How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

It is really interesting how Artillery really has become the determining factor in this war - and now @JonS will come and tell us that is has always been thus - however, from a western perspective it has largely been all about airpower, followed up by those poor lowly guns.  In this war indirect fires of all shapes and sizes have been a key indicator.  We saw RA guns drop off last late summer as a key indication that the UA deep strike campaign was working, and that Russia had lost the offensive initiative.  And now it appears as though RA guns are coming under logistics strain again although exactly why is not clear - my suspicion is deep logistical issues, they are getting into the antiquated stocks of both shell and barrel.

What is telling is that without supporting fires defence or offence becomes untenable. This may seem like a "duh" conclusion but I have to say that I have never seen it as this stark an issue.  No ISR and no Guns = dead, in this war. 

How much of that perception is just the eighty years since the west fought an even conventional fight. Artillery utterly ruled the first world war, and by every account I ever read did most of the actual killing in WW2. We just forgot this in an era of great power peace? I would love to see better studies of both Korea and the Iran/Iraq war.

2 hours ago, billbindc said:

In any calculation, it should be noted that the Federal Protective Service of Russia controls near Moscow some 50,000 men who are fairly heavily armed, are between Wagner and the logistics that support Wagner and are under the FSB. Unless and until Prigozhin can figure out how to counter them, he's not getting anywhere near power without Patrushev and his cohorts acquiescing. 

And the Russian rail network among other things was intentionally structured around Moscow to facilitate this kind of control. 

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

If I may weigh in?  This is a really fun discussion.

Well to your first point, I am not sure we are the only species that possesses the ability to do long-term planning.  I would say we are the only species that can do adaptable long term planning.  For most animals the long term planning and strategies are hardwired into them at birth (migratory cycles, reproductive patterns...cicadas anyone?).  Humans seem to posses a unique ability to dynamically plan based on feedback from the environment.

I think that the main issue on either side of your positions - and major weakness in both arguments to frank - is that neither of you has defined longer term.  If we are talking a one year horizon then Steve is wrong and there is an entire Agrarian Age of evidence stacked up against him.   There would be no human civilization if we could not plan out a year of agricultural operations.  5 years, much trickier but I suspect that the evidence points to the idea that we are not only able to plan/strategize that far but do so regularly particularly when we invented much larger enterprises where endstate objectives took longer than a year to accomplish - e.g. pyramids and roads. We broke long term strategies into smaller one year strategies - meta-strategizing effectively, but it still counts.

Beyond 5 years, well yes we can do it, and in many cases do it very well.  But herein lies the second problem with the debate, you are muddling individual with collective; in human affairs scale matters.  For example, at a small scale individual level, one does not develop a strategy to send one's kids to college during the high school graduation ceremony.  My wife and I started strategizing on the children's post-public school educations when they were infants.  And given the College Savings Plan industry, I am sure we are not an isolated case.

Now try and get a 20 year strategy for national education and one is tilting at windmills.  I don't think one could do it at the municipal level let alone higher scales. 

So What? Well I am not sure of the whole "biologicamal 20 Hz versus 55 Hz thing", but looking at the world around us it appears that we can do longer term planning, at a micro social scale.  My mortgage says we are pretty good at it.  So no matter how our brains are designed, there is overwhelming evidence we can do small social scale - long term, to a point.  Even at a micro-scale planning out past say two or three generations (I am farmer, so my son can be an engineer, so his son can be an artist).  Get past that into the century window and I think we pretty much stop caring enough to actually put the effort into the issue.   We enter into the land of faith at that point, or as my dear departed Grandmother used to say - "stop worrying, it will all work out somehow."  To which, as I slide into my golden years, I would add to my own children/grandchildren - "Stop worrying, it will all work out somehow. And if it does not, you will be long dead and wont care anyway."

