How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

Rare BMP-2M was destroyed probably with DM-21

 

[DesertFox]

 

 

[chrisl]

47 minutes ago, holoween said:

Isnt this already sufficiently explained by troop quality?

I dont think youre wrong in looking at a militaries ability to generate, interprete and act upon information. Fully linked battle management systems are probably the cleareat case showing it matter.

But if your 10 guys can simply outshoot their 20 you just have more raw combat power.

I was halfway through typing a long response to this and my computer spontaneously restarted, and both Steve and The_Capt got posts in first that provide supporting for what was writing (so thanks!)

I'd frame it differently than @The_Capt (information has mass) and closer to Steve (information is a force multiplier) and say that it gives you efficiency of force (or efficiency of other things in other applications).  The net effect is that when you're doing your calculations the old way, however one does those, you'd put in a dimensionless constant to account for the efficiency.  That constant is the force multiplier.

In practice, suppose you're Russia in 2022 and there's a platoon of UA defending 2 km of front.  You're basically blind to their locations, so you get every tube and rocket rail that's in range and paste it for 30 minutes, then you send in the prisoners to do recon by death. And die they do, because massed artillery just isn't that great against a dug in defender.  If you're Ukraine, you send up 3 or 4 drones and each time one spots a target, it calls in 2-3 rounds from one tube.  That gets rid of a bunch of the defenders because they don't have time to take cover before the rounds start hitting *their* holes.  A couple more drones fly around and drop grenades on vehicles, taking them out of the defense.  When the PBI finally have to go in and finish things, there aren't a lot of well placed defenders left, and on a good day the Ukrainian PBI are getting feedback from the drones at a level of "a guy just went into a dugout in the trench you're about to go into, go up to the edge, move 3 m to your right, and toss a grenade down without sticking your head over".  

And the catch is that you don't need just the information, but the ability to act on it at a level commensurate with the information.  If I know exactly where everybody is (Steve's example) but all I have is artillery with a CEP the size of the map, then the information doesn't do me much good. I'm still just going to plaster the whole map with all my arty.  But if I have drones with lasers and laser guided munitions, I can send a drone up to point at each guy, fire one lgm, then go to the next.

So while information is vital, and valuable, and adds efficiency, you also need equipment that has comparable precision.  Some pages ago, I pointed out that the extreme limit of perfect information and perfect precision you need a number of munitions less than or equal to the number of opponents you have to deal with.  It's like in science fiction where one good guy (e.g. Robocop) is in a room full of bad guys with machine guns (mass).  He kills them all with a number of shots equal to the number of bad guys minus one (he gets two with one shot once), taking advantage of his IR vision (information) to see where people are behind concealment and precisely target them.  Miltech is headed in that direction, where eventually every person on the ground will have augmented reality goggles that automatically integrate the information from all drones and all the other AR goggles so that every friendly and enemy shows up exactly in the right place, with appropriate shading/transparency to indicate that they're behind cover or terrain. 

The other catch is that you have to be able to do it all quickly - it doesn't do you any good to know how to do perfect information and precision if you can't deliver it faster than the other guy can kill you.  Russia probably has a lot of smart people in universities and their MIC who can describe all this, but they don't have the resources to implement it much past pencil and paper.

[dan/california]

46 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

From a simulation standpoint, I'd say no.  Informational Mass is its own thing just like logistics capabilities, will to fight (different than morale), international political support, homefront strength, etc.  All of these things matter and yet the bean counter military experts seemed to have neglected them because they aren't as easy to evaluate as tanks and ships.

A term I don't hear too much lately is the concept of "force multiplier".  This is military speak for something that enhances the ability to kill something, but in and of itself doesn't.  ISR, night vision, body armor, radios, that sort of stuff has been referred to like that in the past.  The_Capt is arguing that ISR has advanced to the point where it is on par or superior to traditional aspects of warfare.  I agree.

