How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

  

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

I have watched a few experts drawing lines like this was the Gulf War and unless the will of the Ukrainian people breaks on a massive scale (and there are no indications it will, in fact it has gone the other way), encirclement is a really bad idea as you now stretch out your forces along very long LOCs, surrounded by hostiles.   In fact this whole 5-6 prong attack was dumb

New topic.

I've seen this criticism from a lot of the experts and I do not disagree with it at all.  However, this is all fairly minor points when analyzing Russia's failure.  For some reason nobody out there is really talking about where the pooch was really screwed.  I will remedy that

Putin and his top troublemakers came up with a grand plan -> take over eastern Ukraine and the coast so quickly there won't be meaningful resistance, dismember the country before the international community gets their act together, then have a stronger Russia that nobody will want to mess with.

Obviously Putin and his cronies were convinced it was possible to achieve all of this, even if it is objectively stupid to have thought that.  So what would Putin and his goons do next?  Get the military guys in to design a means of achieving the first, and most critical, part of the plan - the seizure of a huge amount of territory very quickly before the Ukrainians can react.

The military looks at this and says that by their calculations they need a minimum of two efforts; one for Odessa and at least one for everything east of the Dnpr.

Effort Count 1 + 1 = 2

A closer look at the eastern part shows there's too much territory to start in one place and take everything over.  There needs to be at least two equidistant efforts.  So one from the northeastern corner and one from the south out of Crimea.

Effort Count is now 1 + 2 = 3

Looking at it again, Keiv is a massive urban area and really requires its own effort in order to ensure it is taken and the rest of the ops aren't slowed down.

Effort Count is now 1 + 3 = 4

Hmmm... well, right in the middle of one of the biggest axis of advance is Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv.  That's probably going to slow things down some.  OK, divide up the push from the north into a northern group to take everything between Kiev and Kharkiv and a central group to push through Kharkiv.

Effort Count is now 1 + 4 = 5

Final conclusion, it will take 5 simultaneous efforts to achieve the desired outcome within a short period of time.

And there, folks, is where the big mistake was made.  Not in planning out an offensive with 5 efforts.  No, that is a logical and fairly sound approach to what was asked of the military.  The mistake was the military should have said it can not be done.  Let me say that again...

There was no militarily sound way to achieve the result Putin was looking for with anything less than 5 main efforts.  Therefore, the plan itself was an appropriate solution to the problem Putin asked to be solved.  The real problem is the military was asked to do something beyond it's strategic capacity and produced a plan that either

1. they were dumb enough to think had a chance in Hell of working
2. they were too afraid to tell Putin he needed to rethink his overall strategy
3. they suspected it might not work, but figured the risk of trying it vs. refusing Putin was the safer option

 

And there you have it.  The 5 effort plan shouldn't be criticized as a bad plan for the objectives Putin laid out.  Any other plan would have no chance of achieving the necessary objectives to secure Putin's war aims even under the most wildly optimistic assumptions.  Blaming the 5 effort plan for this mess is like blaming a bunch of chickens for only producing eggs instead of blaming the guy who thought chickens could be milked to produce cheese.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

38 minutes ago, akd said:

Well, the only thing he is getting from Techno House is rations of PlayStations and IPhones.

Well, now!  I bet there was more than a few young visitors from Europe that found themselves looking for a rave and instead found themselves at 2 in the morning standing in front of the Kherson equivalent of Best Buy.  And now that I know this, the break in makes sense.

Serious note here.  This does indicate a lack of low level discipline.  They have just entered a very large city after a really tough fight, and yet there appears to be time and opportunity for this soldier to go looting?  Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Steve

[akd]

Now seems like a good moment to revisit Mikhail Khodarenok’s analysis published weeks before the invasion:

Quote

Mass Fire Strike on Ukraine

Posted on February 7, 2022 | 11 Comments

Mikhail Khodarenok’s article about the course of a possible Russian war on Ukraine appeared in NVO last week. He’s a knowledgeable and realistic analyst.

