How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_Capt]

8 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

Really is that the best answer you can offer to a honest technical question? How is that "obtuse flanking"? 

For your information, I have been in that journey for a number of years.

Seeing your source now I understand your confusion. There is plenty of data that shows barely any correlation between force ratio and engagement result when considering large datasets of engagements. Factors such as force employment and surprise/shock trump superior numbers almost always. Chapter 2 of Steven Biddle's "Military Power" contains an extensive literature review addressing the point of view in the paper you shared and many others.

What a disappointment.

Ah so onto REDDIT tactic #2, treat the other poster like your personal information waiter.  I spent nearly a half a page answering your post but this is the “soup you do not like.”  This is exactly what I mean by obtuse flanking - I do all the work and you sit back and nit pick from the high ground of ignorance.  “Prove to me that the earth is indeed round!”

You need a few more years on that learning journey because you do not even know what you are looking at.  

All of this research is by-design trying to figure out how to overcome the attacker-defender problem.  It has been central to warfare, pretty much from the beginning.  The problem is pretty simple, attacking is more costly and dangerous than defending but it is the only way to get things done.  So how do we overcome that?  Force ratios is one way, but there was a lot of research on speed, tempo etc because we were all up in manoeuvre warfare back in the 90s.  All those force ratio studies were reinforcing the western myth that attrition was dead.  It was all the rage right up until this war where clearly attrition is back on the menu.  Of course there are other factors in the force ratio equations, now you can go look up what force multipliers really mean.

The bottom line is that if you look at highly attritional battles against prepared defences losses ratios at the tactical level can get very high - the the opening of the Somme.  However, over time those ratios tend to settle into around 2-1.5 to 1 losses agains attacker…until/if the attacker achieves break out, then the ratio will flip pretty fast. The major weakness of defence is that it is more rigid system, more tied to owning terrain in land battle. Once that system is cracked it can fall apart pretty quickly.  However clearly the UA has not suffered this yet.

But hey if you want to cling to the idea that at Bakhmut the RA - throwing literally waves of untrained convicts and poorly trained and supported conscripts at prepared UA defences, should be seeing 1:1 loss ratios because you haven’t seen a curve on a graph…well I cannot help you.

I can tell you that if you dial in a solution that does not take into account the fact that attacking is more costly and dangerous in the short term in any professional military school, from junior leadership to joint staff college, you will fail.

 

[FancyCat]

Could a nonstate actor really blow up the pipelines?

 

[Battlefront.com]

28 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

The bottom line is that if you look at highly attritional battles against prepared defences losses ratios at the tactical level can get very high - the the opening of the Somme.  However, over time those ratios tend to settle into around 2-1.5 to 1 losses agains attacker…until/if the attacker achieves break out, then the ratio will flip pretty fast. The major weakness of defence is that it is more rigid system, more tied to owning terrain in land battle. Once that system is cracked it can fall apart pretty quickly.  However clearly the UA has not suffered this yet.

Indeed.  And it's something I've been hammering on since this war started.  Russia has never, not even in February 2022, managed to reap the benefits of a breakthrough in this way (Mariupol is in a different category).  As a result they have never been able to counter balance the losses suffered to take a bit of terrain with destruction of Ukraine's forces immediately thereafter.  In fact, time and time and time again we have seen exactly the opposite.

1. Russia sets up an offensive that encompasses a series of objectives to secure some lofty goal, such as the surrounding of a force, ripping open a section of front, or securing some logistics benefit
2. Russia beats its head against Ukrainian defenses
3. Ukraine slowly yields small amounts of terrain
4. Russia repeats bloodletting against new Ukrainian positions, thus repeating the cycle over a period of weeks or (often) months.  As this goes on Russia's original goals for a larger operation narrow down to a focus on one specific "prize" instead of whatever the original objective was
5. Eventually Ukraine is either unable or unwilling to hold whatever it is Russia is focused on and yields it, usually without significant losses during the withdrawal phase
6. Russia's forces secure the now abandoned terrain, reframe the entire operation as always being about this thing they took, declare victory, and then...
7. The front solidifies where it is without any exploitation or, in some cases, even an attempt of exploitation.  Their attacking forces are exhausted and they know that Ukraine has had the time and the inclination to dig into new positions.

