How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

7 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

You mean like going out and playing whack a mole with the TB for 5 years? - the very definition of conducting useless attacks repeatedly for years with no successful outcome.  Now this war compared to COIN is apples to oranges but I do not believe for a second that western militaries are immune to banging their heads against a wall repeatedly.  Russia is really doing the only thing it can think of, and frankly it kind of worked in WW2, or at least that is the myth - just keep feeding live Russian teenagers into combat until the other side runs out of bullets.  I think it is myth as the Soviet military had developed a lot with respect to operational manoeuvre by the end of that war but Putin and his hand picked generals have clearly been reading whatever the Russian version of Ambrose is on WW2 mythology.

Well we are going to have to continue to agree to disagree...cordially of course.  I think you are becoming enraptured with the after glow of the accuracy of your prediction, or at least are at risk of it.  I would red-team the assumptions that your predictions are directly and solely causal to where things are today, maybe just a little bit. 

I do not think it was possible to predict the outcome of this war beforehand unless one knew the Russian strategy.  If Russia had gone for a limited "sewing up of the Donbas", they could have afforded to suck tactically and even operationally but they still may very well have secured their objectives before the world got all up in arms.  I am convinced the response from the West would have been pretty much in line with what it was last time...all squawky and sanctiony but we would not be seeing the massive amounts of military support over a few more acres of Donbass.  It was places like Mariupol and Kharkiv that created the attention and the drama, that and a brilliant IO campaign by the Ukrainian government.

It wasn't until the UA got all the resources to connect the dots on whatever this has become did the fate of the RA become truly sealed, and that needed the political/strategic over-reach mis-step of trying to take the entire country in flagrant violation of the global order.  I do not argue that you very likely predicted the tactical outcomes of this war before it started but the operational and strategic outcomes were impossible to predict until we are about 3 days into this war.  Even then HIMARs and full western support took longer to form up, allowing the RA as poor as it was to still hold onto large swaths of territory and severely damage its opponent.

Finally, the overall Russian offset to sucking tactically has always been overwhelming mass.  You are good Steve but I am not sure Arquilla himself would have predicted just how much the utility of dumber mas would drop in this war, I know I sure didn't.  The Russian initial attack was with the best troops they had, the same approach that worked very well in 2014, and the fall back was Enemy at the Gates with the mountains of Soviet era equipment and ammo - recall everyone freaking out about that back in Apr/May?  No one could predict that would fail on Feb 21st unless they 1) knew the Russian strategy and 2) knew the West would put in place the enablers and support to make the UA able to do something no one thought possible before the war.

I am of a firm mind that a whole lot of conditions had to fall into place in order for us to be where we are in this war today.  Some of those conditions were predictable, like the growing tactical disparity between the two sides as one was modernizing while the other was rotting from corruption.  Others, such as the Russian baffling strategic choices and the UA breaking the rules of warfare to the extent they did, were not predictable and yet were just as determinative to being where we are.  Sure Russian's suck at this war, but that is the beginning of the analysis of this event, not the end of it in my opinion.

Russia has mad the worst possible choice at literally every possible decision point. There might be one exception but I will get to that last. Russian force design is wrong in about seven different ways, all have been discussed. Russia couldn't afford the army it tried to build even it was relatively well run for an economy of its size. Of course it is in fact run horribly with corruption so severe that if you put it in a bad novel the editor would send it back. Putin decided nothing less than the complete conquest of Ukraine was the objective. Russia made multiple horrible assumptions about its forces, and Ukrainian resistance. This led to a plan even worse than the assumptions. Zelensky turned out to be great wartime leader. Putin didn't have the sense to call the whole thing off at about the two week mark when actually might have been able to get SOMETHING at the negotiation table. Russian war crimes and atrocities have been off the scale awful, and it is ALL on video. Virtually all of these mistakes were required for us to get to the point we are at now, Russia has flat out lost this war, and if they don't quit soon may a lose a great deal more than just their claims in Ukraine.

The one exception to this litany of epic failure was the artillery led attempt to take all of the Donbas in May,that came uncomfortably close to working before the accumulated weight of all of Putin's other errors started to bear down. If Putin/Russia hd been smarter at virtually any of the decision points above they would not be this bad off. 

[billbindc]

12 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

And here we agree fully.  I do not think Russia is capable of freezing this conflict either.  The West and UA have far too many options left to them while the Russian option space has pretty much collapsed.  We can go around the tree a few more times on why - Russia Sucks vs UA-is-bending-theories-of-warfare-in-the-same-scope-as-the-Mongols-did^tm- but at the end of the day the reality we are in now is that the Russia is so far behind the UA that it would take Russian military reforms to come anywhere near being able to compete. Reforms that would need to be conducted from the forward edge, back through the operational and strategic, to the industrial, legal and political levels. Russia would realistically need to freeze this conflict for the better part of a decade - even without being under crushing sanctions and isolation - in order to re-tool the military it needed to counter the UA and the West on an equal footing.

I am not sure that is even the play to be honest.  Right now it looks like Russia is desperately playing for time, hoping that Ukraine fatigue will set in and western support will wane.  That, or the west will decide and push for some arbitrary line that "there is where Ukraine has won enough and Russia has lost enough", my money is on the post-2014 lines but even that will require Putin to have a 9mm headache, along with his power circle.  I think the worry that western support will dry up and the RA will be able to resume offensive operations is highly unlikely, the RA is pretty much shattered at this point as far as major offensive operations as far as I can tell.

