How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[FlemFire]

16 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Dude does love the sound of his own voice.  Goes on & on & on saying something-ish, I guess.  (not you, fireship4 the other guy).  but hey, he knew what was going to happen so clearly enjoys the gift of prophesy and feels compelled to share his great gifts of knowledge, both past & future, with us.

 

You're right. I'm joining you guys. After analyzing the results, here's my assessment:

 

I'm not entirely sure why the attacks didn't work, but I'm putting it together. Every attack throughout the entire static warfare stage of this conflict has either failed or been completed with immense casualties, even those attacks which were not entirely expected, but this one was supposed to be different. Because it was supposed to be. Your Russian cannon fodder should not have been able to hold those lines with the force density we saw (was I in the intel room looking at the sat maps? No, but the stupid Russians didn't know we had their force arrangements on Fox/CNN).  We are talking conscripts facing US C4ISR and modern weaponry.  Real Terminator stuff vs. their rusted weaponry and rustic mindsets.  I know we're into a new kind of war with 1.5 years of analysis on this subject but standard pre-war doctrine from 40-years ago says it takes a 1000 troops to hold a km.

 

RA was doing it with 300 troops (from the Russia report from Sep, which I now trust for this specific purpose).  Tossing away rotations -because Russia (lol just because, you know, because)- that means they had about a company per km with maybe a bit of depth and no reserves (per Russia, and my own media).  I don't know how all the crucial geographic spots got blanketed in craters, but I do know that they had very limited support.  Basically 150 guys (lost 150 just because) with drones and ATGMs.  A few tanks to pull up for sniping. And AH. These things -- drones, ATGMs, tanks, air support -- I'm going to dedicate no more than 15 words to as they're not that important to the results of the battle. And they do all this with conscripts?!  While being hammered by western modern artillery, deep strike and UAS, no don't ask me how said assets are moved forward and can be protected in staging when Russian assets are just sitting in defense waiting for them. They were there and they were firing on all cylinders. About the only thing the RA had was EW and that was not airtight. The ONLY thing they had was EW. Per new military doctrine, it appears EW is the queen of the battlefield.

 

I'll report back with more findings later. The point is, the Russians are not to be respected. Respecting your enemy is for losers. You strawman them so that they are super easy to burn on the battlefield. Pretty sure Sun Tzu said that in some book.

[fry30]

Ironic that you, of all people, are now using the term strawman. 

[FlemFire]

20 minutes ago, fry30 said:

Ironic that you, of all people, are now using the term strawman. 

I'd never strawman. Just not conducive to conversation. However, if I didn't want to have a conversation I have a few strawmen I lean on, like MAGA, far-right, soothsayer, conspiracy theorist, etc., as I can favorably bring these up regardless of content. You might wonder, what does a former President's marketing label have to do with a war in eastern Europe? If you have to ask, you're thinking too hard. Just deploy it and go.

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, FlemFire said:

You missed air support and artillery supremacy of any kind. Those are, in fact, extremely significant which begs the question as to how they could be 'missed' at all.

Yeah, except none of us here (including me) missed either of those.  They were taken into consideration and, as I am saying for the 100th time, Ukraine achieved much of what I thought they would.  It's just the breakthrough didn't happen because, frankly, they ran out of manpower.

Russia's air superiority was a minor factor in the summer battles overall.  It played a crucial role in the mashing of the 47th Mech Brigade's attacks, for sure, but I don't consider it decisive in any way.  At most it was an "insurance policy".

As for Russia's supposed artillery superiority, it wasn't evident in the south.  Many sources, on both sides, attest to the fact that Ukraine had artillery dominance for the first half of the campaign at a minimum.  Then it started to run out of munitions around the same time Russia got restocked from North Korea.

3 hours ago, FlemFire said:

I said back in January that Ukraine needs to operate a loose defense and let Russia invite itself in. The point would be to inflict losses not to "corrode" but to shock Russian sensibilities via major losses, frankly the only remotely possible avenue for a military route to victory and even then it is only to leverage Russia's internal socio-economic stability against it. For some reason, people said I was nuts and that Ukraine had this in the bag.

Russia lost vast amounts of manpower and equipment defending tooth and nail.  It did not break Russia.  The subsequent slaughter of Russian forces in Avdiivka and left bank of the Dnepr didn't do it either.  And as I just said, they have managed to replace them almost as fast as they were losing them without any short term negatives within Russia.  So no, I don't think you were even remotely correct.

On the political level, Ukraine had to try something offensive in 2023.  The public (Ukraine and abroad) is fickle and they would have seen sitting around Bakhmut style as they did with, well, Bakhmut.  That's because the public does not understand warfare.  This gets to a point The_Capt has made multiple times about the "West has gone soft".

So, if Ukraine had sat still it might (just might, not definitely) have been in a better military position now than it currently is.  But I'm not so sure of that, but I am sure politically it would be in a bad place.  Maybe worse than now, impossible to say.

Steve

 

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I am not sure that Russian force generation was the defining factor. 

The more we discuss this, the more convinced I am that Russian manpower replacement was the decisive factor.

The troop density of wars' past needs to be taken into consideration of the major differences in this war:

1. PGMs and ISR.  As bad as the Russians might be, they knew where Ukraine was and what it was up to.  This means you don't have to be everywhere, you just have to be in the right spot.

2. Russia's minefields were OFF THE CHARTS in terms of density and depth.  Orders of magnitude.  Whatever doctrine or past wars of maneuver we might point to, they come up short of explaining how to deal with what the Russians had.

3. Maneuver warfare has some outdated methodology baked into it, all of which was impractical for this situation:

   1. If it's too tough, go around.  Russia's defenses were unbroken, therefore there was no going around.

   2. If you can't go around, apply more mass.  As we have discussed endlessly, more mass doesn't have the same effect it once had.