And he’s a Russian patriot given his military career and service in the General Staff. But he’s one who says what the Kremlin doesn’t want to hear, but needs to.

Khodarenok points to the danger of Russia’s overconfidence about military action even with its significantly revamped and upgraded forces. His piece resembles what many Western observers write when the U.S. contemplates war. But, in Russia, Khodarenok is a lonely voice.

War on Ukraine, he argues, won’t be easy like Moscow’s hubris would indicate.

We can hope Putin won’t opt for war. But, if he does, it will change everything, including for Putin himself. He probably can’t even imagine how right now.

In either event, here’s a translation of Khodarenok’s timely article:

Predications of bloodthirsty pundits

Of rapturous hawks and hasty cuckoos

In Russia’s expert community recently a sufficiently powerful opinion has taken root that it won’t even be necessary to put troops on Ukraine’s territory since the armed forces of that country are in a pathetic state.

Some pundits note that Russia’s powerful fire strike will destroy practically all surveillance and communications systems, artillery and tank formations. Moreover, a number of experts have concluded that even one crushing Russian strike will to be sufficient to finish such a war.

Like a cherry on top different analysts point to the fact that no one in Ukraine will defend the “Kiev regime.”

IT WON’T BE A CAKE WALK

Let’s start with the last. To assert that no one in Ukraine will defend the regime signifies practically a complete lack of knowledge about the military-political situation and moods of the broad masses in the neighboring state. And the degree of hatred (which, as is well-known, is the most effective fuel for armed conflict) in the neighboring republic toward Moscow is plainly underestimated. No one in Ukraine will meet the Russian army with bread, salt and flowers.

It seems events in south-east Ukraine in 2014 didn’t teach anyone anything. Then they also figured that the entire left-bank Ukraine in one fell swoop and ticked-off seconds would turn into Novorossiya. They already drew the maps, thought out the personnel contingent for the future city and regional administrations, worked out state flags.

But even the Russian-speaking population of this part of Ukraine (including also cities like Kharkov, Zaporozhe, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol) didn’t support similar thoughts by a huge majority. The “Novorossiya” project somehow imperceptibly deflated and quietly died.

In a word, a liberation crusade in 2022 in the form and likeness of 1939 won’t work in any way.¹ In this instance the words of Soviet literature classic Arkadiy Gaydar are true as never before: “It’s obvious that now we won’t have an easy battle, but a hard campaign.”

“WITH LITTLE BLOOD, A POWERFUL STRIKE”

Now about “Russia’s powerful fire strike,” by which “practically all surveillance and communications systems, artillery and tank formations of the VSU²” will supposedly be destroyed.

Only in this single expression it’s apparent that only political workers could say such a thing. For reference: in the course of hypothetical military actions on the scale of a theater of military operations [TVD] strikes on priority targets and mass fire strikes are delivered. We note in the course of operational-strategic planning the adjectives “powerful” (and also “medium,” “weak,” etc.) aren’t used.

In military science it’s emphasized that strikes can be strategic (this for the most part relates to strategic nuclear forces), operational and tactical. According to the forces which will participate and the targets which will be destroyed strikes can be mass, group and individual. And it’s altogether better not to introduce or use other definitions even in works of a political nature.

Strikes on priority targets and mass fire strikes can be delivered in the bounds of a front (fronts on Russia’s western borders still haven’t been formed) or a main command of armed forces in a theater of military operations (such a thing also hasn’t yet been established in the South-Western strategic direction). Anything less than this isn’t a mass strike.

And what is, for example, a front mass fire strike (MOU)? For starters we note that the maximum number of combat ready forces and means of aviation, missile troops and artillery, EW systems at the disposal of the commander of a front (an operational-strategic large unit) are engaged in the MOU. The MOU is one mass sortie of aircraft, two-three launches of OTR³ and TR⁴ systems, several artillery fire bombardments. It’s good if the degree of fire destruction to the enemy in this is 60-70%.