Whether we're talking about early battles for larger places like Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Mariupol, etc. or much smaller ones like the villages south of Izyum, Pisky, Soledar, Lyman, or countless other places even smaller than these the pattern is exactly the same.  Russia smashes a place until it takes it, but never gets the benefit of trashing the defender after.

Ukraine has had a much better track record on this, but Russia has done a very good job of running away faster than Ukraine can catch up to them.  I say this with some snark, but the fact remains that Ukraine has missed opportunities to bag a lot of Russian casualties after a successful operation.  The most obvious of which was Kherson.  This is partly due to Russian "skill" in running away as well as solidly executed phased withdrawals.  If Ukraine can solve for this, Russia is going to be out of the war fairly quickly.

Steve

[dan/california]

19 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Ah so onto REDDIT tactic #2, treat the other poster like your personal information waiter.  I spent nearly a half a page answering your post but this is the “soup you do not like.”  This is exactly what I mean by obtuse flanking - I do all the work and you sit back and nit pick from the high ground of ignorance.  “Prove to me that the earth is indeed round!”

You need a few more years on that learning journey because you do not even know what you are looking at.  

All of this research is by-design trying to figure out how to overcome the attacker-defender problem.  It has been central to warfare, pretty much from the beginning.  The problem is pretty simple, attacking is more costly and dangerous than defending but it is the only way to get things done.  So how do we overcome that?  Force ratios is one way, but there was a lot of research on speed, tempo etc because we were all up in manoeuvre warfare back in the 90s.  All those force ratio studies were reinforcing the western myth that attrition was dead.  It was all the rage right up until this war where clearly attrition is back on the menu.  Of course there are other factors in the force ratio equations, now you can go look up what force multipliers really mean.

The bottom line is that if you look at highly attritional battles against prepared defences losses ratios at the tactical level can get very high - the the opening of the Somme.  However, over time those ratios tend to settle into around 2-1.5 to 1 losses agains attacker…until/if the attacker achieves break out, then the ratio will flip pretty fast. The major weakness of defence is that it is more rigid system, more tied to owning terrain in land battle. Once that system is cracked it can fall apart pretty quickly.  However clearly the UA has not suffered this yet.

But hey if you want to cling to the idea that at Bakhmut the RA - throwing literally waves of untrained convicts and poorly trained and supported conscripts at prepared UA defences, should be seeing 1:1 loss ratios because you haven’t seen a curve on a graph…well I cannot help you.

I can tell you that if you dial in a solution that does not take into account the fact that attacking is more costly and dangerous in the short term in any professional military school, from junior leadership to joint staff college, you will fail.

 

If I might add a small extra point, Russia simply hasn't shown any of the abilities that help the attackers ratio. They have not demonstrated surprise, they have not demonstrated coordination and/or combined arms, they have not demonstrated the ability to attack anything past a few hundred meters in depth. The lancets might be a small exception to that last part, but they seem to have very few of them. When a U.S. heavy brigade with full air support decides to hit you, things blow up to a depth of tens of kilometers at zero hour, things like that can move the ratios. The Russian tactic, certainly the Wagner tactic, is recon by death. They put a platoon out there and try to spot what killed it. Try to shell it, and then send out another platoon of victims, i mean troops. This is NOT how you move the ratios in a favorable way.

[Astrophel]

1 hour ago, kevinkin said:

 China’s intensifying self-sufficiency push, which is aimed at sanctions-proofing its economy. Those measures include establishing a yuan-based commodities trading scheme and developing the Cross-Border Interbank Payments System, augmented by the digital yuan, to enable sanctioned entities to dodge SWIFT, the Western-controlled global payments network.