   3. If you can't go around and applying more mass doesn't work, try again until it does.  And here is where we get into Russia's replacement capabilities

If Russia had 300 men per KM of front, and doctrine says you need 1000, ask the question what are the assumptions of that 1000 man force.  The assumption is you need 1000 men because you need something left over after losing 300.  Russia did exactly this, but in waves.  It would put 300 into the front, Ukraine would kill it, then as it went to move it would find another 300 crammed into that sector of front.  It would then kill those, advance a little bit until it ran into another 300.

This means that Russia, in fact, had troop densities well over 1000 in the places where it mattered.  Just not all at once.  But it didn't need to because Ukraine's maneuver options were highly constrained and the depths of the defenses deep. Russia was able to ensure that every time Ukraine woke up in the morning and went into the field that there were 300 men in trenches and bunkers facing them.

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

We can’t even blame the UA.  They are about as highly trained and equipped as we could make em.  They held off the RA and collapsed last year with less.  So I still do not know what is it.  UAS + mines + standoff weapons?  C4ISR integration.  Or maybe as you say, it was a far closer run race than we saw.  

None of that would have mattered if Russia ran out of bodies.  But with a seemingly endless supply of bodies and no concerns about equipment losses, Ukraine was unable to leverage any advantages it had because there was always a treeline to fight through.

Proof of this were reports from the front, especially in Robotyne.  Sources from both sides agreed that Russian counter attacks were as fierce as they were wasteful.  We also heard from Ukrainian sources that it was impossible for them to move forward because every they tried some meat assault smashed into them.  Sure, they killed almost everybody that came at them, but it physically wore Ukraine out.  Men got tired, ammo had to be replaced, vehicles had to be repaired, casualties had to be replaced.

We saw this in Bakhmut as well.  Wagner's meat assaults did exactly the same thing.  We can even say we saw it in Mariupol and Sievierodonetsk too.

This is why I say the reason my expectations for Ukraine's counter-offensive fell short is because baked into my calculations was Russia running out of forces.  It did not, despite all indications that it should have.  If we go back and look at my comments in July and August I'm sure there's a couple dozen times where I said "I don't understand where they are coming from".  Now we know and it does not bode well for the near term future of this war.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, FlemFire said:

RA was doing it with 300 troops

As I said above, they didn't.  They might have had densities in the low 1000s in the places that mattered.  Not all at once, but that's the fatal flaw in maneuver warfare... it doesn't matter what the starting density is if the enemy is able to replace what it loses faster than you can take ground.

3 hours ago, FlemFire said:

The ONLY thing they had was EW. Per new military doctrine, it appears EW is the queen of the battlefield.

No.  Ukraine managed to zap Russian armor, EW, AD, and above all artillery in massive quantities throughout the summer portion of the battles.  EW might have made it more difficult, but the confirmed kill counts Ukraine racked up clearly indicate it didn't have much of an impact.  At the end of the counter-offensive Ukraine was running out of shells not targets.

Steve

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

If Russia had 300 men per KM of front, and doctrine says you need 1000, ask the question what are the assumptions of that 1000 man force.  The assumption is you need 1000 men because you need something left over after losing 300.  Russia did exactly this, but in waves.  It would put 300 into the front, Ukraine would kill it, then as it went to move it would find another 300 crammed into that sector of front.  It would then kill those, advance a little bit until it ran into another 300.

This means that Russia, in fact, had troop densities well over 1000 in the places where it mattered.  Just not all at once.  But it didn't need to because Ukraine's maneuver options were highly constrained and the depths of the defenses deep. Russia was able to ensure that every time Ukraine woke up in the morning and went into the field that there were 300 men in trenches and bunkers facing them.

This is the part where I am skeptical.  The RA had never demonstrated this level of logistical nuance, let alone C4ISR to back it up.  They would need to move those reinforcing waves faster than the UA could reposition to attack.  To synchronize and project with that modularity at a higher tempo than the UA the RA would have had to improve both its C4ISR and logistics considerably and there is little evidence of this.

It was the fact that very few troops could deny a frontage - especially a mined one - that blunted the UA offensive.  Of course having more conscripts to stuff into the front was important but less so than the fact that with the limited ISR and PGM that the RA had it was enough to stop mechanized forces cold.

If your theory is true, then it would be possible for the UA to stack offensive waves in pulses and out tempo RA reinforcements, which is pretty much what looked like it tried to do.  But they cannot mass enough to overcome the 300, and the RA put 300 everywhere - the cost of defence bottomed out.

In fact it is that defence-cost collapse that even allows Russia to sustain troop strengths without massive mobilization.  Apparently a few poorly trained conscripts are able to hold a frontage against mech assaults, so long as they have UAS and ATGMs.  And the odd tank or helicopter.  In some instances they are likely able to hold a km with a platoon under those conditions.  

The only place we have seen the reinforcement waves has been in RA attacks, which kinda matches what we would expect from their logistics - keep shoving troops into one location.  In fact if RA logistics was that synchronized and agile we should be seeing attacks all over the place and rapid reinforcement of any success.  Instead we see the same frontals in a few locations - Bakhmut 2.0.

 

[The_Capt]

10 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

As I said above, they didn't.  They might have had densities in the low 1000s in the places that mattered.  Not all at once, but that's the fatal flaw in maneuver warfare... it doesn't matter what the starting density is if the enemy is able to replace what it loses faster than you can take ground.

That sounds more like a flaw in attrition warfare to be honest.  The fatal flaw in manoeuvre warfare is that is assumes one can achieve higher tempo by positioning.  When facing no manoeuvre room one’s tempo is restricted.  One has to then swing to fires tempo - which kinda sounds like corrosive warfare: hit them faster than they can recover.

13 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

No.  Ukraine managed to zap Russian armor, EW, AD, and above all artillery in massive quantities throughout the summer portion of the battles.  EW might have made it more difficult, but the confirmed kill counts Ukraine racked up clearly indicate it didn't have much of an impact.  At the end of the counter-offensive Ukraine was running out of shells not targets.

