times, so if you have an HQ consisting of 2 guys and one radio, not to difficult to see that isn't going to survive long after the battle starts.  And because that's all the formation has, there's nobody to take over in the event of either equipment failure or personnel losses.

Related to this, coordination of effort requires not only good real-time communications, but it also requires personnel that are trained to think on the fly and operate within (often) complex constraints.  Not just the leader at the top of the formation, but all the way down to the lowest levels.  It does a Company Commander no good to fully understand the tactical situation of his and the neighboring units if he can't effectively have his subordinate units conducting themselves in accordance with whatever the plan is.  Communications is, of course, critically important but leadership is probably even more so.

The Soviets, ever pragmatic, built that into their operational control doctrine.  Coordination was pre-planned by a higher level commander and issue subordinate commands detailed instructions such as points on the map to be taken by x time.  This is akin to what happens in the West, but the thing is THIS IS ALL THAT HAPPENS!  The are sent off on their missions with the assumption that there won't be any practical way to modify the plan after it is set in motion.  This is absolutely opposite to what happens in the West.

It seems that the Russians aren't very different now than their 1945 predecessors.  Instructions are kept simple because complexity only invites disaster.  Plans are incapable of easy modification after they start up, and when there is modification it is likely blunt "stop moving" or "hurry up" type instructions, not "Unexpected enemy activity is threatening the advance.  1st Company, shift forces 600m to the west and provide covering fire on Field 123 for 2nd Company's advance across the field.  When complete, reform and continue toward primary objective".

The result is that units of at least company size, if not larger, are operating pretty much independently of everything else around it.  They have near zero real-time situational awareness other than what they are able to sense on their own.  They don't know what is going on with their neighboring units as the battle unfolds.  Hell, they might not know before the battle begins!

And the underlying reason for all this?  Russian units today might have more radios than their great grandfathers did, but their concepts of training and control are almost the same.  The problem for the Russians today is that only worked for their grandfathers because there was a lot more of them in the fight.  A nimble force is what the Russians built, but they didn't invest in actually making it nimble. 

Steve

[Combatintman]

22 minutes ago, sross112 said:

I was looking through some of the RA army structures for dedicated recon units. It appears that the divisions have a dedicated battalion but that was all I found. No recon regiments at the army level and no recon companies at the brigade level. So what they have is basically what is indigenous to the BTG's themselves and as you pointed out they don't appear to be equipped for the task. 

The only exception was some of the armies had an ISR brigade. Maybe they thought their electronic and UAV based stuff was enough? 

Don't get hung up about the ISR nomenclature - I've been through Recce, RISTA, ISTAR, ISR etc .... all of which amounted to the same thing employing almost the same but slightly fewer resources with each name change (peace dividend, lighter and agile and other great buzzwords) - the bottom line is that FIND is a core function in combat and has been for donkey's years.

The Russian/Soviet Army has never had dedicated/organic recce assets below regiment/brigade level in the 30+ years I've been looking at it (on and off).  The recce component that you see on the oft posted slide of a BTG is, in essence, what used to be called a regimental recce coy and some sources indicate that the old regimental recce companies in the new-fangled brigades were retitled as brigade reconnaissance companies.

Now ... I apologise for being vaguely parochial and slightly platform focused ... but bear with me ... that 'company' that sits in either the old school Soviet regiment, the new fangled brigade, or chopped to a BTG is what in the two armies I've served in would be called a recce platoon.  If you've got CMSF crack open any of the UK battalions (minus the formation reconnaissance regiment) and see what I mean.

Anyway ... back to effect, rather than platforms ... you can have all of the information/reporting in the world, but it is no good if you don't have an HQ that is capable of processing it and empowered to act on it in a timely fashion.

In my trade and in the reconnaissance game, you are looking for redundancy and multiple source information so there is nothing wrong with UAVs and SIGINT in the mix.  I'm sure I posted an example on this thread a few days back as to how you cross-cue your collectors to confirm or deny various activities.  Doing so; however, (I'm getting boring now) requires grown-ups to be able to plan, task, process and act on what is collected.

[Battlefront.com]

Oh, and to tie into the posts about recon above...