What is the main thing in this question as it applies to a conflict with Ukraine? It goes without saying that the MOU will visit heavy losses on a probable enemy. But to count on only one such strike to crush the armed forces of an entire state means that simply unbridled optimism has appeared in the course of planning and conducting combat operations. Such MOUs have to be delivered not once and not twice, but much more often in the course of hypothetical strategic operations in a TVD.

To this it’s certainly necessary to add that supplies of prospective and highly-accurate weapons in the VS RF⁵ don’t bear any kind of unlimited character. “Tsirkon” hypersonic missiles still aren’t in the armory. And the quantity of “Kalibrs” (sea-based cruise missiles), “Kinzhals,” Kh-101 (air-launched cruise missiles) and missiles for “Iskanders” in the very best case number in the hundreds (dozens in the case of “Kinzhals”). This arsenal is completely insufficient to wipe a state on the scale of France with a population of more than 40 million from the face of the earth. And Ukraine is characterized by exactly these parameters.

ON AIR SUPERIORITY

Sometimes in the Russian expert community it’s asserted (by the followers of Douhet’s doctrine⁶) that since hypothetical combat operations in Ukraine will be conducted in conditions of full Russian air superiority the war will be extremely brief and will end in the shortest time.

But it’s somehow forgotten that the armed formations of the Afghan opposition in the conflict of 1979-1989 didn’t have a single aircraft or combat helicopter. And the war in that country stretched out for a full 10 years. Chechen fighters didn’t have a single airplane. And the fight with them continued several years and cost federal forces a great deal of blood and victims.

And the Armed Forces of Ukraine have some combat aviation. As well as air defense means.

In fact, Ukrainian crews of surface-to-air missile troops (scarcely Georgian) substantially stung the Russian VVS⁷ in the course of the 2008 conflict.⁸ After the first day of combat operations the Russian VVS leadership was obviously shocked by the losses sustained. And it wouldn’t do to forget about this.

MOURNED IN ADVANCE

Now on the thesis “The Armed Forces of Ukraine are in a pathetic state.” Naturally, the VSU have problems with aviation and modern PVO⁹ means. However, we have to recognize the following. If the VSU represented fragments of the Soviet Army until 2014, then over the last seven years a qualitatively different army has been created in Ukraine, on a completely different ideological foundation and largely on NATO standards. And very modern arms and equipment are coming and continue to come to Ukraine from many countries of the North Atlantic alliance.

As concerns the VSU’s weakest spot — Air Forces. It’s not possible to exclude that the collective West could supply Kiev with fighters in a sufficiently short time, as they say, from what their armed forces have — speaking simply, used ones. However those second-hand ones will be fully comparable with the majority of aircraft in the Russian inventory.

Of course, today the VSU significantly lag the VS RF in combat and operational potentials. No one doubts this — not in the East or in the West.

But you can’t treat this army lightly. In this regard it’s necessary always to remember Aleksandr Suvorov’s precept: “Never scorn your enemy, don’t consider him dumber and weaker than yourself.”

Now as concerns assertions that western countries won’t send a single soldier to die for Ukraine.

We have to note that most likely this will be the case. However this hardly excludes in the event of a Russian invasion massive assistance to the VSU from the collective West with the most varied types of arms and military equipment and large volume supplies of all kinds of materiel. In this regard the West has already exhibited an unprecedented consolidated position, which, it seems, was not expected in Moscow.

One shouldn’t doubt that some reincarnated lend-lease in the form and likeness of the Second World War from the USA and countries of the North Atlantic alliance will begin. Even the flow of volunteers from the West of which there could be very many can’t be excluded.

PARTISANS AND UNDERGROUND FIGHTERS

And finally, about the protracted hypothetical campaign. In the Russian expert community they say several hours, sometimes even several dozen minutes. Meanwhile somehow they forget we have already been through all this. The phrase “seize the city with one parachute regiment in two hours” is already a classic of the genre.¹⁰

It also pays to remember that Stalin’s powerful NKVD and the multimillion-man Soviet Army struggled with the nationalist underground in Western Ukraine for more than 10 years. And now there is a possibility that all of Ukraine could simply turn into partisans. Additionally these formations could easily begin to operate on Russia’s territory.

