How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[sburke]

This would seem to be a sure-fire way to incite some civil unrest.  Yeah sure, go jail someone's grandmother for 5 years for sharing a post.

Russia Jails Pensioner for Post About Army Casualties (msn.com)

Quote

 

A 72-year-old pensioner was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for allegedly sharing a post online about Russia's military casualties in Ukraine, rights groups said Monday.

Yevgeniya Maiboroda, from Russia's southern Rostov region, was prosecuted under a law that prohibits the deliberate spreading of "false information" about the Russian army.

Maiboroda pleaded guilty but denied she was motivated by "political hatred" as prosecutors alleged, the OVD-Info rights group reported.

She shared two posts on her VK social media page, one an "emotional video" about the conflict and the other on the number of soldiers killed, legal group Setevye Svobody said.

The group said she felt compelled to share the posts after her brother became trapped under the rubble of a building "collapsed by shells" in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
A spokesperson for Shakhty City Court in Rostov confirmed Maiboroda's conviction to AFP, and said she was charged over illegal content on her VK account, without elaborating.

Moscow made criticism of its army illegal shortly after launching its Ukraine offensive in February 2022. Thousands of opponents of the conflict have been censored, jailed or exiled.

A 61-year-old ailing pensioner who criticized the conflict was sentenced this month to over eight years in prison for enemy treason, a charge he denied.

 

 

[Kinophile]

What's to stop UKR from plopping a flag down on top of the Kremlin? In the background during a live broadcast? 

Btw, @OBJis the MWI Urban Project is excellent, and I agree. But in there are  examples of how badly lagging the doctrine you cite actually is. The three big urban fights of the last ten years have been Marawi, Mosul and Mariupol. None of those featured top down assaults by anyone (I believe. As always, open to refute) 

The initial police action that sparked Marawi was a ground level assault with very little aviation. The later AFP counter attack back into the city lost several helos early and remained a ground attack primarily. Mouse holing was absolutely a primary tactic (the PA units involved initially viewed it as innovative, and which says more about their lack of formal MOUT / FISH / FIBUA/ etc. Decades of CT jungle work will do that to an organization...) but highly effective snipers kept the roofs clear and forced the mouse holing.

Mosul was, in the I believe, was a further development in that drones teally came into play, both ISR and attack. This seems to have deterred top assaults as the city roofscape was in view of ISIS for nearly the whole battle. Another factor was ISIS constantly rigging structures to drop on assaulters,  even with defenders still inside and still fighting room to room. This made the Iraqis extremely leery of structure assaults (which was one intention, and I assume). So they used their Abrams and US air to drop the buildings in advance. 

Interestingly, Mariupol seems like it was a lateral development. The Russians had drones but were not experienced and the lag/disconnect from observe to fires was often apparent. The UKR had some drones but not many and once cut off their numbers plummeted. Even then RUS didn't do top down assaults. They just shelled the **** out of everything, as always. The UKR AFVs were apparently enormously useful and lethal, due to maneuverability, the RoF, optics and simple size. 

There's a highly detailed account by a Mariupol defender about retaking a tall-ish building; he isolated the site, poured fires in from adjacent structures and assaulted in from the ground. Standard, and simple and "safer". 

The top down attacks are dead but for civilian police /SOF CT work. Even then,  could you imagine a modern Mumbai - but with intensive drone use by the Terrorists? 

Cripes, they could take an urban site, mine the surrounding roofs and alleyways with drone dropped APMs and decimate responding police. 

[Kinophile]

Oh and The Road, noted @Ultradave, man that film is bleak but good God the book is even more awful. Amazing work. 

Edited January 30 by Kinophile

[billbindc]

If the reporting that the lethal drone attack on Tower 22 is correct then the Shahed followed in an American surveillance drone in order to evade detection and interception. That was either blind dumb luck or lessons being learnt by the Russians are being passed on to Iranian client militias in the ME. 

I'm not a big believer in luck. 