Collectively we have demonstrated an ability to conduct long term collective strategization (a word I did not just totally make up), however, we have not demonstrated a lot of talent or inclination.  For example, China does have an infamous rumored 100 year strategy ( https://www.brookings.edu/essay/the-long-game-chinas-grand-strategy-to-displace-american-order/), but to be honest I am not sure how much of this is us projecting our own strategic weaknesses and painting China as some sort of superhuman collective, and/or how much is reality.  There are persistent myths that totalitarian states do strategy better, but history is really a mixed bag on this.  We had sustainable great empires in the past where some sort of longer term strategy was likely at play, but they all fell apart, usually to lack of strategic foresight.  Or when micro-social strategies diverged too far from wherever the macro-social strategies were going. 

Democracy is a weird one.  She is like a girl we dated in college but got away and now we are trying it again in middle age.  We are older, wiser and saggier so maybe this time it will stick...jury is still out.  As to whether democracies can strategize - well obviously they can, and in some cases do it well.  However, it tends to be (nod to Mintzberg) emergent and messy.  We also tend to not write it down.  We write a lot of stuff but the real strategies we dare not say lest they evaporate before our eyes.  

I suspect that collective strategy is much harder because it is built on what Harari called "imagined community" and these are held together by abstract ideas and concepts.  So pinning those down into hard metrics we can all agree upon get much harder.  There is plenty of evidence that we suck at collective longer term planning, history is a collection of human failures in that regard.

Finally, I am not sure those are "biological cages" more anchors.  We can pull away from them but they do tend to weigh us down.  In many ways you are both right or wrong depending on a "certain point of view". 

At least part of the problem is that your planning is no better than your information. The further into the future you try to plan, the lower quality information you are working with. 

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

What has happened to airpower in this war is by far more impactful than what happened to armour (i.e. the bloody tank).  I have not heard one coherent explanation or assessment of why neither side has been able to achieve air superiority.  I have seen a lot of ideas and anecdotes being tossed around, along with theories but a full blown case study is lacking.

Is this some sort of Ukraine-Russia specific thing or is airpower as we know it in trouble? Unmanned tactical airpower is having a massive surge in that vacuum as a result.  This appears to be a collision of air denials - both sides are effective in denying traditional airspaces leading to a stalemate.  This is particularly concerning as Canada shells out $19B for F35s. Did we just spend all that money to intercept Russian bombers made in the 60s because we wont be able to use them elsewhere?

Perhaps it only confirms what every army officer already knows - depend on what you control.  In this case, tac UAS and the guns. 

I think the question is did the Soviets miss the last revolution in air power, or has Ukraine bootstrapped the next one, and fundamentally changed the balance of power between offense and defense in the air. I would argue the jury is still out, but I think most tech trends point to a fundamental change in the balance. My guess, worth what you paid, is that going forward things are going to be bleeping dangerous for anything bigger than a crow, or slower than a ballistic missile. 

Then we get into the whole question about can drone swarms really work...

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

I am more in line with this kind of thinking.  Putin IS the gov't.  Like other dictators, he rules by division -- keeping all the other power brokers in competition w each other, like hitler did.  Each one always trying to undermine the others to get a little more power and no trust between them.  There is no succession plan.  If Putin chose a successor, that person would necessarily need to have access to the levers of power in the event of Putin's demise.  Which means the successor would have everything to gain by killing Putin and is therefore a constant threat to Putin himself.  Dictators stay in power by making sure no one has the immediate ability to control all the powers needed to take complete control of the gov't.
 

The death of Putin would lead to a struggle for power.  The only way it doesn't go to serious violence is if enough power brokers decide to back one player, which could happen, though not without a number of balcony falls.  

There is a subtle variation where the winners of the Russian power struggle send the losers to the Hague to buy at least some relief from sanctions.

58 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

It happens recently mentioned strike at Lantrativka schol killed Russian civilian contractors gathered to construct trenches, not soldiers:

 

If they are constructing fortifications this is a distinction without a difference.