A quick test... when playing CM would you rather know where everything of the enemy's is and be able to use that information to selectively and accurately target whatever you want *OR* would you rather have more or better tanks *OR* more or better artillery *OR* more or better infantry?  I know what my answer is

Not exactly.  Raw combat power should still be thought of as a basic component such as how many shooters you have.  The reason is enhancements, such as ISR, are inherently fragile and can be removed or reduced without affecting the fundamental "raw" power of a unit. 

At least this is the way I look at things from a simulation standpoint.  ISR is its own thing in my view.

Steve

 

46 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Not at all.  We are talking information architecture to support all that mass, not simply the quality of troops involved.

At Severodonetsk, we saw the RA far "outshoot" the UA but it still took more loses. 

This famous graphic - not sure as to accuracy but it matches the moon scaping the RA did last summer.  Some took this as bad news and that the UA was being far overgunned, but if you look at the effects that much lower UA tonnage was able to deliver we begin to see the realities of information and precision.

Raw combat power matters much less than refined combat power.  A large part of refined combat power is information and in many ways it has a mass of its own as both a resource and effect.  The UA has never "shot more" is has "shot better" and to do that you need to be able to collect, process and employ information at much higher rates - compare a modern MBT information infrastructure to a WW2 tank and you can see what mean.  In fact one could argue that with enough information advantage one could defeat a modern MBT with a WW2 tank - knowing exactly what the MBT could see, where its weak points are, ability to hit it exactly on that spot etc.

It is brute force simulation, but just open any CMBS scenario and play it on basic training. Go the extra mile and give yourself 10 or twenty excalibur rounds. It is so easy its boring after that. I have a fairly strong impression that when the full ISR stack is focused on your piece of dirt, and there precision rounds available it really is something close to that. Those are both big ifs that don't apply most places most of the time, but the capability exists in meaningful quantities. The Russian response seems to be to throw in more bodies that Ukraine has ammo, but their results are unimpressive to put it mildly.

Edit: Cross posted with Chrissl, he said it better.

Edited March 19, 2023 by dan/california

[DesertFox]

 

 

[The_Capt]

Just now, chrisl said:

I was halfway through typing a long response to this and my computer spontaneously restarted, and both Steve and The_Capt got posts in first that provide supporting for what was writing (so thanks!)

I'd frame it differently than @The_Capt (information has mass) and closer to Steve (information is a force multiplier) and say that it gives you efficiency of force (or efficiency of other things in other applications).  The net effect is that when you're doing your calculations the old way, however one does those, you'd put in a dimensionless constant to account for the efficiency.  That constant is the force multiplier.

In practice, suppose you're Russia in 2022 and there's a platoon of UA defending 2 km of front.  You're basically blind to their locations, so you get every tube and rocket rail that's in range and paste it for 30 minutes, then you send in the prisoners to do recon by death. And die they do, because massed artillery just isn't that great against a dug in defender.  If you're Ukraine, you send up 3 or 4 drones and each time one spots a target, it calls in 2-3 rounds from one tube.  That gets rid of a bunch of the defenders because they don't have time to take cover before the rounds start hitting *their* holes.  A couple more drones fly around and drop grenades on vehicles, taking them out of the defense.  When the PBI finally have to go in and finish things, there aren't a lot of well placed defenders left, and on a good day the Ukrainian PBI are getting feedback from the drones at a level of "a guy just went into a dugout in the trench you're about to go into, go up to the edge, move 3 m to your right, and toss a grenade down without sticking your head over".  

And the catch is that you don't need just the information, but the ability to act on it at a level commensurate with the information.  If I know exactly where everybody is (Steve's example) but all I have is artillery with a CEP the size of the map, then the information doesn't do me much good. I'm still just going to plaster the whole map with all my arty.  But if I have drones with lasers and laser guided munitions, I can send a drone up to point at each guy, fire one lgm, then go to the next.