What is the value of real-time recon information if there is pretty much no assured way to act upon it?  Recon capabilities are expensive, so why bother?  Especially because parade grounds and exercise fields don't need recon.

Brute force doesn't require recon.  Russia reformed their military into a smaller, lighter, brute force tool.  Works fine when the enemy is either too weak militarily or politically to stand up to Russia.  Doesn't work well when either or both aren't true.  As we know in this war, Ukraine is not weak militarily or politically.

So just as we in the West have to adjust our thinking to comprehend Russian strategic objectives for this war, and toss aside all our thinking about how unrealistic it is, we also need to take our concepts of how war should be conducted and toss those aside.  Until we do that we won't ever understand how Russia is fighting and why.  Because as illogical and dumb as the Russian behavior might be in our views, it is logical and actually quite internally consistent within the Russian paradigm.

Steve

[danfrodo]

Wow, what a busy day.  I was in car all day and today I had huge amount of info to catch up on this morning.  THANKS ALL.  The drive really showed just how insanely long the Russian front really is. 

So Russian General Pyrrhus, of ancient Greek descent, continues to launch expensive attacks for little gain.  And the gain is mainly due to huge expenditures of artillery, rounds which won't be available for the main show (if it actually will happen), though maybe that doesn't matter.  Or maybe this is the main offensive.

Russians burning conscription offices -- now that is a sign I really like.  Draft riots, like level of 1863 New York City, would be great.  

Zelensky puts out statement that he's finally getting what he needs from the west -- an excellent sign.  And like Dan/CA said above, hopefully we'll see all this in a UKR counteroffensive coming in a couple weeks or so.  

Mud drying up some w the warm/dry weather on the way.  But can RA really deploy given the terrain between current front and Slovyansk?   Looks like woods and swamps to me.  

Meanwhile, lots of folks in the media are counting BTGs like hitler placing empty divisions on maps in 1944-5.  We have good evidence that only 1 of 3 of a regiment's BTGs were close to full strength as a matter of practice, w the other two ~50-60%.   And that was to start the war.  Now that most BTGs have taken losses, then they are all depleted.  Yet folks keep counting these units as if they are 100% strength.   They are probably something much less, 50-70%, and w thrown together people & commands so lacking cohesion.  I wonder how strong all these BTGs really are.

 

Edited April 23, 2022 by danfrodo
typos

[Haiduk]

Some other allusion on WWII battle. 2nd Kharkiv offensive operation 1942 of Red army, which finished with disaster. Almost similrar positions. So "Little Saturn" vs. "Fredericus"

 

Edited April 23, 2022 by Haiduk

[The_Capt]

15 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Works fine when the enemy is either too weak militarily or politically to stand up to Russia

This comes back the what I think is at least one of the major strategic flaws in this whole thing: the Russia  perception that this was a security operation in a rebellious “province” and not an invasion of a conventionally capable sovereign state.  This is clearly where their heads were/are at based on their behaviour.  Further, all this talk of Russians invading Poland is also utter nonsense, as is “30 hours to Riga”.  This Russian military we see is built for defence and internal security, it is not an expeditionary force.

Edited April 23, 2022 by The_Capt

[Der Zeitgeist]

Hmmm, I wonder if they will take the train.

 

[Der Zeitgeist]

(delete)

 

Edited April 23, 2022 by Der Zeitgeist

[akd]

Someone else is making a list and checking it twice:

 

Might be worth cross-checking.  Looks like it is missing some of the DNR/LNR command losses.

[danfrodo]

We actually announced the visit date of two high ranking US officials?  tell me we didn't do that.

Meanwhile, Putin et al keep threatening Poland, Finland, et al, as per above posts.  This is hilarious.  It's like me threatening to beat up an NFL defensive lineman.  "what out Aaron Donald, else I'm gonna F you up!".   For you non-US football folks, Aaron Donald is, in strength and agility, the closest thing to a comic book superhero that actually exists.

[MikeyD]

The officer death sheet ties in with earlier comments about lower echelon units not knowing what they're doing and being reliant on the officers up the chain of command to steer them. But the officers keep getting killed off. I can only imagine what losing 50 officers while prepping for a major offensive would mean.