[Battlefront.com]

3 minutes ago, billbindc said:

If the reporting that the lethal drone attack on Tower 22 is correct then the Shahed followed in an American surveillance drone in order to evade detection and interception. That was either blind dumb luck or lessons being learnt by the Russians are being passed on to Iranian client militias in the ME. 

I'm not a big believer in luck. 

Cripes, now drones need tail gunners!

Steve

[billbindc]

38 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Cripes, now drones need tail gunners!

Steve

Or Crazy Ivan's....

[G.I. Joe]

18 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Or Crazy Ivan's....

Or tail warning radar...maybe a rear-facing camera.

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, G.I. Joe said:

Or tail warning radar...maybe a rear-facing camera.

i am thinking the short term plan is some sort of super basic visual IFF. Either have some LEDS that flash in a programable pattern that can be changed frequently, Or have them fly some sort of random pattern a kilometer or two out. It would at least make a trick like this harder.

[dan/california]

3 hours ago, sburke said:

This would seem to be a sure-fire way to incite some civil unrest.  Yeah sure, go jail someone's grandmother for 5 years for sharing a post.

Russia Jails Pensioner for Post About Army Casualties (msn.com)

 

My favorite quote/story from Chinese History, supposedly... "The General says to adjutant, "What is the penalty for being late?" "Death Sir!" responds the unhappy adjutant. The General "What is the penalty for rebellion?"  "Death Sir" responds the the VERY unhappy adjutant. The General" Well we are late, incidentally we are also rebelling". The story, which is far to good to check, is that after a nice ugly civil war he founded the next dynasty. 

Edited January 30 by dan/california

[Carolus]

6 hours ago, Joe982 said:

But is it Russian or Ukranian???

Russian. Haven't seen a confirmation yet.

[sburke]

Interesting if this is Ukraine's plan to seize more of the strategic initiative.

 

Ukraine's strikes on targets inside Russia hurt Putin's efforts to show the war isn't hitting home (msn.com)

Quote

 

With fighting largely frozen along the 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) front line during winter, the missile and drone attacks inside Russia have demonstrated Ukraine’s long-range strike capability that is stretching Moscow’s security assets.

“Continued Ukrainian strikes in deep rear areas in Russia may thus increase pressure on Russia’s air defenses overall,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a recent analysis.

If this is Kyiv’s plan, it’s similar to what Russia did a year ago by targeting Ukraine's power grid in the hope that repairs would take time. In the end, Ukraine managed to get enough spare parts and make quick fixes so that Moscow’s campaign failed. Now, it's Russia that needs to find a coping strategy.

Sergey Vakulenko, an energy analyst at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said it could be challenging for Russian refineries to fix the damage quickly.

While Ukraine's small drones can't cause major destruction, he said “they can damage not just pipelines, but also compressors, valves, control units, and other pieces of equipment that are tricky to replace because of sanctions.”

“If we are seeing the beginning of a wave of attacks on western Russia’s oil refineries, the consequences will be serious,” Vakulenko said in a commentary.

 

 

[Holien]

6 hours ago, billbindc said:

That was either blind dumb luck or lessons being learnt by the Russians are being passed on to Iranian client militias in the ME. 

I'm not a big believer in luck. 

Or a smart opponent who has been watching SOP of the base for long enough to work out the security flaws.

Or some one on the base passing information to the wrong people.

I would love to blame Russia for everything but this one seems a bit of a stretch.

For sure Iran, China, North Korea and Russia will be learning off one another but how quickly and what lessons are passed on is open to discussion. 

It would be a gold mine of intelligence if the west could spy on those WhatsApp discussions...

[The_Capt]

11 hours ago, dan/california said:

 

GTFOH.  From Mt Suribachi to this in 79 years.

[OBJ]

11 hours ago, Kinophile said:

What's to stop UKR from plopping a flag down on top of the Kremlin? In the background during a live broadcast? 

