How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

It's claimed damaged missile corvette "Samum" (Bora-class), being hit by UKR naval drone or damaged by close explosion. As was reported resently she really has visible stern trim. 

Using of two tugboats is not a sign of damage, this is usual thing, when a ship enters to the harbor. 

Some people say this is normal for these class of ships, but I can't say anymore about this. Here is a photo of her sistership "Bora". It also has stern trim. "Bora" and "Samum" are both hovercraft catamarans, so damaging of one of two hulls is not so critical as for usual ship

Also here a satellite photo of Russian frigate "Admiral Makarov", being towed by two tugs in Sevastopol harbor. Some rumors it was also damaged in open sea on 14th of September, but no confirmation.  

 

Edited September 16, 2023 by Haiduk

[holoween]

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

 The role of the tank is becoming much narrower - currently a rapid, well protected indirect fire system.

And this is bigger than tanks.  We are not seeing a lot of IFV/AFV success either.  We do still see them in infantry support roles, however, they are also blunted.  The entire mechanized portfolio is currently getting compressed into a capability with a much narrower role.  

 

The role of a tank is direct fire. Its essentially a great sensor with a 0 time delay precision artillery attached. And ukraine and russia are using them in the direct fire role. If they werent they wouldnt be asking for tanks but spgs which do the whole indirect fire far better.

were also seeing successful use of even just mraps for assaults and for the charkiv offensive they have been essential in quickly taking lots of ground once the line had been broken.

 

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Tanks look to me like they are in the beginnings of a death spiral, particularly if we are talking long term attritional warfare.  They take too long to produce, and cost too much for what they are able to deliver right now.  As Steve notes, they are also being supplanted by a lot of other things that are a lot cheaper to manufacture.

”Well infantry are easy to kill and have not gone obsolete”.  Well 1) they are a lot cheaper than armour, 2) they are actually really hard to kill.  They may be soft squishy humans but they are like sand and get into everything.  Hard to find and fix, and extremely replaceable. 3) They are also nearly impossible to fully deny..see sand, and 4) they have not been supplanted, in fact they have been dramatically augmented with modern UAS and ATGMs.  

Tanks on the other hand are really expensive, getting more so just trying to keep them alive. East to spot…big lump of hot metal and ceramic. Easy to deny.  Hard to replace at scale.  And now they are being supplanted.  However, like a lot of military capabilities they will take some time to die.  On could argue that have been dying since the 80s but I am not so sure.  This war has definitely not been good news for amour or mech and everyone knows it.  In fact it has not been good news for manoeuvre warfare itself.

Now modern militaries have a couple choices: adapt or hang onto legacy capability for “reasons”.  We are really good at that last one.

Tanks have always taken heavy casualties in combat. But the alternative to using them has been firing artillery shells in such quantities that it wasnt sustainable with even the entire worlds production capacity dedicated to war and still taking infantry casualties at a rate unsustanable for most modern developed nations.

 

[Kinophile]

5 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

 As a side note, though no one reputable has ever told me so, I strongly suspect this is why muskets are so absurdly long by the 18th century (with the butt on the ground, the muzzle will reach up to your shoulder, and with the bayonet attached it will be about as tall or taller than you are). They are specifically designed to be a hybrid firearm/polearm. They are far longer than it makes any sense for a firearm to be, while being well short of the optimal length for a polearm. But they are about the perfect compromise length between a firearm and a polearm.

No one reputatable ever will,  because that's not why they were long. It's because they were smoothbore and need the barrel length for even the modicum of accuracy that they had.  Even then they're not that long. I've held and Fired muskets,  with the bayonet attached. They're a little unwieldy (more unbalanced than anything else) but perfectly workable. 

Rifles at Waterloo were shorter because the rifling reduced the need for a longer barrel (and as the rifling increased the cost a shorter barrel was conveniently cheaper). 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, holoween said:

 

So is ukraine does everything right.

What im interested in is what exactly causes their attacks to fail or succeed and how does it do that so i can draw conclusions on what needs to be done to be successful.

