How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[JonS]

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.      

It seems to me that it's probably akin to the Drake equation- a fairly simplistic equation with multiple independent terms. The difficulty with Drake is that we have little idea what value to assign each of the values. Reasonable assumptions lead to wildly different outcomes, from "we're alone and always will be" to "Alan the Alien should be here next week".

In the warfare equivalent we have some idea for the factors (recruitable population, GDP, access to trade, ...) there is no certainty about the weighting for each from war to war or even month to month. For example: Allied GDP was crucial in WWI and WWII, yet all but irrelevant in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russian manpower reserves was crucial in WWII, but having no impact so far in Ukraine. Technology was overwhelmingly important at Omdurman, but irrelevant in Vietnam. And so on. We know the factors, but the damn weightings keep changing.

[akd]

This is not the pontoon bridge you are looking for… *waves hand*

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by akd

[The_Capt]

24 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

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.

Again, a lot to unpack here but I disagree mainly because we just did it.  As to computers, we are talking about non-linear algorithms here which do not create deterministic models, they instead can give probability based assessments.  Will we ever have a super computer able to predict war accurately?…dunno, depends who you talk to.  Dr John Arquilla seems to think so, but plenty experts agree with you.  I do know it is an investment area in military affairs and I have seen some stuff that says “definitely maybe” at least in some contexts.

As to metrics and indicators, a forum full of guys saw and predicted the Russian failures based on a finite number of key metrics - What we could see: Russian logistics fail; operational pre-conditions fail; air power fail; abandoned vehicles/discipline fail; combined arms fail; UA friction/attrition.  We already did a  meta-analysis and we still are doing it.  And that analysis was far more accurate than “the professionals”.  We did not need a giant computer to tell us Russia would fail to take Kyiv, nor did we need one to know they would stall in the Donbas.  Nor do we need one to tell us that they are likely going to be looking at collapse this Fall.  If we had better data or a way to crunch large data better we would likely see more trends - I have no doubt we missed some.

We just did crowd-sourced meta-analysis that led to a better assessment of the current war than a lot of professionals are doing - and here you will just have to trust me.  If we took this method and fed it high-side information we would even do better.  If we could distill this down to a currency of war, we would be on to something even stronger.

I am not a war game developer (well maybe an amateur one), I am professional military and have been for 33 years, and what I have seen on this thread alone tells me we have not come anywhere near the potential limit of what is knowable about a war in motion.  In fact I hope we kept a list of the trends we developed and followed as they may be closer to the “silver bullet” so assessment that a lot of what we are using in the trade right now.

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

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.

This I agree with and it's what I wrote about in my previous post.

Dupuy tried to create a universal number crunching method for predicting the outcome of battles and wars.  He and his team failed.  However, they did succeed in identifying critical aspects of warfare and made some decent stabs at quantifying them.  This gave people ideas about what they should be looking for and a context for evaluating them.  Simplified equations built with these factors can reasonably give you a kinda litmus test in which to influence broader evaluations.  I think this is extremely useful and is, in a way, how we approach things in Combat Mission.

For example, one of the primary reasons I thought the Russian Army would not perform it's intended role very well is because of Javelin.  You can take all the mechanized, maneuver warfare theories you want, make all the rosiest assumptions you can think of, but if a bunch of dismounted infantry squads can blow up 10% of the attacking force in the first few hours of a battle, and then do so repeatedly in subsequent engagements, well then... fat load of good all that doctrine, training, and equipment does.   Putting the Jav gunners to Conscript and the tankers to Elite doesn't change the equation all that much either.

In this case Combat Mission provided us a quantitative analytical tool that allows us to spot things of importance in context, explore those things, and draw some general conclusions which might be useful in evaluating a larger battle.  The Javelin example is just one of those.  Bunching up in restricted terrain, trying to keep poor quality units in the fight, the lack of counters to accurate and well directed artillery fire, etc. are others.  It's the sort of stuff that allowed many of us here to look at the performance of Russian forces in early February and conclude "wow, these guys suck at war" while so many others were saying "but they have thousands of tanks" or "they will adapt and do better next time".

Steve

[JonS]

29 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

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

Ok, gotcha: It is, except when it isn't. Great insight - thanks!

