How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, poesel said:

But then it is very German to take a long time to get around to one thing, but then we stick to it forever (for better or worse).

Olaf "Treebeard" Sholz?

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

I think it is hysterical that so many pundits in the free world, including us here, are saying the same exact negative things about the TC-Putin interview as the Russian power elites are.  It was rambling, largely irrelevant, lacking pithy one liners to stick in people's minds, and above all a missed opportunity.  This was Putin's one chance to get his message out to the right wing extremists in the West and he failed to do it.  If there's one thing that makes the right wing nod off and fall asleep is a history lesson.

On the other side, Tucker was obviously trying to use this interview to become relevant again.  I mean, outside his loyal bases of non-thinkers.  And he blew it.  Now he's getting all the blowback without an apparent benefit.

Good

Steve

[Maciej Zwolinski]

11 hours ago, FancyCat said:

Zelensky honored Zaluzhny and Budanov with the Hero of Ukraine, and Zaluzhny initiated 2 hugs with Zelensky. Does not seem to indicate hard feelings to me at least.

In traditional Cossack martial arts it is the opening guard for the sequence where you break your opponent’s neck

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

Much better.  Do we have a list of which battles they sampled?  I count 15 "x's" and would very much like to see which battles they used.  This definitely does not match what we know about Mariupol.

[poesel]

38 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Olaf "Treebeard" Sholz?

Steve

Probably of this kind:

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

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

No disagreement on that. I am fully convinced that the impression of urban combat as particularly difficult comes from it being so very slow and resource consuming for the attacker in terms of artillery, explosives, other ammunition. The fact, that the attacker does not suffer commensurately huge casualties in terms of human lives is the counter-intuitive outlier

I am not sold on that last part...but clearly it can and has happened.  I think the answer may lie deeper in elements of that urban battle.  For example at Ortona, the Canadians suffered over 2:1 casualties as attackers.

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

Sarajevo 3:1 in favor of attacker.

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

Gorzny round 2 - 1:1 but only have Russian reports

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1999–2000)

Leningrad 5:1 against the defender.

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

Berlin 1945 - looks like about 3:1 against the attacker.

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

And of course the big one...Stalingrad.  Looks to be 1:1 but this one was wild as both sides were attacker and defender at different points.  Here the biggest issue was "who" was lost.  The Russians lost conscripts, while the German Army lost 2 x 1st Tier Armies.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad#Casualties

What all this is telling me is that casualty ratios are not the core metric by which to judge a battles outcome in urban warfare.  Nor can anyone really create a "rule of thumb" with respect to casualties based on loss ratios.  Urban fights are definitely costly in many dimensions but losses vary wildly.  One trend is that urban combat is a bit of an equalizer.  Troops built for high tempo manoeuvre warfare lose a lot of advantages in a street fight.

So back to Bakhmut - all we really know is that the loss ratios could have been anywhere in a broad range.  The RA may have lost up to 3:1 as the attacker or the exact inverse.  Bigger questions remain unanswered - which troops?  which equipment?  what did Wagner and the RA not do because of Bakhmut.  What did they do while the UA was pinned down in that fight?  Inversely what did the UA do or not do?  This is before rolling in the political calculus.  I think we can say that the Wagner and the RA lost a lot...this we do know.  Now what did they gain?  I do not think we really know.

[Sequoia]

57 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Olaf "Treebeard" Sholz?

Steve

Good analogy, but he actually looks more like Barliman Butterbur.

[Haiduk]

1 hour ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

In traditional Cossack martial arts it is the opening guard for the sequence where you break your opponent’s neck

There are no "traditional Cossack martial arts", all what we know from the book of Guillaume de Beauplan, French engineer and cartographer of 17th century, that Cossacks liked usual fist fight and belt wrestling, no any Shaolin, like show adepts of modern-invented "martial hopak" ). Cossacks were disciplined infantry for musket firing in dense lines, so they do not need any special martial art for unarmed hand-to-hand combat, except usual brawl and sabre fight %)