Btw, @OBJis the MWI Urban Project is excellent, and I agree. But in there are  examples of how badly lagging the doctrine you cite actually is. The three big urban fights of the last ten years have been Marawi, Mosul and Mariupol. None of those featured top down assaults by anyone (I believe. As always, open to refute) 

The initial police action that sparked Marawi was a ground level assault with very little aviation. The later AFP counter attack back into the city lost several helos early and remained a ground attack primarily. Mouse holing was absolutely a primary tactic (the PA units involved initially viewed it as innovative, and which says more about their lack of formal MOUT / FISH / FIBUA/ etc. Decades of CT jungle work will do that to an organization...) but highly effective snipers kept the roofs clear and forced the mouse holing.

Mosul was, in the I believe, was a further development in that drones teally came into play, both ISR and attack. This seems to have deterred top assaults as the city roofscape was in view of ISIS for nearly the whole battle. Another factor was ISIS constantly rigging structures to drop on assaulters,  even with defenders still inside and still fighting room to room. This made the Iraqis extremely leery of structure assaults (which was one intention, and I assume). So they used their Abrams and US air to drop the buildings in advance. 

Interestingly, Mariupol seems like it was a lateral development. The Russians had drones but were not experienced and the lag/disconnect from observe to fires was often apparent. The UKR had some drones but not many and once cut off their numbers plummeted. Even then RUS didn't do top down assaults. They just shelled the **** out of everything, as always. The UKR AFVs were apparently enormously useful and lethal, due to maneuverability, the RoF, optics and simple size. 

There's a highly detailed account by a Mariupol defender about retaking a tall-ish building; he isolated the site, poured fires in from adjacent structures and assaulted in from the ground. Standard, and simple and "safer". 

The top down attacks are dead but for civilian police /SOF CT work. Even then,  could you imagine a modern Mumbai - but with intensive drone use by the Terrorists? 

Cripes, they could take an urban site, mine the surrounding roofs and alleyways with drone dropped APMs and decimate responding police. 

 

Thanks @Kinophile, hope I am not missing your point here:

To me, in the limited and focused part of combined arms tactics that involves small infantry units entering and clearing buildings supported by other infantry, engineers, armor, and other arms, I am not sure some things will change.

1. Grenades will still roll down stairs more easily that up
2. Defenders will still prepare ground floor defenses first
3. Technology will still be degraded in urban environments

The ATTP, based on what we know is 20+ years of middle eastern urban combat experience at all levels of intensity, asks the CQB leader to account for a lot of different factors, and make a decision. If above ground floor level entry is possible, assuming eventual success in clearing the building in all cases, which entry level is likely to result in fewer friendly casualties?

Also worth pointing out top down does not equate to roof down, re mouse-holing, re Ortana, re any urban environment with buildings adjacent to one another.

I read MWI Urban Project case studies, Fallujah II, Mosul, Ortona. Other than Ortona, they did not mention top down. I did not take that to mean top down was never used when judged best, just that it wasn't a significant enough practice to call out, or casualty risk was routinely assessed as no more going in at ground level than above, other than at Ortona.

I also found a MWI urban project premise that modern urban warfare has much in common with medieval sieges intriguing, and needing more exploration by me.

I agree, the MWI Urban Project is a really good resource for those interested in recent and near future urban warfare.

I agree Ukraine points to significant changes to all domains including ground combined arms operations and tactics.

I admit, although hadn't thought of it before, my interest in top down maybe a reflection of my maneuver bias. I find avoidable casualties revolting and all combat experience that may preclude them attractive.

Edited January 30 by OBJ

[OBJ]

9 hours ago, dan/california said:

i am thinking the short term plan is some sort of super basic visual IFF. Either have some LEDS that flash in a programable pattern that can be changed frequently, Or have them fly some sort of random pattern a kilometer or two out. It would at least make a trick like this harder.

I would think this, some sort of effective IFF. If there was confusion or an inability to distinguish friendly from enemy, whatever IFF was in place clearly wasn't effective.

Although tail gunners could work too...

[OBJ]

4 hours ago, Holien said:

Or a smart opponent who has been watching SOP of the base for long enough to work out the security flaws.

