How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[TheVulture]

11 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

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

Using "their" in a sentence like that has been around for decades, possibly over a century.  Its not some new development. And not exactly on topic either.

[The_Capt]

23 minutes ago, photon said:

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.

Oh my, that is good.  I am totally stealing it.

[Bulletpoint]

6 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

Using "their" in a sentence like that has been around for decades, possibly over a century.  Its not some new development. And not exactly on topic either.

I believe that until recently, it was only used when the gender was unknown ('someone forgot their phone on the table', 'each voter will have to make up their own mind about whom to vote for').

In any case, yes, it's off topic, so let's move on.

[The_Capt]

8 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

Using "their" in a sentence like that has been around for decades, possibly over a century.  Its not some new development. And not exactly on topic either.

Isn't it great that we live in a time where third-person plural possessive can spark social controversy?  

[photon]

4 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Oh my, that is good.  I am totally stealing it.

All yours. I'm very much in the land of confusion trying to draw analogies to history I know about (which is pretty good from 753 B.C. to maybe 200 A.D. and from 1939 to 1945 and iffy beyond that).

But I can't shake the feeling that a lot of what we learned in the Pacific theater resonates today in terms of the physics of battle.

[keas66]

With regards close in use of tanks against  trenches/infantry pockets  by the Ukrainians at least - the clips we keep seeing - I have seen mention that these types of  use cases only occur after surveillance by drones  . No idea if true or not - but smells reasonable .

[billbindc]

If you are watching the back and forth between Zelensky and Zaluzhny today, I would warn against the way in which most commentary is treating if as if it's a football game...as they do much of what has happened in the war so far. Shashank Joshi at the Economist is going to drop an article soon that looks more deeply at the reasons and the forces motivating the move. I would recommend it in advance. 

[cyrano01]

2 hours 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. 

........

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?”

So, my current reading is air-power doctrinal development between WW1 and WW2, and this resembles the way (mostly) British and American, bomber-mafia airmen sold the 'knockout blow' between the wars to their political masters as the way to avoid all that attritional, positional warfare of 1914-18; only for it to turn out that a determined opponent with some air denial technologies could make air warfare just as attritional.

John Terraine described the politics/doctrine circle with the phrase, 'if the RAF played a prettier tune than the Western Front of 1914-18, they (political leaders) would prefer to listen to that.'

 

Edited January 30 by cyrano01

[cyrano01]

Double post

 

Edited January 30 by cyrano01

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, cyrano01 said:

So, my current reading is air-power doctrinal development between WW1 and WW2, and this resembles the way (mostly) British and American airmen sold the 'knockout blow' between the wars to their political masters as the way to avoid all that attritional, positional warfare of 1914-18; only for it to turn out that a determined opponent with some air denial technologies could make air warfare just as attritional.

John Terraine described the politics/doctrine circle with the phrase, 'if the RAF played a prettier tune than the Western Front of 1914-18, they (political leaders) would prefer to listen to that.'

 

I tell my students that militaries only really do three things:

- We carry out policy.

- We provide sound military advice to policy.

- We guarantee the policy making framework.

If you are doing anything else in uniform, you are heading towards a mutiny or coup. 

What we tend to forget is that #2 is absolutely critical to the integrity of the entire scheme.  And frankly we fail at it far too often. 

[OBJ]

1 hour ago, Kinophile said:

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. 

Me too, I am here for the discussion, contrary opinions like yours being most valued as they cause me to ask myself if I am being dogmatic, pedantic or some other bad 'ic' and should be listening more and opinionating less, but I am not quite there yet

So casualties, yup, gunna happen, just as we see here on this forum almost everyday when a FPV feed snaps to static then the ISR feed shows smoking, bleeding casualties crawling away, some dying while we watch their buddies try to save them, other smoking, bloody, unmoving bodies scattered in the snow around the impact point.

On the other hand we here routinely denigrate Russian 'meat grinder' tactics. To me, we think Russian tactical commanders are needlessly taking casualties when Ukrainian commanders, after attacking last summer, quickly deduced tactical defensive primacy and decided they needed to stay on the defensive. So, Ukrainians, in actual combat, not between the wars staff officer theorizing, in actual combat tactical practice are avoiding needless casualties while the Russians are not.

Avoiding needless casualties, NOT, avoiding casualties.

Back to urban warfare and other premises of the the MWI Urban Project, world trending is toward more urbanization, militarily weaker opponents recognize the combat effectiveness leveling and technology negating and other domain benefits of urban warfare, and  non-combatants will be a major component of future urban warfare.

This last puts western tactical commanders constantly doing proportionality assessments, see the now closed thread under SF2 on 'How Hot is Israel Gonna Get' and @The_Capt's led discussions on proportionality. At least early in the city fight, many of these western commander assessments will result in a decision necessitating supported infantry entering and clearing buildings.