The version "Zaluzhnyi just showed how he would choke Zelenskyi" was thrown-in in social media by desperated Poroshenko-followers because they can't explain such behavior of general "opressed by traitors". They even told Zaluzhnyi was forced to hug Zelenskyi according to offical protocol, but by some reasons Budanov, who got the same award next, didn't hug president %) Poroshenko followers tried to organize meeting on Maidan with demand to turn Zaluzhnyi back, but only about several dozens of people came to listen several well-known public opinion leaders from Facebook, who long time have been pushing Poroshenko's agenda about "Zelenskyi and Yermak are traitors and Kremlin agents" 

Edited February 10 by Haiduk

[JonS]

45 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Much better.  Do we have a list of which battles they sampled?  I count 15 "x's" and would very much like to see which battles they used.  This definitely does not match what we know about Mariupol.

There's about 60 battles there, not 15. The X's are the ones that there is only partial data for. None of the ~60 battles ticked over 1:1 cas atk:def

That's a very counter-intuitive result.

Edited February 10 by JonS

[Artkin]

35 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I am not sold on that last part...but clearly it can and has happened.  I think the answer may lie deeper in elements of that urban battle.  For example at Ortona, the Canadians suffered over 2:1 casualties as attackers.

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

Sarajevo 3:1 in favor of attacker.

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

Gorzny round 2 - 1:1 but only have Russian reports

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1999–2000)

Leningrad 5:1 against the defender.

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

Berlin 1945 - looks like about 3:1 against the attacker.

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

And of course the big one...Stalingrad.  Looks to be 1:1 but this one was wild as both sides were attacker and defender at different points.  Here the biggest issue was "who" was lost.  The Russians lost conscripts, while the German Army lost 2 x 1st Tier Armies.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad#Casualties

What all this is telling me is that casualty ratios are not the core metric by which to judge a battles outcome in urban warfare.  Nor can anyone really create a "rule of thumb" with respect to casualties based on loss ratios.  Urban fights are definitely costly in many dimensions but losses vary wildly.  One trend is that urban combat is a bit of an equalizer.  Troops built for high tempo manoeuvre warfare lose a lot of advantages in a street fight.

So back to Bakhmut - all we really know is that the loss ratios could have been anywhere in a broad range.  The RA may have lost up to 3:1 as the attacker or the exact inverse.  Bigger questions remain unanswered - which troops?  which equipment?  what did Wagner and the RA not do because of Bakhmut.  What did they do while the UA was pinned down in that fight?  Inversely what did the UA do or not do?  This is before rolling in the political calculus.  I think we can say that the Wagner and the RA lost a lot...this we do know.  Now what did they gain?  I do not think we really know.

Citing wikipedia again does not tell the full story. 

The Germans lost a large part of 6th army, but not all of it. In fact no more than 1/3 of the army was ever devoted to the city. The other divisions of the army were defending the Don river and were cycled over time. The only other unit in the city was 4th panzer army, which was a small army to begin with. It also did not lose a massive part of its force. 

What people call the "Battle of Stalingrad" involves a lot more than the city fighting itself. 

[Haiduk]

A tragedy in Kharkiv. Russian attacked the fuel storage in eastern part of the city with Shaheds, Three of eight reached own target and set on fire several tanks. Leaked burning fuel spread along the street and set on fire many private houses. Seven people burned alive in own houses  

You can see the scale of fire

In this house burned alive all family - the couple and three their children, boys seven, four and less one year old. The temperature was so huge that only ash left afer them...

 The question remains. What idiot filled with a fuel tanks, encircled by houses in 40 km from the border?  

Edited February 10 by Haiduk

[Maciej Zwolinski]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Much better.  Do we have a list of which battles they sampled?  I count 15 "x's" and would very much like to see which battles they used.  This definitely does not match what we know about Mariupol.

I will try to find a reference to a specific report, but Rowland only says it is 42 battles from WW2, Italy and NW-Europe.

[The_Capt]

25 minutes ago, JonS said:

There's about 60 battles there, not 15. The X's are the ones that there is only partial data for. None of the ~60 battles ticked over 1:1 cas atk:def

That's a very counter-intuitive result.