Russia's remaining hopes lie, as they have since approximately May, in a collapse of Western support for Ukraine. That support will certainly be pressured over time but it is hard to imagine a scenario at this point where even limited support doesn't allow Ukraine to at minimum maintain the status quo. The other shoe that has so far stubbornly failed to entirely drop is a collapse in the domestic Russian economy. The dangers in going against Putin are acute and any would be coup planners will want to know that a wave of popular support will overwhelm the dead enders. So Russia will lurch forward for a while yet, I think.

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, Tenses said:

What is fun about this vision is that when you replace plasma rifle with Javelin, nothing really changes. Both are massive overkill and along with PGM, ultimate reason why this war looks like that.

This is an age of sword, which massivly overcame the shield. Next era will be all about shield and how to effectively implement it(APS, lasers, UAVs and UGVs of all sizes, personal armor).

I am sort of repeating myself here, but one interesting thing that  offense is getting much harder at the tactical operational level, even as defending fixed targets far behind the lines becomes much more difficult. The Shaheed 136 is effectively a ~1000 km range cruise missile for $20,000. The supply of them is not great enough, And Russia's unfixable overall  situation bad enough, that they will not change the course of this war. But things like them are going to have a very great deal of weight going forward. The number of them China could launch at Taiwan if it set its mind to it for instance...

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Russia's remaining hopes lie, as they have since approximately May, in a collapse of Western support for Ukraine. That support will certainly be pressured over time but it is hard to imagine a scenario at this point where even limited support doesn't allow Ukraine to at minimum maintain the status quo. The other shoe that has so far stubbornly failed to entirely drop is a collapse in the domestic Russian economy. The dangers in going against Putin are acute and any would be coup planners will want to know that a wave of popular support will overwhelm the dead enders. So Russia will lurch forward for a while yet, I think.

Economies on the scales we are talking take a long time to build up the pressures for major shifts, this is something that the average person does not understand because personal finances are very simple systems in comparison and can blow up in an afternoon.  Even the 2007-08 financial crisis can trace causes back to banking deregulation during the Clinton era (and likely even before that).  So what?  Well sanctions and economic pressure are not like a nuclear weapon - bright flash and big boom.  They take a long time to build up to something dramatic.  It took two and half years of a global pandemic to create the economic mess we are in now globally, nations were deficit spending on a scale not seen since...well, I am not sure when we blew that much creating what were essentially welfare states as entire economic sectors collapsed....but hey let's blame {insert political party of your choice}.  Further the damage being done to Russia on this scale may become generational, particularly if Europe hardwires outside of Russian energy, that was the single largest misstep Russia/Putin made on this whole mess - burned his major market to the ground over whatever this thing was about.  The Russian future looks very grim without renormalization, which will not come easily if at all.  Now will that lead to a coup tomorrow...doubtful but the conditions for one are brewing.

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

You mean like going out and playing whack a mole with the TB for 5 years?

Key words in what you responded to was "this sort of outcome", which was losses of upwards of 25-50%, maybe more, 10-20 times a day, every day, for months on end for a couple hundred meters of terrain (and Russia's war is, unlike Afghanistan, measured by terrain taken/held).  How many battles in Afghanistan did Canadians lose that sort of combat power on an offensive operation?  If it was 10-20 a day like the Russians, do you think Canada would have kept it up for 5 years?  Or a week?  Yet Russia keeps doing it.  Why?  Because it feels compelled to do something and yet this is all it can do because Russia Sucks™

Afghanistan was a strategic failure from the start through the finish, but the operational and tactical execution was quite good.  Doctrine and equipment evolved to make outcomes even better, but the strategic failures were never addressed.  Hence defeat after 20 years of battlefield success.

Russia, on the other hand, is failing at all levels and doing so without any real signs of being able to change its behavior.  The Soviet Union was way better than Russia.  It used to be scary good at both strategic and operational warfare, even if tactically it took losses that Westerners could not fathom.  At some point Russia lost interest in maintaining its capacity to wage war effectively, for a plethora of reasons we've gone into great depth about.

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Well we are going to have to continue to agree to disagree...cordially of course.  I think you are becoming enraptured with the after glow of the accuracy of your prediction, or at least are at risk of it.  I would red-team the assumptions that your predictions are directly and solely causal to where things are today, maybe just a little bit. 

I like it   However, I keep bringing the limited Donbas fight into discussions because, like you, it was something Russia could have easily done if that's what Putin wanted to do.

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I do not think it was possible to predict the outcome of this war beforehand unless one knew the Russian strategy.  If Russia had gone for a limited "sewing up of the Donbas", they could have afforded to suck tactically and even operationally but they still may very well have secured their objectives before the world got all up in arms.  I am convinced the response from the West would have been pretty much in line with what it was last time...all squawky and sanctiony but we would not be seeing the massive amounts of military support over a few more acres of Donbass.  It was places like Mariupol and Kharkiv that created the attention and the drama, that and a brilliant IO campaign by the Ukrainian government.

I agree, except Mariupol would have been part of that expansion and (presuming they didn't attack out of Crimea) would have been a frontal assault.