[Battlefront.com]

10 minutes ago, JonS said:

It seems to me that it's probably akin to the Drake equation- a fairly simplistic equation with multiple independent terms. The difficulty with Drake is that we have little idea what value to assign each of the values. Reasonable assumptions lead to wildly different outcomes, from "we're alone and always will be" to "Alan the Alien should be here next week".

Yup, and you can read about the struggles Dupuy's people had with this very thing.  In the end they admitted they just assigned values they felt were "about right".  And then changed them when they didn't like the results they produced

10 minutes ago, JonS said:

In the warfare equivalent we have some idea for the factors (recruitable population, GDP, access to trade, ...) there is no certainty about the weighting for each from war to war or even month to month. For example: Allied GDP was crucial in WWI and WWII, yet all but irrelevant in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russian manpower reserves was crucial in WWII, but having no impact so far in Ukraine. Technology was overwhelmingly important at Omdurman, but irrelevant in Vietnam. And so on. We know the factors, but the damn weightings keep changing.

This gets to my Javelin point.  Back when Rand did their study that showed Russia taking over the Baltics within a couple of days, my first question was... "how much weight did they assign to Javelin?".  Not because I think it is some sort of Holy Grail weapon, but because I felt it was a system that was perfect for defenders in that sort of terrain against Soviet style attack waves.  Looking at their results I didn't see the sort of outcomes in terms of pacing and casualties for the Russian attackers that I'd expect from just this combination alone.  So I concluded they botched some of the fundamentals underlying their conclusions.  I took some flak for so brazenly saying that they screwed up, but after a couple of days in February I felt pretty vindicated

Steve

[holoween]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

For example, one of the primary reasons I thought the Russian Army would not perform it's intended role very well is because of Javelin.  You can take all the mechanized, maneuver warfare theories you want, make all the rosiest assumptions you can think of, but if a bunch of dismounted infantry squads can blow up 10% of the attacking force in the first few hours of a battle, and then do so repeatedly in subsequent engagements, well then... fat load of good all that doctrine, training, and equipment does.   Putting the Jav gunners to Conscript and the tankers to Elite doesn't change the equation all that much either.

And the scary consequence of that being true is that western mechanized forces are basically just ass vulnerable to a such equipped oponent and the primary reason id argue tanks without aps are obsolete.

[Haiduk]

Nova Kakhovka now

Mospyne, Donetsk oblast, not far from Ilovask railway node, being struck yestreday

Edited July 29, 2022 by Haiduk

[The_Capt]

17 minutes ago, JonS said:

It seems to me that it's probably akin to the Drake equation- a fairly simplistic equation with multiple independent terms. The difficulty with Drake is that we have little idea what value to assign each of the values. Reasonable assumptions lead to wildly different outcomes, from "we're alone and always will be" to "Alan the Alien should be here next week".

In the warfare equivalent we have some idea for the factors (recruitable population, GDP, access to trade, ...) there is no certainty about the weighting for each from war to war or even month to month. For example: Allied GDP was crucial in WWI and WWII, yet all but irrelevant in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russian manpower reserves was crucial in WWII, but having no impact so far in Ukraine. Technology was overwhelmingly important at Omdurman, but irrelevant in Vietnam. And so on. We know the factors, but the damn weightings keep changing.

So a dynamic Drake equation that continually needs to 1) stay aligned with context as it shifts and 2) can learn.  My best guess is that it will have to be a man-machine pairing, as the machine will be needed to aggregate the data and the man to understand slithery human context, add a good dose of instinct.

Of course we are back to currencies of war and what to look for, you list a few right there.

[Battlefront.com]

7 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Again, a lot to unpack here but I disagree mainly because we just did it.  

I made a two part argument.  One is that we can produce computer modeling that identifies nuances in warfare that can help with assessing how well a war is being fought as it is being fought.  This, I agree, is what we did here.  But the second point I made is that such simulations will never be so accurate, so reliable that they can produce quantifiable results without well reasoned Human analysis to compensate for the things that can't be fully quantified.