So while information is vital, and valuable, and adds efficiency, you also need equipment that has comparable precision.  Some pages ago, I pointed out that the extreme limit of perfect information and perfect precision you need a number of munitions less than or equal to the number of opponents you have to deal with.  It's like in science fiction where one good guy (e.g. Robocop) is in a room full of bad guys with machine guns (mass).  He kills them all with a number of shots equal to the number of bad guys minus one (he gets two with one shot once), taking advantage of his IR vision (information) to see where people are behind concealment and precisely target them.  Miltech is headed in that direction, where eventually every person on the ground will have augmented reality goggles that automatically integrate the information from all drones and all the other AR goggles so that every friendly and enemy shows up exactly in the right place, with appropriate shading/transparency to indicate that they're behind cover or terrain. 

The other catch is that you have to be able to do it all quickly - it doesn't do you any good to know how to do perfect information and precision if you can't deliver it faster than the other guy can kill you.  Russia probably has a lot of smart people in universities and their MIC who can describe all this, but they don't have the resources to implement it much past pencil and paper.

Ok, now we are getting somewhere.  So what you are describing is a modern operational system (or components thereof).  Add in logistics, force protection/preservation, mobility and then institutional functions and we are starting to see the entire picture.

My only problem with "information as force multiplier" is that it boxes it in.  Information supports physical effects.  The reality is that the two are far more symbiotic.  Physical effects create information and in some cases are only conducted to gather information (e.g. spec fire).  The two concepts drive each other.  Better physical systems are a force multiplier for information - I can move, see and "cause" better than an opponent.

To my mind - and here we are at "all war is communication", physical effects/violence are simply ("milbits") of information themselves.  The act of warfare is knowing mare than an enemy and taking away their ability to be able to "know'.  As we see far too often, and trust me a tactical wargaming community is not alone in this, physical capability as the primary "way" of warfare, when in fact it is just another "means".  The primary way is information based via violent communication because warfare is all about human will.  Will is build on cognitive and conative frameworks housing...wait for it...information (well, knowledge really but why quibble).

So in many ways those mortars are force multiplying information superiority as much as it is going the other way. 

[Vet 0369]

On 3/16/2023 at 10:23 AM, Tux said:

The more I think about it the more I suspect this whole thing is actually just a case of an idiot (and let’s just say it one more time: f*ing *reckless*) pilot accidentally colliding with the MQ-9.  There’s no way he deliberately approached a moving target at a closing speed of something like 100kts, the last second or two with the ‘target’ out of sight, and then purposefully clipped just the outer 20cm of the propeller.  There’s also no way his superiors ordered him to try to do just that. 

I think this is an angry clown of a pilot trying to scare the drone’s operators with a very close flyby and… ahem… “messing” it up. 

I’m not really “sure”what the stall speed (the slowest speed at which an aircraft can maintain lift) of the SU-24, or the “cruising speed” of the MQ-9, but I believe the SU-24 stall speed is about 200 to 230km/h. If the cruise speed of the MQ-9 is slower than that, the SU would have to be doing more than say 200 to 230 Km/H or else the SU would fall out of the sky. I feel quite certain that it was a deliberate act to knock the MQ-9 out of the sky. The only question is if it was ordered by someone, or if the pilot made a “command decision” on his own to do it.

[chrisl]

19 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Ok, now we are getting somewhere.  So what you are describing is a modern operational system (or components thereof).  Add in logistics, force protection/preservation, mobility and then institutional functions and we are starting to see the entire picture.

My only problem with "information as force multiplier" is that it boxes it in.  Information supports physical effects.  The reality is that the two are far more symbiotic.  Physical effects create information and in some cases are only conducted to gather information (e.g. spec fire).  The two concepts drive each other.  Better physical systems are a force multiplier for information - I can move, see and "cause" better than an opponent.

To my mind - and here we are at "all war is communication", physical effects/violence are simply ("milbits") of information themselves.  The act of warfare is knowing mare than an enemy and taking away their ability to be able to "know'.  As we see far too often, and trust me a tactical wargaming community is not alone in this, physical capability as the primary "way" of warfare, when in fact it is just another "means".  The primary way is information based via violent communication because warfare is all about human will.  Will is build on cognitive and conative frameworks housing...wait for it...information (well, knowledge really but why quibble).