Personally, I don't think Russia would have ever launched a war just for Donbas as what it wanted more was the land bridge for Crimea.  But let's stick to the very limited Donbas scenario...

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

It wasn't until the UA got all the resources to connect the dots on whatever this has become did the fate of the RA become truly sealed,

I disagree.  Russia pushed VERY hard against the previous line of contact in the Donbas and made no progress for months.  Russia would have had to overcome these forces first in the Donbas scenario.  It would have been slow going for the bulk of the front and for the extremities (northern Luhansk and southern Donetsk) might every well have looked like the February/March where Russian gains were initially impressive and then bogged down.

Remember, other than the flood of AT weapons, Ukraine largely fought through March with mostly its own resources (other than Intel, but I presume they would have gotten that in the Donbas scenario).

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

and that needed the political/strategic over-reach mis-step of trying to take the entire country in flagrant violation of the global order.  I do not argue that you very likely predicted the tactical outcomes of this war before it started but the operational and strategic outcomes were impossible to predict until we are about 3 days into this war.  Even then HIMARs and full western support took longer to form up, allowing the RA as poor as it was to still hold onto large swaths of territory and severely damage its opponent.

True, so it might have taken us 3 weeks to figure out if Russia was going to lose the Donbas enlargement battle.  And as I said before, it would likely have been only a battle.  Even with reduced Western assistance and sanctions I don't think Ukraine would have rolled over.

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Finally, the overall Russian offset to sucking tactically has always been overwhelming mass.  You are good Steve but I am not sure Arquilla himself would have predicted just how much the utility of dumber mas would drop in this war, I know I sure didn't. 

Oh, for sure I didn't predict it.  Remember, my scenario was Russia's 1st Phase taking over everything east of the Dnepr except for Kyiv even with high losses.  That's because I, like you and everybody else, predicted that Russian mass was sufficient to achieve this even with low expectations across the board otherwise.

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

The Russian initial attack was with the best troops they had, the same approach that worked very well in 2014,

I've raised challenges to this presumption many times.  I think Russia had much higher expectations than it was able to achieve, which is why Russia sought to freeze the conflict with Minsk.  On many levels the war did not go well for Russia in 2014/2015, yet it apparently learned nothing from that experience even though it knew it would once again fight a conventional war with Ukraine.

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

and the fall back was Enemy at the Gates with the mountains of Soviet era equipment and ammo - recall everyone freaking out about that back in Apr/May? 

By everyone I presume you don't mean me   I was one of the voices that kept saying that it wouldn't matter as Russia was burning through it fast and without showing any gains from it.  And what made me so confident?  Because Russia Sucks™

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

No one could predict that would fail on Feb 21st unless they 1) knew the Russian strategy and 2) knew the West would put in place the enablers and support to make the UA able to do something no one thought possible before the war.

I'll quibble with this a bit.  I was convinced on the 22nd (maybe earlier?) that Russia would launch a full scale invasion.  I did not know their plan, but I was confident that whatever it was it would fail because Russia Sucks™.  Even if the West provided nothing and Ukraine's conventional forces were eventually exhausted in some aspects (artillery in particular), I was sure Ukraine would win.

What I didn't know until I saw the Russian plan was what victory might look like for Ukraine.  My pre-war assumptions of Russian mass had Ukraine winning a multi-year mixed conventional/unconventional war and Russia collapsing because of the strain.  After about Day 3 of the war I realized it would be conventional from start to finish and that it wouldn't last more than a year.  I am probably wrong about the timeframe because I underestimated the regime's ability to do conduct a hidden mobilization and overestimated the ability of power blocs to challenge Putin's rule.  That's more Putin being much better as a dictator than he is a military leader.

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I am of a firm mind that a whole lot of conditions had to fall into place in order for us to be where we are in this war today.  Some of those conditions were predictable, like the growing tactical disparity between the two sides as one was modernizing while the other was rotting from corruption.  Others, such as the Russian baffling strategic choices and the UA breaking the rules of warfare to the extent they did, were not predictable and yet were just as determinative to being where we are. 

Again, I think most of those conditions were there to see before the war happened.  The most important ones were what Russia brought to the table.  Those were also the ones Western analysts screwed up the most.  Hence why they made such crap predictions even after the war started.

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Sure Russian's suck at this war, but that is the beginning of the analysis of this event, not the end of it in my opinion.

Nice to end on a point where you and I are, and always have been, in 100% agreement.  Dismissing Russia's capacity to wage war in the future simply because Russia Sucks™ right now would be a huge mistake.  We need to get into the details of how Russia has fought this war and pay attention to the instances where it didn't suck (many pages ago I listed about a dozen areas they did at least a good job).  Most of Russia's problems with waging war are long term, but they are long term simply because they've not changed.  They could change and we need to be aware of it.

It is also important to deeply analyze why Russia has performed so badly in order that we can better understand what fighting a conventional war against China or Iran might look like.  Russia's going to be out of the war fighting business for at least a decade, not so with China.

Steve

[MSBoxer]

1 hour ago, Thomm said:

Why not use quad bikes instead of fantasy power armor?

They should transport the weapons just fine, and the rider could dismount for extra mobility.

 

 

 

I like this thinking.  
Quads would also be my first choice to electrify for more silent operation.  Lower power requirements, of course also reduced range.