'Major,' not exactly sure what, or how many, or the percentage of, that is, but 'Major' casualties may be UNAVOIDABLE, as long as the ROE don't allow friendly forces to just drop the building when they confirm or suspect it is defended, or put a 120mm HE round into every door, window and wall facing the assault direction, or bursts of 25mm HE.

Any tactical plan for building entry and clearing needs to reflect the tactical commander's judgement of what will best allow his unit to accomplish his mission and minimize friendly casualties given constraints. I have a hard time imagining mouse holing onto the second floor from an adjacent building with suppressive fire support is just the same as breaching the front door, or windows, or walls, and starting clearing from the ground floor. But that's just me, and combat based tips, techniques and procedures for CQB leaders.

If we have someone here, given viable upper entry options, that has made these decisions in combat and witnessed the results we should listen to them.

[OBJ]

2 hours 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 Capt.

I share your concern for western casualty sensitivities. They have and remain a major constraint on western operations. I worry politicians and the public in democracies will not adjust their thinking as fast as a successful peer level campaign would require.

I am hopeful in this war an eventual combination of new technologies, organization and doctrine will restore battlefield mobility, the ability to successfully execute offensive operations. I do worry it is possible the war could get stuck like Korea before this happens, leaving it to theory until conflict resumes in Ukraine or elsewhere.

I also hope none of the western democracies reach a Maginot conclusion. Adopting isolationist policies looks like that to me.

[OBJ]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

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.

The western front in WWI was ~765 km, the eastern was 1,300 km, essentially technical parity across all belligerents, just very different force to space ratios. Western front operations started with a maneuver phase. The Eastern front, given lower force to space ratios, was a lot of maneuver.

If the Ukrainian front is 800km, I'm spit-balling here, but from Northern Finland to Romania on the Black Sea it's 2,500-3,000 kms, just sayin' lot of room for maneuver, especially initially.

I think you are right about the drones, if they can clear the building, without killing more non-combatants than our troops would, let 'em.
I'm pretty sure LLF will be along soon with a meme of Robo Cop's ED-209.

[cesmonkey]

This seems to be unconfirmed at the moment:
 

 

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, OBJ said:

The western front in WWI was ~765 km, the eastern was 1,300 km, essentially technical parity across all belligerents, just very different force to space ratios. Western front operations started with a maneuver phase. The Eastern front, given lower force to space ratios, was a lot of maneuver.

If the Ukrainian front is 800km, I'm spit-balling here, but from Northern Finland to Romania on the Black Sea it's 2,500-3,000 kms, just sayin' lot of room for maneuver, especially initially.

I think you are right about the drones, if they can clear the building, without killing more non-combatants than our troops would, let 'em.
I'm pretty sure LLF will be along soon with a meme of Robo Cop's ED-209.

I am not sure what you are presenting here to be honest.  So we are back to WWI dynamics (i.e. same frontage yielded deadlock)?  But if we somehow get lucky and bite off a front of 1400, we might be ok? 

I think this is an pretty low resolution analogy, and misses a lot of other factors.  Troops density is the main one.  In WW1 it took in the area of 3000-6000 troops to hold a kilometer and a half (terrain dependent of course: https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/January-February-2022/Liddell-Hart-Space-1960/#:~:text=On the main stretch%2C therefore,repelled all the Allied attacks.).  Russia is holding that 800 frontage with somewhere between 150-300 troops per km (give or take, accounting for rotations, depth and support).  That is an order of magnitude less, to hold the same ground.  This would suggest that a defender could cover off 1400 kms with far fewer troops than WW1 and we could still be looking at stasis/defensive primacy.

And then there is the thorny issue that 1400km front wars are not necessarily the norm.  Bounded by political boundaries, water and terrain, frontages are not often really a military choice - they are a constraint.  Even if manoeuvre warfare is still viable at 1400km, we are talking a massive shift in doctrine to fight and win theatres of much narrower frontages.  We cannot tell political masters and the public: "Sorry but we really can't get involved until the conflict widens down to Romania" while Russia is pounding on the Baltics.  An example of this was Iraq in '03.  The US-led coalition was tightly bounded in Kuwait and had to make due.  We simply cannot hope reality shaped itself around our doctrine, we need to be ready to shift doctrine to fit reality.

[cesmonkey]

 

[Carolus]

Apparently this baby is finally leaving the delivery room. Should ease the pressure on GLMRS stocks.

[cesmonkey]

53 minutes ago, Carolus said:

Apparently this baby is finally leaving the delivery room. Should ease the pressure on GLMRS stocks.