So in many ways those mortars are force multiplying information superiority as much as it is going the other way. 

 

At the operational level and down, information as a force multiplier and force as information multipliers are just M and 1/M and which side of the equals sign you put it on depends on whether you're trying to apply force or trying to communicate  (cue any number of Star Trek scenes, from any of the series). 

But I'm not sure it fits quite neatly either way, because it can also let you avoid force entirely.  That's been a big part of the value of space ISR since it started - having the ability to accurately know how many and what strategic weapons your opponent has and in what state (stored, doors opening, launching) has had a stabilizing effect in that it avoided a lot of potential pre-emptive use of force and "launch on anxiety" events.  

Maybe that's all a good argument in favor of thinking of force as an information multiplier, but I think it's more that force is an information carrier or transmitter (communication is information per unit time between two or more points, rather than bulk information), and better information helps you target that information transmission much more effectively (and I think we just developed a differential equation here...now we're all in trouble).  

Does putting your enemy's prize racehorse's head in his bed count as use of force to transmit information, or is it just very direct information on its own?

 

[Vet 0369]

On 3/16/2023 at 2:00 PM, Battlefront.com said:

They haven't been paying any attention to the fact that the brothels and strip clubs in Russia are already facing a customer shortage because of this war, so Wagner should conclude that market is already tapped out.

Steve

Perhaps the lack of “live” patronage is simply related to men who fear being “snatched” as it were in those places just resorting to “safer” modes of entertainment?

[Vet 0369]

On 3/16/2023 at 5:54 PM, chuckdyke said:

What is this? Transporting or an innovation?

 

The concept isn’t new. During Operation Barbarossa, the German assault was stopped for a time by a modified KV-1 chassis (I believe) that had a 5 inch Naval Rifle mounted on it. It actual stopped the assault for a number of days. See CMx1 CMBB.

[Grossman]

Xi in Moscow. Xi's visit next week......

Behind closed doors, and on a one-to-one, where interpreters can fall from the 5th floor, Xi will be giving Putin his marching orders. The Chinese will have evaluated the weakness of Putin's position, personally, nationally, economically and militarily. Xi has come to Moscow to give the message personally. In fact this is one of the most crucial conversations Xi will ever have. He will be telling Putin the game is up, try to sue for a peace settlement, a cease -fire. Forget your defiant posturing, get out with as much as you can. The other message to Putin will be that China will do all it can to provide a united front, but it the end its national interests will override. China cannot afford to be seen to align with Russia against both the EU and the US. 

 

In many ways the arrest warrant was a master stroke. Putin's personal days in power are numbered. He is disposable. 

[Rokossovski]

Two thoughts:

(1) The discussion of how the Ukrainians have leveraged Western (and presumably some home-grown) ISR information to overcome the Russian's advantage in traditional mass has reinforced my view that Putin's choice to try to consume Ukraine in two bites (2014, and then 2022) doomed his effort.

The 2014 attacks and subsequent low-boil conflict prompted the Ukrainians to improve and rethink their defenses, and it must have fostered close working relationships with Western intelligence services. Ukraine had almost eight years of conflict in the Donbass in which to field-test the use of Western ISR on the battlefield, to develop protocols for sharing that information up and down the chain, and for even low-level commanders to become accustomed to working with such information. I don't have any specific insight into how far along that process had advanced by February 2022, but the results suggest that the time was not wasted. The year-plus since that time would appear to have advanced the process further.

Western nations have a lot of ISR assets to share with allies, but absent the sort of relationships, protocols, and practical experience that Ukraine had years to develop after 2014, I'm not sure those assets could be put to such full use.