I wouldn’t say that.  However, they probably have a better sense of what works and what doesn’t right now as they have been a lot more up close and personal than we have.  I have seen too many posts and threads of “well why are they not just doing X” while completely ignoring the environment they are in.  The UA, and even the RA have been learning and evolving with this war often while the west sits on the sidelines and critiques.  

I am also interested in why they succeed or fail.  However, my starting position is not “Western doctrine equals success” as I think we have move to far away from fundamentals that underpinned that doctrine.

[Beleg85]

As to discussions regarding fate of Russian 72nd brigade:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1703048620398841934.html

[Haiduk]

14 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think this is an example of a Ukrainian PsyOp:

https://www.businessinsider.com/ukrainian-partisans-say-russian-serviceman-helped-plan-crimea-attack-2023-9

Basically, Ukrainian partisans are crediting "double agents" within Russia's Sevastopol workforce for aiding the attacks on the shipyard.  What info could workers give that Ukraine couldn't get from satellite images and a little sniffing around?  Nothing critical.  However, how much damage might Ukraine do by stoking Russian paranoia about intel leaks?  Oh, now that could be fun!  Maybe not as fun as Russian police shooting it up with Russian military levels of fun, but it could still be good.

Steve

UKR side claimed operation was successfull thanks to coordination of GUR agents and satellite info, SBU, SOF and aviation

Today an SOF Command made a statement, their small group (I suppose these were guys of 73rd Maritime Special Operations Center) sailed close to Sevastopol on RHIBs and infiltrated to the harbor under the water. They ajusted the fire and conducted visual control of strike results. Here is an article in English: https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/09/16/7420056/

I don't know how they could ajust Storm Shadows, but these guys uploaded short video how they look on fire from ther sea 

More about partisan actions - today ATESH resistance claimed their agent, serviceman of Russian army (likely Crimean) could put 10 kg IED near deployment of Russian troops on Henichesk outskirt. When two Russian trucks arrived and personnel disembarked, he activated IED - as result both trucks were damaged, Russian suffered losses among personnel

On the photo place of explosion marked by red circle

 

Edited September 16, 2023 by Haiduk

[Battlefront.com]

3 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

I don't know how they could ajust Storm Shadows, but these guys uploaded short video how they look on fire from ther sea 

They can't.  However, what observers on the ground can do is real time BDA which can then guide what happens next. Night time with smoke makes soldiers on the ground/water extremely valuable.  I suspect this is what they are talking about.

"Direct hit on Target A!  No need for follow up"

"Target B not struck!  Send follow up"

"Target C only slightly damaged!  If something is available, hit it again"

Very valuable so as not to waste valuable PGMs on things that have already been destroyed.  Also really good to prioritize remaining PGMs, especially because of interceptions.  If your lower priority targets were hit then you'd want to shift all remaining PGMs to high priority.  If your high priority targets got hit, then shift to medium priority and ignore low priority.  Etc., etc.

That sort of thing. 

Steve

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Fernando said:

Since horses have been used for war there has been a constant struggle for predominance between infantry and cavalry (and initially chariots) where on some occasions the infantry has predominated and on other occasions the cavalry has predominated. Infantry are slow, difficult to maneuver but usually very solid. Cavalry is much more mobile, easier to maneuver, and can have appreciable shock power that can be applied at the most favorable point.

Even in cases of clear predominance of one of the forces (in the case of infantry, the Macedonian Phalanxes, the Roman Legions, the Swiss pikemen or the Spanish Tercios; in the case of the Cavalry, the Byzantine and Persian Cataphracts, the medieval knights or the Mongolian cavalry) it has always been necessary for every army to have elements of the arm that do not predominate.

After the Second World War and the mechanization of modern armies, everything de facto became cavalry, that is, mobile, fast units with great shock and maneuver capabilities. Even the infantry became de facto dragons. For this reason, the traditional foot infantry had to rediscover the Phalanx, in this case exchanging the traditional pikes for all types of increasingly sophisticated anti-tank weaponry and tactics to minimize the advantages of the new and predominant "heavy cavalry" forces (armored units and mechanized infantry units, i.e. dragoons)

Even in the 16th century, when the Tercios of pikemen and harquebusiers, that is, the infantry, dominated the battlefield, light and heavy cavalry were necessary. Although tactics changed and adapted to each situation over time, the need for fast, shock units continued even today. Horses were used at the time, but as soon as something better became available (tanks, trucks, APCs, etc.), they became mechanized forces. That's why I don't think the tank or armored units are dead. They are the modern cavalry whose functions (shock, movement and maneuver) have never disappeared. Some of the means used may change (perhaps UGV), but there will still be what cavalry has functionally been for centuries, and even millennia.