The Chinese approach reminds me of the guy admiring a beautiful piece of furniture and deciding "I could make that if only I had the right chisel".  

[danfrodo]

13 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

Could a nonstate actor really blow up the pipelines?

 

Maybe was martians?  maybe was hillary?  maybe was hitler, because we don't really know he's dead, now do we?  We get these snippets based on not much info and everyone runs w it (not saying you are running w this, FancyCat, you just reported what folks are saying).  I am going to stick to the most obvious answer, RU, until I get compelling evidence otherwise.  Some of the motive and potential blowback for other actors doesn't really add up -- maybe it was UKR, but it would be insanely risky for them relative to Euro relationships that they desperately need.

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

I know it is anecdotal, but I feel we've been seeing more videos of Russian staging positions being hit appearing in the last week or so.  Could be the nature of OSINT creating a false image of an increased attention on behind the lines concentrations, or it could be that there's a real uptick in such missions.  If history is to be used as a guide, we should be expecting Ukraine to start increasing such attacks as that is what it has done in the past ahead of larger offensive operations.

Steve

It may also indicate decreased Russian counter drone capability or increased UA drone capability.

It may also indicate that some new intermediate range PGMs (*cough* GLSDB *cough* Switchblade 600) have arrived in the region and they can be used with impunity.

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, chrisl said:

It may also indicate decreased Russian counter drone capability or increased UA drone capability.

I thought of this as well as Ukraine is (probably) now using some of the fancier military drones that the West has pledged.

1 minute ago, chrisl said:

It may also indicate that some new intermediate range PGMs (*cough* GLSDB *cough* Switchblade 600) have arrived in the region and they can be used with impunity.

I am sure this is true even without videos.  For sure Ukraine is planning an offensive operation for the better weather, be it late Spring or definitively Summer.  Ukraine would be foolish to be using it's precious PGMs at this stage unless it had enough on hand to ensure it wouldn't be caught short during the offensive.  So far Ukraine's corrosive warfare strategy has always been followed up with a hammer blow somewhere.  Hard to hammer if you used up all of your capabilities during the corrosive phase.

Steve

[billbindc]

22 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

Could a nonstate actor really blow up the pipelines?

 

Note: a "proxy force with connections to the Ukraine government" in no way rules out that it was done at Moscow's behest. 

[danfrodo]

8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

For sure Ukraine is planning an offensive operation for the better weather, be it late Spring or definitively Summer.  Ukraine would be foolish to be using it's precious PGMs at this stage unless it had enough on hand to ensure it wouldn't be caught short during the offensive.  So far Ukraine's corrosive warfare strategy has always been followed up with a hammer blow somewhere.  Hard to hammer if you used up all of your capabilities during the corrosive phase.

Yeah, I think this is all about whether UKR is weak and that's why can't stop RU in Bakhmut OR is simply using economy of force to bleed RU while piling up resources for spring offensive.  I think it's economy of force.  As Steve or someone said yesterday, if UKR was in desperate straits they wouldn't be sending thousands of troops to NATO countries for extended periods of training.  So to me it looks like UKR could do more around Bakhmut but doesn't want to get bogged down there, which is probably something RU wants.

[Kinophile]

43 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Indeed.  And it's something I've been hammering on since this war started.  Russia has never, not even in February 2022, managed to reap the benefits of a breakthrough in this way (Mariupol is in a different category).  As a result they have never been able to counter balance the losses suffered to take a bit of terrain with destruction of Ukraine's forces immediately thereafter.  In fact, time and time and time again we have seen exactly the opposite.