Armed struggle in large Ukrainian cities is generally poorly suited to forecasting. It’s commonly known that a big city is the best battlefield for the weak and less well-equipped side of an armed conflict.

Serious experts note that in a megapolis it’s possible not only to concentrate a grouping in the thousands and even tens of thousands of fighters, but also to protect it from the enemy’s superior fire power. And also supply it with material resources for a long time and replenish losses in people and equipment. Mountains, forests, jungles don’t present such a possibility today.

Specialists are convinced that an urban environment helps the defender, slows the movement of attackers, allows the deployment of the highest number of fighters per square meter, compensates for the gap in forces and technology. But in Ukraine there are more than enough big cities, including ones with a million in population. So the Russian Army could meet far from a single Stalingrad or Groznyy in the course of a hypothetical war with Ukraine.

CONCLUSIONS

Generally, there won’t be any kind of Ukrainian blitzkrieg. Utterances by some experts of the type “The Russian Army will destroy the greater part of VSU sub-units¹¹ in 30-40 minutes,” “Russia is capable of destroying Ukraine in 10 minutes in a full-scale war,” “Russia will destroy Ukraine in eight minutes” don’t have a serious basis.

And finally, most important. Armed conflict with Ukraine now fundamentally doesn’t meet Russia’s national interests. Therefore it’s best for some overexcited Russian experts to forget their hat-tossing fantasies. And, with the aim of preventing further reputational damage, never again to recall them. 

_______________________________________________________

¹“Liberation crusade” of 1939 refers to Moscow’s conquest of western Ukraine under the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

²Abbreviation for Armed Forces of Ukraine.

³An operational-tactical missile generally capable of striking targets to the depth of a front’s responsibility up to 500 km.

⁴A tactical missile with shorter range.

⁵Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

⁶Italian strategic bombing theorist Giulio Douhet, 1869-1930.

⁷Abbreviation for Air Forces.

⁸Khodarenok is saying Ukrainian troops participated in the air defense of Georgia during its Five-Day War with Russia.

⁹Abbreviation for air defense.

¹⁰Reference to former Defense Minister Pavel Grachev’s claim that Russian forces would easily take the Chechen capital Groznyy in 1994. They were decimated during an ill-advised attack on the city over New Year’s.

¹¹Tactical forces below regiment-level.

https://russiandefpolicy.com/2022/02/07/mass-fire-strike-on-ukraine/#comments

[sburke]

31 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Great stuff @The_Capt, and again, I hope it keeps devolving much as you say.

I especially like the idea of "who has whom encircled, again?" 

But [deep breath]....

Like Zveroboy, I remain skeptical of the 'open warfare' striking power of the UA forces for the time being. To me, they seem highly  fragmented, lightly armed, and also on the move now. We see mainly small infantry detachments in civilian cars, combing over abandoned Russian vehicles. Sure, such units can scrounge food and gas from civvies, but can they keep meaningful mech forces in the field for weeks?

...So I really don't know how well they can capitalize on RA blunders and lengthening supply lines to block or destroy those strung out BTGs before they reach the Dniepr.

The patriotic militias are basically static formations, tactically valueless at the moment outside their own communities. Unless of course the Russians actually do try city fighting, which I am starting to doubt.

 

What I fear most is that the "war of movement" will end in a few weeks, and this war will enter a terrible new phase. Let me spell out a 'worst case' scenario, and let you hack at it:

 

I dunno after watching Dan's post on that Pantsir about 4x now I think there is no way Russia is gonna be able to supply this effort.  That is a unit that you would think would get more attention than most and yet it has been reduced to junk by.. driving down the road.  Regular supply trucks being treated any better is too far fetched for me to believe. 

[Zveroboy1]

Playing devil's advocate a bit here because I mostly agree with Steve's points, but isn't it a bit flawed however to automatically assume all the different axis the Russians are pursuing have been affected the same level of effort?

