How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Huba]

32 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I think you miss my point, I am likely not describing it clearly.  We live in, or at least view it as, an information-based universe.  Standard unit that describe quantities (or qualities e.g. density) are built off of universal constants that are in effect packages information.  We see physical phenomenon and we measure it via different slices of those universal constants.  e.g. a meter is how far light travels in a vacuum in a set period of time. This is all information, packaged, transferable and universal.

Economics is about value.  How it is made/determined and how it is distributed and how it transitions.  We use a completely arbitrary unit to describe value and measure it - currency - fundamentally in economics everything boils down to a value-information unit.

No matter how one looks at it, we have fundamental units - you can call them something else, measure them in a different way but they are all wrapped around a fundamental piece of information.

In warfare, we do not have that.  This enormous human enterprise, in some ways as large as economics - in fact we measure war in dollars as well as blood.  We do not have a fundamental unit.  This would be like trying to understand physics without a standard unit of time or length.  Or a universal constant like the speed on light.  

Not really asking for an answer, if anyone had one I would be shocked - and I have looked for a very long time.  My point was that applying “killing” as a sole primary metric, or fundamental unit of information within war is problematic and proven as inaccurate in many cases.

I hate to be the "well, actually..." guy, but personally I see here a mixup of the two separate orders - economics and warfare really belong to the humanities / social "sciences"(ducking for cover here), not science. Quantifying and measuring parts of these with the cognitive tools of sciences is of course useful, even central to these disciplines, but trying to make  general observations only this way leads to nowhere IMO. We are stuck with inductive reasoning here I'm afraid, building an educated narrative and having it peer reviewed is the most we can hope for.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Huba

[holoween]

17 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Problem with this is that is broadens the definition of “political” to mean everything which then really means nothing.  So ISIL going to war with the west as basically a doomsday cult…is political.  Barbary Coast pirates waging war as a vocation…political.

At this end of the spectrum, may as well say “war is an extension of human” because everything human is “political”.   This is about as useful as saying “war is war”. 

The definition of a war is the use of force by one group of people on another group to compell it to do its will.

Sure you could narrow it down to make it only count if states are the key players but that would exclude a lot of wars.

ISILs goal was creating a state of god in the middle east (and once established go further). Their means was straight military conquest where they could manage and use of terror to coerce western countries to leave them alone.

Barbary Coast pirates goal is to make easy money. They fight only if one refuses to pay them

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

In warfare, we do not have that.  This enormous human enterprise, in some ways as large as economics - in fact we measure war in dollars as well as blood.  We do not have a fundamental unit.  This would be like trying to understand physics without a standard unit of time or length.  Or a universal constant like the speed on light.  

Thanks for boiling down your previous thoughts in a different way.  However, I think you're underselling the problem   Even if there was a single metric to assess degree of success, there isn't a universal way to assess what that means when compared against the other side's use of the very same metric.

For example, let's say that casualties is a universal means of measuring success failure (it isn't, but let's go with it!).  OK, great, so you figure that 20% casualties is the threshold which determines a force is beaten.  Well, what if that's only true for your side and not the other?  OK, so maybe you say 10% for attacker and 20% for defender, maybe that might work?  Not likely because a poorly motivated defender might quit at 5% and a highly motivated one might not quit even at 60%.  Yet the attacker might still be at 10% for either scenario.

So even if there was some magical, universal way to evaluate the relative success of one side, it's not clear how one compares it to the other side's evaluation.  Which means we have a two fold measurement problem.

5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Not really asking for an answer, if anyone had one I would be shocked - and I have looked for a very long time.

There never will be one, so you might as well stop looking   The best we might get is a simple formula where a small number of variables, which can be somehow quantified, can be computed.  However, for decades the Dupuy Institute has been working on this very thing and still hasn't come up with anything approaching universal applicability.

Look at how Combat Mission assesses victory.  There's a half dozen different quantifiable values that can be combined together, in any way and to varying degrees, in order to assess victory/defeat.  This means each side has its own quantifiable means of measuring success and those measurement tools can be different from battle to battle (different elements and emphasis).  Then, separate from this, Combat Mission determines which of the two sides should be declared the victor AND to what degree depending on a comparative analysis of each side independently and then compared against each other.