27 minutes ago, billbindc said:

There *is* a system...it's a personalist autocracy imbued with the methods and values of the siloviki. That system is an oligarchy of strong men who are managed by Putin, the primus inter pares but *not* an absolute ruler in a mobilized state a la Stalin or Hitler. Mass action is almost entirely absent. Should Putin fall, his policies are up for grabs but the form of the state itself is quite unlikely to change unless an actual revolutionary agent such as Prigozhin can alter its composition. On this we agree...I don't believe that's a realistic scenario. 

And the whole question is can they agree on a new primus without a circular firing squad that is fatal to the whole system. There is going to be a test, sooner or later.

Edited January 10, 2023 by dan/california

[Kinophile]

The above exchange points to my basic thesis -  There's nothing the Russian MoD can do to win the war because it is politically sockpuppeted. 

It has no war winning strategy because it lacks the strategic means to crush Ukraine, due to NATO/EU backing. 

So whatever it plans to do in 2023 will be determined by domestic politics to a ridiculous degree,  and what it actually does will be limited to at most operational success. 

I doh the AFRF in Ukraine will break forward to the Dniper.  I think they'll hold,  grind forward in Donbass and attempt a distracting,  dramatic assault somewhere else. Essentially  2023 as a holding year to rebuild long term force quantity, then go for 2024.

Thats a strategy. 

But hey,  it's the Russian MoD so anything sensible is anathema... 

 

Edited January 10, 2023 by Kinophile

[dan/california]

Is Russia repeating its mistake at Severodonetsk? Overpaying so badly for whatever they are gaining that it weakens their whole army?

[billbindc]

13 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

It doesn't need to change, for Prigozhin to take over,  though. He can smooth his way with a LOT of funds available, plus who wants to pick a fight with the "only"  force actually  "winning"? Prigster is firmly within the Russian Zeitgeist. 

Wagner is just his gun held idly in the hand to make a message clear. 

The only real opposition could be FSB, and they have no one visible right now.

Patrushev, pere and fils would be strong contenders. So would Ivanov and his kvost if the idea was to bring in someone untainted by the current debacle. Remember that visibility isn't really a big indicator of political viability because mass politics isn't that important in this milieu. Remember where Putin came from?

And that's Prigozhin's mistake. He's playing to the crowd but the crowd doesn't have that much power. The key is who can direct the institutions of force. Prigozhin has one in Wagner, that's not even the biggest on paper, that is dependent for resources on the powers that be back in Moscow and is pushing in a revolutionary, unsettling direction that's quite likely to unite the rest of those institutions of force against him. 

Watch the grey men, not the clown waving his arms in the mud.

[dan/california]

1 minute ago, billbindc said:

Patrushev, pere and fils would be strong contenders. So would Ivanov and his kvost if the idea was to bring in someone untainted by the current debacle. Remember that visibility isn't really a big indicator of political viability because mass politics isn't that important in this milieu. Remember where Putin came from?

And that's Prigozhin's mistake. He's playing to the crowd but the crowd doesn't have that much power. The key is who can direct the institutions of force. Prigozhin has one in Wagner, that's not even the biggest on paper, that is dependent for resources on the powers that be back in Moscow and is pushing in a revolutionary, unsettling direction that's quite likely to unite the rest of those institutions of force against him. 

Watch the grey men, not the clown waving his arms in the mud.

Out of likes, very well put...

[danfrodo]

3 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Patrushev, pere and fils would be strong contenders. So would Ivanov and his kvost if the idea was to bring in someone untainted by the current debacle. Remember that visibility isn't really a big indicator of political viability because mass politics isn't that important in this milieu. Remember where Putin came from?

And that's Prigozhin's mistake. He's playing to the crowd but the crowd doesn't have that much power. The key is who can direct the institutions of force. Prigozhin has one in Wagner, that's not even the biggest on paper, that is dependent for resources on the powers that be back in Moscow and is pushing in a revolutionary, unsettling direction that's quite likely to unite the rest of those institutions of force against him. 

Watch the grey men, not the clown waving his arms in the mud.