7 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

As to metrics and indicators, a forum full of guys saw and predicted the Russian failures based on a finite number of key metrics - What we could see: Russian logistics fail; operational pre-conditions fail; air power fail; abandoned vehicles/discipline fail; combined arms fail; UA friction/attrition.  We already did a  meta-analysis and we still are doing it.  And that analysis was far more accurate than “the professionals”.  We did not need a giant computer to tell us Russia would fail to take Kyiv, nor did we need one to know they would stall in the Donbas.  Nor do we need one to tell us that they are likely going to be looking at collapse this Fall.  If we had better data or a way to crunch large data better we would likely see more trends - I have no doubt we missed some.

Agreed.  But it was the result of lots of disciplines and smart people pooling knowledge and experience that is just not possible to code into a simulation for purely practical reasons.

7 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

We just did crowd-sourced meta-analysis that led to a better assessment of the current war than a lot of professionals are doing - and here you will just have to trust me.  If we took this method and fed it high-side information we would even do better.  If we could distill this down to a currency of war, we would be on to something even stronger.

Oh, I believe you entirely!  There's so many times when we were winging it on horribly tiny scraps of information that we guessed someone with high level security clearance knew a ton more about.  Output is always constrained by input when it comes to information processing.  Or as the old saying goes... garbage in, garbage out

7 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I am not a war game developer (well maybe an amateur one), I am professional military and have been for 33 years, and what I have seen on this thread alone tells me we have not come anywhere near the potential limit of what is knowable about a war in motion.  In fact I hope we kept a list of the trends we developed and followed as they may be closer to the “silver bullet” so assessment that a lot of what we are using in the trade right now.

And it seems we are really in agreement.  Pretty close to full agreement.  Let me see if my assessment is accurate

1. warfare is made of of a plethora of factors which interact with each other.  These can be simulated to some degree or another
2. some of these factors are more indicative of success/failure than others, therefore it is beneficial to know which ones to pay attention to
3. many of these factors have little to do with warfare, which means a broad spectrum of knowledge is essential
4. the better one isolates the most important factors, the better the resulting assessment
5. the deeper the collective understanding of those factors, the more refined the assessment can be
6. flexibly applying these factors to specific circumstances allows for even better assessment
7. the degree of receptiveness to competing application of factors and conclusions is required to test and improve assessments

That sound about right?  If so, then perhaps the only thing we might disagree with is if all of this can be coded into a singular system that can produce a "universal" evaluation tool.  I don't think it is practical, though I do concede it is theoretically possible.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

19 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Nova Kakhovka now

Whoa.  I'm guessing what's burning are the advance supply centers for the Russian forces operating in the northern portion Russia's Kherson force.  I mean, it is logical for them to have significant depots in Nova Kakhovka, especially due to the limited capacity of the bridge there.

Steve

[Beleg85]

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

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.

Most important is that several columns of potential Russian prisoners (2-300 each) cut off on other side of Dnieper could have unforseen PR consequences for Putin regime, especially when mixed with obvious defeats. It wcould broke the charm of RU propaganda, especially if some Chechens would be cut off as well.

 

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This is a very, very common autocrat situation.  And it always winds up with the system failing the autocrat, often spectacularly.  We can even see it in democracies where autocratic minded executive leadership generally begets administrative incompetence for exactly the same reasons... poor quality people put into positions that matter, good quality people ignored because they say uncomfortable things.

And then there's Kadyrov.

Unlike Putin, he's a senior middle manager of sorts.  He doesn't have the luxury of having all the cards in his hands.  So he knows he needs to play games and is likely to enlist help doing it.  Further, Chechnya is tribal and that system is still very much in evidence.  This means Kadyrov has internal checks and balances on his decision making and advice, whether he likes it or not.  Sure, they are all corrupt and nasty people, but I doubt the sort of "yesmen" that Putin has surrounding him.

So there we go... Kadyrov, bumbling idiot or not, is playing the autocrat game much better than Putin is at the moment.  Which furthers the risk to Russia of a conflict with Chechnya when the timing is optimal for Chechnya.

Steve

You literally descibed Max Weber theory of authority Putin represents legal state authority (with small mix of charismatic, mainly a relict coming from Tsarist times) while Chechn system is more based on traditional model but with Kadyrov pushing it to charismatic model (strongly manifesting in 'Warlord" type, not "Priest" type). Dagestani leader Shamil in XIX cent. tried to do the same in Caucasus, but with more push into Priesthood/Religious manifestation of power. Of course he didn't succedd, as differences beteen various peoples were too much and Russians use them against him.