Clearly Kyiv has to be a main effort in terms of strength even though it looks like the Ukrainian resistance is so strong, the Russian have been forced to shift their attack to the west; the two drives out of Crimea as well if only because they seem to be most competent and are perhaps achieving the most. The pushes from the east however, especially the one in front of Kharkiv, I am not certain they can be counted as major efforts. They very well might be, but could also be secondary thrusts to be honest.

If you look at the eastern half of Ukraine, it almost looks like a bulge in a way right? With the way Russians can attack both from Belarus and Crimea. If you were in charge of the whole thing you'd never affect the main effort from the east imo.

They seem to be attacking all over the place and so that would mean a dilution of their strength. But it is common practice to attack along secondary axis to pin down enemy forces or to deceive the enemy as to your real intentions, even launching secondary attacks first sometimes. The Soviets were good at that before.

It looks obvious the Russians are facing lots of issues and their performance has been far from stellar to put it mildly, but surely this is something generals must have studied at the military academy. Could they simply have forgotten all this stuff lol ?

Edited March 3, 2022 by Zveroboy1

[Battlefront.com]

AKD, that is by far the best predictive article I have ever read on the war we find ourselves in now.  Even though it was written after the US warnings of pending invasion (i.e. he had some facts to work off of), he obviously has very deep knowledge at the ready.  Every single thing he predicted has come true. 

I especially appreciated his comments about the "MOU" needing to be repeated many times over to get the intended effect, but practically speaking this just isn't possible due to the limitations of the munitions needed for such high tempo ops.  Not to mention softening up time as you don't really want to be doing these MOU attacks concurrent with ground ops.

Has last point about the difficulty of the Soviet state to suppress the Ukrainian independence fighters after retaking Ukraine from the Third Reich is one that, honestly, I've kinda forgotten about.  Sure, I know of it quite well, but I didn't really connect the dots about the relevance to where we are now.

Thanks for that repost.

Steve

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, Zveroboy1 said:

Playing devil's advocate a bit here because I mostly agree with Steve's points, but isn't it a bit flawed however to automatically assume all the different axis the Russians are pursuing have been affected the same level of effort?

Clearly Kyiv has to be a main effort in terms of strength even though it looks like the Ukrainian resistance is so strong, the Russian have been forced to shift their attack to the west; the two drives out of Crimea as well if only because they seem to be most competent and are perhaps achieving the most. The pushes from the east however, especially the one in front of Kharkiv, I am not certain they can be counted as major efforts. They very well might be, but could also be secondary thrusts to be honest.

They seem to be attacking all over the place and so that would mean a dilution of their strength. But it is common practice to attack along secondary axis to pin down enemy forces or to deceive the enemy as to your real intentions, even launching secondary attacks first sometimes. The Soviets were good at that before.

It looks obvious the Russians are facing lots of issues and their performance has been far from stellar to put it mildly, but surely this is something generals must have studied at the military academy. Could they simply have forgotten all this stuff lol ?

Steve went into some of this, but it isn't so much that they didn't know it was a bad plan, as that they were afraid to tell Putin it was a bad plan. Also the plan was made far worse by epic corruption all the way up and down the chain of command. There was probably a GREAT deal of reluctance to tell Putin his bad plan was going to be much worse because of the actual state of the army. So the paper capabilities of many units were just fiction. Throw in an initial assumption of very little resistance that is world historically bad, and they have made themselves a proper mess.

[The_Capt]

4 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Great stuff @The_Capt, and again, I hope it keeps devolving much as you say.

I especially like the idea of "who has whom encircled, again?" 

But [deep breath]....

Like Zveroboy, I remain skeptical of the 'open warfare' striking power of the UA forces for the time being. To me, they seem highly  fragmented, lightly armed, and also on the move now. We see mainly small infantry detachments in civilian cars, combing over abandoned Russian vehicles. Sure, such units can scrounge food and gas from civvies, but can they keep meaningful mech forces in the field for weeks?

...So I really don't know how well they can capitalize on RA blunders and lengthening supply lines to block or destroy those strung out BTGs before they reach the Dniepr.

The patriotic militias are basically static formations, tactically valueless at the moment outside their own communities. Unless of course the Russians actually do try city fighting, which I am starting to doubt.