[FancyCat]

6 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

We actually announced the visit date of two high ranking US officials? 

I feel that in the case of U.S officials, the U.S wants to warn the Russians against any attacks while they are in the city, lest they accidentally kill them and force the U.S to up the ante in response.

[akd]

 

Edited April 23, 2022 by akd

[sross112]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is very interesting.  One of Russia's top priorities was to dig up a high profile warcrime and bury the dead.  If they hadn't made this public I would have thought they did it to cover up their crime.  "See, no bodies.  You were lied to".  But they made sure people knew they were doing this.  And as a priority activity.  I don't get it.

Steve

The strike on the theater was pretty early on but I remember someone posting in this thread that the Russians were saying that Azov blew the building up. If they are sticking to their story then this clean up is also to bolster their internal propaganda around their false claims. I say internal because everyone else in the world knows that Russia was responsible.

[CHEqTRO]

A very interesting thread of what could have actually happened to the Moskva and why It didnt shoot down those Neptune missiles, while, in theory, It should have been able to; using the program Harpoon 5. Its all speculation of course, but I found It interesting and plausible.

Its in spanish thought, althought for this is why we have the translator function on Twitter

 

 

[FancyCat]

54 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

This comes back the what I think is at least one of the major strategic flaws in this whole thing: the Russia  perception that this was a security operation in a rebellious “province” and not an invasion of a conventionally capable sovereign state.  This is clearly where their heads were/are at based on their behaviour.  Further, all this talk of Russians invading Poland is also utter nonsense, as is “30 hours to Riga”.  This Russian military we see is built for defence and internal security, it is not an expeditionary force.

I keep going back to the information that Russia keeps a huge intelligence focus and desk space for the west, for China, for Europe, but for Ukraine, nada, not even after getting stopped by Ukrainian resistance in 2014. SVR runs foreign intelligence operations, FSB was assigned Ukraine, despite being a domestic intelligence agency. (Apparently CIS countries are FSB domain thru a agreement between SVR and FSB)  I wonder how misinterpreted the rest of the information on CIS is in FSB.

You probably saw this article on how Russian surveys of Ukraine prior to the war likely led them to some wrong conclusions. Surveys are well and good and all but war has a habit of being a destabilizing activity that changes perception hugely. That Russia somehow felt this wasn't war and that a survey should convey Ukrainians attitude to war is insane.

I would go further and suggest that the major most single factor in Russia losing this war was their outlook on Ukraine and planning perception, as much as Russia has ****ed up, it is very clear that their planning was based on a long list of falseness about Ukraine, that say if we looked at Russian war plans for something like the seizure of the Baltics, Russia vs NATO would be much different.

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/ukraine-through-russias-eyes

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/04/11/putin-misjudged-ukraine-hubris-isolation/

 

[BeondTheGrave]

16 minutes ago, CHEqTRO said:

A very interesting thread of what could have actually happened to the Moskva and why It didnt shoot down those Neptune missiles, while, in theory, It should have been able to; using the program Harpoon 5. Its all speculation of course, but I found It interesting and plausible.

Its in spanish thought, althought for this is why we have the translator function on Twitter

 

 

Was it ever concretely determined that the 30mm CWIS magazine did not explode? This thread suggests it didnt (or that the Moskva in the Harpoon simulation didnt). And the brain trust over on Reddit also discounts that theory. BUT as I recall @Haiduk suggested early on, before pictures came out, that the Moskva suffered a 30mm ammo detonation. Further the Russian reports seem pretty adamant that the ship was lost thanks to a fire caused by an ammo detonation (nevermind the cause). Seems to me like the Occam's Razor explanation is that the Ukrainians engineered a smart attack, the Moskva was for some reason unable to respond appropriately to the attack, and then the missiles got lucky with the missiles and hit her bang on the port 30mm housing. This would explain why two missiles caused disproportionate damage, why the fire seemed to be so severe (missiles + a few thousand 30mm rounds going off), and why land Moscow has clung to this ammo detonation fantasy. 