1. Russia sets up an offensive that encompasses a series of objectives to secure some lofty goal, such as the surrounding of a force, ripping open a section of front, or securing some logistics benefit
2. Russia beats its head against Ukrainian defenses
3. Ukraine slowly yields small amounts of terrain
4. Russia repeats bloodletting against new Ukrainian positions, thus repeating the cycle over a period of weeks or (often) months.  As this goes on Russia's original goals for a larger operation narrow down to a focus on one specific "prize" instead of whatever the original objective was
5. Eventually Ukraine is either unable or unwilling to hold whatever it is Russia is focused on and yields it, usually without significant losses during the withdrawal phase
6. Russia's forces secure the now abandoned terrain, reframe the entire operation as always being about this thing they took, declare victory, and then...
7. The front solidifies where it is without any exploitation or, in some cases, even an attempt of exploitation.  Their attacking forces are exhausted and they know that Ukraine has had the time and the inclination to dig into new positions.

Whether we're talking about early battles for larger places like Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Mariupol, etc. or much smaller ones like the villages south of Izyum, Pisky, Soledar, Lyman, or countless other places even smaller than these the pattern is exactly the same.  Russia smashes a place until it takes it, but never gets the benefit of trashing the defender after.

Ukraine has had a much better track record on this, but Russia has done a very good job of running away faster than Ukraine can catch up to them.  I say this with some snark, but the fact remains that Ukraine has missed opportunities to bag a lot of Russian casualties after a successful operation.  The most obvious of which was Kherson.  This is partly due to Russian "skill" in running away as well as solidly executed phased withdrawals.  If Ukraine can solve for this, Russia is going to be out of the war fairly quickly.

Steve

It feels like Russias institutional leadership deficiencies leave it far more vulnerable to a decap campaign than Ukraine would be. 

The Ivan clearly has some capable and adaptable brigade/div level leaders, who are able to handle tough, complex situations, despite getting shafted by higher ups. But they're the exception not the rule, whereas imaginative,  adaptive, cooperative and realistic leadership seems the cultural tend within the mid-level ZSU commands.

Keeping older mindsets is viewed as unwanted and detrimental to the war effort,  versus the AFRF mentality of Don't Rock The System.

The distributed,  self-initiallzing nature of a lot of the UKR resistance lends itself to a very active and independent leadership style, from the lowest level upwards, something quite anathema to the Russian MoD and Putin's regime in general. 

A concerted campaign corroding Russian brig/div level leadership could have disproportionate effect on the Russian forces adaptation to escalating operational situations.

Easier said than done, but still, a distinct vulnerability. 

Edited March 7, 2023 by Kinophile

[Battlefront.com]

23 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Note: a "proxy force with connections to the Ukraine government" in no way rules out that it was done at Moscow's behest. 

I sometimes have to chuckle when I read a story like this:

Quote

Mats Ljungqvist, a senior prosecutor leading Sweden’s investigation, told The New York Times late last month that his country’s hunt for the perpetrators was continuing.

“It’s my job to find those who blew up Nord Stream. To help me, I have our country’s Security Service,” Mr. Ljungqvist said. “Do I think it was Russia that blew up Nord Stream? I never thought so. It’s not logical...

And yet above this...

Quote

Any findings that put blame on Kyiv or Ukrainian proxies could prompt a backlash in Europe and make it harder for the West to maintain a united front in support of Ukraine.

Well Mr. Ljungqvist, maybe you should read the article you are quoted in because at least someone thinks there is "logic" to Russia attacking its own stuff and having someone else take the blame for it.  Also, it's not like Putin hasn't done stuff like this before.  Oh, like an infamous apartment building ahead of the 2nd Chechen War for example.  Or the other times Russia sabotaged its pipelines and claimed mechanical problems.  You know, just for example.

Anyway, the logic that Russia did the attack is pretty straight forward.  It assessed that the pipelines were going to be shut down as part of sanctions anyway, making them strategically useless for the time being.  However, scaring the bejeezus out of Europeans ahead of the Winter heating season might be helpful, especially if they thought Ukraine was the one that cut them off from cheap gas.  Driving wedges between Western allies and between them and Ukraine is a top priority for Russia.