As cool and nuanced as the Victory Condition system is in Combat Mission, it still requires Human judgement to determine how each side should be evaluated in that particular battle in a particular context at that particular time.  There's nothing scientific about that.

5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

My point was that applying “killing” as a sole primary metric, or fundamental unit of information within war is problematic and proven as inaccurate in many cases.

And yet that's the metric that militaries fall back on time after time.  Even with the high profile condemnation of the US "body count" approach of Vietnam, we saw the same thing used for the war in Afghanistan and the fight against ISIS.  Perhaps without the same flawed belief that it was an indication of victory as was the case in Vietnam, but still something people used to gauge how well the wars were going.

Steve

[Grigb]

2 hours ago, dan/california said:

My personal opinion:   Kherson proper, and the bridge close to it are already in the outer limits of 155 range. If the Ukrainians can get within 155 range of Nova Khakova the Russian position on the west/north side of the Dnipro will just disintegrate as the supply situation goes from bad too non existent. My read mk1 eyeball map read is that the Ukr need to make 15k from their current Inhulet's crossing. Thoughts?

I checked the Deep state map. It is 20 km to get in the 30 km range. Move Southeast from the crossing, until you see the settlement of Charivne (slightly south from yellow fire dots). This is where they need to get. 

[poesel]

2 hours ago, akd said:

Who needs Switchblade 300?

 

Using FPV drones as assassination devices - that is crazy efficient. Such OTS drones cost about 500$ and are not that difficult to fly. Used in masses would definitely be a hit to morale in the trenches.

[The_Capt]

4 hours ago, holoween said:

The definition of a war is the use of force by one group of people on another group to compell it to do its will.

Is it now?  So when the Mongols employed strategies of extermination against the Khwarazmian Empire, how exactly were they "compelling to do will"?  ISIL is another great example, they followed an eschatological doctrine - the hard core believers were not fighting to compel anyone to do their will, they were an extension of the will of their god, same for the Crusaders for that matter.

Problem is that there is no universally accepted definition of war - https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Contemporary_Military_Theory/9WQKBAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0  We have more forms and types of war than Inuit have names for snow...and none fall under any universal definition that is not so broad as to be useless to the practitioner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_war.

Best advice in that reference - "It is by understanding the war you are about to embark upon that you can identify correctly you comparative strategic and operational advantages, which, in turn, is necessary in order to construct an optimized strategy" (Ch 2, pg 2 - quoting Harry G. Summers).  This speaks to the reality is that war is a multi-dimensional creature that often takes on many different characteristics between conflict.  Knowing which one you are in, is likely the most important step.

With respect to overly broad terms like "politics" the problem becomes obvious...so what? How does one build a strategy from a definition that encompasses every facet of human interaction.

Clausewitz was not talking about the broader term, we know this from his trilogy.  He was talking the politics of the state.  Reading his small wars papers and "older Clausewitz" demonstrate that he struggled with "war of the people" significantly and never really cracked them, and may have never done so because they did not fit his reality.

Clausewitz was not wrong, he was in fact a foundational theorist - western at least - however, it is important to know where the Clausewitz horizon is located.  We have gotten ourselves in far too much trouble ignoring that.  From what I have seen he has several horizon limitations - micro-social, pre-civilization, culture/ideological and modern information age warfare to name a few.  Past these horizons we either apply the wrong metrics or principles.

5 hours ago, holoween said:

But clausewitz doesnt consider simple body counting usefull. To paraphrase the war will be won if either side gives up or is put into a situation where it can no longer resist the other

Ok, and here is another problem with Clausewitz, because his writing is incomplete it remains vague...like "Bible vague" in places, and believers are always trying to "fill in the blanks".  When Clausewitz reduces war to the key principle of "decision of arms", I cannot assign Sun Tzu-esque nuance that is not there.  He meant "kill them until they stop or cannot fight anymore"...nothing more or less should be expected from a Prussian aristocrat from his time.  I have seen to many in the  Clausewitzian priesthood go "well you must understand in the original German"...don’t buy it, never will. The man was an old soldier and knew his business.  Problem is that we know this does not work universally - e.g. NVA and VC, never won a battle but won the war, same applies to the Taliban.