I was wondering about this... from the Politico article:
 

Quote

 Despite the fact that the U.S. has no new money to authorize weapons transfers from existing stocks, the U.S. signed a contract with Boeing last year to provide the weapon to Kyiv.

 

[A Canadian Cat]

I love your list of just three things.

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

- We guarantee the policy making framework.

There is an awful lot of stuff /  work covered by this one.

[OBJ]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I am not sure what you are presenting here to be honest.  So we are back to WWI dynamics (i.e. same frontage yielded deadlock)?  But if we somehow get lucky and bite off a front of 1400, we might be ok? 

I think this is an pretty low resolution analogy, and misses a lot of other factors.  Troops density is the main one.  In WW1 it took in the area of 3000-6000 troops to hold a kilometer and a half (terrain dependent of course: https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/January-February-2022/Liddell-Hart-Space-1960/#:~:text=On the main stretch%2C therefore,repelled all the Allied attacks.).  Russia is holding that 800 frontage with somewhere between 150-300 troops per km (give or take, accounting for rotations, depth and support).  That is an order of magnitude less, to hold the same ground.  This would suggest that a defender could cover off 1400 kms with far fewer troops than WW1 and we could still be looking at stasis/defensive primacy.

And then there is the thorny issue that 1400km front wars are not necessarily the norm.  Bounded by political boundaries, water and terrain, frontages are not often really a military choice - they are a constraint.  Even if manoeuvre warfare is still viable at 1400km, we are talking a massive shift in doctrine to fight and win theatres of much narrower frontages.  We cannot tell political masters and the public: "Sorry but we really can't get involved until the conflict widens down to Romania" while Russia is pounding on the Baltics.  An example of this was Iraq in '03.  The US-led coalition was tightly bounded in Kuwait and had to make due.  We simply cannot hope reality shaped itself around our doctrine, we need to be ready to shift doctrine to fit reality.

Sorry, yes, when all other factors were essentially equal, technology, mobility, organization, force to space/troop density is what enabled maneuver on one front and quickly precluded it on the other. 

I am wondering, wondering, while we speculate on what the future equivalent of 'Blitzkreig' will be, if we also challenge the assumption defensive primacy conditions will be omni-present in future conflicts, start to finish, limited or not. If we assume stalemate where ever we go, whatever we do, start to finish, are we missing out on thinking about preventing stalemate, in addition to breaking stalemate.

Breaking stalemate maybe the CM level problem, while preventing stalemate maybe the levels above.

As an aside, I have been on the, 'OMG, maneuver is dead, this is the Western front all over again, what are we going to do!' bandwagon, in fact was an early adopter, and am now trying to rethink that.

In the limited war that Ukraine is with both Ukraine and apparently Russia presently lacking the means to support strategic maneuver, we're probably stuck, at least or until there's a decisive attritional disparity, either in physical ability or political will.

[kimbosbread]

9 hours ago, OBJ said:

…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

1. Wrong. A smart grenade can fly. We’re pretty close to having these proliferate.
2. I dunno, given the proliferation of drones they might rather defend windows first.
3. I think this is wrong too. The revolution that allowed small quadcopters (way more computing power on a small, energy-efficient chip) also allows lot of small, cheap sensors. If you can just bombard a building with hundreds of sensors, you can find out where soldiers are. Sniff for CO2, look at termal signatures, measure vibration (footsteps, heartbeats, water in pipes) and use your cheapo compute for sensor fusion. Small area seems like a death trap.

[The_Capt]

50 minutes ago, OBJ said:

I am wondering, wondering, while we speculate on what the future equivalent of 'Blitzkreig' will be, if we also challenge the assumption defensive primacy conditions will be omni-present in future conflicts, start to finish, limited or not. If we assume stalemate where ever we go, whatever we do, start to finish, are we missing out on thinking about preventing stalemate, in addition to breaking stalemate.

Good lord this sentiment is so 2024.  We are not even entirely sure if we are looking at defensive primacy, let alone if it will be enduring.  We have suspicions, but we really do not fully understand the full impact of what is, or is not, happening.  I think it may be a little too early to start "challenging our challenges."

The defensive primacy shift of the 19th and early 20th century took roughly 50-60 years to fully emerge.  And then it lasted roughly 30 years before technology broke it.  The current possible shift has taken maybe 20 years to sink in and no on knows how long it will actually stick - if it is indeed a thing.  I personally do not think manouevre is dead, I think its selling points have definitely have taken a hit.  But the principles of manoeuvre are very old - "hit em where they ain't, faster than they can recover" likely has roots in pre-civilization warfare.  What we, in the western military complex appear to have forgotten is that detail (or "task") command and good old fashion attrition ("me smash, you") is not dead, in fact it never was. 