Damn, now that's a good post.  Great point that wagner relies on supplies from folks in moscow that wagner does not control.  

[Kinophile]

10 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Patrushev, pere and fils would be strong contenders. So would Ivanov and his kvost if the idea was to bring in someone untainted by the current debacle. Remember that visibility isn't really a big indicator of political viability because mass politics isn't that important in this milieu. Remember where Putin came from?

And that's Prigozhin's mistake. He's playing to the crowd but the crowd doesn't have that much power. The key is who can direct the institutions of force. Prigozhin has one in Wagner, that's not even the biggest on paper, that is dependent for resources on the powers that be back in Moscow and is pushing in a revolutionary, unsettling direction that's quite likely to unite the rest of those institutions of force against him. 

Watch the grey men, not the clown waving his arms in the mud.

Great points,  thank you! Loving the discourse. 

I'll counter and corrupt your point re Putin -  he rose on the back of popularity,  and stayed there on the fear of the Bad Old Days. 

The key thing I always note about Wagner is that it is intensely loyal to Prig and taps a deep well of willing recruits/support in its hyper nationalist and aggressive image. It is catnip to younger men. Its new, exciting, dangerous and active, different and tough,  all qualities that the Nazis embodied and were a huge draw. 

The FSB and MoD by contrast, are slow,  obtuse old and uninspiring. 

My money is on Priggy, and where he puts his battlefield weight is where we should watch for 2023.

Edited January 10, 2023 by Kinophile

[Kinophile]

Ref Soledar:

 

 

[JonS]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/10/us-victory-ukraine-lives-conflict-war-iraq-afghanistan?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

[billbindc]

12 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Great points,  thank you! Loving the discourse. 

I'll counter and corrupt your point re Putin -  he rose on the back of popularity,  and stayed there on the fear of the Bad Old Days. 

The key thing I always note about Wagner is that it is intensely loyal to Prig and taps a deep well of willing recruits/support in its hyper nationalist and aggressive image. It is catnip to younger men. Its new, exciting, dangerous and active, different and tough,  all qualities that the Nazis embodied and were a huge draw. 

The FSB and MoD by contrast, are slow,  obtuse old and uninspiring. 

My money is on Priggy, and where he puts his battlefield weight is where we should watch for 2023.

To this, I can only say that it echos Curzio Malaparte's surprise in the mid 1930's that Hitler wasn't overthrown by the shock troops of Nazism because he refused the coup d'etat and the violent revolution. Malaparte eventually realized that Hitler was smarter than that. The levers of the state are what matters and Prigozhin is not close to controlling them.

[billbindc]

3 minutes ago, JonS said:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/10/us-victory-ukraine-lives-conflict-war-iraq-afghanistan?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

The claim that states must clearly articulate objectives at all times is one of the worst canards of foreign policy debates.

[Twisk]

RE: Airpower

If I'm not mistaken both Ukraine and Russia operate under an air power assumption of denying airspace to the (peer) enemy. This is the opposite of the western concept of airpower where you don't have AAA and instead rule the air. The U.S. focuses a lot on wild weasel attacks on enemy AAA and itself has little AAA, for example.

So neither force is suited to gaining air superiority because their priors assumed that they ought to be focused on denying it to the enemy. Looking into the war specifically Russia has the missiles but lacks the targeting data to hit AAA that would grant them superiority while Ukraine has the data but lacks the missiles. The result being that traditional airpower is sidelined and cheaper drones are being used.

[danfrodo]

9 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Ref Soledar:

 

 

So tanks aint dead it seems.  Having mobile, protected firepower matters after all.  Would be nice if the defenders had a bunch of AFVs w autocannons at least.   I would like to see all the UKR forces have some mobile firepower in support to help  thwart these wave attacks.  

[JonS]

19 minutes ago, billbindc said:

The claim that states must clearly articulate objectives at all times is one of the worst canards of foreign policy debates.

Agree, and I also think that's true in a general sense, not just specifically true of foreign policy.