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

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.

Very true. Just on side not of this interesting discussion, there was a reason why Clausewitz practically started his narration of 'On War" from Napoleon Bonaparte, almost excluding Ancients/Medieval (god Forbid!)/Early Modernity as source of inspiration. Which was very bold idea at this time, especially refuting Roman heritage in light of esthetical interests of the era.

Interesting school of interpretation is to pair him with Hegel, who had some similar views on nature of the State. For him, State was epitomy of civilization(especially Prussian State-but there are debates here if it was "ideal" or "existing" state and if really History should "culminate" in Germany), where society/politics/military came together in most balanced fashion and reached most advanced forms. Everything that came before was highly, let's say, "imperfect". Clausewitz had similar limitations in his viewing of other societies and polities, including military systems (and "why" they were there, not only "how" they worked). Just like Hegel, Shakespeare, or other great names his heritage is both universal and very limited in time and place.

Ok, this adds nothing to this discussion, just still try to make up and proceed what was written before.

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by Beleg85

[Battlefront.com]

24 minutes ago, holoween said:

And the scary consequence of that being true is that western mechanized forces are basically just ass vulnerable to a such equipped oponent and the primary reason id argue tanks without aps are obsolete.

Yes.  Even with APS they aren't looking so hot.

In continuing with the discussion about predictive analysis, Combat Mission allows us to do some fairly easy testing of this theory.  Take one player and arm him with light dismounted infantry with tons of Javelins, TOW-2s, NLAWs, and other top attack weapons.  Allocate a bunch of observation drones.  These guys are the defenders.

For the attackers give them the biggest, baddest, toughest tanks that exist in the game.  Choose any terrain situation you wish to.  Hit GO! and see how it turns out. 

I doubt the attacking force will do much better with top of the line Abrams than if the force had been armed with T-90s *if* tanks are used the way Western doctrine states they should be used.  If instead if the 10s of millions of Dollars worth tanks are used in a "gamey" way so as to avoid them being blown up, then the point that their useless is also proven

Tanks still have a place on the battlefield for now, but mostly because the substitute systems aren't fielded yet.  They are definitely on the way in the form of UGVs and expanded UAVs.

Steve

[chuckdyke]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Tanks still have a place on the battlefield for now, but mostly because the substitute systems aren't fielded yet.  They are definitely on the way in the form of UGVs and expanded UAVs.

The latest Panther got rid of the loader but it seems still have a fourth crew member. He will operate the drone onboard possibly they could be launched through the main gun barrel. We could see a revolution compared with that of the battleship and the aircraft carrier. Tanks engaging out of visual contact.

[JonS]

37 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So a dynamic Drake equation that continually needs to 1) stay aligned with context as it shifts and 2) can learn.  My best guess is that it will have to be a man-machine pairing, as the machine will be needed to aggregate the data and the man to understand slithery human context, add a good dose of instinct.

Yeah, except while that could have good explanatory power (ie, looking backwards) in the particular instance it was tailored for, it would have only limited predictive use in that particular war, and almost none in a general sense.

[Battlefront.com]

15 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Just on side not of this interesting discussion, there was a reason why Clausewitz practically started his narration of 'On War" from Napoleon Bonaparte, almost excluding Ancients/Medieval (god Forbid!)/Early Modernity as source of inspiration. Which was very bold idea at this time, especially refuting Roman heritage in light of esthetical interests of the era.

Related... when people have asked us to adopt CM to WW1, American Civil War, or other earlier time periods we've been very clear that it will never happen.  All the coding in CM is explicitly tailored to modern mechanized warfare.  Why?  Because you don't get a great modern mechanized simulation by coding in weaponry and tactics that are no longer in use.  Clausewitz was doing the same thing in his works.

Steve

[Raptor341]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Related... when people have asked us to adopt CM to WW1, American Civil War, or other earlier time periods we've been very clear that it will never happen.  All the coding in CM is explicitly tailored to modern mechanized warfare.  Why?  Because you don't get a great modern mechanized simulation by coding in weaponry and tactics that are no longer in use.  Clausewitz was doing the same thing in his works.