Then just fit any of our heavy equipment with the ability to charge the quad batteries.  
Quads could perform recon then pull back to main force to swap cells, or wait in place until heavier units advance with replacement.

 

Hell you might be able to resupply batteries with larger drones.

 

[kevinkin]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

freezing the war over the winter doesn't really do much for it so keep on the attack and hope something more positive comes of it.

I can see a bit of both since a strategic sized ground offensive is out of Russia's reach. So perhaps sector sized attacks (BTGs) to keep Ukraine's artillery at manageable ranges while the front remains fairly static as a whole. I posted something a while back about how the range of common artillery is a major factor for both sides. But I do hope strategic pressure is maintained against Russia so some of those scenarios don't realize themselves.

Edited November 7, 2022 by kevinkin

[dan/california]

22 minutes ago, MSBoxer said:

I like this thinking.  
Quads would also be my first choice to electrify for more silent operation.  Lower power requirements, of course also reduced range.

Then just fit any of our heavy equipment with the ability to charge the quad batteries.  
Quads could perform recon then pull back to main force to swap cells, or wait in place until heavier units advance with replacement.

 

Hell you might be able to resupply batteries with larger drones.

 

All the logistics you just proposed would be equally necessary for either system. But a Quad can't hide in a random drainage ditch the way a person can. Can they build armor that would still let a person do that?  I don't know, but I suspect they are trying.

[danfrodo]

On the ongoing RU-sucks at war theme, let us remember that this was supposed to be a coup, not a war.  Especially not a long war and especially not a long war with sanctions and especially not a long war with sanctions where UKR has kickbutt western artillery.  Putin chose a coup, not a war.  Continuing the war and constantly doubling down and losing those bets is his choice, however.

[sross112]

27 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Russia's remaining hopes lie, as they have since approximately May, in a collapse of Western support for Ukraine. That support will certainly be pressured over time but it is hard to imagine a scenario at this point where even limited support doesn't allow Ukraine to at minimum maintain the status quo. The other shoe that has so far stubbornly failed to entirely drop is a collapse in the domestic Russian economy. The dangers in going against Putin are acute and any would be coup planners will want to know that a wave of popular support will overwhelm the dead enders. So Russia will lurch forward for a while yet, I think.

I agree. Russia's greatest hope of coming out of this with anything is for western support to fail. With that being said they have to stay in the fight until the support fails. There will be a combination of freezing the lines and continued attacks. They have to keep attacking for their internal consumption, even the small village here and there portrayed as a win for the public. That explains their continued assaults on basically useless objectives at great cost for little gain. The army has to show the politicians it is trying and the politicians have to show the public some sort of positive gain.

 

37 minutes ago, dan/california said:

The one exception to this litany of epic failure was the artillery led attempt to take all of the Donbas in May,that came uncomfortably close to working before the accumulated weight of all of Putin's other errors started to bear down. If Putin/Russia hd been smarter at virtually any of the decision points above they would not be this bad off. 

There has been a lot of talk of how mass is dead, but I agree it has worked for the RA in this sense with arty. I think that dumb mass will still work on the battlefield but we really haven't seen it used at scale. Instead we have seen mass of fires without mass of forces to follow it up. The RA has tried to fight smart and technical but they lacked the force structure, technology, training, discipline and leadership to do so. Their system is broken for the smart type of cutting edge combined arms warfare we think they should be doing (like western armies). Their hybrid system of the old massed fires and new BTG is beyond their ability to use, control and fight like it should be able to on paper. It is just beyond their abilities, period. 

What isn't and what I think we will see in the winter is dumb mass. The RA could do dumb mass but they haven't had the mass that they need to succeed. We haven't seen it yet in this war where a thousand guns pound the front while 500 tanks smash the defenders and 10,000 infantry follow through the breach. That is the Russian way of war and it would still work. Casualties would be immense with today's firepower but it would still punch a hole. The RA didn't have the manpower to do this in the beginning because they spread themselves so thin and they still don't have enough, but with the chmobiks they just might. 

If Putin and the Kremlin are all in on the superiority of the Russian and look to their history as much as we think they do then them counting on the fresh Siberian divisions (chmobiks) breaking the fascists (UA) in a winter campaign is not unlikely. Expect this sort of attack from the south into the Donetsk region this winter. There are already reports of lots of troops staging in Mariupol with train loads of tanks and guns coming in. 

Will this be a stunning Russian victory and end the war? Nope. Even if it is halfway successful and requires the UA to pull back and give up something like Bahkmut (sp?) it will be a political win for the Kremlin, no matter the cost in men and material. Any kind of Russian success feeds the naysayers in the west and mangles up the support. They need a win to save face and start negotiations and the butcher's bill won't matter.

I certainly could be wrong but personally I'll be very surprised if Russia doesn't try to do something like this during a winter campaign. It is about their only option that I can see for them.

[MSBoxer]

9 minutes ago, dan/california said:

All the logistics you just proposed would be equally necessary for either system. But a Quad can't hide in a random drainage ditch the way a person can. Can they build armor that would still let a person do that?  I don't know, but I suspect they are trying.

Yes, but the technology for electric quads is here, power armor is still a few years off.