I also found the idea of US articulating war aims for a war it isnt in (you know what I mean - the old pig vs. chicken at breakfast time thing) to be faintly amusing.

That said, the emergent realpolitik is interesting. The US isn't supporting Ukraine for anything beyond selfish reasons.

[Battlefront.com]

23 minutes ago, billbindc said:

To this, I can only say that it echos Curzio Malaparte's surprise in the mid 1930's that Hitler wasn't overthrown by the shock troops of Nazism because he refused the coup d'etat and the violent revolution. Malaparte eventually realized that Hitler was smarter than that. The levers of the state are what matters and Prigozhin is not close to controlling them.

This and what you said before.  As soon as Putin is gone Prigozhin will be cut out of everything he needs to be a threat to the established, entrenched power entities within the regime.  Fat chance the MoD will give the Chef bullets and fuel.  The threat Prigozhin theoretically poses would be neutralized quickly.  In fact, I think there is a much better chance of Prigozhin being bought off to fade away than other way around.  After all, there are many on one side and only Prigozhin on the other.  An open window or heart attack would fix that easily if money didn't.

In some ways Prigozhin is similar to Ernst Röhm.  Röhm fancied himself as a force to be reckoned with and that earned him lots of enemies.  When the time was right, they acted in concert and Röhm became a regime statistic.

The smartest thing Prigozhin could do if Putin is dethroned, or about to be dethroned, is cut a deal with whomever seems strongest (my money is on the FSB) to sign Wagner over to the MoD to be incorporated or disbanded in exchange for being able to walk away with his money.  He might still fall out a window later, but he'd at least have a chance of avoiding it.

Steve

[Zeleban]

 

[billbindc]

11 minutes ago, JonS said:

Agree, and I also think that's true in a general sense, not just specifically true of foreign policy.

I also found the idea of US articulating war aims for a war it isnt in (you know what I mean - the old pig vs. chicken at breakfast time thing) to be faintly amusing.

That said, the emergent realpolitik is interesting. The US isn't supporting Ukraine for anything beyond selfish reasons.

The US is the architect and main defender of a world more or less based on liberal democracy and lightly fettered capitalism for reasons that benefit us and that, in a way most hegemonies would not be able to fathom, also benefit a lot of other nations. The US doesn't need to articulate highly defined goals in this war because the one big one...that challengers to the status quo must be stopped and must be made to think twice before they try it again...is so preponderant. The details of a war Ukraine is fighting is obviously up to it.

What I find striking about the realpolitik isn't that it is emergent...it's that it was there all along but for a variety of reasons many politicians tried to pretend it was not. Putin...ironically...being the worst offender.

 

Edited January 10, 2023 by billbindc

[Battlefront.com]

32 minutes ago, Twisk said:

RE: Airpower

If I'm not mistaken both Ukraine and Russia operate under an air power assumption of denying airspace to the (peer) enemy. This is the opposite of the western concept of airpower where you don't have AAA and instead rule the air. The U.S. focuses a lot on wild weasel attacks on enemy AAA and itself has little AAA, for example.

So neither force is suited to gaining air superiority because their priors assumed that they ought to be focused on denying it to the enemy. Looking into the war specifically Russia has the missiles but lacks the targeting data to hit AAA that would grant them superiority while Ukraine has the data but lacks the missiles. The result being that traditional airpower is sidelined and cheaper drones are being used.

This has been one of the things I've seen the air power experts focus on.  And it makes sense.  Russia has, basically, a defensive air force trying to operate offensively in contested air.  It just isn't cut out for that.  Bombing hapless, defenseless civilians into rubble is the only thing they are capable of.

Steve

[Huba]

Another little step:

Also this. I wonder if the Pakistanis are willing to send these tanks to UA to be modernized?

 

 

Edited January 10, 2023 by Huba

[billbindc]

And further evidence that the primacy of the Wagnerites has been over rated: 

 

[Battlefront.com]

51 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Ref Soledar:

 

 

Interesting.  Thanks!  It seems Russia has adapted Human Wave tactics from the old days to smaller scale tactical warfare.  8 men at a time instead of 100, but otherwise similar to what we've seen in previous wars.  Maybe we should call these Human Ripples?