And here comes the other point, I do not believe that the war in Ukraine is a preview of what World War III would be like. It seems more like the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) to me. Modern and cutting-edge weapons were used, but the SCW was not a preview of World War II. Everyone drew conclusions (the Germans for example  that tactical aviation was essential and that they did not really need specialized strategic air forces), but they were not necessarily always correct. And hence the surprise caused by the German Blitzkrieg. Few people expected it.

Russia may be acting with its traditional incompetence, and Putin's failure to use his traditional numbers advantage by not mobilizing may be misleading. Ukraine is unfortunately NOT NATO, nor does it have in any way the resources that NATO has. It lacks air and naval superiority, its doctrine is different (like the Russian one, it is an artillery army), it has more men only because Putin has not carried out a real mobilization yet, but in almost everything else it was or still is inferior. Western aid, the wear and tear suffered by the Russian incompetence and the Ucranian hard work, the lack of early mobilization of all Russian resources, and the use of new weapons such as drones, have allowed the gap between both armies to be closed, but Ukraine is somehow still fighting a poor man's war.

In my opinion, believing that a next war fought by NATO would be the same as the one being fought in Ukraine seems to me to be a mistake, and I think  that sometimes the analysis is being taken too far, generalizing what are sometimes particular cases, as sometimes happened in the case of the Spanish Civil War too.

Well modern day cavalry is looking a lot like UAS.  Everyone is getting all hot and bothered as to armour and whether this war is an anomaly or a preview.  All the while no one really takes about fundamental shifts.

The next war NATO fight in will be fundamentally different than what we planned for before.  It will likely have elements of this war but evolution of technology is happening very fast.  What we do know:

C4ISR has changed the game.  Battlefields are entirely illuminated and surprise is pretty much dead.  So is heavy hot mass, at least as far as being able to hide it.  This is not an opinion…it is physics.

Unmanned has changed the game.  Combining with ISR, unmanned systems are going to spread and expand in scope as quickly as they are able.  No military on earth after this war is going to try and go in without unmanned support.

Precision, reach and lethality.  Closely linked to the first two, the over the horizon capability of small (read hard to find) and deadly systems are going no where but upward.  

Ok, so what?  Well the other shoe to drop is Shield.  What can we do to better protect the force from these new realities?  This is going to happen, definitely in the short term.  We have far too much sunk cost in our existing systems to simply drop them and run.  Shield will buy time to pivot.  The challenge will be the fact that technology does not really help us here.  The ability to put little brains on things that can be taught to target is just too far ahead of any viable counters right now…and it is getting worse.

This war is no where near Spanish Civil War in impact.  That war did see modern AirPower come out of the closet and we drew a lot of wrong (and some right) conclusions.  The shifts being observed in this war are far more dramatic.  Further they are all pretty much extensions of previous trend we saw in other wars.  

That all said, there are a lot of unknowns.  For example, next wars might be even faster.  If someone can achieve ISR, unmanned and PGM superiority they will be able to cut through an opponent very quickly - neither side has been able to achieve that trifecta yet in this war.  AI has not made a full entry yet.  A lot of what we are seeing in this war is last generation.  Some of these systems are already being replaced. 

So, I agree, the next war NATO fights will not look exactly like Ukraine - it will probably be crazier and even further from what we recognize.  

[akd]

13 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

infiltrated to the harbor under the water

OMG, Ukrainians and dolphins in close-quarter combat at last.

[holoween]

36 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

No one reputatable ever will,  because that's not why they were long. It's because they were smoothbore and need the barrel length for even the modicum of accuracy that they had.  Even then they're not that long. I've held and Fired muskets,  with the bayonet attached. They're a little unwieldy (more unbalanced than anything else) but perfectly workable. 