(2) I'm also wondering about the limits of Western ISR assets in less conventional conflicts (i.e., Afganistan, against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, etc.) or with partners with whom information sharing could be complicated by concerns about the penetration of the command structure by elements hostile to our efforts. A conflict such as this one in Ukraine could be a best-case scenario for the power of ISR, much as the 1991 Gulf War could be seen as a best-case scenario for air power. In short, I'm wondering if we should be on guard against expecting its evident importance in this conflict as necessarily translating into it being quite so central in future conflicts that have different contours.

Side note: I haven't chimed in for several months on this mega-thread, but I've been following it closely. I really appreciate the great analysis folks from around the world and from so many backgrounds have been contributing. Thank you!

Edited March 19, 2023 by Rokossovski

[chrisl]

3 minutes ago, Rokossovski said:

Two thoughts:

(1) The discussion of how the Ukrainians have leveraged Western (and presumably some home-grown) ISR information to overcome the Russians advantage in traditional mass has reinforced my view that Putin's choice to try to consume Ukraine in two bites (2014, and then 2022) doomed his effort.

The 2014 attacks and subsequent low-boil conflict both prompted the Ukrainians to improve and rethink their defenses, and it must have fostered close working relationships with Western intelligence services. Ukraine had almost eight years of conflict in the Donbass in which to field-test the use of Western ISR on the battlefield, to develop protocols for sharing that information up and down the chain, and for even low-level commanders to become accustomed to working with such information. I don't have any specific insight into how far along that process had advanced by February 2022, but the results suggest that the time was not wasted. The year-plus since that time would appear to have advanced the process further.

Western nations have a lot of ISR assets to share with allies, but absent the sort of relationships, protocols, and practical experience that Ukraine had years to develop after 2014, I'm not sure those assets could be put to such full use.

(2) I'm also wondering about limits of Western ISR assets in less conventional conflicts (i.e., Afganistan, against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, etc.) or with partners with whom information sharing could be complicated by concerns about the penetration of the command structure by elements hostile to our efforts. A conflict such as the Ukraine could be a best-case scenario for the power of ISR, much as the 1991 Gulf War could be seen as a best-case scenario for air power. In short, I'm wondering if we should be on guard against expecting its evident importance in this conflict as necessarily translating into it being quite so central in future conflicts that have different contours.

Side note: I haven't chimed in for several months on this mega-thread, but I've been following it closely. I really appreciate the great analysis folks from around the world and from so many backgrounds have been contributing. Thank you!

The RUSI report that was linked several pages ago (here) has a nice summary of what Ukraine did from 2014 to 2022 that helped them enormously (and sometimes inadvertently), as well as how both home grown and wester ISR helped them at the start.  I'm only partway into the report, but it's an excellent summary.  They're often more generous to the Russians than we tend to be here (and I think they're accurate), but they also highlight the major failings of the Russians very well.  One thing about what Ukraine did from 2014 to 2022 that I marvel at is that Russia had *exactly the same opportunity* and squandered it. Russia was on the opposite side of the lines the whole time and gained far less from the experience.

[Battlefront.com]

41 minutes ago, Grossman said:

Xi in Moscow. Xi's visit next week......

Behind closed doors, and on a one-to-one, where interpreters can fall from the 5th floor, Xi will be giving Putin his marching orders. The Chinese will have evaluated the weakness of Putin's position, personally, nationally, economically and militarily. Xi has come to Moscow to give the message personally. In fact this is one of the most crucial conversations Xi will ever have. He will be telling Putin the game is up, try to sue for a peace settlement, a cease -fire. Forget your defiant posturing, get out with as much as you can. The other message to Putin will be that China will do all it can to provide a united front, but it the end its national interests will override. China cannot afford to be seen to align with Russia against both the EU and the US. 

 

In many ways the arrest warrant was a master stroke. Putin's personal days in power are numbered. He is disposable. 

Thanks for posting this.  It is possible that this is exactly what is going to happen next week.  From China's perspective it makes total sense.  As we've discussed here many times, this war is *NOT* good for China for several reasons, the primary one giving all of China's potential adversaries motivation to be better prepared to deal with potential Chinese aggression.  The longer the war goes on, the more prepared the US and its allies will be.  The more likely Asian countries will seek even stronger military alliances.  The more likely countries will question their reliance on Chinese manufacturing.  The more likely investments will be withheld from Chinese interests.  The more likely Chinese "soft power" abroad will be challenged.  Etc.