Edited July 30, 2022 by The_Capt

[chrisl]

24 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

And yet that's the metric that militaries fall back on time after time.  Even with the high profile condemnation of the US "body count" approach of Vietnam, we saw the same thing used for the war in Afghanistan and the fight against ISIS.  Perhaps without the same flawed belief that it was an indication of victory as was the case in Vietnam, but still something people used to gauge how well the wars were going.

It goes back to the business principle of "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it" (or the engineering version "if you can't measure it, you can't control it").  The problem that people too often run into without realizing it is grabbing something that they can measure and managing/controlling around that without regard for whether it's even a proxy for the thing you're trying to control, let alone the thing you're trying to control.  I see it happen plenty of times in engineering situations where people should know better.

Counting bodies is much more quantifiable than evaluating success in the implementation of political/social objectives and evaluators of progress (who aren't necessarily the military, they may be politicians or the press) often fall back on that at the expense of viewing strategic goals.  A big part of why this thread has been so interesting is that there's a lot of inspection into the quantitative strategic impact of low level tactical events.  Popular press might say "Russia is pasting region X of Ukraine with artillery for days", while the analysis here will look at whether Russia can continue that for long enough to meaningfully take objectives, and what objectives might be achievable with the estimated long term resources.

edit: And there are all sorts of tools sold in the engineering and business world for "quantitatively" evaluating customer goals or selection of systems when there are multiple stakeholders who all have different goals/metrics/things they care about.  As quantitative tools they're all 100% garbage because they're readily gameable by anybody who's ever played games.  But they aren't actually useless - the value comes in making people consciously game them to get the result they want so they have to think about what criteria they actually care about.  But they're ultimately qualitative, not quantitative.

Edited July 29, 2022 by chrisl

[Butschi]

57 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I think you miss my point, I am likely not describing it clearly.  We live in, or at least view it as, an information-based universe.  Standard unit that describe quantities (or qualities e.g. density) are built off of universal constants that are in effect packages information.  We see physical phenomenon and we measure it via different slices of those universal constants.  e.g. a meter is how far light travels in a vacuum in a set period of time. This is all information, packaged, transferable and universal.

Economics is about value.  How it is made/determined and how it is distributed and how it transitions.  We use a completely arbitrary unit to describe value and measure it - currency - fundamentally in economics everything boils down to a value-information unit.

No matter how one looks at it, we have fundamental units - you can call them something else, measure them in a different way but they are all wrapped around a fundamental piece of information.

In warfare, we do not have that.  This enormous human enterprise, in some ways as large as economics - in fact we measure war in dollars as well as blood.  We do not have a fundamental unit.  This would be like trying to understand physics without a standard unit of time or length.  Or a universal constant like the speed on light.  

Not really asking for an answer, if anyone had one I would be shocked - and I have looked for a very long time.  My point was that applying “killing” as a sole primary metric, or fundamental unit of information within war is problematic and proven as inaccurate in many cases.

Thanks for the clarification. Hm, have to think about it a little more. Quick remark. I think one reason why breaking war down to a fundamental quantity or whatever one would call it might by that war itself is not sufficiently fundamental. What I mean to say is, wars are fought for very different reasons in very different ways and so it is hard to find a basic measure to describe it.

For instance, a war of extermination may very well be described by no. of kills. A war for land or expansion may be described by square kilometers taken and so on. Wars for liberation, independence, resources have probably very different... KPIs to use business buzzwords.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Butschi

[Thomm]

1 hour ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Make the bastards pay, Ukraine.

Can you please stop these posts.

They do not add anything to this thread.

Best regards
Thomm

[Markus86]

Recent post of the embassy of the Russian Federation in London, hours after the POW massacre in Olenivka:

 

[Cederic]

50 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Problem with this is that is broadens the definition of “political” to mean everything which then really means nothing.  So ISIL going to war with the west as basically a doomsday cult…is political.  Barbary Coast pirates waging war as a vocation…political.

At this end of the spectrum, may as well say “war is an extension of human” because everything human is “political”.   This is about as useful as saying “war is war”. 

So go back to the actual term Clausewitz used: Will.

Converting to your religion is imposition of your will.

Achieving commercial goals through warfare is imposition of your will on those that would otherwise prevent your commercial success.

Adding Ukraine to your empire is imposing your will on Ukrainians and on those that would see Ukraine retain its independence.