Now this does bring up a good point.  How long can the RA sustain losses of the high end capability?  Stuffing 300 conscripts into trenches is one thing.  Replacing a summers worth of AD, EW and guns is something else.  There has to be a qualitative breaking point in there somewhere. These systems take significant resources to manufacture and train competent crews on - not all blood has the same value.

[Battlefront.com]

38 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

This is the part where I am skeptical.  The RA had never demonstrated this level of logistical nuance, let alone C4ISR to back it up.  They would need to move those reinforcing waves faster than the UA could reposition to attack.  To synchronize and project with that modularity at a higher tempo than the UA the RA would have had to improve both its C4ISR and logistics considerably and there is little evidence of this.

It was the fact that very few troops could deny a frontage - especially a mined one - that blunted the UA offensive.  Of course having more conscripts to stuff into the front was important but less so than the fact that with the limited ISR and PGM that the RA had it was enough to stop mechanized forces cold.

It doesn't take much logistics to truck a bunch of infantry and dump them into trenches that were already outfitted with at least some ammo.  And it takes almost no ISR to know where Ukraine was because they weren't able to do more than make limited gains before they ran into yet more defenses.  In other words, Ukraine wasn't moving fast enough to cause stress on either Russia's logistics or ISR to the point of it producing tangible effects on the ground.  At least not of an operational nature.

38 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

If your theory is true, then it would be possible for the UA to stack offensive waves in pulses and out tempo RA reinforcements, which is pretty much what looked like it tried to do.  But they cannot mass enough to overcome the 300, and the RA put 300 everywhere - the cost of defence bottomed out.

Exactly.  This gets at our "mass is dead" conversation.  Ukraine found it didn't have enough force in a given sector at a given time to both negotiation the minefields and PGMs while also dealing with heavy entrenched infantry.  By they time they slogged through the defenses and were in the midst of the infantry, Russia was bringing up another batch to man the next line.  Or as it happened in several locations, such as Robotyne, launch counter attacks.

The idea that the answer to this is to apply "more mass" has been proven flawed throughout this war.  All more mass does is produce higher friendly casualties disproportionate to their impact on the battle.  Russia can do this, Ukraine can not.

38 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

In fact it is that defence-cost collapse that even allows Russia to sustain troop strengths without massive mobilization.  Apparently a few poorly trained conscripts are able to hold a frontage against mech assaults, so long as they have UAS and ATGMs.  And the odd tank or helicopter.  In some instances they are likely able to hold a km with a platoon under those conditions. 

Yes, and let's talk about logistics.  The infantry units they used in the south, and elsewhere, are basically solid infantry.  The logistics to support them are whatever is already in place for that sector of front.  The infantry come with whatever they can carry, MAYBE they get something from the local stores before moving forward, MAYBE they get something after they are engaged in combat.  Either way, they are in the front and Ukraine has to root them out one by one.

This system is wasteful of Human life, but we've seen nobody on the Russian side seems to care.  Even the Russian soldiers dying because of this.  They post "appeals" videos *after* they were slaughtered and then they go off to be slaughtered again.  A Russian soldier in a trench with limited ammo still slows things down and consumes limited resources.

38 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

The only place we have seen the reinforcement waves has been in RA attacks, which kinda matches what we would expect from their logistics - keep shoving troops into one location.  In fact if RA logistics was that synchronized and agile we should be seeing attacks all over the place and rapid reinforcement of any success.  Instead we see the same frontals in a few locations - Bakhmut 2.0.

 

See above.  It's neither synchronized nor agile.  And quite a bit of the time it's not even doing the basic functions we'd expect of it.  But it does enough to get what Russia expects of it, which is to overwhelm Ukraine's ability to sustain operations (either offensive or defensive).

We really do have to think about logistics differently for the Russian side.  They can do a lot more with a lot less because their cannon fodder is OK with it.

Steve

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

We really do have to think about logistics differently for the Russian side.  They can do a lot more with a lot less because their cannon fodder is OK with it.

The mobiks seem to understand they are completely expendable, and just be ok with it. Todays tape of two fully loaded AFVs driving past six OTHER dead Russian AFVs to get whacked within fifty yards of the same spot is exhibit A. And i fully expect there to be tape of a third batch dying in the same kill zone next week. I mean there is a Ukrainian mortar team that just leaves a tube zeroed on that spot, so they can drop death on it with thirty seconds notice. But the mobiks are so beat down from a hundred generations of abuse they would rather die that way, than shoot their officers and surrender. Ukraine may have to kill another half a million of them to get the point across. We need to be sure they have the tech, and the ammo, to do that with the lowest possible casualties.

Edited December 18, 2023 by dan/california

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/17/2212145/-Ukraine-Update-The-Battle-of-Avdiivka-is-showing-both-Ukraine-s-greatest-strengths-and-weaknesses?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_4&pm_medium=web

The Battle of Avdiivka is demonstrating the decisive advantage that Ukraine now wields in critical battles with Russia… but also the limits of that advantage. 

In short, Ukraine has been able to establish drone superiority in key strategic sectors, particularly at Krynky in southern Ukraine, and at Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.  But Ukraine can’t extend those capabilities across the entire massive front line, thus ceding the drone advantage to Russia in other areas.

 

 I think this article is at least directionally correct. Ukraine can't get a big enough advantage in enough places at once to break the Russian system. We need to help them fix that.

Edited December 18, 2023 by dan/california

[LongLeftFlank]

Well evidently somebody thinks moar mech is the key to breaking the deadlock 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/12/07/ukraine-is-forming-five-new-mechanized-brigades-now-they-need-vehicles/?sh=3bff7d502f70

The Ukrainian army is forming five new mechanized brigades. On paper, the 150th, 151st, 152nd, 153rd and 154th Mechanized Brigades represent a significant force—a five-percent expansion of the Ukrainian ground forces....

The brigades reportedly are drawing their cadres of experienced officers and non-commissioned officers from existing brigades, while filling out their 2,000 or so other billets with new recruits.