Rifles at Waterloo were shorter because the rifling reduced the need for a longer barrel (and as the rifling increased the cost a shorter barrel was conveniently cheaper). 

The length of early muskets has a lot more to do with getting velocity out of bad powder and bad barrel matallurgy.

smoothbore barrels dont stabilize the round so they cant gaign accuracy and rifling already wirks with very short barles (an inch is enough). But early musktes with shorter barrels would have even less range or would need far more powder and would still be as heavy to withstand the pressure anyways.

 

[Haiduk]

3 minutes ago, akd said:

OMG, Ukrainians and dolphins in close-quarter combat at last.

Sharks more likely ) In Black Sea we have small sharks - katrans ) 

[The_Capt]

53 minutes ago, holoween said:

The role of a tank is direct fire. Its essentially a great sensor with a 0 time delay precision artillery attached. And ukraine and russia are using them in the direct fire role. If they werent they wouldnt be asking for tanks but spgs which do the whole indirect fire far better.

were also seeing successful use of even just mraps for assaults and for the charkiv offensive they have been essential in quickly taking lots of ground once the line had been broken.

 

Tanks have always taken heavy casualties in combat. But the alternative to using them has been firing artillery shells in such quantities that it wasnt sustainable with even the entire worlds production capacity dedicated to war and still taking infantry casualties at a rate unsustanable for most modern developed nations.

 

Dude, c’mon.  We know what tanks were for but nothing in this war aligns with our current doctrine.  Armour has largely been relegated to a fire support role, and noted as no small amount of “indirect fire support”.

The internet is filled with invest “tank-people” explaining and complaining right now but I have yet to hear a single coherent theory as to why armour has not worked as it should in this war.  In fact there is a long list of stuff that has not worked as it should in this war - airpower, cyber, and engineering are also on that list.

[holoween]

39 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I wouldn’t say that.  However, they probably have a better sense of what works and what doesn’t right now as they have been a lot more up close and personal than we have.  I have seen too many posts and threads of “well why are they not just doing X” while completely ignoring the environment they are in.  The UA, and even the RA have been learning and evolving with this war often while the west sits on the sidelines and critiques.  

I am also interested in why they succeed or fail.  However, my starting position is not “Western doctrine equals success” as I think we have move to far away from fundamentals that underpinned that doctrine.

Giving current NATO doctrine an honest reality check is absolutely essential. But taking it as a starting point seems entirely reasonable.

[cesmonkey]

39 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

I don't know how they could ajust Storm Shadows

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Shadow
 

Quote

Enhancements reported in 2005 included the capability to relay target information just before impact and usage of one-way (link back) data link to relay battle damage assessment information back to the host aircraft, under development under a French DGA contract. At the time in-flight re-targeting capability, using a two-way data link, was planned.[20]

 

[Haiduk]

Some news from Zaporizhzhia front

- Hanna Maliar claimed "partial success" near Novoprokpivka and Verbove. I can't say how is her words reliable, because her statements often were objects of criticism, but some OSINT observations show UKR troops have taken enemy position NW of Verbove

... and west from Robotyne toward Kopani

Unofficial TG of 46th air-assault brigade claims:

- UKR troops captured part of strongpoint north from Novoprokopivka. Russian sources also partially confirmed this - that UKR forces siezed eastern part of this strongpoint and now there are clashes for it western part on otehr side of road to Tokmak.

- Russians brought too many infantry to places, where UKR troops broke their first position of main line. Also Russians are withdrawing from minor positions (but fiercely fighting for important strongpoints), when they see they can't stand against UKR assault or arty strtikes, but UKR troops mostly can't take foothold on these positions because of intensive mortar, artillery, airstrikes and FPV/Lancet strikes. 

- despite on some success near Novoprokopivka and Verbove, heights near theses villages still under enemy control, so until they are taken, it will be too hard to capture these villages. 