If China wants this war to end ASAP, there's two ways to go about it:

1. help Russia defeat Ukraine and its backers in open warfare.  This means sending massive amounts of military and economic aid.  So much that it's unlikely China will get paid for it in any reasonable timeframe.  China will also have to suffer further negative consequences with the West and its Asian neighbors.
2. not help Russia defeat Ukraine and instead use some carrots and sticks to get Putin to end the war even if it means getting little from it.  This will likely be catastrophic for Putin's regime, but like us China probably thinks Putin will be replaced by someone similarly hostile to the West and so no net loss.

Getting back to my points about "possible" and "probable", either scenario (or shades of it) is possible.  It is possible that this war might be decided by Xi rather than Putin.  Is it probable?  I really don't know.

One possible play for Xi is to say that Russia is on its own unless it tries to negotiate a cease fire based on terms Ukraine might accept, offer financial assistance to keep Russian's economy from collapsing, and promise Putin a safe haven if his regime goes belly up.  Another play is to make it known within Russia's power elites that it wants Putin gone and will richly reward anybody who makes that happen.  There's all kinds of things Xi can do, but Putin could wind up rejecting all of them and keeping things going.  For now.

Steve

[The_Capt]

Just now, Rokossovski said:

In short, I'm wondering if we should be on guard against expecting its evident importance in this conflict as necessarily translating into it being quite so central in future conflicts that have different contours.

So we are talking conventional peer (or near peer) warfare in this context.  How well it translates into unconventional conflict is a very big question.  One of the big issues we had in Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan is that our entire ISR enterprise was built for this war and not those ones.  So we brought ISR designed to find an opponents center of gravity and tried to apply it to a COIN setting where centers of gravity are totally different.

ISIL also found out the hard way that if you fight in the manner we are built for, it is bad.  Now if we meet someone who fights like Ukraine, more distributed, hybrid and unconventionally, we could face similar challenges as we had against the Taliban.  The UA is a far more conventional force than the TB but I can see how future conflict may drive opponents deeper into the unconventional space because they have observed what happens in an fully illuminated fight.

On our end, we need to learn to fight in that entirely illuminated battlefield, first step will be to take a hard look at our structures, which were built and designed in WW2.  What we take from this conflict as anomaly and what is trend is probably the biggest unknown of this war. 

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.economist.com/international/2023/03/19/what-does-xi-jinping-want-from-vladimir-putin

Double or nothing

Rather than downgrade the relationship Mr Xi appears to be strengthening it, while exploiting Russia’s miscalculations in Ukraine to tilt the balance of power in his favour. It is easy to see why. Mr Xi has won access to discounted energy supplies. And he has almost certainly extracted an assurance that Mr Putin will back him diplomatically in a war over Taiwan.

 

Long article, fairly grim conclusions, though I doubt many people on the thread will be surprised by any of them. Xi is obsessed with Taiwan and pushing the U.S. out of the western Pacific. A new cold war with China seems inevitable, and a hot war over Taiwan by no means unlikely. There are parts of the Chinese government that understand this is a terrible idea, but they are very much not the ones in charge.

My two cents is that the U.S. needs to expand military spending massively and now to try and head off the worst of this. I would argue for a truly large scale deployment of U.S. forces to Taiwan. Strategic ambivalence has run its course. To his credit Biden has said this several times, but he is having to drag the blob along behind him .

It would be a great time to offer the Vietnamese one heck of a deal. It would 80 years late, but still the worth doing.

Edit: Cross posted with Steve, he is giving the optimistic scenario, the Economist is giving a very negative one, we shall see. 