In practice, the Ukrainians seem to appreciate that brigades lose fighting vehicles fast while in combat, and need access to ample stocks of replacement vehicles.

 

[Tux]

I wonder whether another factor behind the UA's 'difficult summer' was a kind of doctrinal disorientation suffered by the military leadership?

Ukraine successfully defeated the initial invasion force through more-or-less ad hoc corrosive warfare tactics: distributed light infantry with modern ATGMs, shop-bought Mavics and a hotline to artillery backup.  The tactics used seem to have been largely improvised due to the fact the UA was caught off-balance and massively outnumbered by the invading force.  The forces which achieved such success included a relatively large proportion of TD units which, in theory at least, were not really supposed to be that effective but had done their jobs when the chips were down.

After the first phase was over the UA was still not properly on its feet and so it dug in and kind of leaned into the same tactics; trying to absorb Russian attacks with mostly light infantry and an increasing number of artillery PGMs allowing their gun park to perform effectively despite overall limited ammunition stocks.  In one major instance this undermined Russian operational systems to the point that they totally collapsed around Kharkiv.  Around Kherson, where Russian defence was perhaps a little more deliberate, it sorta kinda worked to the point that the UA reached the Dniepr but I think we all identified at the time that things hadn't gone quite as neatly as may have been expected, given what probably should have been the critically vulnerable nature of Russian logistics across the river.

During the Bakhmut phase it feels like the UA may have lost a little more faith in the 'corrosive warfare' operational method (perhaps the Kherson experience contributed to this?).  I may be misremembering but isn't this about the time we were reading accounts of Ukrainian TD units kicking off and maybe occasionally abandoning frontline positions in protest at their apparent newfound status as line infantry?  I wonder whether that, combined with a degree of horrified awe at the power of Russia's artillery ever since Severodonetsk, may have worked to persuade the UA's leadership that distributed mass had been a successful means to an end but that, given the choice and their own training, soviet-style world-ending application of force was the thing to aim for.

We should also remember that, throughout this period, a very hot topic was Ukraine's repeated and insistent requests for tanks.  Lots of tanks.  As many tanks as allies could spare and especially some of those shiny, modern, western MBTs, please.  Even at the time I remember wondering why.  I think I might even have posted on this thread that 'maybe it's misinformation to scare mobiks and really what they want is drones, shells, SAMs and access to more C4ISR'.  Is this more evidence that, at a senior level, the UA hadn't actually learned all the lessons we were crediting it with having taught us?

In addition to all that, Ukrainian servicemen were being carted across Europe to undergo NATO standard training.  We've heard various accounts of how such training was ignorant of the realities of the war as it was being fought, so this effectively ended up as a third doctrinal flavour (and a flawed one, in the minds of at least some UA soldiers who went through it), somehow operating in parallel with the UA's soviet institutional heritage and its recent, bleeding edge experience.

So then came the summer offensive.  Well before it started there seems to be evidence to suggest that there was overt disagreement between the UA and western advisers with regards to what that offensive should look like both in terms of scale/breadth and tactics used (although I haven't seen any suggestion that either side were advocating a continuation of corrosive warfare tactics - how curious).  In the end it seems like Ukraine implemented western tactics with western equipment and (very) freshly western-trained units until they got a bloody nose and not much longer.  Now, I'm not saying these tactics would have worked if they tried harder but they only tried for, what, a couple of weeks?  Then they reverted very quickly to what looked like an uneasy, almost incongruous marriage of drones/PGMs with regular, more traditionally soviet-style blunt attacks.  At this point they were trying to attack everywhere despite not really having the numbers to be able to do that and properly reinforce success wherever it may be close.  Our very own Haiduk was often telling us of complaints about various levels of UA leadership and their dogmatic adherence to wasteful frontal attacks.  All of the above suggests a horrible lack of unity within the UA in terms of how and where things were being done versus how and where they should be done.

So, the Ukrainian military leadership was caught organising a full-scale offensive while having to consider:

1. Should they lean hard into western tactics and doctrine, which none of them were trained in and only a few of their (admittedly near best-equipped) tactical units were partly trained in?
2. Should they take advantage of the fact they have caught their balance after the first year, they have secured fresh supplies of ammunition and equipment and the Russians are on the defensive in order to implement a proper, full-blooded soviet-style assault in the way they were always trained to?  Even though such theory isn't really intended to carry the day against an enemy with numerical and potentially materiel superiority?
3. Should they discard both doctrinal frameworks in favour of what has worked so far, even though absolutely no-one is trained in that; they only did it because they couldn't do much else; it might only have worked because the Russians were so over-stretched and disorganised; perhaps they should step away from using TD units and towards 'real' combat units, now; and who's in charge here anyway, comrade General or that mouthy wannabe-NCO who won't stop carping on about reconnaisance and toy planes?

Is it any wonder they ended up kind of doing all three at various times and places?

tl;dr: is there a case to be made that, rather than the fact the tactics were imperfect (and who could blame them for that in the current environment?), it was the fundamental uncertainty and consequent indecision in the minds of UA leadership itself which shaved those critical percentage points of speed and effectiveness away such that the offensive appears to have stretched the RA but did not break it?

P.S. I promise I will work on structuring my thoughts more succinctly in future, when I have time.

[Carolus]

4 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Well evidently somebody thinks moar mech is the key to breaking the deadlock 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/12/07/ukraine-is-forming-five-new-mechanized-brigades-now-they-need-vehicles/?sh=3bff7d502f70

The Ukrainian army is forming five new mechanized brigades. On paper, the 150th, 151st, 152nd, 153rd and 154th Mechanized Brigades represent a significant force—a five-percent expansion of the Ukrainian ground forces....

The brigades reportedly are drawing their cadres of experienced officers and non-commissioned officers from existing brigades, while filling out their 2,000 or so other billets with new recruits.

In practice, the Ukrainians seem to appreciate that brigades lose fighting vehicles fast while in combat, and need access to ample stocks of replacement vehicles.