[dan/california]

29 minutes ago, sross112 said:

I agree. Russia's greatest hope of coming out of this with anything is for western support to fail. With that being said they have to stay in the fight until the support fails. There will be a combination of freezing the lines and continued attacks. They have to keep attacking for their internal consumption, even the small village here and there portrayed as a win for the public. That explains their continued assaults on basically useless objectives at great cost for little gain. The army has to show the politicians it is trying and the politicians have to show the public some sort of positive gain.

 

There has been a lot of talk of how mass is dead, but I agree it has worked for the RA in this sense with arty. I think that dumb mass will still work on the battlefield but we really haven't seen it used at scale. Instead we have seen mass of fires without mass of forces to follow it up. The RA has tried to fight smart and technical but they lacked the force structure, technology, training, discipline and leadership to do so. Their system is broken for the smart type of cutting edge combined arms warfare we think they should be doing (like western armies). Their hybrid system of the old massed fires and new BTG is beyond their ability to use, control and fight like it should be able to on paper. It is just beyond their abilities, period. 

What isn't and what I think we will see in the winter is dumb mass. The RA could do dumb mass but they haven't had the mass that they need to succeed. We haven't seen it yet in this war where a thousand guns pound the front while 500 tanks smash the defenders and 10,000 infantry follow through the breach. That is the Russian way of war and it would still work. Casualties would be immense with today's firepower but it would still punch a hole. The RA didn't have the manpower to do this in the beginning because they spread themselves so thin and they still don't have enough, but with the chmobiks they just might. 

If Putin and the Kremlin are all in on the superiority of the Russian and look to their history as much as we think they do then them counting on the fresh Siberian divisions (chmobiks) breaking the fascists (UA) in a winter campaign is not unlikely. Expect this sort of attack from the south into the Donetsk region this winter. There are already reports of lots of troops staging in Mariupol with train loads of tanks and guns coming in. 

Will this be a stunning Russian victory and end the war? Nope. Even if it is halfway successful and requires the UA to pull back and give up something like Bahkmut (sp?) it will be a political win for the Kremlin, no matter the cost in men and material. Any kind of Russian success feeds the naysayers in the west and mangles up the support. They need a win to save face and start negotiations and the butcher's bill won't matter.

I certainly could be wrong but personally I'll be very surprised if Russia doesn't try to do something like this during a winter campaign. It is about their only option that I can see for them.

They don't have the tanks anymore. I also doubt they can concentrate that much mass without getting Himarsed into oblivion. Your reasoning about why they will try anyway is quite sound though. If Ukraine can shatter an attempt like that the way I think they can, it might be their chance for a maximum effort counter attack to break the land bridge once and for all.

[Taranis]

Ukrainian military captured 21 mobilised men from Moscow region on Svatove direction

 

[Huba]

39 minutes ago, sross112 said:

There has been a lot of talk of how mass is dead, but I agree it has worked for the RA in this sense with arty. I think that dumb mass will still work on the battlefield but we really haven't seen it used at scale. Instead we have seen mass of fires without mass of forces to follow it up. The RA has tried to fight smart and technical but they lacked the force structure, technology, training, discipline and leadership to do so. Their system is broken for the smart type of cutting edge combined arms warfare we think they should be doing (like western armies). Their hybrid system of the old massed fires and new BTG is beyond their ability to use, control and fight like it should be able to on paper. It is just beyond their abilities, period. 

What isn't and what I think we will see in the winter is dumb mass. The RA could do dumb mass but they haven't had the mass that they need to succeed. We haven't seen it yet in this war where a thousand guns pound the front while 500 tanks smash the defenders and 10,000 infantry follow through the breach. That is the Russian way of war and it would still work. Casualties would be immense with today's firepower but it would still punch a hole. The RA didn't have the manpower to do this in the beginning because they spread themselves so thin and they still don't have enough, but with the chmobiks they just might. 

If Putin and the Kremlin are all in on the superiority of the Russian and look to their history as much as we think they do then them counting on the fresh Siberian divisions (chmobiks) breaking the fascists (UA) in a winter campaign is not unlikely. Expect this sort of attack from the south into the Donetsk region this winter. There are already reports of lots of troops staging in Mariupol with train loads of tanks and guns coming in. 

Will this be a stunning Russian victory and end the war? Nope. Even if it is halfway successful and requires the UA to pull back and give up something like Bahkmut (sp?) it will be a political win for the Kremlin, no matter the cost in men and material. Any kind of Russian success feeds the naysayers in the west and mangles up the support. They need a win to save face and start negotiations and the butcher's bill won't matter.

I certainly could be wrong but personally I'll be very surprised if Russia doesn't try to do something like this during a winter campaign. It is about their only option that I can see for them.

What I didn't see discussed much is if Russia is really able to create even this 'dumb mass' ? Quality aside, with mobilization they are certainly able to put a huge quantity of men at the front, but this in itself will only take them this far, unless they manage to properly equip them (let's leave training out of this for now). It is a rather safe bet to say that they in general are not capable to build enough tanks, guns, aircraft, ammunition, all the conceivable materiel in quantities sufficient for a two million strong army. Not unless they already started building new factories all over the place and are willing to go to full blown wartime economy, and even then it would take years.
What they are doing now is tapping into ex-USSR reserves and I imagine counting on creating a kind of 'surge' effect, with both freshly mobilized men and repaired equipment. So question is (which I believe we are not able to answer) how much oomph are russians able to produce, and for how long could they keep it up materiel-wise, before they run out of everything? We already know that they are out of SRBMs for example, and have their cruise missile arsenal somewhat dented too, but recently there are signals that they are buying up DPRK artillery ammunition too, which looks even worse. 
If we trust UA GS reports, RU casualties in last week or two are on the highest level since probably the heaviest fights in Donbas - and there's no general offensive anywhere, lines are basically static. 