Or some one on the base passing information to the wrong people.

I would love to blame Russia for everything but this one seems a bit of a stretch.

For sure Iran, China, North Korea and Russia will be learning off one another but how quickly and what lessons are passed on is open to discussion. 

It would be a gold mine of intelligence if the west could spy on those WhatsApp discussions...

I tend to agree with Holien, much as we wish they were, our enemies in the middle east are neither stupid or incompetent. They do seem to be patient, persistent, capable, and able to leverage local resentment towards 'occupying unbelievers,' certainly enflamed by events in Gaza.

[cesmonkey]

 

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, OBJ said:

I admit, although hadn't thought of it before, my interest in top down maybe a reflection of my maneuver bias. I find avoidable casualties revolting and all combat experience that may preclude them attractive.

This is what selling manoeuvre warfare as a panacea over the last 30 years has gotten us into.  Worse we sold it to politicians as “best” military advice - the political level loves low cost/low risk.  Then the First Gulf War happened and everyone danced a jig because the idea worked.  Unfortunately we entirely lost sight of context - an isolated Iraq with low end Cold War denial capabilities was not the direction our main opponents were planning to go.

Then manoeuvre started to fail, or at least fail as a primary strategy.  First in Iraq and Afghanistan.  No matter how much we out-tempo’d an opponent, or how many times he killed an HVT, it did not seem to matter.  Manoeuvre in dirty small wars isn’t even in the same zip code as conventional war, but we kept trying.  And now this war.  Russia applied the manoeuvre warfare template that looked a lot more like our plans than many are comfortable with.  We laughed off the failure and put it down to “Russia Sux”…all the while working very hard to avoid looking too closely at the deep underlying trends.  Now 2 years later there is no getting past them.

War, or at least land war, has flipped on its head.  One no longer can manoeuvre-to-Attrit-to-Annihilation.  We watched the RA try it and fail, and then the UA did the same.  One has to Attrit-to-Manoeuvre-to-???

This does not mean Manoeuvre warfare is dead.  It just means that it is sliding back to where it originally was, and should have stayed: one approach in the tool box whose employment is driven by context and the operational art - not slavishly adhered to out of political expediency.  We learned this in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 20 years, but those were not “real” wars.  Now again in what is most undeniably a “real war” and we see the same lessons.

Politics drove doctrine, which for follow on generations became dogma.   The cold harsh light of reality is beginning to hit.  The only question left now is: “how well do we adapt?”

[Kinophile]

1 hour ago, OBJ said:

I admit, although hadn't thought of it before, my interest in top down maybe a reflection of my maneuver bias. I find avoidable casualties revolting and all combat experience that may preclude them attractive.

I want to be clear, Im not putting you down in this next bit, I'm liking this discussion.

That approach feels classic peacetime Western. The nub here for me is "avoidable". 

Say we need to take a building; Russia / ISIS / Brotherhood of Nod defending. They do not have the sense of avoidable casualties - for them it's whatever number of humans need to die to hold their objective. 

I suspect there's a point, rapidly, where if you have tech and organizational parity then major casualties are unavoidable no matter what route you take. It's just relatively less and what may on paper make sense as an outflanking move becomes a trap.  

There were numerous events in Fallujah II with a building used as bait for the marines, but then turned into a trap. Superior Air and ground assets usually turned the tide but that's what it took. In Mariupol it appears  the primary unchanging UKR advantage was personal motivation - high levels, across almost all units, consistently and for a extremely long duration. 

Avoidable appears as a context specific choice, not just tactical but at a strategic and geopolitical level. ISIS was in an existential fight, so losses were unavoidable (they certainly compounded them with ridiculously bad wave assaults). US dodged the need in Iraq with over matched tech. But Ukraine is in an existential fight with a peer+ enemy. If a building needs to be taken, then and its always Now Now Now, then a top down approach takes time, space and people. In a crowded urban fight you never have enough of those. The related experiences so far bear that out with Drones making everything harder and easier in turn. 