Steve

So no CM The Great War then?? *sad* 

 

Carry on! 

[dan/california]

30 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So a dynamic Drake equation that continually needs to 1) stay aligned with context as it shifts and 2) can learn.  My best guess is that it will have to be a man-machine pairing, as the machine will be needed to aggregate the data and the man to understand slithery human context, add a good dose of instinct.

Of course we are back to currencies of war and what to look for, you list a few right there.

The question is can data be massaged to enable some nice curve fits with massaging it too uselessness. Or is the vastly more ambitious idea below necessary, 

14 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I made a two part argument.  One is that we can produce computer modeling that identifies nuances in warfare that can help with assessing how well a war is being fought as it is being fought.  This, I agree, is what we did here.  But the second point I made is that such simulations will never be so accurate, so reliable that they can produce quantifiable results without well reasoned Human analysis to compensate for the things that can't be fully quantified.

Agreed.  But it was the result of lots of disciplines and smart people pooling knowledge and experience that is just not possible to code into a simulation for purely practical reasons.

Oh, I believe you entirely!  There's so many times when we were winging it on horribly tiny scraps of information that we guessed someone with high level security clearance knew a ton more about.  Output is always constrained by input when it comes to information processing.  Or as the old saying goes... garbage in, garbage out

And it seems we are really in agreement.  Pretty close to full agreement.  Let me see if my assessment is accurate

1. warfare is made of of a plethora of factors which interact with each other.  These can be simulated to some degree or another
2. some of these factors are more indicative of success/failure than others, therefore it is beneficial to know which ones to pay attention to
3. many of these factors have little to do with warfare, which means a broad spectrum of knowledge is essential
4. the better one isolates the most important factors, the better the resulting assessment
5. the deeper the collective understanding of those factors, the more refined the assessment can be
6. flexibly applying these factors to specific circumstances allows for even better assessment
7. the degree of receptiveness to competing application of factors and conclusions is required to test and improve assessments

That sound about right?  If so, then perhaps the only thing we might disagree with is if all of this can be coded into a singular system that can produce a "universal" evaluation tool.  I don't think it is practical, though I do concede it is theoretically possible.

Steve

So on the off chance some ambitious soul with a security clearance is looking a subject for his computer science/AI phd, has natural language programming reached the point where it could basically digest the thread and turn it into code, and then feed it all the data the classified date that is sitting on NATO hard drives? Does anything useful result from this exercise?

10 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Whoa.  I'm guessing what's burning are the advance supply centers for the Russian forces operating in the northern portion Russia's Kherson force.  I mean, it is logical for them to have significant depots in Nova Kakhovka, especially due to the limited capacity of the bridge there.

Steve

actually it would be logical for them to be 40 or 50 km further back, and well dispersed. That seems to be beyond the Russians though, and they are going to lose this war as a result.

35 minutes ago, holoween said:

And the scary consequence of that being true is that western mechanized forces are basically just ass vulnerable to a such equipped oponent and the primary reason id argue tanks without aps are obsolete.

Tanks without APS being obsolete is a given, this war has proven it more or less beyond question. The thing that remains undecided is whether or not tanks WITH good APS are obsolete, or at least uneconomic. There have been four basic categories of things killing tanks in this war, ATGMs, other tanks, land mines, and artillery. Even an M1A3 SEP only really helps with two of those categories. Even if it is 95% better at dealing with ATGMs, and other tanks, is worth the total cost and logistical burden if it is still vulnerable to the other two? This is a very real question, and the next twenty years of ground warfare procurement depends on what you think the answer is. My personnel opinion is that a really high tech multispectral ghillie suit is the next big thing.

 

 

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=f+ukraine+quits+fighting+there+is+no+more.+ukraine&sxsrf=ALiCzsY4-IFlJRPxspO6knZOU02AUQTBbQ:1659134807554&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj2vNrmlp_5AhWxGTQIHRv6D5wQ_AUoAnoECAEQBA&biw=1393&bih=730&dpr=2#imgrc=55PkUlt4L312xM

 

And one last thought, each sides will is heavily affected by what it perceives as the stakes, see the photo above.