 

Why does this matter? Because war is not about killing people. War is about achieving outcomes. Maybe two centuries later we can use business language instead of political language but you still need to understand what the person you're at war with is trying to actually achieve. You also need to really understand the outcomes that you want. Imposing your will on your opponent to achieve your outcomes doesn't even need to prevent him achieving his.

What do Russia actually want from this war? That's complex as hell, as it includes their original reasons for invasion.

What do Ukraine want? That's within their gift to articulate, understand and work to achieve. If they can achieve those goals through means other than direct warfare, they'd be stupid not to.

Retaking Kherson is, unless you live there, irrelevant. The political implications of retaking Kherson however.. that's massive. If that causes Putin to lose face, leading to his removal by Russians in positions of power, that shifts the dynamics of the war but goes beyond that: It may lead to an end to the war.

If the will of Ukraine is to have safe governance across the whole country then knowing what lets them impose that will on those that would thwart them (Russia and the separatists in Donbass) accelerates achieving their goal. Politics AND war both contribute towards that.

(Sadly I too can't, you won't be surprised to find, articulate the appropriate metric for scoring war.)

[The_Capt]

18 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

There never will be one, so you might as well stop looking   The best we might get is a simple formula where a small number of variables, which can be somehow quantified, can be computed.  However, for decades the Dupuy Institute has been working on this very thing and still hasn't come up with anything approaching universal applicability.

And here we definitely disagree...well maybe not entirely.  I too have heard the stories of the "big giant computer program" and they have not ever been effective - RIP EBO.  War, like economics is highly complex, to the point it may be chaotic (Bosquette called it chaoplexic a term I really like) but it is bounded by predictable and definable frameworks - gravity for instance. Human interaction is also governed by patterns of behaviour, sown with chaotic elements.  I think there are at least two answers to the "unsolvable riddle" theory:

1.  We have not developed the computational horsepower, or sophistication to be able to actually crunch numbers. Here things like AI/ML and Quantum computing offer some glimmers of potential.  These teamed up with omniscient ISR means that the answers are likely there but they are deeply hidden in the noise.

2.  We are looking at the problem incorrectly, missing something or a perspective.  The idea that war should be viewed through a meta-analytical lens/framework may gives us an ability to derive indicative trends - in fact we did that exact thing here on this thread.  By stepping back and pulling in multiple macro and micro data points, process by many minds from different backgrounds and perspectives, we developed an meta-analytical algorithm that has been pretty damned accurate, if low resolution.  This is not that different from what military staffs do already.

Or perhaps you are correct and I am an alchemist looking for the Riddle of War, which may be unsolvable.  But the effort is not wasted.      

26 minutes ago, Huba said:

I hate to be the "well, actually..." guy, but personally I see here a mixup of the two separate orders - economics and warfare really belong to the humanities / social "sciences"(ducking for cover here), not science. Quantifying and measuring parts of these with the cognitive tools of sciences is of course useful, even central to these disciplines, but trying to make  general observations only this way leads to nowhere IMO. We are stuck with inductive reasoning here I'm afraid, building an educated narrative and having it peer reviewed is the most we can hope for.

You kinda are making my point.  If we can apply a universal metric to a social enterprise like economy, why can we not do it for warfare?  One can argue in some wars the fundamental unit was "land"...took so much terrain.  I am getting the sense the answer may lie in value-for-cost but both of those are squishy concepts.

[Jammason]

40 minutes ago, poesel said:

Using FPV drones as assassination devices - that is crazy efficient. Such OTS drones cost about 500$ and are not that difficult to fly. Used in masses would definitely be a hit to morale in the trenches.

Why not hand off the FPV to AI and go full slaughterbot. What could possibly go wrong?

Yes, slightly off-topic, but this war will be remembered for putting drones "on the map". I don't see (a version of) this future *not* happening, sadly

Edited July 29, 2022 by Jammason

[The_Capt]

12 minutes ago, Butschi said:

What I mean to say is, wars are fought for very different reasons in very different ways and so it is hard to find a basic measure to describe it

This...and

5 minutes ago, Cederic said:

So go back to the actual term Clausewitz used: Will

This.

War is a human enterprise built on a foundation of Will.  I call it Certainty, because I believe it goes beyond "wanting" and must encompass believing.  Clausewitz definitely got that part right.