Simple, blunt and quick is best. Simple doesn't not mean just frontal (unless you're a RUS/older UKR general, here everything is mono-directional: "Vorwarts!")

EDIT: OODA'd by the Capt. 

Edited January 30 by Kinophile

[OBJ]

9 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

This is what selling manoeuvre warfare as a panacea over the last 30 years has gotten us into.  Worse we sold it to politicians as “best” military advice - the political level loves low cost/low risk.  Then the First Gulf War happened and everyone danced a jig because the idea worked.  Unfortunately we entirely lost sight of context - an isolated Iraq with low end Cold War denial capabilities was not the direction our main opponents were planning to go.

Then manoeuvre started to fail, or at least fail as a primary strategy.  First in Iraq and Afghanistan.  No matter how much we out-tempo’d an opponent, or how many times he killed an HVT, it did not seem to matter.  Manoeuvre in dirty small wars isn’t even in the same zip code as conventional war, but we kept trying.  And now this war.  Russia applied the manoeuvre warfare template that looked a lot more like our plans than many are comfortable with.  We laughed off the failure and put it down to “Russia Sux”…all the while working very hard to avoid looking too closely at the deep underlying trends.  Now 2 years later there is no getting past them.

War, or at least land war, has flipped on its head.  One no longer can manoeuvre-to-Attrit-to-Annihilation.  We watched the RA try it and fail, and then the UA did the same.  One has to Attrit-to-Manoeuvre-to-???

This does not mean Manoeuvre warfare is dead.  It just means that it is sliding back to where it originally was, and should have stayed: one approach in the tool box whose employment is driven by context and the operational art - not slavishly adhered to out of political expediency.  We learned this in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 20 years, but those were not “real” wars.  Now again in what is most undeniably a “real war” and we see the same lessons.

Politics drove doctrine, which for follow on generations became dogma.   The cold harsh light of reality is beginning to hit.  The only question left now is: “how well do we adapt?”

Agree, and so my interest in innovative methods to restore battlefield mobility, penetration in depth of prepared defenses to enable operational level breakout, to include use of jetpack infantry, which I do not find either funny or outlandish, which might also support top down building assault.

We seem to agree we are witnessing the pendulum swinging back past the equilibrium point in favor of the defense. As it always has, the pendulum will start it's swing back in the other direction, only a question of when and based on what.

We also can not forget the front in Ukraine is geographically constrained enough that the combination of modern day technology in combination with forces available to both sides has resulted in statement, at least temporarily. The analogies with the WWI western front all seem appropriate. However there was a WWI eastern front, in which the combination of geographic space and forces available favored maneuver, both fronts in the same war with the same technology available to both sides.

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, OBJ said:

We also can not forget the front in Ukraine is geographically constrained enough that the combination of modern day technology in combination with forces available to both sides has resulted in statement, at least temporarily. The analogies with the WWI western front all seem appropriate. However there was a WWI eastern front, in which the combination of geographic space and forces available favored maneuver, both fronts in the same war with the same technology available to both sides.

The current situation in Ukraine sees a a roughly 700-800 km front.  If, in context of modern warfare, we cannot establish the conditions to effectively manoeuvre in that sort of battlespace then the concept has stalled.  We cannot embrace a central tenant that requires greater than 800kms of manoeuvre room in order to be viable.  Worse, that front is being held by positively skeletal troop densities when compared to other wars in history.  Finally, it is the underlying reasons of why manoeuvre is not working in Ukraine that a driving things - ubiquitous ISR, unmanned systems, precision weapons of all sorts.  All leading to Denial primacy - add in about a bazillion mines and we have deadlock...at least for now.

Jet packs...now that is an idea...but man, that will be a lot of jetpacks.  If we are at that point I still question the point of sending a human up at all.  Send up a drone and have it lob grenades down on defenders.  Hell have it fly into the building and chase down individual enemy solders...we are pretty much already there.