It absolutely is, so which battles is important.  It begs the question on modern military doctrine - why stress high force ratios for urban combat when this data shows one can theoretically have inverted ratios.  Of course this opens up the big question of what were the attacker/defender strength ratios in each of these battles? Were these all battles of overwhelming attacker force ratios?  A quick review of wiki can find urban battles over 1:1 so was the author being selective to prove a point?  

This was back in ‘06 and every discussion I have heard on urban combat over the last 15 years had not been “s’ok, attackers are golden based on history”. In fact it has been the opposite as smart cities start to kick in.  So something odd is going on here or mainstream has been extremely off base.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

30 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

There are no "traditional Cossack martial arts", all what we know from the book of Guillaume de Beauplan, French engineer and cartographer of 17th century, that Cossacks liked usual fist fight and belt wrestling, no any Shaolin, like show adepts of modern-invented "martial hopak" ). Cossacks were disciplined infantry for musket firing in dense lines, so they do not need any special martial art for unarmed hand-to-hand combat, except usual brawl and sabre fight %)

The version "Zaluzhnyi just showed how he would choke Zelenskyi" was thrown-in in social media by desperated Poroshenko-followers because they can't explain such behavior of general "opressed by traitors". They even told Zaluzhnyi was forced to hug Zelenskyi according to offical protocol, but by some reasons Budanov, who got the same award next, didn't hug president %) Poroshenko followers tried to organize meeting on Maidan with demand to turn Zaluzhnyi back, but only about several dozens of people came to listen several well-known public opinion leaders from Facebook, who long time have been pushing Poroshenko's agenda about "Zelenskyi and Yermak are traitors and Kremlin agents" 

I am sorry, I was joking:) I had no idea people could post the same thing seriously.

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

I will try to find a reference to a specific report, but Rowland only says it is 42 battles from WW2, Italy and NW-Europe.

What would be very interesting is what then overall attacker to defender force strengths were.  It was  easy to find urban battles where the ratio goes above 1:1 against the attacker (eg Ortina), so this leaves me a bit suspicious in that the author could not even cite a single battle that refutes his thesis.

 

[The_Capt]

17 minutes ago, Artkin said:

Citing wikipedia again does not tell the full story. 

The Germans lost a large part of 6th army, but not all of it. In fact no more than 1/3 of the army was ever devoted to the city. The other divisions of the army were defending the Don river and were cycled over time. The only other unit in the city was 4th panzer army, which was a small army to begin with. It also did not lose a massive part of its force. 

What people call the "Battle of Stalingrad" involves a lot more than the city fighting itself. 

Ok, so what were the urban combat loss ratios then?  Also, on German losses…so it was what?  A draw?  German losses were not significant?  

[Maciej Zwolinski]

57 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I am not sold on that last part...but clearly it can and has happened.  I think the answer may lie deeper in elements of that urban battle.  For example at Ortona, the Canadians suffered over 2:1 casualties as attackers.

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

Sarajevo 3:1 in favor of attacker.

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

Gorzny round 2 - 1:1 but only have Russian reports

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1999–2000)

Leningrad 5:1 against the defender.

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

Berlin 1945 - looks like about 3:1 against the attacker.

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

And of course the big one...Stalingrad.  Looks to be 1:1 but this one was wild as both sides were attacker and defender at different points.  Here the biggest issue was "who" was lost.  The Russians lost conscripts, while the German Army lost 2 x 1st Tier Armies.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad#Casualties

This list immediately shows how important would be the gathering of proper data to compare apples to apples. For example with Sarajevo and Leningrad I immediately suspect that the figure may include civilians. Stalingrad - operation Uranus included lots of non-urban fighting, is this included? Etc....

 

[Kinophile]

5 hours ago, poesel said:

But then it is very German to take a long time to get around to one thing, but then we stick to it forever (for better or worse).

That has been my impression lately too - slow to accept (normal German caution),  but once accepted it becomes entrenched (and hence the initial caution). 