[FancyCat]

Ukraine is expanding their red lines for peace talks, while obviously Russia has several factors in deciding not to finish off the Mariupol resistance, it's notable that Ukraine is now expanding their red lines to include if the fake referendums are held. Definitely Ukrainian confidence is increasing diplomatically. I hope in a month Kherson will be liberated and the idea of a Kherson people's republic is dead where it belongs.

 

[FancyCat]

So how is Russia supposed to reinforce and supply their forces in Syria? Thru Iran i suppose, except if I were Iran, I would ask them maybe you should sign the new Nuclear Treaty allowing Iran to trade again....

 

 

 

 

[akd]

Interesting breakdown of manning in one Russian high-readiness motor rifle brigade.  Not sure what the source is, but doesn’t seem implausible:

[sburke]

1 hour ago, akd said:

Someone else is making a list and checking it twice:

 

Might be worth cross-checking.  Looks like it is missing some of the DNR/LNR command losses.

damn.  beats my list by a lot!

[kraze]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is very interesting.  One of Russia's top priorities was to dig up a high profile warcrime and bury the dead.  If they hadn't made this public I would have thought they did it to cover up their crime.  "See, no bodies.  You were lied to".  But they made sure people knew they were doing this.  And as a priority activity.  I don't get it.

Steve

Because russians, common russians, are legit proud of it.

[Huba]

Czechs suggest the are going to send Mi-24s, same goes for Poland

 

[Der Zeitgeist]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

I keep going back to the information that Russia keeps a huge intelligence focus and desk space for the west, for China, for Europe, but for Ukraine, nada, not even after getting stopped by Ukrainian resistance in 2014.

This ties into the entire cultural background to this war.

In Russia's eyes, Ukrainians are khokhly, nothing more than backwards barbarians who renounced Russian high culture. They don't need to be taken seriously, they are a corrupt failed state, they don't have any agency, and they're essentially just puppets of the West.

This is also why Russia can't accept that Moskva was sunk by Ukrainian-built missiles. Because khokhly can't built those. It absolutely has to be an accident or at least US-supplied weapons. Everything else would be an embarrasment. It's impossible, it cannot be.

This also explains why Russian TV talk shows are talking more and more about fighting NATO & the West in Ukraine, but not the Ukrainians. Russian cannot have military failures against Ukrainian khokhly, because, again, they're only barbarians and that would be shameful.

[Haiduk]

Roman Donik about actions of UKR troops of OUV "Sloboda" (Izium axis) for yesterday 22nd of April.

OUV - "Operatyvne ugrupuvannia viys'k" (operative grouping of troops). Main strenghth of OUV "Sloboda" consists of BTGs of 92nd, 93rd mech. and 95th air-assault brigade 

For 22nd of April:

5 engagements, 85 artillery shelling, 2 distant minelaying, 1 airstrike and two missile strikes (Tochka-U) at UKR positions

 

In the sector of 92nd brigade: from 10:27 to 14:25 elements of xx battalion of 92nd brigade have conducted offensive actions in area X. Enemy (in the strength about company) withdrew, The settlement X is taken over control.

 

In the sector of 93rd brigade: From 11:50 to 15:20 there was engagement in area XX against opposing forces in strength up to enforced motor-rifle company with tank platoon. The enemy hadn't success and withdrew. 

From 11:30 to 12:40 there was engagement in area Y (3 km west from XX) against opposing forces in strength up to enforced motor-rifle company. The enemy hadn't success and withfrew. Enemy losses 3 tanks, 2 BMP, 1 BTR, personnel losses 20 KIA, 30 WIA

From 16:00 the enemy in the strength of motor-rifle company have conducted offensive actions in area XX. Enemy was hit with artillery and fire assets of defenders and stopped.

17:24 enemy conducted air strike at our positions in area XX

 

In the sector of 95th air-assault brigade: from 11:30 to 12:00 there was fighting against enemy company (6 BMP) in area Z. The enemy withdrew w/o success.

Total enemy losses for 22nd of April: 4 tanks, 2 BMP, 1 BTR , 3 trucks, 2 UAVs Orlan-10, 20 KIA, 30 WIA (only results of one fighting)    

Edited April 23, 2022 by Haiduk