Edited March 19, 2023 by dan/california

[The_Capt]

58 minutes ago, chrisl said:

At the operational level and down, information as a force multiplier and force as information multipliers are just M and 1/M and which side of the equals sign you put it on depends on whether you're trying to apply force or trying to communicate  (cue any number of Star Trek scenes, from any of the series).

And

59 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Does putting your enemy's prize racehorse's head in his bed count as use of force to transmit information, or is it just very direct information on its own?

So projection and application of force is communication.  And so is projection and application of information.  Force can be applied either directly or indirectly - and here we get into the sweet spots of each.

Kinetic Effect (Conductive) - the direct application of energy in order to force change upon a system.

Non-Kinetic Effect (Inductive) - indirect application of energy in order to induce a system to change itself.

So horse heads definitely communicate directly - here is what we can do to you.  But having the mob boss wake up to his horse cutting off its own head (lets put opposable thumbs to the side for a moment) also sends a very powerful message - we can do this to get you to do this to yourself.  One is swinging the blade (effect) to send a message, the other is a message to create effect (whatever pushes a suicidal horse over the edge - think Alma from the Ring).

This is why I do not think one can cleanly separate the two into supported and supporting roles.  They trade off continually.  In operational planning exercises I always ask students - "Ok, what are you trying to communicate to the enemy in all this?"  And "what are they saying back?"  

Unless one is waging a war of total extermination (eg nuclear) where one is really only communicating with oneself.  This is what made apocalyptical groups like ISIL so impossible - there was no communicating with them, nor negotiation as they were following an eschatological doctrine where their will was derived by a supreme being.  So we wiped them out, and will continue to.  We had no need to negotiate, we just eradicated.  We negotiated with sub-groups who were not apocalyptics, or convinced a few to go other ways. 

 

[Battlefront.com]

53 minutes ago, Rokossovski said:

Two thoughts:

(1) The discussion of how the Ukrainians have leveraged Western (and presumably some home-grown) ISR information to overcome the Russian's advantage in traditional mass has reinforced my view that Putin's choice to try to consume Ukraine in two bites (2014, and then 2022) doomed his effort.

Yes and no.  I am of the strong opinion that Putin realized that it was not practical to militarily take Ukraine in "one bite" in 2014/2015.  Russia was simply not in a position for such a large scale military intervention at that time.  A better option, in Putin's mind, was to revert to Russia's tried and true means of politically undermining Ukraine's government and getting what he wanted through corruption and coercion.  The Minsk II agreement certainly was aimed at doing just that.

It seems to me that for 8 years Putin thought a political solution was feasible, even if just a little out of reach.  So he kept pushing in that direction and not building up his military as a backup plan.  He probably allowed himself to think his military could handle Ukraine without new investments as long as it was given a bit of time to put things into place. 

Four years into his waiting game the Pandemic hit.  Even Putin wasn't stupid enough to think a military adventure in a Pandemic was a good idea, so this elongated things by another 2 years.  As soon as the Pandemic was mostly over he put the military plan into effect thinking he had what he needed to do the job.  And that is how we got to where we are today.

The primary thing to focus on is that in no point over the last 7 years did Putin think his forces weren't capable of crushing Ukraine, therefore Russia did nothing to prepare for the challenges Ukraine forced upon it.

53 minutes ago, Rokossovski said:

(2) I'm also wondering about the limits of Western ISR assets in less conventional conflicts (i.e., Afganistan, against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, etc.) or with partners with whom information sharing could be complicated by concerns about the penetration of the command structure by elements hostile to our efforts. A conflict such as this one in Ukraine could be a best-case scenario for the power of ISR, much as the 1991 Gulf War could be seen as a best-case scenario for air power. In short, I'm wondering if we should be on guard against expecting its evident importance in this conflict as necessarily translating into it being quite so central in future conflicts that have different contours.

I think this is very true.  I will say from my perspective that I also underestimated how much ISR would come into play in Ukraine's favor and Russia's detriment.  For the most part my belief that Russia would lose this war was based on Ukraine's will to survive and Russia's lack of even basic preparedness for a war of this scale against Ukraine's kinetic abilities (including Western weaponry).  I think my under appreciating the impact of Ukraine's ISR is partly why I underestimated how badly Russia would get its arse kicked.