 

What I fear most is that the "war of movement" will end in a few weeks, and this war will enter a terrible new phase. Let me spell out a 'worst case' scenario, and let you hack at it:

1. The RA will bypass or 'seal off' many urban centers, as well as huge swathes of 'hostile' country. Upon reaching the Dniepr, the BTG/RCTs will set up a web of fortified* cantonments / firebases to effectively interdict key crossings and road/rail junctions and assert 'control' over all of East Ukraine.

* I guess I need to disagree here with Steve that Russians can't figure out how to dig in, wire up and mine secure perimeters, as they did in A'stan.

2. While these bases' supply lines will surely remain under steady attack, the UA light infantry won't be able to stop all convoys. Once entrenched, RA forces will become far less exposed to their own organizational shortcomings, and improve their defenses against such positional attacks as the UA can conduct: raids, drone swarms, whatever.

3.  From those bases, the RA will be able to improve convoy security and over time, conduct seek and destroy operations as the weather improves, especially in the open steppe country.

(This all assumes btw Russia mobilizes for total war; Ukraine should not base its defense strategy on the presumption of a popular revolt and withdrawal)

4. From there, I fear time shifts in Russia's favour. Large populations of Ukrainian civilians will run out of food and other essentials of life as the Russians either shut off their supply chains, or wherever they can, place them under control of mafiya gangs -- monopoly for allegiance!

(yes, I've been rethinking my earlier notion that no Ukrainians will collaborate if the Russians demonstrate they are determined to stay. This tactic will likely work best in areas with many Russian speakers more likely to reconcile themselves to new rulers)

This will all create an awful economic and humanitarian disaster, depopulating many cities. Of course, the Russians will be only too happy to offer (non military aged male / non-ethnic Russian) refugees 'humanitarian' safe passage west across the Dniepr. Draining the guerrilla 'sea', as it were.

4. Wasteful, pointless and cruel? Completely! But within a year, Putin could 'create a wasteland and call it peace', even victory, according to his own logic.

A 'South Vietnam' scenario, sure, as an insurgency would drag on and on, but with a ruthless, stubborn occupier not interested in anyone's 'hearts and minds', and the West too scared of nuclear war to intervene.

... So what can the UA do to prevent this? Can it inflict heavy enough losses to force a withdrawal, or regime change before the Russians create 'facts on the ground'?

First step, sealing of urban centres and countryside.  Russia would have to commit it entire professional ground force (208k) and then call up reserves and do conscription to even look at sustaining it - we are talking about a country the size of France.  Also what do you do about the other nations you are trying to menace?  Harsh language? Because everything is now tied up In this operation without full mobilization, which creates enormous domestic resentment.  But you are all in.

Second step. You dig into firebases/FOBs whatever to try and control the ground.  This is setting yourself for continuous attrition, now with reserves and conscripts as your professional forces can only go so far.  Now you start taking a steady stream of dead and wounded with spikes and horror stories, compounded by you own troops war crimes and massacres (see: sustaining resolve of the west for the long term).  Because you never really break the will of the nation to fight and in reality you only control the FOBs and about 1000m from them and insurgency has got all the room.  Your LOCs are the stuff of nightmares, ambushes and captured troops.  Troop morale is a total mess and discipline will follow.

Step 3 - Go on the Offensive, search and destroy and all that good stuff.  Here you even have fewer troops as this is very dangerous and specialized work.  But you are all in, you got all the sigint firing, you are working humint and even doing nasty infiltration stuff (you do speak the language), you get some wins but this takes a very long time and for most of it especially early on you are coming up empty and losing people…and ever time you screw up you deepen resentment and resolve of locals to fight. You never get enough intel to really swing things your way.  You bag some insurgency leaders but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. You kill the #2 insurgency leader, 17 times.