Video of fight from 47th mech.brigade

 

According to infromation from 47th brigade, thier commander lt.colonel Oleksandr Sak, youngest brigade comamnder in UKR army was removed from duty colonel Oleksandr Pavliy was appointed to command. Recently he commanded by 112nd Territorial Defence brigade of Kyiv. In social networks some people say Sak was removed because he turned out not enough ready to complete so hard tasks, he made several mistakes and lost too many soldiers and value equipment. Other say all is other way round - Sak just was rejecting to acomplish endless "Go-go-go!" from "Tavria" Operative Grouping HQ (or maybe and higher) and didn't want to send soldiers in "meat attacks", so top-brass decided to remove obstinate comamnder. Maybe will be more information soon. Recently chief sergeant of brigade Valeriy Markus sharply criticize brigade command for their vision of brigade usage and was forced to leave the unit.  

[holoween]

6 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Dude, c’mon.  We know what tanks were for but nothing in this war aligns with our current doctrine.  Armour has largely been relegated to a fire support role, and noted as no small amount of “indirect fire support”.

The internet is filled with invest “tank-people” explaining and complaining right now but I have yet to hear a single coherent theory as to why armour has not worked as it should in this war.  In fact there is a long list of stuff that has not worked as it should in this war - airpower, cyber, and engineering are also on that list.

Sure tanks have been used as indirect fire support. But the continuous flow of video evidence of tanks used in the direct fire role supporting infantry, spearheading attacks and anchoring defenses is together with the fact that both sides specifically want tanks not just spgs is clear evidence they still very much have a role.

Tanks havent worked as effectively as expected for a variety of reasons.

- Tanks developed 40 years ago and last updated 20 years ago going up against current munitions

- An overall low training level

- Bad combined arms especially on the russian side

- Lack of short range air defense

 

That airpower hasnt worked as wed expect if NATO was involved also isnt exactly hard to explain.

- Both sides have fairly heavy air defenses

- Ukraine simply doesnt have many aircraft available

- Russia didnt really train and focus on SEAD which meant ukraines air defense stayed largely intact.

- So we have mutually denied airspace

 

 

[Fernando]

39 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Well modern day cavalry is looking a lot like UAS.  Everyone is getting all hot and bothered as to armour and whether this war is an anomaly or a preview.  All the while no one really takes about fundamental shifts.

The next war NATO fight in will be fundamentally different than what we planned for before.  It will likely have elements of this war but evolution of technology is happening very fast.  What we do know:

C4ISR has changed the game.  Battlefields are entirely illuminated and surprise is pretty much dead.  So is heavy hot mass, at least as far as being able to hide it.  This is not an opinion…it is physics.

Unmanned has changed the game.  Combining with ISR, unmanned systems are going to spread and expand in scope as quickly as they are able.  No military on earth after this war is going to try and go in without unmanned support.

Precision, reach and lethality.  Closely linked to the first two, the over the horizon capability of small (read hard to find) and deadly systems are going no where but upward.  

Ok, so what?  Well the other shoe to drop is Shield.  What can we do to better protect the force from these new realities?  This is going to happen, definitely in the short term.  We have far too much sunk cost in our existing systems to simply drop them and run.  Shield will buy time to pivot.  The challenge will be the fact that technology does not really help us here.  The ability to put little brains on things that can be taught to target is just too far ahead of any viable counters right now…and it is getting worse.

This war is no where near Spanish Civil War in impact.  That war did see modern AirPower come out of the closet and we drew a lot of wrong (and some right) conclusions.  The shifts being observed in this war are far more dramatic.  Further they are all pretty much extensions of previous trend we saw in other wars.  

That all said, there are a lot of unknowns.  For example, next wars might be even faster.  If someone can achieve ISR, unmanned and PGM superiority they will be able to cut through an opponent very quickly - neither side has been able to achieve that trifecta yet in this war.  AI has not made a full entry yet.  A lot of what we are seeing in this war is last generation.  Some of these systems are already being replaced. 

So, I agree, the next war NATO fights will not look exactly like Ukraine - it will probably be crazier and even further from what we recognize.  

I'm not sure that much has changed definitively. For example, the case of drones and satellites, which today seem to have put an end to any possibility of surprise, not only strategic, but also operational, and even tactical.

At the beginning of World War I, aviation played an incontestable role in eliminating strategic and operational surprise. It was observation planes that discovered the change in the advance route of Kluck's 1st Army, and the gap that formed between the German 1st and 2nd Armies. This made possible the Allied counteroffensive known as the Battle of the Marne.