But unpacking Will is where Steve's point comes in...how do you do it?  Can you do it?  It is an incredibly complex and problematic concept.  It is influenced by memory, fear, greed, righteousness, culture, social value, to name but a few.  Finally, Will is often not rational, nor does rationality become insured through a collective...hell we are watching Russia do that now.   

War is a violent collision of human Will, while all parties negotiate with a future.  Is as close as I can come right now.  From this we get: 

- Vision - what is that Will envisioned as a future Certainty?

- Communication - How do a people communicate that Vision?  I think this component is fundamental to characterizing a war.

- Negotiation - Internally and externally.  How is a people negotiating with the future?

- Sacrifice - How do a people rationalize the loss against the vision?

All of this is only useful if it can be translated into practical strategy.

[Huba]

24 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

 You kinda are making my point.  If we can apply a universal metric to a social enterprise like economy, why can we not do it for warfare?  One can argue in some wars the fundamental unit was "land"...took so much terrain.  I am getting the sense the answer may lie in value-for-cost but both of those are squishy concepts.

For starters, I shouldn't be allowed near the PC drunk, but anyway... IMO looking for fundamental metric both in economics and warfare is a folly. Money in a modern understanding of it is just very convenient when applied to modern economic systems, but in no way it is a fundamental unit in economics as a discipline - I'd say an abstract concept of "value" is much more central, money is just a one (very limited at that!) way to measure it.

My point is that when we talk about warfare (with the caveat that my understanding of it is centered mostly on historical aspect of it, as opposed to it being an applied discipline), looking for a way to quantify and measure it shouldn't really be central to our endeavour - this line of reasoning is really very limited, and while useful to understanding of specific aspects (logistics...),  one should be aware that you can't explain the phenomenon with numbers alone.

Edit: I'd say that to be able to better describe warfare, on the high level at least, studying methodologies of humanities/ social sciences might perhaps  be more useful than trying to apply the theories of sciences.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Huba

[JonS]

12 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

The rather obvious answer to that is that using WMD brings the danger of becoming the target of those of the enemy. So, there's nothing strange about the fact that it usually doesn't happen.

So, then, war is *not* about "killing the enemy in as large a number as possible"?

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Or perhaps you are correct and I am an alchemist looking for the Riddle of War, which may be unsolvable.  But the effort is not wasted.      

Well, sometimes the effort is wasted:

Seriously though, I don't think computational power or modeling is going to get us any closer to a universal means of measuring how well a war is going.  Why?  Because warfare involves too many variables that are inherently unstable and/or prone to performing outside of expected ranges.  This is problematic for predictive/assessment modeling for other complex systems that are, in theory, far easier to quantify than warfare.

In engineering you can crunch a ton of numbers and come up with something like Mean Failure Time, maximum pressure, effective lifetime of service, sheer force, or any number of similar evaluations.  I don't know what the Mean Failure Time was for the power substation that a squirrel got into, but I know for sure that it exploded and we were without power for 6 hours.  In a different light, it's hard to predict how well a public transport bus will brake in an emergency if, unknown to the bus driver, the maintenance records were falsified to show work was done when it wasn't (but as a jury member after the fact I could safely assess that 3 brakes didn't work and a woman died as a result).  Random events and not knowing what you think you know throws a monkey wrench into evaluations.  There's plenty of both in warfare.

So let's say you come up with a complex formula that runs on all of the world's computers in order to evaluate how a war is going.  Let's say you have correctly identified every single relevant factor that influences outcome.  You've also correctly quantified each one of those individually and then developed a massively complex means of evaluating all this data correctly.  As a guy who does this exact thing for a living, I can say I don't hold out much hope of it being achievable even with AI learning (because, first, you have to make the AI learning system!).  Can something short of this be developed and have it produce reasonable evaluations on a regular basis?  Yes, I do think so.  Universally accurate results?  No.  Therefore, it will fail to achieve the universal measurement concept we're discussing.

Personally, as a guy that simulates warfare in a quantitative way for a living, I don't think we'll ever find a universal way of measuring success/failure on the battlefield.  All I think we can do, and I believe CM does this quite well in fact, is provide a tool that allows for analysis suitable for combining with other methods to better understand the approach to evaluating how wars progress.  It will never be a stand alone tool, nor will it be useful to someone who doesn't have a solid grasp of a great many cross disciplines.