Edited November 7, 2022 by Huba

[danfrodo]

13 minutes ago, Taranis said:

Ukrainian military captured 21 mobilised men from Moscow region on Svatove direction

 

Those fellers are talking foreign, dang it.  It'd be interesting to know what they have to say.  They look like .... rabble?  ~40 yr olds or so.  

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

I disagree.  Russia pushed VERY hard against the previous line of contact in the Donbas and made no progress for months.  Russia would have had to overcome these forces first in the Donbas scenario.  It would have been slow going for the bulk of the front and for the extremities (northern Luhansk and southern Donetsk) might every well have looked like the February/March where Russian gains were initially impressive and then bogged down.

Remember, other than the flood of AT weapons, Ukraine largely fought through March with mostly its own resources (other than Intel, but I presume they would have gotten that in the Donbas scenario).

Ah, but by this point they had already crossed the Rubicon of committing forces to 4-5 other operational axis.  They pushed hard with what they had left.  If they had concentrated all 300k forces - with the exception of deceptions - in the Donbas on day 1, concentrated their operational and strategic strike on that and the supporting regions I argue they very well could have taken the entirety of the Donbas fast enough to leave the west dislocated and divided.  Call it an R2P operation, create enough BS Ukrainian oppression stories in the region and then seal it up quickly.  I do not think the reaction from the west would have been the same.  This was possible and Russia Sucks theory does not hold up in this "what if" because, as you note, the UA would have been holding without widescale western support.  Russia was still sucking but its strategy would have been aligned with its capability.

However, under our timeline Russia made bafflingly bad strategic choices - ones that were not predictable without a lot of information/data that we do not have access to.

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

I've raised challenges to this presumption many times.  I think Russia had much higher expectations than it was able to achieve, which is why Russia sought to freeze the conflict with Minsk.  On many levels the war did not go well for Russia in 2014/2015, yet it apparently learned nothing from that experience even though it knew it would once again fight a conventional war with Ukraine.

Well that does not match the western analysis I have seen, 2014 was full on liminal warfare and they took half the Donbas and the entire Crimea without much of a western response, so "win" by any metrics.  The tactical lessons observed show that Russia was leaning into a modern way of warfare that was starting to concern us, I have already posted several of these analysis and none of them point to "Russia sucking", in fact quite the opposite. 

In that conflict the UA was noted as fighting like it was 1982 and got clobbered, hence why they went hard at military reforms including a lot of western training missions. 

So the evidence, at least as far as I have seen, point to more limited gains by Russia due largely in part to them wanting to keep that war in the "uncertainty" space to keep that war obfuscated and the west confused and divided, not poor battlefield performance...and it largely worked as Europe kept by Russian energy by the buttload, while making squawking noises.  In fact the 2014 war is largely why the west kept over-estimating the RA before this one.  

I am going to have to see some further evidence to join you on the 2014 version where "Russia Sucks so they went to Minsk".

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'll quibble with this a bit.  I was convinced on the 22nd (maybe earlier?) that Russia would launch a full scale invasion.  I did not know their plan, but I was confident that whatever it was it would fail because Russia Sucks™.  Even if the West provided nothing and Ukraine's conventional forces were eventually exhausted in some aspects (artillery in particular), I was sure Ukraine would win.

What I didn't know until I saw the Russian plan was what victory might look like for Ukraine.  My pre-war assumptions of Russian mass had Ukraine winning a multi-year mixed conventional/unconventional war and Russia collapsing because of the strain.  After about Day 3 of the war I realized it would be conventional from start to finish and that it wouldn't last more than a year.  I am probably wrong about the timeframe because I underestimated the regime's ability to do conduct a hidden mobilization and overestimated the ability of power blocs to challenge Putin's rule.  That's more Putin being much better as a dictator than he is a military leader.

I was not convinced until it was clear that they were doing a "full bars" grab.  A full on invasion as definitely clear but how  that invasion was going to be carried out was not, nor were the political/strategic objectives clear (stated or implied).  It was about 72 hours in that it was clear that they had picked a strategy that failed and that mass was not working...Russia sucking was secondary to my mind until it was clear they were attempting a war well outside their abilities.  

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Again, I think most of those conditions were there to see before the war happened.  The most important ones were what Russia brought to the table.  Those were also the ones Western analysts screwed up the most.  Hence why they made such crap predictions even after the war started

And here we land at what is probably the point of disagreement, one that I do not think can be settled until we have a lot more data, likely after the war is over.  I do not think what Russia did or did not bring to the table were the most important.  Their very poor political and strategic thinking definitely set the conditions, again I do not see any evidence these were easily predictable...in fact I think most were surprised just how overtly Putin went in on this.

What was the most important condition in my opinion was highly unpredictable and that was what happens when the UA combination of highly empowered dispersion, ubiquitous ISR, and precision weapons met traditional conventional mass - poorly formed, trained and C2'd mass fully accepted but I am not sure if the Russians had better C2 and combined arms performance it would have really made a difference.  Their logistics would still have been highly vulnerable and nothing the RA could have done could have solved for western ISR integrated into the UA, which likely the single biggest factor in the outcome of this war at the operational-to-tactical level.