At that time, airplanes flew practically at will, with no limitations other than their range, and it gave the impression that strategic and operational surprise was a thing of the past. But little by little, things changed. Some pilots began to arm themselves with pistols and rifles (they had already done so before the war and bombs had been dropped from an airplane during the Balkan wars and in December 1913 in Spanish Morocco), then a machine gun was mounted in the position of the observer, and finally fighters appeared, airplanes specialized in hunting other airplanes with machine guns synchronized through the propeller.

I have no doubt that the same will happen with drones, and perhaps also with satellites. Currently they are more capable and have much fewer obstacles to act than they will have in the future, as happened with observation planes, which in 1914 operated almost without opposition, but in 1918 they were forced to do so in a much more complicated situation. I am convinced that drones specialized in hunting other drones, bombing, electronic warfare and even other tasks such as assault engineers will be developed and will begin to appear. Under these conditions, it will be very difficult to operate with drones freely and it is very possible that one of the sides in a hypothetical war could achieve air superiority in drones, denying that capability to the enemy and facilitating the possibility of achieving strategic and operational surprise.

The action-reaction process is continuous and never ends.

I fully agree with your other points.

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, holoween said:

Sure tanks have been used as indirect fire support. But the continuous flow of video evidence of tanks used in the direct fire role supporting infantry, spearheading attacks and anchoring defenses is together with the fact that both sides specifically want tanks not just spgs is clear evidence they still very much have a role.

I agree that is what the evidence shows us about what's going on now.  However, NATO certainly didn't envision the tank's primary role as supporting platoon sized infantry attacks with 1-2 tanks that fire quickly and then bugger out as fast as they can before getting hit with something.

For the last 30-40 years the West has spent trillions on trying to make the only threat to a tank another tank.  In this war tanks rarely engage each other, from what we've read and seen in videos.  Yet tanks have been destroyed in the thousands.  This alone indicate that NATO's entire concept of the tank, not just its doctrine, needs to be thrown out.  Not overhauled, I mean tossed into the dustbin.

What is needed now is for the Pentagon to get a bunch of people like us into a room and talk about what we see as the future of combined arms tactical warfare.  Why a group like us?  Because we are both open minded and opinionated.  Based on past times of disruption it seems to me that a lot of the professionals paid to talk about this stuff are just opinionated

The discussion needs to start with examining tactics used in this and other recent (smaller, thankfully) wars.  Look at trends, figure out what is more-or-less universal and what is conflict specific.  That should provide a pretty solid base from which to design theoretical combined arms concepts.  From there, make some suggestions about what "blank slate" capabilities, using existing and near future technologies, would be needed to fulfill this new tactical doctrine.  Put it all together and game it out to see how it goes, adjust, try again, etc.  Then, and only then, talk about what is needed.  Maybe some form of tank survives all this rigor, though I doubt it.  Almost lastly, figure out what in the existing forces are no longer needed and how much cutting them results in financial savings.  Finally, take the savings from abandoning legacy systems and plow it into the replacements instead of trying to have those costs be on top of unnecessary legacy systems.  Cutting out one type of tank, aircraft, and ship would likely free up enough capital to fund redoing the entire military.

Although I am a huge proponent of unmanned ground, air, and sea vehicles displacing a lot of what is currently in use, I do not rule out the possibility that we'd see something like the AMX-10 RC "make the cut" while something like the Abrams getting chucked.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Another high profile push to get ATACMS off to Ukraine right away.  I am happy to see one of my Senators is part of this group:

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4208276-gop-senators-ask-biden-to-provide-ukraine-with-missiles-needed-to-win-war/

Steve

[Letter from Prague]

Learning the lesson is important. Not overlearning is also important.

From what I'm reading, it seems that this war is different because

• C4ISR / everything is fully illuminated
• Modern PGMs finally in use
• Drones that work like squad level PGMs and also input into that fully illuminated angle
• Endless minefields and other very thoroughly prepared defences
• Lack of decisive (=NATO style) air operations from either side

I agree that we're seeing "traditional maneuver warfare" fail - we saw it fail whenever Russian tried, we saw it work once on collapsed Russians around Kharkiv, and then we saw it fail few more times executed by both Russia and Ukraine.