  

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

 If we can apply a universal metric to a social enterprise like economy, why can we not do it for warfare?

Ah, but we can't   Right now people in the US are arguing over if the economy is in Recession.  There is a metric that is often used for this evaluation (2 consecutive quarters of negative growth), which is something we currently have.  Now the experts are arguing about if the means of determining the metric is applicable to this strange COVID influenced economy that is also tainted by an energy and food war.  Which is why only some economists have said we are in Recession, while the majority seem to be saying "wait, not so fast".  So much for a reliable means of testing a rather simple concept of if the economy, on the whole, is shrinking.

Steve

[Aragorn2002]

18 minutes ago, JonS said:

So, then, war is *not* about "killing the enemy in as large a number as possible"?

Sigh....it is, but not with WMD. Or chemical weapons. Try to think, it ain't that hard.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[Kraft]

1 hour ago, Markus86 said:

Recent post of the embassy of the Russian Federation in London, hours after the POW massacre in Olenivka:

 

This message could come straight from ISIS

[The_Capt]

56 minutes ago, Huba said:

For starters, I shouldn't be allowed near the PC drunk, but anyway... IMO looking for fundamental metric both in economics and warfare is a folly. Money in a modern understanding of it is just very convenient when applied to modern economic systems, but in no way it is a fundamental unit in economics as a discipline - I'd say an abstract concept of "value" is much more central, money is just a one (very limited at that!) way to measure it.

My point is that when we talk about warfare (with the caveat that my understanding of it is centered mostly on historical aspect of it, as opposed to it being an applied discipline), looking for a way to quantify and measure it shouldn't really be central to our endeavour - this line of reasoning is really very limited, and while useful to understanding of specific aspects (logistics...),  one should be aware that you can't explain the phenomenon with numbers alone.

Edit: I'd say that to be able to better describe warfare, on the high level at least, studying methodologies of humanities/ social sciences might perhaps  be more useful than trying to apply the theories of sciences.

Clearly I am not getting through here.  I am not proposing a complete numbers based theory of warfare…that died with Jomini and the thinkers of his era.  Nor can war entirely be based on scientific method, here we often fall down in the West.

That all said, war is not a voodoo art or entirely a set of dice rolls either.  We can, and should do more to try and develop more nuanced theories of a central human enterprise, or we all know the risks involved.  I completely disagree with the “ce sera” or “it is too hard” position as it traps us into planning for the last war and strategies built on hope, which never work out.

Gains can be made, and better ideas are out there - we can war better.

[Battlefront.com]

10 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Sigh....it is, but not with WMD. Or chemical weapons. Try to think, it ain't that hard.

Well, even the way you are defining killing isn't all that useful.  In fact, most studies of warfare find it's more useful to wound the enemy instead of killing because a dead soldier gets put in the ground, a wounded one requires all kinds of attention (evacuation, treatment, rehabilitation, etc.).

Therefore, while I agree with you that killing as many Russian soldiers as possible as quickly as possible is good for Ukraine, it's not necessarily the most important way to success.  I'd be really, really pleased with Kherson if it wound up being 500 KIA, 1500 WIA, and 8,000 POW.  Way better than 10,000 KIA from my perspective.

Steve

[sross112]

So there has been some talk about how the UA should proceed in Kherson and elsewhere for maximum effect on the RA and Russia. I think we need to look at what has provoked the largest reactions so far. I came up with 3 things:

1. Moskva - however I think there wasn't such a great reaction to be seen as the greatest effect was a stunning blow. Kind of a wake up slap. Something that really got people's attention and made them look a little more at what was going on. It was a big loss but in and of itself it was more of an awakening to the fact that the UA was going to hit back and it was going to hurt.
2. River Crossing debacle - This really lit them up. If you remember there was much teeth gnashing and calls for answers when the footage of all those wrecks and broken bridges came out. Unlike the Moskva, there was no way for the Kremlin to spin its failure into a fire in the magazine. It was apparent to the Russian people that the RA was fallible and that great losses were occurring even though they were being denied. But mostly it showed the RA getting its butt whooped and that was very very hard for a lot of Russians to comprehend.
3. HIMARS - These have been very successful in shaping for the UA, but the most interesting part is how much debate and finger pointing they have caused in Russia, especially in the ultra national rants. Because this is pretty much the the confirmation for anyone who was still in doubt as to the superiority of the RA and their vaunted weapons systems. 