Once this war is over, two things are going to happen. 1) modern militaries are going to scramble like mad to jump on all sorts of bandwagons based on how this thing has gone down.  And 2) they will immediately stuff these new phenomenon into the existing box.  We will see Battalion TFs wearing unmanned hats as next-gen collides with legacy inertia - we can see this already.  Some may over subscribe and read the tea leaves wrong - get ready for some crazy ideas in all this.

I suspect it will take at least a decade to fully unpack what has been happening in this war.  Right now most of the evidence is happening on social media - of one digs around for scholarly analysis, we are not there yet.  What we have are some pretty skeletal frameworks that roughly fit what we are seeing, but I am still not entirely sure why.

As I also tell my students - the trick to this war is understanding what is fundamental and enduring, and what is a unique manifestation that will only occur in Ukraine.   

Edited January 30 by The_Capt

[OBJ]

16 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

1. Wrong. A smart grenade can fly. We’re pretty close to having these proliferate.
2. I dunno, given the proliferation of drones they might rather defend windows first.
3. I think this is wrong too. The revolution that allowed small quadcopters (way more computing power on a small, energy-efficient chip) also allows lot of small, cheap sensors. If you can just bombard a building with hundreds of sensors, you can find out where soldiers are. Sniff for CO2, look at termal signatures, measure vibration (footsteps, heartbeats, water in pipes) and use your cheapo compute for sensor fusion. Small area seems like a death trap.

All good points and valid. If pulling the curtains/blinds closed and tight keeps the drones out I am sure defenders have already done it.

I agree drone proliferation and specialization is present and evolving, capabilities constantly improving. I haven't seen a video or heard of drone or drone assisted building assault and clearing yet but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened yet. On the other hand I am quite certain drones have been used for some time now to provide urban warfare ISR support.

[Kinophile]

7 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Oh my, that is good.  I am totally stealing it.

Ironically, the US tactical & operational solution to the Pacific assaults was mass - massed fires and massed infantry. 

The strategic solution seems like it was to out-tech the Japanese at a rapid rate of increment. The gigantic, expansive and (relatively) efficient R&D base allowed the US to develop and implement steadily better Op/Tac solutions at an exponentially increasing rate - but the Japanese R&D base was limited by materials, culture and politics. So going from near parity in tech to a large cumulative op/tech advantage became inevitable - with the ultimate strategic advantage detonating over Hiroshima.

Japan by contrast lagged the US early and consistently, further exacerbating the difference in pace and depth of their respective R/D/I cycles. The death of the Japanese Navy (and its Naval Air Force) as an ocean going force was a direct result of this technological race.

Innovate the fastest or die.

WRT to Ukraine, it has a very innovative, lively and imaginative R&D culture, lead by a relatively democratic government, coupled with an extremely motivated workforce. With sufficient support they could probably outpace Russia in several important areas. They already heave, but the scale isn't there yet.

Russia, to me, has a comparatively less actively innovative and more sluggish cycle, burdened with inefficient political process and heavy corruption but it does have enormous scaling potential and state direction can really push hard in certain areas giving heavy advantages (eg air, manpower).

I suspect that until Ukraine can accelerate past Russia's RDI cycle it will never really win/be safe. It'll just achieve an unstable state, vulnerable to external shocks and imbalances. To some extant it appears to be in that framing already.

The true power of the EU is always economic. If/when UKR can properly tap that power and expand on it will when it becomes truly secure. Work like Rheinmetall setting up plants in Ukraine is a good signifier but its the research area that really needs to be developed, modernised and expanded. UKR drone progression and their Amazing Adventures in AD show just how goddamn fast and hard they can work.

To circle back to the Pacific - the early assault failures lead to rapid development and implementation of solutions (both technical & organizational) in time for the next island. Each assault iterated on the previous until by the end the US could contemplate invading Japan proper, a truly insane proposition. But they thought they could do it and I personally feel they would have eventually, bloodily, "won". 

Ukraine could potentially outstrip Russia in the RDI cycle, but its still pretty far off. When it does I think we'll see a gradual climb then a sudden and drastic shift to offensive primacy.

TBH, that's when the truly scary **** is going to start happening...

[JonS]

21 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I suspect it will take at least a decade to fully unpack what has been happening in this war. 

That's a great point. It took, for example, 40-odd years to unpack and deconstruct "blitzkreig" from a mythically wondrous imagined doctrine to its actual reality as a marketting elevator pitch. And, frankly, 40 years after that epiphany there are still plenty of folks who continue to prefer the marketting take.

One concern I have about analysis of this war is availability bias: drone feeds are new and exciting and ubiquitous, but are they representative? I wonder if we give drone's effectiveness too much weight due simply the the large supply of feed videos.

Edited January 31 by JonS