[Huba]

51 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

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.

Well, that's clearly the limitation of my POV - as I said in the previous point, all my humble remarks are about war as a phenomenon of history, not an applied discipline. What I can say from my philosophical POV is that "general theory" of war is not attainable, not in a way that would allow creating models useful for predicting future events in general - if you want to create a practical model, you have to narrow it down as much as possible (dunno, model an operational level/ logistical trains/ small unit tactics, perhaps political decision making). The sensible aim IMO is to try to predict/ describe a phenomenon defined by as narrow set of variables as possible, and steering away from trying to derive general truths from your analysis (unless those are very very general, but Sun Tzu took care of that...). Build a narrative about how these models would work when combined, given certain entry conditions. Argue for this interpretation from the depth of your erudition and rhetorical skill. And that's it - you have reached the limit of what is achievable.

In general, I'm not saying that is it "too hard", there are many examples of visionaries who predicted how the next war will look like. What I'm saying is that the most you could achieve ante factum is some kind of consensus/ agreement among the peers you engage about it, but anything you come up with will never be really "true" in the scientific sense, i.e. falsifiable.

[holoween]

35 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yes.  Even with APS they aren't looking so hot.

In continuing with the discussion about predictive analysis, Combat Mission allows us to do some fairly easy testing of this theory.  Take one player and arm him with light dismounted infantry with tons of Javelins, TOW-2s, NLAWs, and other top attack weapons.  Allocate a bunch of observation drones.  These guys are the defenders.

For the attackers give them the biggest, baddest, toughest tanks that exist in the game.  Choose any terrain situation you wish to.  Hit GO! and see how it turns out. 

I doubt the attacking force will do much better with top of the line Abrams than if the force had been armed with T-90s *if* tanks are used the way Western doctrine states they should be used.  If instead if the 10s of millions of Dollars worth tanks are used in a "gamey" way so as to avoid them being blown up, then the point that their useless is also proven

Tanks still have a place on the battlefield for now, but mostly because the substitute systems aren't fielded yet.  They are definitely on the way in the form of UGVs and expanded UAVs.

Steve

Well the APS question is something CM would be amazing at representing.

test your scenario with bare tanks, an APS that has a 50% chance to intercept top attack missiles, and one that has 80% chance.

Id guess at 50% to somewhat reenable tank attacks and at 80%+ it practically invalidates infantry.

 

As a sidenote id live to see how camoflage affects javelins hitchance and lickon time. At least for normal thermal imagers heavy camoflage does help a lot. couplet with smoke dischargers it could already significantly degrade their performance.

Edited July 29, 2022 by holoween

[dan/california]

https://twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1553149093454684162/photo/1

great set of maps of Kherson situation.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

And it seems we are really in agreement.  Pretty close to full agreement.  Let me see if my assessment is accurate

1. warfare is made of of a plethora of factors which interact with each other.  These can be simulated to some degree or another
2. some of these factors are more indicative of success/failure than others, therefore it is beneficial to know which ones to pay attention to
3. many of these factors have little to do with warfare, which means a broad spectrum of knowledge is essential
4. the better one isolates the most important factors, the better the resulting assessment
5. the deeper the collective understanding of those factors, the more refined the assessment can be
6. flexibly applying these factors to specific circumstances allows for even better assessment
7. the degree of receptiveness to competing application of factors and conclusions is required to test and improve assessments

That sound about right?  If so, then perhaps the only thing we might disagree with is if all of this can be coded into a singular system that can produce a "universal" evaluation tool.  I don't think it is practical, though I do concede it is theoretically possible.

Pretty damn near exactly.  I suspect that there are some fundamental factors that we can employ across wars; however, the weighting (like weighted violence) is different for each war.

We already have this in operational planning in the form of indicators and information requirements.  JIIPOE alone has laundry lists of analytical factors, as does Mission Analysis, COG constructs…we got a lot of factors is my point.  My thinking is there may be more fundamental ones worth exploring and we likely glanced off them right here on the thread.