So if the UA wants the most bang for their buck out of Kherson they need to make sure they have a Putin's Precious Pocket that they completely destroy. Nibbling and gentle pushing may eventually take back all the contested territories, but that is just boiling the frog for the RA. The catastrophic destruction of some RA formations will create large internal reactions both in the RA and the Kremlin. Dodging responsibility for that will be like try to avoid shrapnel from a grenade in a phone booth. There is no way to spin it into something that it isn't.   

Something along those lines could be a trigger for many events including political upheaval or collapse of the RA. I don't see nibbling as being a trigger like that but I guess it could be over a long period of time. 

[Haiduk]

 

Lack of time, so briefly about objects being struck yesterday:

Shymshynivka, Luhansk oblast (this one probably was two days ago). Transshipment vehicles base 12 km east from Alchevsk town, using since 2014. No photos, but FIRMS showed a fire there

Ilovaisk, Donetsk oblast. Main railroad node for ammunition for DPR forces. Military train with ammunition destroyed after arrival. Oil base struck too. Ralways damaged. Video filmed from Khartsyzk town.

Brylivka, Kherson oblast, 45 km SE from Kherson, right bank of Dnieper. Ammunition dump

Klimovo, Bryansk oblast Russia. Looks like Grad or some heavier hit the area of Russian military unit

Komysh-Zoria, Zaporizhzhia oblast, railway between Tokmak and Mariupol. Diversion of resisstance, railroad damaged.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Haiduk

[danfrodo]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Well, even the way you are defining killing isn't all that useful.  In fact, most studies of warfare find it's more useful to wound the enemy instead of killing because a dead soldier gets put in the ground, a wounded one requires all kinds of attention (evacuation, treatment, rehabilitation, etc.).

Therefore, while I agree with you that killing as many Russian soldiers as possible as quickly as possible is good for Ukraine, it's not necessarily the most important way to success.  I'd be really, really pleased with Kherson if it wound up being 500 KIA, 1500 WIA, and 8,000 POW.  Way better than 10,000 KIA from my perspective.

Steve

Yes, very very very much so.  UKR needs prisoners because it's more humane, it's less danger to UKR forces, and maybe most of all they need something to trade to get their own kidnapped people back.

[holoween]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Ok, and here is another problem with Clausewitz, because his writing is incomplete it remains vague...like "Bible vague" in places, and believers are always trying to "fill in the blanks".  When Clausewitz reduces war to the key principle of "decision of arms", I cannot assign Sun Tzu-esque nuance that is not there.  He meant "kill them until they stop or cannot fight anymore"...nothing more or less should be expected from a Prussian aristocrat from his time.  I have seen to many in the  Clausewitzian priesthood go "well you must understand in the original German"...do buy it, never will. The man was an old soldier and knew his business.  Problem is that we know this does not work universally - e.g. NVA and VC, never won a battle but won the war, same applies to the Taliban.

Being german ive only ever read it in german only really ever taking english quotes for such conversations. My background is also in sociology and political science though ive since gone on to become a soldier.

I found his book(s) reasonably easy to read especially compared to some other sociology books and lets be clear that is where war studies belong.

I need to start this another way though i think

what is it you want to look at?

Because what clausewitz provides is a framework on how to think about war. He then uses it to make several observations and then removes himself from that discussion and looks at tactics and strategy.

His tactics and strategy are entirely outdated except for the very basics like concentration of force, logistics mattering etc.

The how to think about war part though id consider basically timeles and ass close to the truth of the matter as were going to get for quite some time.

Quote

This speaks to the reality is that war is a multi-dimensional creature that often takes on many different characteristics between conflict.  Knowing which one you are in, is likely the most important step.

War is the use of force by one group of people on another group to compell it to do its will

Serves as a usefull check for a policy maker

What do i want, what does my oponent want, how can i force him to comply with my whishes.

And depending on each sides will and ability looking through this lense may sometimes lead to the conclusion that war may be unable to achieve what you want.

Edited July 29, 2022 by holoween