 

[Maciej Zwolinski]

10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

What would be very interesting is what then overall attacker to defender force strengths were.  It was  easy to find urban battles where the ratio goes above 1:1 against the attacker (eg Ortina), so this leaves me a bit suspicious in that the author could not even cite a single battle that refutes his thesis.

Well, he claims to be surprised by the result, so theoretically should not be self-selecting.

Regarding the force strength and adjusted force ratios, Rowland tries to work in these and other variables, which makes the whole chapter 30 pages long and makes it impossible to reproduce it all. Given that the sample is taken from Italy and post-Overlord, we probably may assume per rule of thumb the typical battle would have the attacker at small advantage in men, but significant superiority in artillery and air. My unscientific guess would be that force ratios adjusted by artillery and air support would be strongly in favour of the attacker.

Will to look up Dupuy to see if his calculations shed any light on this.

[Kinophile]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

WW1 - you are confusing outputs with outcomes.  Of course there was movement in WW1 but none of it was decisive.  There was plenty of defence in WW2 but none of it was decisive either.  All war is a combination of each, however, which form of warfare that is decisive in creating outcomes shifts overtime.  I do not debate that offensives happened in WW1, I debate the idea that any of them created decisive outcomes.  WW1 was an attritional and positional war in the majority. Not decided by manoeuvre - even if it was happening in a bunch of sideshows.  To try and force that war into an offensive primacy lens is to attempt to bend the facts to fit a perception/dogma, not the other way around which is how it is suppose to be done.

Gettysburg.  Lee broke his military in that battle and never recovered.  His entire campaign buckled and collapsed after that fight.  He decisively lost a Union defensive battle.  What is so hard about this?  It happens all the time in war.  The consequences of Gettysburg were significant.  European sentiment toward the Confederacy went cold, Southern force generation started to fail and Lee’s gilding was tarnished.  That battle set the conditions for a Southern defeat - this is not really debated (except here).  But because it was a defensive victory and does not fit this strange offensive-cult mindset we are going to dismiss it?

Victory.  I have provided numerous historical examples but somehow the idea that most military “victories” are negotiated endstates that neither side can declare total continues to elude.  Turn your binary equation around, “If Ukraine can only achieve 80% of its political and strategic objectives…this is a defeat?”  

Here is another English saying for you “take the f#cking win you can get”.  If Ukraine pursues a blind “total victory or death” strategy here they could easily wind up with the latter.  They could break themselves on those southern minefield belts while western support grows cold.  They could kill hundreds of thousands of their own people until domestic support grows cold.  That could easily set conditions for that 80-20 ratio to flip violently.

Grown ups do not think this way.  They realize the stakes are much higher.  All war is a violent negotiation.  Victory is not some simplistic binary calculation.  It is linked broader political objectives, some which do not become clear until after the war is over.  This war will very likely end much like the majority of wars have, with a mixed outcome where both sides will declare victory for themselves and defeat on their opponent.  Then the wrangling will continue to try and use that as a foundation for what comes next.

I think what you, and other purists, find offensive is the idea that war is not a decisive political tool.  Well I hate to be the one to break it to you but the evidence of this is pretty overwhelming.  Wars rarely are the “last argument of kings” without becoming the first argument for what happens next.  All victories and defeats are messy human affairs.  Anyone seeking clear and definitive results due to warfare is chasing fantasy.  In fact this is the central flaw in all Clausewitzian thinking - war is not rational, nor is it decisive. Or at least very rarely so. So rarely that when looking through a long lens, all wars are in fact largely indecisive.  Nazi Germany was totally defeated, yet Germany is the major power in the EU.  We won the Cold War and are living with this. The North won the Civil War but the seeds of discontent never really went away.  

This war is not going to end in total Russian military defeat. Ukraine is not going to march on Moscow or remove Russia as a threat on its eastern border.  So we had better start figuring out how to live with whatever the outcome of this thing is and stop treating it like the skewed historical fictions we have created.

 

This post needs a lot more attention. 

[The_Capt]

Mystery deepens.  Another quick look, wiki-deep, and we see more anomalies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aschaffenburg_(1945)

2:1 casualties against attacker (US), unless one counts POWs then it skews back to roughly 1:1.