 

Isn't "Mechanized" just a bit of a formality at this point?

The Ukrainian air assault troops haven't seen the inside of an airplane in years, either. 

I don't think Ukraine has the vehicle pool to fully equip these formations, but force generation and creating reserves is important so that rotations in the trenches become possible, which means they'd just need some sort of battle taxi to get to and from positions.

Also hoping that as many of these officers are not "old-school" as possible, like Hajduk unfortunately described so many still are. 

Edited December 18, 2023 by Carolus
typo

[Zeleban]

49 minutes ago, Carolus said:

Also hoping that as many of these officers are not "old-school" as possible, like Hajduck unfortunately described so many still are. 

Much worse. Many new Ukrainian officers are so-called "jackets" - this is the name regular Soviet officers gave to reserve officers - ordinary citizens who graduated from a civilian higher educational institution with a military department at that university. For example, at the law school where my friend studied there may be an artillery department that trained artillery platoon commanders. The preparation was very minimal (a friend told me that they had an 85 mm D-44 cannon as a training tool).

Before the war, institutes with a military department were super popular, because they made it possible to avoid conscription. You calmly graduated from university, after which you automatically became a junior lieutenant in the reserves. Then no one thought that war would happen and that he would have to become a real officer.

The disparaging nickname “jackets” was given to these people by real regular officers of the Soviet army. Because these so-called officers came to military training in civilian clothes. They didn't even have military uniforms. Due to their extremely poor training and virtual uselessness, the attitude towards such officers was very dismissive (we are not members of the same family).

Today, such officers command platoons and even companies in the Ukrainian (and also in Russian) army. To be fair, I can say that not all “jackets” are bad officers. Just like not all regular officers are “good” officers. Everything depends heavily on a person’s motivation and desire for self-development.

Edited December 18, 2023 by Zeleban

[OBJ]

Sorry, just trying to synthesize/wrap my head around what everyone has said above in the last ~6 hours, through Zeleban at 07:50 EST, about the UA counter offensive and why it failed. I think I hear everyone saying what follows. I am confident all of you will point out what I missed or got wrong:

1. UA early war experience and successful practices were either not applicable or not applied to the UA 2023 offensive.
2. The UA pause in late 2022 offensive operations to receive and train on a piddling hodgepodge of different complex western mechanized systems gave RU time to consolidate and prepare defenses in depth.
3. When UA did attack, they did not concentrate their effort according to western doctrine, quickly took losses UA judged to be unsustainable, transitioned to trying to find ways to breakthrough with most emphasis on how to breach very high density RU minefields, and to date have not found operational practices that would allow them to penetrate to the depth of the RU defenses
4. Both sides have leveraged the ubiquitous presence of cheap drones to reveal maneuver to enable effective counters.   
5. The ubiquitous presence both ISR and attack drones, given the length of the front and density of forces, has resulted in stalemate significantly favoring the defender.
6. RU defensive practices have included low manpower density coverage, 'waves' of defenders being sent forward to replenish losses and high casualty local counter attacks.
7. UA has been able to convert RU tactics into high RU losses.
8. RU has much greater manpower resources than UA and given RU social and military cultures will win a protracted war of attrition.

Put all this together I get an uneasy feeling it's appearing more likely RU maybe left in place to consolidate what they have taken, reconstitute their forces, and resume their aggression in the next year, or two, or three, with the loss of Western political will being a, if not the, deciding factor.

Edited December 18, 2023 by OBJ

[OBJ]

And there is this, to the issue of clearing minefields to a depth of 20km, 02Nov23 article, UA CINC, Valerii Zaluzhnyway. As always apologies if this is a duplicate.

Apparently amount and capability of equipment UA had was insufficient given depths of mine fields and RU ability to quickly reseed cleared lanes/areas with FASCAM. He does offer ideas on what they do need, new kinds of technology, "We need radar-like sensors that use invisible pulses of light to detect mines in the ground and smoke-projection systems to conceal the activities of our de-mining units," "We can use jet engines from decommissioned aircraft, water cannons or cluster munitions to breach mine barriers without digging into the ground. New types of tunnel excavators, such as a robot which uses plasma torches to bore tunnels, can also help.'

I don't have the knowledge needed to know if these systems exist or are in development, or what stage if the latter.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-iron-general-west-mine-clearing-equipment-insufficient-russia-war-2023-11

Per the article, "In July, Ukrainian military officials told The Washington Post that Western-supplied de-mining equipment was slow, noisy, and could easily be destroyed by Russian forces."

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Tux said:

I wonder whether another factor behind the UA's 'difficult summer' was a kind of doctrinal disorientation suffered by the military leadership?

Ukraine successfully defeated the initial invasion force through more-or-less ad hoc corrosive warfare tactics: distributed light infantry with modern ATGMs, shop-bought Mavics and a hotline to artillery backup.  The tactics used seem to have been largely improvised due to the fact the UA was caught off-balance and massively outnumbered by the invading force.  The forces which achieved such success included a relatively large proportion of TD units which, in theory at least, were not really supposed to be that effective but had done their jobs when the chips were down.

After the first phase was over the UA was still not properly on its feet and so it dug in and kind of leaned into the same tactics; trying to absorb Russian attacks with mostly light infantry and an increasing number of artillery PGMs allowing their gun park to perform effectively despite overall limited ammunition stocks.  In one major instance this undermined Russian operational systems to the point that they totally collapsed around Kharkiv.  Around Kherson, where Russian defence was perhaps a little more deliberate, it sorta kinda worked to the point that the UA reached the Dniepr but I think we all identified at the time that things hadn't gone quite as neatly as may have been expected, given what probably should have been the critically vulnerable nature of Russian logistics across the river.