As to big computing.  I gotta be honest, I do not know.  I have seen some impressive stuff but I suspect it will be like unmanned systems and will require a human in the loop for context.  I suspect war can be distilled down to a fundamental strategy framework, we actually had some already End-Ways-Means; however, they keep coming up short.

 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

What I can say from my philosophical POV is that "general theory" of war is not attainable, not in a way that would allow creating models useful for predicting future events in general

Not attainable?  The problem we have is that there are too many and they are often in conflict.  We are living in one right now, we call it Joint - which code for “integrated, empowered and expensive”.  The general theory is simple - if I have that better than an opponent, I will win.  Before that we had Mass (the quality of quantity), and before that we had Offensive Spirit (the bold press of the bayonet).  We have tomes of general theories, we call them doctrine.  It is picking the right one that appears to be the problem. 

Now if we are talking a universal general theory that will stand forever as a universal constant…that one is harder unless you go with very broad definitions - e.g. War is a violent contest of human Will.  Ok, most definitely applies to every war we have ever had…it also applies to a football game.  Nor does it leave much for strategy:. “We must have more Will, and better violence”…um, ok.  

Now the problem is that general theories evolve, they are dynamic.  Further the side that figures that out first has an enormous advantage.

1 hour ago, Huba said:

What I'm saying is that the most you could achieve ante factum is some kind of consensus/ agreement among the peers you engage about it, but anything you come up with will never be really "true" in the scientific sense, i.e. falsifiable.

If war is a human-based affair then if we get consensus, it is “true”.  It is when that truth runs into physical reality that things get strange, and physical reality is “true” in the scientific sense.

So we have a subjective human activity that sits on a foundation of objective physical reality, that is the tricky part but does not disqualify the pursuit for deeper or better general theory.

I guess my point is for everyone to take a short break from the OS feeds on this war and reflect on the last 1000 or so pages. Just looking at what happened to the Russians we can 1) confirm the theories we already knew (e.g. understand the war you are in, and be prepared to adapt to a new one), and 2) have seen some bent and possibly broken (e.g. Conventional Mass and Surprise).  We could bolt together all the things we have seen and discussed for the last 6 months into a new general theory of modern warfare, or at least How Not to Fight a Modern War that may only apply to this one, or it may uncover deeper general principles.  

[alison]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

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 am not a scholar of war, but to me it seems that war is merely a strategy that can be used to achieve some other measurable goal. For instance, a war might be initiated in order to capture land with some valuable and measurable resource, or it might be initiated to provide a measurable polling bump for a politician, or it might be initiated to fulfil a sense of justice - ensuring that a measurable number of people will henceforth live under a particular rule of law. I agree that it's not useful to see "killing" as the primary metric in all wars, but that's because I think each war has its own unique set of metrics by which you can measure success, and these are based on the intent of the belligerents.

From reading this thread, the feeling I get is that Putin instigated this war for a variety of domestic political purposes - economic, ideological, legacy-building etc. By almost every metric, he is currently losing. The Russian economy is doing worse than when the war started. Brain drain is increasing. International relations have soured. Overall military power and resulting regional influence has been diminished. It's not clear if domestic public opinion has swung in his favor, but given the criticism coming from other political figures in the country, it seems like no.

On the other hand, it's not clear that Ukraine is winning this war either, by the metrics of seeking a peaceful and prosperous nation. But perhaps if improved ties with the EU and NATO were a goal of the Zelenskyy government, then this war has accelerated those, so perhaps on balance Ukraine is losing less badly than Russia is. I think it is okay for belligerents to have different metrics by which success in war is calculated, and I think it's possible (perhaps even probable) that when a war ends everybody has lost. I hope that won't be the case in this one.

Edited July 30, 2022 by alison
typo

[Billy Ringo]

Many many years ago in my freshman economics class, the professor made a very interesting point:

Over the next four years you are going to study the affects different economic factors have on each other.  Price of oil goes up, inflation goes up.  Interest rates go down, housing starts will increase.  And these will seemingly make sense.  But it doesn't work that way.

In theory we can predict and model certain outcomes.  But the world doesn't function in a vacuum.  There are 1,000s of moving nuanced and varied factors that all have impacts on the economy and can turn things completely upside down from our calculated expectations.

This discussion reminds me of that first economics class.