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Key words in what you responded to was "this sort of outcome", which was losses of upwards of 25-50%, maybe more, 10-20 times a day, every day, for months on end for a couple hundred meters of terrain (and Russia's war is, unlike Afghanistan, measured by terrain taken/held).  How many battles in Afghanistan did Canadians lose that sort of combat power on an offensive operation?  If it was 10-20 a day like the Russians, do you think Canada would have kept it up for 5 years?  Or a week?  Yet Russia keeps doing it.  Why?  Because it feels compelled to do something and yet this is all it can do because Russia Sucks™

You posted this one first but I will leave it to last.  You seem to be alluding to the idea that somehow we in the west - who do not suck - would somehow stop this operation?  That is not how military operations work.  If we in the west were caught up in a war taking significant casualties we would do everything we could think of to mitigate that but we would not simply cry "stop the war".  Canada's military, or any other western military for that matter would keep fighting for as long as its people told them to, regardless of the brutal casualties; history is on my side on this one.  Do you not think we knew how useless the war in Afghanistan was from the ground level, yet we kept going because there were no other options?  

I suspect the RA is in the exact same situation.  They have not adapted, but I am not sure how much they can at this point.  They have political and strategic direction, so they attack when told to and defend when told to.  They are trying to use mass and it isn't working, but that is not proof "they suck", at least not at the operational and tactical levels - it means they are stuck in a very bad political/strategic framework where there is no way out.  The military answer is to pull back and try to freeze this war before they lose ground they had before it started, but the RA does not have this option.  All they can do at this point is keep feeding human capital into a meatgrinder.  Russia is Stuck^tm is a far more accurate assessment of their situation in my opinion, or may Russia is Stuck Sucking^tm There is plenty of evidence of RA qualitative failures but being stuck in an impossible loop is not one of them. 

 

[sross112]

15 minutes ago, Huba said:

What I didn't see discussed much is if Russia is really able to create even this 'dumb mass' ? Quality aside, with mobilization they are certainly able to put a huge quantity of men at the front, but this in itself will only take them this far, unless they manage to properly equip them (let's leave training out of this for now). It is a rather safe bet to say that they in general are not capable to build enough tanks, guns, aircraft, ammunition, all the conceivable materiel in quantities sufficient for a two million strong army. Not unless they already started building new factories all over the place and are willing to go to full blown wartime economy, and even then it would take years.
What they are doing now is tapping into ex-USSR reserves and I imagine counting on creating a kind of 'surge' effect, with both freshly mobilized men and repaired equipment. So question is (which I believe we are not able to answer) how much oomph are russians able to produce, and for how long could they keep it up materiel-wise, before they run out of everything? We already know that they are out of SRBMs for example, and have their cruise missile arsenal somewhat dented too, but recently there are signals that they are buying up DPRK artillery ammunition too, which looks even worse. 
If we trust UA GS reports, RU casualties in last week or two are on the highest level since probably the heaviest fights in Donbas - and there's no general offensive anywhere, lines are basically static. 

I'm not thinking it'll be T90s and top of the line gear. They have been moving a lot of old gear so I'm thinking they can empty their storage for one big push. Yes, it will be ugly, but it is possible. When it comes to dumb mass the old stuff fills the billets just fine. Especially since, as has been noted here, not all the UA units and areas of the front are equipped with lots of high end gear. A cold war style attack by a cold war era equipped force against a non top tier unit would work. 

My bet is that they have enough "stuff" left from storage and repairs to do it once. After that, unless they get China or India to sell them a bunch of equipment they are done offensively at anything approaching large scale. 

[FancyCat]

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

On the ongoing RU-sucks at war theme, let us remember that this was supposed to be a coup, not a war.  Especially not a long war and especially not a long war with sanctions and especially not a long war with sanctions where UKR has kickbutt western artillery.  Putin chose a coup, not a war.  Continuing the war and constantly doubling down and losing those bets is his choice, however.

Honestly this is extremely important to consider. Things like eliminating infrastructure, supply lines and industry, a lot of that was not targeted, and even today, the narrative is that Putin is holding back for some.

I recall the impressive barrage at the very beginning of the war, surely it was targeted to wipe out Ukrainian defenses but significant targets remained standing, and hardship on civilians could have been much worse with attacks on civilian infrastructure not undertaken until recently.

 

Let's not forget that there are formations that are TDF manning large? parts of the front line and while Ukraine has had a cadre of trained and semi-trained personnel, NATO training of Ukrainian personnel is focused primarily on training new cadres of civilian mobilized personnel in basic training.

Clearly Ukraine needs to use civilian to military training pipeline to fill in and replace losses. There isn't any reason for Russia to not generate the same sort of TDF alike and Belarus might be very important for that, and at that point, parity may be achieved in portions of the front. 

 

Edited November 7, 2022 by FancyCat

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, sross112 said:

What isn't and what I think we will see in the winter is dumb mass. The RA could do dumb mass but they haven't had the mass that they need to succeed. We haven't seen it yet in this war where a thousand guns pound the front while 500 tanks smash the defenders and 10,000 infantry follow through the breach. That is the Russian way of war and it would still work. Casualties would be immense with today's firepower but it would still punch a hole. The RA didn't have the manpower to do this in the beginning because they spread themselves so thin and they still don't have enough, but with the chmobiks they just might.