But are the latest attempts by Ukraine not working because it is hitting very well prepared defences or is it because of drones or is it both?

And will the next war have similar conditions, or would the for example more dynamic battlefield (no millions of mines per square mile) or decisive air support make it work differently?

edit: it feels like this is not a war of manoeuvres but more of a series of sieges. Of course things work differently in a siege! But would every war from now on turn into series of sieges?

Wait I'm just restating the question of "is it defensive primacy now" in different words.

another edit: but in my brain what still makes most sense is that the thing that turned this into series of sieges is the thoroughly prepared defense and lack of effective air. But how would you know that.

Edited September 16, 2023 by Letter from Prague

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Well modern day cavalry is looking a lot like UAS.  Everyone is getting all hot and bothered as to armour and whether this war is an anomaly or a preview.  All the while no one really takes about fundamental shifts.

The next war NATO fight in will be fundamentally different than what we planned for before.  It will likely have elements of this war but evolution of technology is happening very fast.  What we do know:

C4ISR has changed the game.  Battlefields are entirely illuminated and surprise is pretty much dead.  So is heavy hot mass, at least as far as being able to hide it.  This is not an opinion…it is physics.

Unmanned has changed the game.  Combining with ISR, unmanned systems are going to spread and expand in scope as quickly as they are able.  No military on earth after this war is going to try and go in without unmanned support.

Precision, reach and lethality.  Closely linked to the first two, the over the horizon capability of small (read hard to find) and deadly systems are going no where but upward.  

Ok, so what?  Well the other shoe to drop is Shield.  What can we do to better protect the force from these new realities?  This is going to happen, definitely in the short term.  We have far too much sunk cost in our existing systems to simply drop them and run.  Shield will buy time to pivot.  The challenge will be the fact that technology does not really help us here.  The ability to put little brains on things that can be taught to target is just too far ahead of any viable counters right now…and it is getting worse.

This war is no where near Spanish Civil War in impact.  That war did see modern AirPower come out of the closet and we drew a lot of wrong (and some right) conclusions.  The shifts being observed in this war are far more dramatic.  Further they are all pretty much extensions of previous trend we saw in other wars.  

That all said, there are a lot of unknowns.  For example, next wars might be even faster.  If someone can achieve ISR, unmanned and PGM superiority they will be able to cut through an opponent very quickly - neither side has been able to achieve that trifecta yet in this war.  AI has not made a full entry yet.  A lot of what we are seeing in this war is last generation.  Some of these systems are already being replaced. 

So, I agree, the next war NATO fights will not look exactly like Ukraine - it will probably be crazier and even further from what we recognize.  

 

15 hours ago, kimbosbread said:

The depressing thing about powered armor and mechs is that the control systems and very likely machine learning necessary to synchronize all those muscles properly mean that you don’t actually need a pilot anymore, and the whole thing reverts to super lame smart mines that can walk around.

If we evolve to a super analog Dune-style world where computers are absolutely haram, hopefully we get mechs.

 

4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I agree that is what the evidence shows us about what's going on now.  However, NATO certainly didn't envision the tank's primary role as supporting platoon sized infantry attacks with 1-2 tanks that fire quickly and then bugger out as fast as they can before getting hit with something.

For the last 30-40 years the West has spent trillions on trying to make the only threat to a tank another tank.  In this war tanks rarely engage each other, from what we've read and seen in videos.  Yet tanks have been destroyed in the thousands.  This alone indicate that NATO's entire concept of the tank, not just its doctrine, needs to be thrown out.  Not overhauled, I mean tossed into the dustbin.