During the Bakhmut phase it feels like the UA may have lost a little more faith in the 'corrosive warfare' operational method (perhaps the Kherson experience contributed to this?).  I may be misremembering but isn't this about the time we were reading accounts of Ukrainian TD units kicking off and maybe occasionally abandoning frontline positions in protest at their apparent newfound status as line infantry?  I wonder whether that, combined with a degree of horrified awe at the power of Russia's artillery ever since Severodonetsk, may have worked to persuade the UA's leadership that distributed mass had been a successful means to an end but that, given the choice and their own training, soviet-style world-ending application of force was the thing to aim for.

We should also remember that, throughout this period, a very hot topic was Ukraine's repeated and insistent requests for tanks.  Lots of tanks.  As many tanks as allies could spare and especially some of those shiny, modern, western MBTs, please.  Even at the time I remember wondering why.  I think I might even have posted on this thread that 'maybe it's misinformation to scare mobiks and really what they want is drones, shells, SAMs and access to more C4ISR'.  Is this more evidence that, at a senior level, the UA hadn't actually learned all the lessons we were crediting it with having taught us?

In addition to all that, Ukrainian servicemen were being carted across Europe to undergo NATO standard training.  We've heard various accounts of how such training was ignorant of the realities of the war as it was being fought, so this effectively ended up as a third doctrinal flavour (and a flawed one, in the minds of at least some UA soldiers who went through it), somehow operating in parallel with the UA's soviet institutional heritage and its recent, bleeding edge experience.

So then came the summer offensive.  Well before it started there seems to be evidence to suggest that there was overt disagreement between the UA and western advisers with regards to what that offensive should look like both in terms of scale/breadth and tactics used (although I haven't seen any suggestion that either side were advocating a continuation of corrosive warfare tactics - how curious).  In the end it seems like Ukraine implemented western tactics with western equipment and (very) freshly western-trained units until they got a bloody nose and not much longer.  Now, I'm not saying these tactics would have worked if they tried harder but they only tried for, what, a couple of weeks?  Then they reverted very quickly to what looked like an uneasy, almost incongruous marriage of drones/PGMs with regular, more traditionally soviet-style blunt attacks.  At this point they were trying to attack everywhere despite not really having the numbers to be able to do that and properly reinforce success wherever it may be close.  Our very own Haiduk was often telling us of complaints about various levels of UA leadership and their dogmatic adherence to wasteful frontal attacks.  All of the above suggests a horrible lack of unity within the UA in terms of how and where things were being done versus how and where they should be done.

So, the Ukrainian military leadership was caught organising a full-scale offensive while having to consider:

1. Should they lean hard into western tactics and doctrine, which none of them were trained in and only a few of their (admittedly near best-equipped) tactical units were partly trained in?
2. Should they take advantage of the fact they have caught their balance after the first year, they have secured fresh supplies of ammunition and equipment and the Russians are on the defensive in order to implement a proper, full-blooded soviet-style assault in the way they were always trained to?  Even though such theory isn't really intended to carry the day against an enemy with numerical and potentially materiel superiority?
3. Should they discard both doctrinal frameworks in favour of what has worked so far, even though absolutely no-one is trained in that; they only did it because they couldn't do much else; it might only have worked because the Russians were so over-stretched and disorganised; perhaps they should step away from using TD units and towards 'real' combat units, now; and who's in charge here anyway, comrade General or that mouthy wannabe-NCO who won't stop carping on about reconnaisance and toy planes?

Is it any wonder they ended up kind of doing all three at various times and places?

tl;dr: is there a case to be made that, rather than the fact the tactics were imperfect (and who could blame them for that in the current environment?), it was the fundamental uncertainty and consequent indecision in the minds of UA leadership itself which shaved those critical percentage points of speed and effectiveness away such that the offensive appears to have stretched the RA but did not break it?

P.S. I promise I will work on structuring my thoughts more succinctly in future, when I have time.

Anymore succinctly and between you and OBJ I think I can retire from the thread.

So ya…this, give or take a few details.  Corrosive warfare in it current form has limits and the RA found them - likely through a combination of mines, ISR and PGM, and to Steve’s point lobotomized logistics meeting requirements and bull force generation.

So how do we break that?

[The_Capt]

32 minutes ago, OBJ said:

We need radar-like sensors that use invisible pulses of light to detect mines in the ground and smoke-projection systems to conceal the activities of our de-mining units," "We can use jet engines from decommissioned aircraft, water cannons or cluster munitions to breach mine barriers without digging into the ground. New types of tunnel excavators, such as a robot which uses plasma torches to bore tunnels, can also help.'

Good lord, this must be how it felt in late 1916.  Nothing is working as it is supposed to…what the hell do we do now?  Jet engines, water cannons and DPICM won’t likely work even if one can ping the mines locations.  To big and clumsy, mines can be anchored too easily and level of power to push the mines out of the way simply too high.  21st century tunnelling is interesting but it will move even slower.

Since we are at “there is no bad idea”.  Upscaling production of these things and creating a new air assault infantry to push over the minefields is a concept.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/special-ops-jetpack-ship-video

 

 

[dan/california]

3 hours ago, Tux said:

I wonder whether another factor behind the UA's 'difficult summer' was a kind of doctrinal disorientation suffered by the military leadership?

Ukraine successfully defeated the initial invasion force through more-or-less ad hoc corrosive warfare tactics: distributed light infantry with modern ATGMs, shop-bought Mavics and a hotline to artillery backup.  The tactics used seem to have been largely improvised due to the fact the UA was caught off-balance and massively outnumbered by the invading force.  The forces which achieved such success included a relatively large proportion of TD units which, in theory at least, were not really supposed to be that effective but had done their jobs when the chips were down.

After the first phase was over the UA was still not properly on its feet and so it dug in and kind of leaned into the same tactics; trying to absorb Russian attacks with mostly light infantry and an increasing number of artillery PGMs allowing their gun park to perform effectively despite overall limited ammunition stocks.  In one major instance this undermined Russian operational systems to the point that they totally collapsed around Kharkiv.  Around Kherson, where Russian defence was perhaps a little more deliberate, it sorta kinda worked to the point that the UA reached the Dniepr but I think we all identified at the time that things hadn't gone quite as neatly as may have been expected, given what probably should have been the critically vulnerable nature of Russian logistics across the river.