I'm not saying Russia did the attack.  I personally have no opinion of it other than I do not think the US was involved.  But to say there isn't a reason for Russia to have done this to itself is really naive.

Steve

 

[Astrophel]

19 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Note: a "proxy force with connections to the Ukraine government" in no way rules out that it was done at Moscow's behest. 

Whoever did it almost certainly did their best to point the finger elsewhere or they would have claimed responsibility by now.

What is sure is the only party with an interest to keep this story alive is russia.  Nobody else cares.  Germany did a brilliant job with help from at least 3 friends around the world to move away from russian gas and they had more or less achieved this by the time the 3/4 of the pipeline was blown - essentially after the event and why leave 1/4 open? 

For me all the circumstantial evidence is pointing at russia - their pipelines after all.  They could have just turned off the supply - nobody was depending on it anymore.  

[dan/california]

26 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Note: a "proxy force with connections to the Ukraine government" in no way rules out that it was done at Moscow's behest. 

 

4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I sometimes have to chuckle when I read a story like this:

And yet above this...

Well Mr. Ljungqvist, maybe you should read the article you are quoted in because at least someone thinks there is "logic" to Russia attacking its own stuff.  Also, it's not like Putin hasn't done stuff like this before.  Oh, like an infamous apartment building ahead of the 2nd Chechen War for example.  Or the other times Russia sabotaged its pipelines and claimed mechanical problems.  You know, just for example.

Anyway, the logic that Russia did the attack is pretty straight forward.  It assessed that the pipelines were going to be shut down as part of sanctions anyway, making them strategically useless for the time being.  However, scaring the bejeezus out of Europeans ahead of the Winter heating season might be helpful, especially if they thought Ukraine was the one that cut them off from cheap gas.  Driving wedges between Western allies and between them and Ukraine is a top priority for Russia.

I'm not saying Russia did the attack.  I personally have no opinion of it other than I do not think the US was involved.  But to say there isn't a reason for Russia to have done this to itself is really naive.

Steve

 

The article seems to flunk the the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" test. 

[dan/california]

Quote

U.S. officials said there was much they did not know about the perpetrators and their affiliations. The review of newly collected intelligence suggests they were opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but does not specify the members of the group, or who directed or paid for the operation. U.S. officials declined to disclose the nature of the intelligence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evidence it contains. They have said that there are no firm conclusions about it, leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services.

From the NYT article. As disclosed this borders on "we have feelings". Don't say anything until you are ready to actually say SOMETHING.

Edit: Is this an attempt to head off a planned Ukrainian operation on Russian territory? Or perhaps another strike on the Kerch bridge?

The fact the U.S. can't decide it wants to win this war and then act like it continues to be crazy making. The world is not getting rest to status quo antebellum, just isn't. 

Edited March 7, 2023 by dan/california

[The_Capt]

10 hours ago, chrisl said:

I'm going to pick a little nit here.  

China has a metric buttload of earth observing satellites (i.e. spy capable)of various flavors in a variety of orbits.  A little googling shows most of them in high-inclination sun-sync orbits (keeps the illumination of the spots they can see consistent) so that they can basically cover the whole earth regularly at roughly uniform resolution, with the revisit rate and max latitude dependent on their altitude.  By having side-looking capability they get a higher revisit rate than strict down-lookers, though at different viewing angles.  These kind don't cost much to task - adjust orientation without using propellant to look at different angles as they fly over a region.  There are a fairly small number in very elliptical orbits - those are the ones that cost you to retask because you have to move the perigee to where you want it.  They don't have a lot of them, and I agree it's unlikely they're spending propellant on Vlad.  Even the optical observing satellites seem to mostly be in moderate altitude sun-sync orbits.  But there are quite a few, and they probably in totally have pretty good revisit rates with some kind of observation or other.  They can't really have a bunch of unknown satellites in highly elliptical orbits - it's hard to hide satellites because any punk with a telescope can sit around in the dark and track them. And there are hobbyists who do.  All you can really do is try to hide their function - we don't necessarily know what all the Chinese satellites do.