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

This is what selling manoeuvre warfare as a panacea over the last 30 years has gotten us into.  Worse we sold it to politicians as “best” military advice - the political level loves low cost/low risk.  Then the First Gulf War happened and everyone danced a jig because the idea worked.  Unfortunately we entirely lost sight of context - an isolated Iraq with low end Cold War denial capabilities was not the direction our main opponents were planning to go.

Then manoeuvre started to fail, or at least fail as a primary strategy.  First in Iraq and Afghanistan.  No matter how much we out-tempo’d an opponent, or how many times he killed an HVT, it did not seem to matter.  Manoeuvre in dirty small wars isn’t even in the same zip code as conventional war, but we kept trying.  And now this war.  Russia applied the manoeuvre warfare template that looked a lot more like our plans than many are comfortable with.  We laughed off the failure and put it down to “Russia Sux”…all the while working very hard to avoid looking too closely at the deep underlying trends.  Now 2 years later there is no getting past them.

War, or at least land war, has flipped on its head.  One no longer can manoeuvre-to-Attrit-to-Annihilation.  We watched the RA try it and fail, and then the UA did the same.  One has to Attrit-to-Manoeuvre-to-???

This does not mean Manoeuvre warfare is dead.  It just means that it is sliding back to where it originally was, and should have stayed: one approach in the tool box whose employment is driven by context and the operational art - not slavishly adhered to out of political expediency.  We learned this in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 20 years, but those were not “real” wars.  Now again in what is most undeniably a “real war” and we see the same lessons.

Politics drove doctrine, which for follow on generations became dogma.   The cold harsh light of reality is beginning to hit.  The only question left now is: “how well do we adapt?”

Thanks for that.  It's real grownup talk and really cuts to the point.  I am not happy with this truth however, so I am going to play the new Downfall battles, before all this icky technology tookover.  

[photon]

34 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Worse, that front is being held by positively skeletal troop densities when compared to other wars in history. 

I've been thinking a lot about this. The physics of the battles in Ukraine feel like amphibious assaults everywhere all the time. In an amphibious assault you've got an illuminated battlefield (the attacker is a finite quantity of very visible ships and the defender is tied to a linearish boundary that the attacker can observe from offshore at leisure before the assault). The attacker can mass fires from behind the line of contact, but will have difficulty advancing those fires as their beachhead is in a pocket surrounded by defender's fires.

But the precursor to a successful amphibious assault is the isolation of the beachhead from its LOC, either by naval blockade for islands or by tactical and strategic air for larger assaults. Those are both unavailable in Ukraine, so even a high-tempo high-casualty assault doesn't produce meaningful operational effects (unless you chain them together over and over in a way anathema to modern western sensibility).

It'd be interesting to look at the ratio of troop density to weapon-denial-range. I think CM does a nice job of simulating that. Playing the CMBO beta Last Defense, I learned quickly that American bazooka armed infantry projected an armor denial zone about 75 meters in all directions. So if you want an impermeable defense, you need something like a squad every 150 meters of frontage in whatever depth you think you need. The first time I played CMBS Into the Breach I thought I was totally screwed because I was used to that sort of frontage. Then I discovered Javelins and had to reconsider. I'd say a modern infantry squad can project that denial zone hundreds of meters if not a kilometer or more. So has the troop density changed relative to the size of the denial zone it can project?

edit: Also, what the heck with all the videos of IFVs and tanks engaging trenches at ranges I'd describe as "pants on head"? Why does that work? Are there lots of videos I'm not seeing of IFV's getting destroyed by infantry light AT as they approach?

Edited January 30 by photon

[Bulletpoint]

On 1/28/2024 at 8:42 PM, Vet 0369 said:

In the Vietnam war, it was common practice to ensure that any Marine “in the field,” I.e. on patrol or on an operation, carried only their ID card and the “Geneva card” with them

Were there any female marines in Vietnam? Since you're using gender neutral "their"..

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Were there any female marines in Vietnam? Since you're using gender neutral "their"..

Yup.

https://vietnamwomensmemorial.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/mstremlow.pdf

https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2017/11/09/vietnam-and-the-women-who-served/