During the Bakhmut phase it feels like the UA may have lost a little more faith in the 'corrosive warfare' operational method (perhaps the Kherson experience contributed to this?).  I may be misremembering but isn't this about the time we were reading accounts of Ukrainian TD units kicking off and maybe occasionally abandoning frontline positions in protest at their apparent newfound status as line infantry?  I wonder whether that, combined with a degree of horrified awe at the power of Russia's artillery ever since Severodonetsk, may have worked to persuade the UA's leadership that distributed mass had been a successful means to an end but that, given the choice and their own training, soviet-style world-ending application of force was the thing to aim for.

We should also remember that, throughout this period, a very hot topic was Ukraine's repeated and insistent requests for tanks.  Lots of tanks.  As many tanks as allies could spare and especially some of those shiny, modern, western MBTs, please.  Even at the time I remember wondering why.  I think I might even have posted on this thread that 'maybe it's misinformation to scare mobiks and really what they want is drones, shells, SAMs and access to more C4ISR'.  Is this more evidence that, at a senior level, the UA hadn't actually learned all the lessons we were crediting it with having taught us?

In addition to all that, Ukrainian servicemen were being carted across Europe to undergo NATO standard training.  We've heard various accounts of how such training was ignorant of the realities of the war as it was being fought, so this effectively ended up as a third doctrinal flavour (and a flawed one, in the minds of at least some UA soldiers who went through it), somehow operating in parallel with the UA's soviet institutional heritage and its recent, bleeding edge experience.

So then came the summer offensive.  Well before it started there seems to be evidence to suggest that there was overt disagreement between the UA and western advisers with regards to what that offensive should look like both in terms of scale/breadth and tactics used (although I haven't seen any suggestion that either side were advocating a continuation of corrosive warfare tactics - how curious).  In the end it seems like Ukraine implemented western tactics with western equipment and (very) freshly western-trained units until they got a bloody nose and not much longer.  Now, I'm not saying these tactics would have worked if they tried harder but they only tried for, what, a couple of weeks?  Then they reverted very quickly to what looked like an uneasy, almost incongruous marriage of drones/PGMs with regular, more traditionally soviet-style blunt attacks.  At this point they were trying to attack everywhere despite not really having the numbers to be able to do that and properly reinforce success wherever it may be close.  Our very own Haiduk was often telling us of complaints about various levels of UA leadership and their dogmatic adherence to wasteful frontal attacks.  All of the above suggests a horrible lack of unity within the UA in terms of how and where things were being done versus how and where they should be done.

So, the Ukrainian military leadership was caught organising a full-scale offensive while having to consider:

1. Should they lean hard into western tactics and doctrine, which none of them were trained in and only a few of their (admittedly near best-equipped) tactical units were partly trained in?
2. Should they take advantage of the fact they have caught their balance after the first year, they have secured fresh supplies of ammunition and equipment and the Russians are on the defensive in order to implement a proper, full-blooded soviet-style assault in the way they were always trained to?  Even though such theory isn't really intended to carry the day against an enemy with numerical and potentially materiel superiority?
3. Should they discard both doctrinal frameworks in favour of what has worked so far, even though absolutely no-one is trained in that; they only did it because they couldn't do much else; it might only have worked because the Russians were so over-stretched and disorganised; perhaps they should step away from using TD units and towards 'real' combat units, now; and who's in charge here anyway, comrade General or that mouthy wannabe-NCO who won't stop carping on about reconnaisance and toy planes?

Is it any wonder they ended up kind of doing all three at various times and places?

tl;dr: is there a case to be made that, rather than the fact the tactics were imperfect (and who could blame them for that in the current environment?), it was the fundamental uncertainty and consequent indecision in the minds of UA leadership itself which shaved those critical percentage points of speed and effectiveness away such that the offensive appears to have stretched the RA but did not break it?

P.S. I promise I will work on structuring my thoughts more succinctly in future, when I have time.

Fantastic post.

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Good lord, this must be how it felt in late 1916.  Nothing is working as it is supposed to…what the hell do we do now?  Jet engines, water cannons and DPICM won’t likely work even if one can ping the mines locations.  To big and clumsy, mines can be anchored too easily and level of power to push the mines out of the way simply too high.  21st century tunnelling is interesting but it will move even slower.

Since we are at “there is no bad idea”.  Upscaling production of these things and creating a new air assault infantry to push over the minefields is a concept.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/special-ops-jetpack-ship-video

 

 

I still come back to drones, drones enable the artillery that makes the minefields impregnable. If you achieve drone superiority in a wide enough area you can use the rest of your force sort of, kind of, as it was intended ten or twenty years ago.

In terms of the course of the war, the great failure was the pace of support in the summer of 2022. If the tanks and the ATACMS, and the cluster munition had been there to leverage the the initial victory at Kharkiv, either by attacking somewhere else, or enabling that attack to roll all the way the Luhansk City, their is at least a possibility that the Russians might have just folded. Giving them six to months months to sort out their problems, and then feeding things like cluster munitions, and ATACMS in piecemeal has been EXTREMELY expensive. Allow me to reiterate that the cluster munitions, and the ATACMS could be used by systems the Ukrainians already HAD, and they had been begging for both since May 2022. Maybe, just maybe, Jake Sullivan ought to develop a urgent need to spend more time with his family before the Russians win this war. It isn't like his Mideast strategy has exactly been a raging success either. The man need to go do something else.

[fireship4]

13 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Sorry, you came late.

Don't know about that, I've been reading as much of the thread as I find practical since the war began.  Perhaps I missed one or two of his posts, I know I ignored quite a lot, since it all seemed to fit a pattern.