But it doesn't really affect your overall argument - even if China sets up a terabit/s pipe to the RA, Russia doesn't have the C4 or the precision to take advantage of it.

First off China is coming up fast, there is no getting past that.  However it is not there yet, nor does it have global coverage.

So some numbers for context:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264472/number-of-satellites-in-orbit-by-operating-country/  (obviously not all military ISR)

Better assessment of pair up here:

https://www.rand.org/paf/projects/us-china-scorecard.html

Really long write up here:

https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05/China_Space_and_Counterspace_Activities.pdf

Bottom line China is not messing around but is still focused regionally.

Backed up by this:

https://www.fpri.org/article/2021/05/chinas-maritime-intelligence-surveillance-and-reconnaissance-capability-in-the-south-china-sea/

Another good short summary here:

So what?  Well China had a finite number of systems and it is a big-@ss sky.  Solar orbits gives a satellite stability on the region it covers but the earth spins around underneath it.  Satellites (except for geostationary, which are actually pretty far out) are built in constellations designed to keep eyes on specific regions as continuously as possible.  They hand off with other ISR and integrate to give a complete picture.  China is clearly focused on the maritime domain, which also means the ISR they are using may not be optimized for land battle.  China like Russia still has pretty slow refresh rates, as such they are not real-time.  Repositioning those assets toward Ukraine would mean holes in the rest of their system - this is not simply flying one satellite like a balloon over Ukraine.  It would mean shifting entire constellations or launching new one.

Ironically, and definitely not-funny, the use of high altitude balloons in Russia as ISR into Ukraine would be a possible solution if they could control them.  Regardless, China is not there yet with respect to global ISR.  The US is because projecting military power globally is a strategic objective, but even it has limitations.
 

 

 

 

[Baneman]

6 hours ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

...

Additionally, RUS have gained in positional terms. They are on the 3 sides of Bakhmut on the high ground so crossfire opportunities are available.

...

I question this bit particularly - if they have artillery on 3 sides of Bakhmut, 2 of those sides would have artillery pieces so ludicrously close to Ukrainian lines that you could almost use mortars for CB.

All info we've seen lately is that the Russians are keeping their artillery as far back as they can to avoid as much CB as they can.

[danfrodo]

30 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I sometimes have to chuckle when I read a story like this:

And yet above this...

Well Mr. Ljungqvist, maybe you should read the article you are quoted in because at least someone thinks there is "logic" to Russia attacking its own stuff and having someone else take the blame for it.  Also, it's not like Putin hasn't done stuff like this before.  Oh, like an infamous apartment building ahead of the 2nd Chechen War for example.  Or the other times Russia sabotaged its pipelines and claimed mechanical problems.  You know, just for example.

Anyway, the logic that Russia did the attack is pretty straight forward.  It assessed that the pipelines were going to be shut down as part of sanctions anyway, making them strategically useless for the time being.  However, scaring the bejeezus out of Europeans ahead of the Winter heating season might be helpful, especially if they thought Ukraine was the one that cut them off from cheap gas.  Driving wedges between Western allies and between them and Ukraine is a top priority for Russia.

I'm not saying Russia did the attack.  I personally have no opinion of it other than I do not think the US was involved.  But to say there isn't a reason for Russia to have done this to itself is really naive.

Steve

 

The obvious answer to motive is that Putin wanted to show Europe that he could and would bring down their infrastructure if they wouldn't behave.  This little demonstration of the pipeline was something he was going to lose anyway so it was a good target.  

All the other explanations might be true, but the motive becomes very unclear.