I a not sure mass is dead, I think static mass is dead.  Agile mass capable of very wide dispersion and then rapid concentration is likely still on the table.

As for your scenario above, I guess my question is how would this be any different than Phase I of this war?  The RA might be able to get crazy gun concentrations and then mass all them big ol tanks, punch a big hole in the UA line and charge!!....but into what?  They will get strung out on longer LOCs, have their logistics hammered because they can be seen from space and we are back to stalling and corrosion.  They could try smaller punches that only advance a few kms at a time but then you are also defeating the purpose of a big punch through because you opponent has time to react and re-set.  The very purpose of "punching a hole" is in doubt because it cannot create disruption when you opponent has ISR superiority...they will watch you punch the hole, then shoot all your gas until you run out, and then watch your crews abandon their vehicles and walk back. 

I do believe you when you say that the RA may try it, it has that WW1 feel of "one last push and we are onto Paris/Berlin" feel to it.

[Huba]

Just now, sross112 said:

I'm not thinking it'll be T90s and top of the line gear. They have been moving a lot of old gear so I'm thinking they can empty their storage for one big push. Yes, it will be ugly, but it is possible. When it comes to dumb mass the old stuff fills the billets just fine. Especially since, as has been noted here, not all the UA units and areas of the front are equipped with lots of high end gear. A cold war style attack by a cold war era equipped force against a non top tier unit would work. 

My bet is that they have enough "stuff" left from storage and repairs to do it once. After that, unless they get China or India to sell them a bunch of equipment they are done offensively at anything approaching large scale. 

Paradoxically, this might be the best scenario Ukraine could hope for in the present circumstances. Surely it is a better prospect than Ukrainians trying to root this whole new army out of their fortified lines.

[dan/california]

14 minutes ago, sross112 said:

I'm not thinking it'll be T90s and top of the line gear. They have been moving a lot of old gear so I'm thinking they can empty their storage for one big push. Yes, it will be ugly, but it is possible. When it comes to dumb mass the old stuff fills the billets just fine. Especially since, as has been noted here, not all the UA units and areas of the front are equipped with lots of high end gear. A cold war style attack by a cold war era equipped force against a non top tier unit would work. 

My bet is that they have enough "stuff" left from storage and repairs to do it once. After that, unless they get China or India to sell them a bunch of equipment they are done offensively at anything approaching large scale. 

You are not accounting for the impossibility of surprise. If the Russians concentrated a force anywhere close to this size everything the AFU has would be there to meet it. Starting with a hard tungsten rain when they were still tens of kilometers back. 

 

16 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I suspect the RA is in the exact same situation.  They have not adapted, but I am not sure how much they can at this point.  They have political and strategic direction, so they attack when told to and defend when told to.  They are trying to use mass and it isn't working, but that is not proof "they suck", at least not at the operational and tactical levels - it means they are stuck in a very bad political/strategic framework where there is no way out.  The military answer is to pull back and try to freeze this war before they lose ground they had before it started, but the RA does not have this option.  All they can do at this point is keep feeding human capital into a meatgrinder.  Russia is Stuck^tm is a far more accurate assessment of their situation in my opinion, or may Russia is Stuck Sucking^tm There is plenty of evidence of RA qualitative failures but being stuck in an impossible loop is not one of them. 

I am not saying the Russians won't try. The_Capt just ably layed out why they might. But they just can't pull the pieces together to make it work. I would posit that if they try it will accelerate Ukraines victory significantly. Maybe by a lot if Ukraine can counter attack right thru the wreckage, or take advantage of the induced weakness somewhere else like they did in Kharkiv.

 

Edit: cross posted obviously...

Edited November 7, 2022 by dan/california

[FancyCat]

We need this war ended sooner than later. Ukraine needs western tanks, more SEAD, more artillery, western fighter aircraft and sooner than later. We cannot have this war bog down and turn the rest of Eastern Ukraine into complete hellscape.

Right now, air defense is coming online, with resulting boosts to the defense of the home front and rear lines. Great. Ukraine according to some articles switched to quiet lobbying for the big ticket stuff.

I'm still annoyed that Iraq got F-16s and Abrams tanks. Iraq's government was reformed in 2004, with F-16s arriving in 2011, 7 years. 4 years for Abrams tanks so I suppose it's only fair that Ukraine must wait except screw fairness, we cannot allow this war to go on for 4 years.

Ukraine keeps their cards close to their chest. And what cards Ukraine has shown have been misdirection. Probably they will seek out the liberation of Kherson by the end of the year with a push to conquer the Svatove line, hopefully before the end of the winter as well.

 

[dan/california]

If this is true at any scale the tipping point might be getting closer. Big if...

[danfrodo]

33 minutes ago, dan/california said:

If this is true at any scale the tipping point might be getting closer. Big if...

This is a very very good thing if true.  It bodes well for collapse on the Svatove front.  I've been wondering whether untrained, unwilling conscripts would hold up given lack of supplies, command, etc, and heavy UKR pressure. 

RU groups shelling each other? -- I have such a big smile right now.

[Beleg85]

Sounds promising...it seems these shocking numbers reported by UA several days ago did not came from thin air.