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, billbindc said:

And further evidence that the primacy of the Wagnerites has been over rated: 

 

Oh man, that couldn't have been timed any better for our conversation here

Steve

[Beleg85]

Some more info about Russian tactics from Soledar:

https://nv.ua/ukr/ukraine/events/soledar-shcho-vidbuvayetsya-de-ydut-boji-ta-yaki-vtrati-rosiji-boyec-novini-ukrajini-50296614.html

-Small assault groups, usually made by Wagnerites of ca. 8 people. When they fell, they don't collect bodies but mark them with white scarfs, so next groups now where not to go. Multiple waves of such attacks happen in single day [something between infiltration tactics and human wave it seems]. They move very skillfully using terrain cover.

-Larger gropus from 4 to 15 soldiers moving fast and dispersed, armed with hand-held termobarics, AGS and HMG's. Usually every goup has drone operator, who correct fire from 82 and 120 mm mortars.

- they are too nimble to be zeroed by Artillery properly, so Ukrainains prefer to use mortars instead [Russians clearly learned not to trust in the armour now].

-they try to cut off elements of Ukrainian 46 and 10th Brigades and sorround the the town

-author suggest using NLAW's as anti-infantry wepaons [?]. Overall he thinks Ukrainian forces as sufficent to defend the area.

{damn, the same author cited before Oh, well }

More or less it looks like that, if they stay out of cover too long:

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1612896177460072448

 

Edited January 10, 2023 by Beleg85

[TheVulture]

45 minutes ago, Twisk said:

RE: Airpower

If I'm not mistaken both Ukraine and Russia operate under an air power assumption of denying airspace to the (peer) enemy. This is the opposite of the western concept of airpower where you don't have AAA and instead rule the air. The U.S. focuses a lot on wild weasel attacks on enemy AAA and itself has little AAA, for example.

So neither force is suited to gaining air superiority because their priors assumed that they ought to be focused on denying it to the enemy. Looking into the war specifically Russia has the missiles but lacks the targeting data to hit AAA that would grant them superiority while Ukraine has the data but lacks the missiles. The result being that traditional airpower is sidelined and cheaper drones are being used.

Isn't it more that Soviet - and by extension Russian - air doctrine wasn't interested in trying to achieve and superiority in the sense that NATO thinks. The Russians focus on achieving temporary, local air superiority sufficient to be able to launch strikes in direct support of ground troops.  NATO tries to achieve permanent, theatre wide and superiority to use and power to hit rear areas to destroy logistics, HQs, communications and interdict movement.

Hence Russian and doctrine isn't too try and contest this with air power. Instead they focus on an array of ground based anti-air systems for defence, and punching local holes in enemy air cover for the duration of a single mission.

Since replacing an entire and defence network and air force is a very major undertaking, Ukraine also still has the legacy Soviet system, much the same as the Russians.

So neither side has an air force designed to maintain superiority over and behind enemy lines. And both sides (more so the Russians, at the start of the war at least) have plentiful  artillery, and that artillery is doctrinally supposed to fulfill the role that is the province of Close Air Support in NATO doctrine.

So I'd have thought it was to be expected that artillery would be playing much of the NATO CAS for in this conflict, because both sides have Soviet-legacy ground and and forces designed to fight that way. And while Ukraine is becoming more NATO-like in many ways, this is something that would require the complete retooling of most of the armed forces before it can be changed significantly.

[JonS]

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Artillery really has become the determining factor in this war

It has always been thus.

 

Caveats:

Always meaning from about 1860. Maybe the 1600s if we're talking about siege warfare. Maybe about 1000bc if you take a rebel/rebel approach to defining artillery and include things like slings, archery, and javelins.

Also, mainly applies to peer on peer. Not so applicable to asymmetric.