[The_Capt]

Just now, dan/california said:

If I might add a small extra point, Russia simply hasn't shown any of the abilities that help the attackers ratio. They have not demonstrated surprise, they have not demonstrated coordination and/or combined arms, they have not demonstrated the ability to attack anything past a few hundred meters in depth. The lancets might be a small exception to that last part, but they seem to have very few of them. When a U.S. heavy brigade with full air support decides to hit you, things blow up to a depth of tens of kilometers at zero hour, things like that can move the ratios. The Russian tactic, certainly the Wagner tactic, is recon by death. They put a platoon out there and try to spot what killed it. Try to shell it, and then send out another platoon of victims, i mean troops. This is NOT how you move the ratios in a favorable way.

So we were talking about losses attacker to defender, and how they vary dramatically based on a lot of factors; however, the overall principle that one tends to be more vulnerable and at higher risk of losses in the offence stands.  How this is offset is through a myriad of methods and a lot of them are qualitative - the one thing the Lancaster Equations never really got.  Speed, surprise, shaping and mass are all factors in reducing that vulnerability.  

In recent years modern western militaries have moved away from simple force ratios and towards "combat power" which is a whole hockey-sock of components (see FM 3.0).  We do force comparisons based on all these factors when doing operational planning.  I suspect this is what happened with the UA.  They had a lot more combat power even though they had smaller physical forces in comparison.  As we have seen things like C4ISR, UAS and precision are fundamentally changing how we think about combat power. 

So when we see the RA outnumbering and grinding, we are failing to take into account all the dimensions of that combat power.  The UA is losing troops but its other elements of combat power (e.g. C2,logistics, ISR and fires) are not suffering attrition (or at least we are not seeing it).  The RA is not in the same position.  We can see its combat power suffering attrition across dimensions, not just in manpower. 

So this sets up other false-deductions coming out of Bakhmut - even if the UA and RA are suffering the same manpower attrition (which, again does not really make sense with what we have seen), what is the combat power attrition calculus look like?  Reports of daily Russian losses of guns, CPs and logistics trucks are out there.  The UA is pretty tight lipped but I am not sure they could hide an equivalent size of losses on their side - and we know a lot of UA combat power generation is out of reach of the RA.

So the UA can inflict 1:1 loss ratios while attacking prepared RA defenses, or maybe even higher because its effective combat power is much higher than the RA despite smaller manpower.  The RA is much larger but its effective combat power is much lower.  So when the RA is attacking a smaller defensive force with higher effective combat power the outcome is pretty plain to see - the RA get nowhere fast.

[For those who want to learn more  https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/fm3-0.pdf  Chapter 2 is all over this]

[Haiduk]

Very bad day. We lost two experienced warriors

Dnytro Kotsiubaylo "Da Vinchi" - youngest volunteer who was awared with state rank Hero of Ukraine and unofficial award People's Hero of Ukraine. He started his war in 2014, when he was 17 y.o. in Right Sector volunteer unit. Since years he became a commander of 1st assault company of VUC (Volunteer Ukrainian Corps), known as "Da Vinchi Wolfs". Fearless commander, and strong leader. Since full-scale war began, his unit soon became a part of 67tn mech.brigade already as separate battalion (company "Da Vinchi Wolfs", company "Honor", medical-evacuation unti "Ulf"). He was officially promoted to jr.lt. rank but was battalion commander. Today he was lost during the battle for Bakmut.

  

Major Andriy Lukaniuk, battalion commander of 80th air-assault brigade. Was at the war also since 2014. Experienced commander. Was killed today in Chasiv Yar town SW from Bakhmut (probably Russians hit battalion command center)

Edited March 7, 2023 by Haiduk

[Vanir Ausf B]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

A perfect example of this was Russia's "Easter Offensive" to take the Donbas.  I went on the record here stating that it was going to end in disaster.  I even called out when it would effectively run out of steam.  I was correct on both counts.  And guess what?  Ukraine had no HIMARS or Excaliburs on hand.  It was still using Soviet era ammo.  It was still wildly under equipped compared to Russia.  And yet Russia got the stuffing knocked out of it.