14 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

This list immediately shows how important would be the gathering of proper data to compare apples to apples. For example with Sarajevo and Leningrad I immediately suspect that the figure may include civilians. Stalingrad - operation Uranus included lots of non-urban fighting, is this included? Etc....

 

No to civilians, they are handled separately in a column below.  Possible, to non-urban combat.  These totals do not seem to fully delineate solely urban combat.  In fact that might be impossible without some pretty deep archival research on daily losses by unit/formation.  Stalingrad may have been much different in the city as outside it.

[The_Capt]

1 minute ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

Well, he claims to be surprised by the result, so theoretically should not be self-selecting.

Regarding the force strength and adjusted force ratios, Rowland tries to work in these and other variables, which makes the whole chapter 30 pages long and makes it impossible to reproduce it all. Given that the sample is taken from Italy and post-Overlord, we probably may assume per rule of thumb the typical battle would have the attacker at small advantage in men, but significant superiority in artillery and air. My unscientific guess would be that force ratios adjusted by artillery and air support would be strongly in favour of the attacker.

Will to look up Dupuy to see if his calculations shed any light on this.

Absolutely on air/fire superiority.  The Battle for Manila as an example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Manila_(1945)

US has air supremacy and ratios against the defender were crazy skewed.  

Now this does not explain Mariupol where the RA had both numerical and firepower superiority but still likely had a worse than 1:1 loss ratio (could be as high as 2:1).

Digging into this one now:https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA424898.pdf

Interestingly the author notes that in his study DCRs do drop in urban combat but due to the longer time spent in these battles overall casualties could be higher than non-urban.  Urban combat appears to slow everything down, which of course favours the defender.  Mariupol might be another indicator of defensive primacy emerging because it definitely bucks historical trends.  What I would give for clear and valid data from Bakhmut and Adiivka…there is a best seller right there.

 

[Maciej Zwolinski]

14 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

2:1 casualties against attacker (US), unless one counts POWs then it skews back to roughly 1:1.

POWs should be included, this is a major source of casualties and a fundamental part of economics of a siege - theoretically, the attacker could decide to go full medieval,cut off routes to the city and just starve the defendant out, in which case non-POW casualties on both sided could be minimal, while at the end of the siege the defendant loses the entire force.

BTW Rowland includes POWs in the above calculations - this may be the deciding factor why he always had more defenders on the casualty list then attackers.

[Kraft]

Interview in german, automated subtitles not really great though

 

 

 

[billbindc]

On 2/8/2024 at 3:04 PM, The_Capt said:

That is a very good analogy.  McClellan was a brilliant force generation general.  He built a modern army out of a tiny start up.  That was an enormous task with many critical systems essentially beginning from nothing - logistics, C4ISR, training and doctrine.  He was in fact exactly what the Union needed at the beginning of the war.  But when it came time to fight, he was sub par and dangerous.  The political level had to replace him and find the right general for the right time: Grant.

Grant would have been a disaster in the first half of the war.  He would have fought like Lee and likely broken the north.  Lee was arguably the wrong general for the South too.  Aggressive to a fault. Slavish adherence to the offensive.  He took an incredibly motivated military and basically broke it without achieving victory.  Now a strong argument can be made that he knew he was up against the clock and was essentially trying to destroy the Union before they inevitably grew too strong but there are holes in this.  However, the Confederacy never solved for stuff like logistics or C4ISR over the same period - that is a major strategic shortfall.

Regardless, generals are very often terrible in a moment other than their own.  Most of the wartime generals of WW2 would have been horrible in small dirty wars.  Good generals in low intensity or peacetime often fail in wartime.  The trick is to put the right general in the chair at the right time. I do not know what the dynamic is with the UA but clearly the politically level has decided they need someone else for what comes next…we will have to see if they are right.

My great-great-grandfather served under McClellen from the very beginning of the war through Antietam. He was present for pretty much every debacle Mac managed to get himself into. He went to his grave thinking McClellan was the greatest general of the Civil War. It’s useful to remember that the soldier isn’t necessarily the best judge of his commander.