I was in the midst of a childish argument with FlemFire, endeavoring to SpitFlames, and replied to you trying understand what you meant when you said this:

19 hours ago, The_Capt said:

This is insane.  The far right nutjob wants to be right so badly that he is embracing liberals progressive theory?  One cannot cherry pick liberal theory...that is not how it works.  If we are going to somehow ascend it all and embrace brother Russia for the good of all mankind, then one has to do the rest as well.  Immigration, social programs (universal healthcare), social equity, liberal capitalism and of course, climate change.

Steve, you have the patience of Job. 

...Because it made no sense to me: you switched from what I normally see in your long dissertations on military strategy to an incoherent definition of "liberals progressive theory"?  Like you had a stroke.  I'm not a political scientist by any means but it is does you a disservice.  Perhaps things are different in Canada...

13 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The weird was when said poster started pulling in liberal theorIes, namely collectivism and global order, as some sort of soft power alternative to opposing what is either a legal war or one we forced Ukraine into (gotta be honest it is really hard to follow).

So my point wasn’t a dissertation on liberalism, it was to point out that someone who is espousing far-right conspiracies trying to employ liberalism was nuts.  Particularly when other elements of liberalism - that I recognize from my own nation- would very likely be vehemently opposed by said poster based on his narrative.  This has been going on for a couple days now.  Sounds like you just walked in and want to compare political systems but that is really off topic and frankly kinda outside the entire discussion.  Anyway with luck Steve will ban the guy or he will simply leave.

...but collectivism is normally used to refer to certain communist concepts.  If I remember from quite a while back you were quite strong on self-determination of people or peoples - I would say that's a pretty liberal (in the normal sense) view.  Perhaps it was collective action between nations that was being referred to.

Anyway I was looking for you clarify as linking global warming with liberal theory was confusing me.  Perhaps you were using it how I've heard Americans use the term 'liberal', as things have become polarised in their country and a person's position on one issue has become a good predictor of their position on others, which otherwise would have a weaker link. 

13 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So anyone who says “it is absolutely this!”

This is indeed a very good indicator someone is wrong.  I've been down on Chomsky for quite a while now (I won't say he is not worth listening to) but the criticism of him I remember best was approximately that points he was making he often cast as obvious.

I think arguing with FlemFire's approach is important in as much as I think it's the approach that is problematic.  It is easy enough to dismiss specific points, or concede specific points, but there are so many, and so many assertions.  We each of have to level up our discourse so that we survive such encounters, and remember we remain even if our bad ideas do not, and we can see where we are learning from each other and what is disingenuous, what is actually a battle of status and soundbite over truth. 

If the West has lost the courage of it's convictions like some people say, then perhaps they must be refreshed by giving them a good whack with a spanner like FlemFire.  I happen to think that while the masses in the West have vast depths of ignorance in their own way, the deep cultural issues of the modern day exist because we are the only societies in which those things can be reexamined.  This is a strength in my book.

Anyway, I am once again putting off my breakfast.

[OBJ]

29 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So how do we break that?

No idea, 'how do we,' Break the Stalemate.

From my limited understanding of historical precedent relative to WWI western front defensive primacy:
1. 1918 Germans developed a doctrinal solution, Stosstruppen, infiltration tactics
2. 1916 British developed a technical solution, the tank
3. The Germans then combined both in WWII

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormtroopers_(Imperial_Germany)#:~:text=Under a creeping barrage%2C Stoßtruppen,enemy headquarters and artillery strongpoints.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infiltration_tactics#:~:text=Hutier favoured brief but intense,%2C artillery%2C and command centres.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_in_World_War_I#:~:text=In Great Britain%2C an initial,Army on 2 February 1916.

 

So maybe flying over the minefields just needs a combination of doctrine and technology to work. Still not sure how the sustainment logistics would work, maybe they fly over too.

At some point I think we also need to account for what is unique in Ukraine, and might not be applicable in all sectors of a wider war.

[kimbosbread]

10 hours ago, The_Capt said:

It was the fact that very few troops could deny a frontage - especially a mined one - that blunted the UA offensive.  Of course having more conscripts to stuff into the front was important but less so than the fact that with the limited ISR and PGM that the RA had it was enough to stop mechanized forces cold.

Exactly this. If you have 1km minefields, then some fortifications, and then repeat a few times, any attacking force will get bogged down.

10 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The fatal flaw in manoeuvre warfare is that is assumes one can achieve higher tempo by positioning.

And if your higher tempo is slowed down, it is all for nothing.

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

It doesn't take much logistics to truck a bunch of infantry and dump them into trenches that were already outfitted with at least some ammo.  And it takes almost no ISR to know where Ukraine was because they weren't able to do more than make limited gains before they ran into yet more defenses.  In other words, Ukraine wasn't moving fast enough to cause stress on either Russia's logistics or ISR to the point of it producing tangible effects on the ground.  At least not of an operational nature.

And there we have it. Many km of defenses, even manned sparsely and backed up with less drones + artillery than the attackers slows the attackers down and attrites them enough the attack fails.

[kimbosbread]

38 minutes ago, OBJ said:

No idea, 'how do we,' Break the Stalemate.

…

So maybe flying over the minefields just needs a combination of doctrine and technology to work. Still not sure how the sustainment logistics would work, maybe they fly over too.

At some point I think we also need to account for what is unique in Ukraine, and might not be applicable in all sectors of a wider war.

Is the problem the minefields, the dug in defenders, the fortifications, their artillery or their drones? If one of these were removed, would the whole thing collapse? Which one would be the easiest to remove?

Flying over removes the minefields + fortifications, but requires a lot of flying infrastructure. 10k heavy lift quadcopters to move 1000 soldiers, many of which will get trashed… that’s a big ask.

Drone swarm of autonomous death that kills anything with a few km squared it can find (including landing and waiting for hapless defenders to peek their heads up)… this is technologically feasible, and probably less expensive than many artillery systems + their accompanying logistics and training requirements. But it doesn’t exist yet.

[cesmonkey]

Quote

"There's a problem with ammunition, especially post-Soviet (shells) - that's 122 mm, 152 mm. And today these problems exist across the entire front line," he said in an interview.