What is needed now is for the Pentagon to get a bunch of people like us into a room and talk about what we see as the future of combined arms tactical warfare.  Why a group like us?  Because we are both open minded and opinionated.  Based on past times of disruption it seems to me that a lot of the professionals paid to talk about this stuff are just opinionated

The discussion needs to start with examining tactics used in this and other recent (smaller, thankfully) wars.  Look at trends, figure out what is more-or-less universal and what is conflict specific.  That should provide a pretty solid base from which to design theoretical combined arms concepts.  From there, make some suggestions about what "blank slate" capabilities, using existing and near future technologies, would be needed to fulfill this new tactical doctrine.  Put it all together and game it out to see how it goes, adjust, try again, etc.  Then, and only then, talk about what is needed.  Maybe some form of tank survives all this rigor, though I doubt it.  Almost lastly, figure out what in the existing forces are no longer needed and how much cutting them results in financial savings.  Finally, take the savings from abandoning legacy systems and plow it into the replacements instead of trying to have those costs be on top of unnecessary legacy systems.  Cutting out one type of tank, aircraft, and ship would likely free up enough capital to fund redoing the entire military.

Although I am a huge proponent of unmanned ground, air, and sea vehicles displacing a lot of what is currently in use, I do not rule out the possibility that we'd see something like the AMX-10 RC "make the cut" while something like the Abrams getting chucked.

Steve

I agree with pretty much everything I quoted above. I just wanted to bring up the fact that the two most important technical questions going forward are the also the hardest to answer. The first question is how much communications bandwidth can you count on at various setbacks from the actual line of contact? And the second one, basically driven by how AI develops, is how much bandwidth do you need? Well, AI development and our willingness to use it. Different answers two these two questions produce radically different force structures. 

In particular, per Kimosbread's post, we may really need a certain number of humans at the leading edge, with all the effort it takes to keep them alive, or we may not need them at all. It all comes down to CAN the robots communicate, and do they HAVE to.

[Teufel]

2 hours ago, dan/california said:

There was a long post about this a month ago. Put on twitter by Constantine. I just can't seem to get back to it in the time I have to look. The thing I recall very specifically is that all of a certain Ukrainian unit's training had been for offense/assault, and that this was huge problem when they had to go on the defensive. The other thing that has been brought numerous times is that drones are omnipresent on the Ukrainian battlefield, and that western training has not caught up with this fact. In particular learning how not to be spotted by drones is EXTREMELY important.

Think you are referencing my post from Sept. 6th? You are welcome good Sir.

 

[kimbosbread]

16 minutes ago, Fernando said:

I am convinced that drones specialized in hunting other drones, bombing, electronic warfare and even other tasks such as assault engineers will be developed and will begin to appear. Under these conditions, it will be very difficult to operate with drones freely and it is very possible that one of the sides in a hypothetical war could achieve air superiority in drones, denying that capability to the enemy and facilitating the possibility of achieving strategic and operational surprise.

I’m less sure on anti-small-UAV capabilities. I think anti-radiation micro missile (also electric prop drone) is the best bet against human guided FPV and quads, but the it’s gonna be tough to detect the radio signal from the drone before you get hit. But if it’s autonomous, you have something that makes next to no noise, has almost no radar signature… how are you supposed to detect it???

15 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Although I am a huge proponent of unmanned ground, air, and sea vehicles displacing a lot of what is currently in use, I do not rule out the possibility that we'd see something like the AMX-10 RC "make the cut" while something like the Abrams getting chucked.

Agree that wanks like the AMX or Ratel or Centauro are much more likely to survive in terms of militaries buying them than 60+ ton monsters with armor that doesn’t stop the primary threats. But then why not have lesser-manned vehicles with only one or two humans on board, and the computer does all the rest of the work?

[Teufel]

Next time you think you seen it all, remind yourself - Russians are still in Ukraine. More videos like this to come.

 

[dan/california]

 

35 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

Agree that wanks like the AMX or Ratel or Centauro are much more likely to survive in terms of militaries buying them than 60+ ton monsters with armor that doesn’t stop the primary threats. But then why not have lesser-manned vehicles with only one or two humans on board, and the computer does all the rest of the work?

The U.S. Army agrees with this strongly enough to be buying a new light tank.

https://www.defensenews.com/news/your-army/2022/12/29/new-army-light-tank-under-construction/

Actual funded program, I think it is in at least low rate production. They basically put the Abrams fire control system in a half size package with a 105mm gun.

Both of these videos are worth the time.

Edited September 16, 2023 by dan/california