This is the sort of stuff that Kofman and others were missing at the time, but others were not.

Steve

Kofman was far more pessimistic at the time about Russia's prospects than you are remembering.

 

[dan/california]

19 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Very bad day. We lost two experienced warriors

Dnytro Kotsiubaylo "Da Vinchi" - youngest volunteer who was awared with state rank Hero of Ukraine and unofficial award People's Hero of Ukraine. He started his war in 2014, when he was 17 y.o. in Right Sector volunteer unit. Since years he became a commander of 1st assault company of VUC (Volunteer Ukrainian Corps), known as "Da Vinchi Wolfs". Fearless commander, and strong leader. Since full-scale war began, his unit soon became a part of 67tn mech.brigade already as separate battalion (company "Da Vinchi Wolfs", company "Honor", medical-evacuation unti "Ulf"). He was officially promoted to jr.lt. rank but was battalion commander. Today he was lost during the battle for Bakmut.

  

Major Andriy Lukaniuk, battalion commander of 80th air-assault brigade. Was at the war also since 2014. Experienced commander. Was killed today in Chasiv Yar town SW from Bakhmut (probably Russians hit battalion command center)

Haiduk's post shows the terrible price of this war on the Ukrainian side.

But these are close to if not THE highest numbers I have ever seen for daily casualties of Russian troops and artillery systems, and are high across the board. The 23 guns eliminated almost has to reflect something new coming on line for the AFU doesn't it? Or at least a whole lot more of one of the more effective systems?

[danfrodo]

10 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Haiduk's post shows the terrible price of this war on the Ukrainian side.

But these are close to if not THE highest numbers I have ever seen for daily casualties of Russian troops and artillery systems, and are high across the board. The 23 guns eliminated almost has to reflect something new coming on line for the AFU doesn't it? Or at least a whole lot more of one of the more effective systems?

The 154K troops -- is that dead or casualties?  I know is dumb question but I am confused because I see such widely varying numbers and most sources don't say what the number means.

[Haiduk]

The country of fulfilled Orwell

 

[Battlefront.com]

23 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I suspect this is what happened with the UA.  They had a lot more combat power even though they had smaller physical forces in comparison. 

When looking at the broader scope of combat power, there is no doubt about it.  At the beginning of the conflict we created a rather lengthy list of factors that gave Ukraine's smaller physical presence on the battlefield a significant boost against Russia's larger presence.

Morale is the big one.  Doesn't matter how much stuff you have if your soldiers abandon it and head back home because the other guy's soldiers are fighting like demons.

Another early example was Ukrainians "phoning in" intel to local units and/or national "tip lines" that the Ukrainian MoD set up.  The example of a Ukrainian refugee seeing a video of his house occupied by Russians calling such a line and asking for his house to be smashed to pieces is never far from my mind.  Russia is able to do some of this through traitors and agents, but not to the extent Ukraine demonstrated.

Oh, and then there's the usual situation where the defender knows the terrain better than the attacker.  This was made worse for Russia because they went in with a lack of maps and many that they did have were hopelessly out of date.  I remember an interview with an old guy who was asked by some Russians were X village was and they were already in it!  He helpfully pointed down a road leading out of the town and the Russians thanked him and sped off away from their objective.

Now, couple this with the flip side of the equation which are the things which Russia did to reduce the effectiveness of its own forces.  Tires that shredded, soldiers with terrible training, open channel radios, inadequate infantry staffing, ships that couldn't defend themselves, no doctrine for meaningful air operations, politically dominated military decision making, etc.

What this means is on the one hand Ukraine was able to fight far better than an accountant would guess at, on the other hand Russia fought far worse than what the accountant would guess at.  This is, in a nutshell, where the pre-war analysts fell down hard.  Combat Mission guys, on the other hand, better understood these sorts of factors.  It's why nobody wants to take King Tigers into forests or fight with Conscripts against Veterans.  The details matter.

Steve