53 minutes ago, Rokossovski said:

Side note: I haven't chimed in for several months on this mega-thread, but I've been following it closely. I really appreciate the great analysis folks from around the world and from so many backgrounds have been contributing. Thank you!

And thank you for that and your contribution!

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

24 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

ISIL also found out the hard way that if you fight in the manner we are built for, it is bad.  Now if we meet someone who fights like Ukraine, more distributed, hybrid and unconventionally, we could face similar challenges as we had against the Taliban.  The UA is a far more conventional force than the TB but I can see how future conflict may drive opponents deeper into the unconventional space because they have observed what happens in an fully illuminated fight.

As you say, the beating heart of Ukraine's amazing battlefield capabilities are still conventional in nature.  Also as you say, that is what Western ISR/precision is designed to confront.  Therefore, if the West went to war with a Ukraine like adversary I would think that in short order the adversary would either give up (in whatever form) or would be necessarily transformed into a Taliban like operation.  From that point the West's advantages start to lose their impact and we're back to a war that is mostly COIN in nature where "whack a mole" once again dominates Western military strategy.

Steve

[akd]

Looks like Russians filmed their own Ka-52 getting whacked:

 

[Sequoia]

@The_Capt, is the artillery usage chart for WWII Germans all fronts?

[The_Capt]

Just now, Battlefront.com said:

From that point the West's advantages start to lose their impact and we're back to a war that is mostly COIN in nature where "whack a mole" once again dominates Western military strategy.

Well there will be three people missing from that next iteration - me and two MPs chasing me.

[kevinkin]

Rules of engagement matter. Take the handcuffs off the US military and you have one force. Channel operations through a panel of lawyers - it's not the same force. Precision helps to a point. But make a mistake and a hit on civilians can turn it the mistake a PR victory for the enemy. Additionally, the US would never tolerate the type of ground warfare and casualty rates witnessed every day in Ukraine. Before the fall of the iron curtain - maybe. After, no way. That's why the the US has emphasized air and naval power knowing that a massive expenditures on ground forces that will never be used is a waste. Against a peer, they basically say if you defeat our air force and navy, you win. 

[The_Capt]

Just now, Sequoia said:

@The_Capt, is the artillery usage chart for WWII Germans all fronts?

This is a re-push of a chart that was floating around here and elsewhere back last summer.  Not sure who actually did it but remembering the usage rates being reported in places like ISW it looks pretty accurate.  I believe these are for the Eastern Front - the Western Front did not really spark up until 1944 (after Jun 1940 of course).  It looks pretty Soviet versus Germans-centric.

What is stark is just how little shooting the UA did, but this matches the reported extreme precision the UA guns have demonstrated largely due to having eyes directly on the target. 

[domfluff]

On ISR as a force multiplier:

I generally think the term "force multiplier" itself is a bit suspect, because it presupposes reducing combat strength to a single value, and then affecting that value with modifiers, which is a gross simplification. A useful fiction, perhaps, but shrug.

As to the self-evident utility of ISR though, this (or any other enabler) were described by Clausewitz, in "Operating against a flank"
 

Quote

Before we enter into the subject, we must establish the simple principle, which must never be lost sight of afterwards in the consideration of the subject, that troops which are to act against the rear or flank of the enemy cannot be employed against his front, and that, therefore, whether it be in tactics or strategy, it is a completely false kind of notion to consider that coming on the rear of the enemy is at once an advantage in itself. In itself, it is as yet nothing; but it will become something in connection with other things, and something either advantageous or the reverse, according to the nature of these things, the examination of which now claims our attention.

 

Essentially, any enabler doesn't actually achieve anything by itself. I can put myself on your flank, but if I can't actually do anything with that, I'm not achieving anything. If I have perfect ISR, but no means to prosecute that, all I've learnt is exactly how screwed I am.