Step 4- Wasteland.  Ok, so you give up search and destroy and go all Rolling Thunder, start breaking things.  Short of nukes this will take a mountain of ordinance and money you no longer have, and this whole time you are still bleeding.  By this time you might even start seeing terror tactics in Russia itself.  But you are now starving people, so mass migration for many, for others nothing left to lose.  You also cannot stop all supplies, these cities and countryside are just too big, so there will be a network of Selensky trails over the parts you control better and pretty much freedom of movement where you don’t.   

Ok, so you have spent let’s say 18 months now, entrenched in FOBs barely controlling your own LOCs, bleeding daily so some really big numbers start adding up, focused on a single operation so other nations are getting cocky, you are really going broke, you have not broken the will of the Ukrainian people or at least enough of them and somehow you have not had a domestic revolution.  So let’s add up the bill for what you would need to make this work:

- a new economic system because this semi capitalist one Russia currently has will not survive the plan.  Something insular and self contained.

- a completely new and huge internal security mechanism to keep domestics in line backed by even more military to back them up.

- an ideology that somehow glues it together to try and win the hearts and minds of your own people.

Well we have just re-invented the Afghan War and the communist system to try and sustain it…and it still failed. Except this time the Ukrainians have the entire western world onside backing them with weapons and support, no yellow jugs of homemade crap, no we are talking EFPs and next gen autonomous stuff.

You say the Ukrainians should not base a strategy on domestic Russian pressure, why not?  It worked very well for Vietnamese and Afghans (twice) and is the strategic centre of gravity for the Russians.  By the approach above you have elevated “killing Russians” as a new Ukrainian religion so their will is solid, the domestic home front is where it always fails in these messes.

The fundamental change in calculus that needs to be made here is that light fragmented forces that 1) are armed with some very advanced western equipment and munitions, 2) can sense, connect, communicate and synchronize in near real time and 3) is motivated, desperate or just really pissed off, are not “light or fragmented”, they are distributed warfighting mass resting on a foundation of home field support.  They can, and have, won in the long term without #1 and #2, they really only need #3.  And Russia would need to go full Genghis in order to try to shoot their way through that, which neither their own population or the west could tolerate.

 

[danfrodo]

Great points folks, thanks for sharing all these excellent insights.  While we talk about the ferocity and effectiveness of a Ukrainian resistance movement, we must also remember who's on the other side.  Putin will murder people in the thousands if he thinks it will quell unrest.  He'll use the police, he'll cut off electricity, fuel, food, internet, cell phones.  It'll be like the 1930s. 
Take a good look at the monster we are dealing with, he'll stop at nothing.  This has the possibility to be ongoing mass murder of Ukrainians.  I think NATO needs to intervene w air power based on humanitarian grounds, due to Russian actions both now and for what the future holds if Putin 'wins'. 

[Battlefront.com]

8 minutes ago, Zveroboy1 said:

Playing devil's advocate a bit here because I mostly agree with Steve's points, but isn't it a bit flawed however to automatically assume all the different axis the Russians are pursuing have been affected the same level of effort?

"Same" in that they all have equal importance in terms of supporting the operational objective of a quick takeover.  If any one of the 5 failed, some major component of the overall plan would fail.  This means the overall plan has "5 points of failure" instead of say 2 or 3.  The more points of failure you have, the more likely you will suffer failure.

8 minutes ago, Zveroboy1 said:

Clearly Kyiv has to be a main effort in terms of strength even though it looks like the Ukrainian resistance is so strong, the Russian have been forced to shift their attack to the west; the two drives out of Crimea as well if only because they seem to be most competent and are perhaps achieving the most. The pushes from the east however, especially the one in front of Kharkiv, I am not certain they can be counted as major efforts. They very well might be, but could also be secondary thrusts to be honest.

It is because the most fundamental premise of the entire campaign is to take over Ukraine.  You can not do this if the national government and symbol of the state is left unoccupied.  Just not possible.

8 minutes ago, Zveroboy1 said:

They seem to be attacking all over the place and so that would mean a dilution of their strength. But it is common practice to attack along secondary axis to pin down enemy forces or to deceive the enemy as to your real intentions, even launching secondary attacks first sometimes. The Soviets were good at that before.

There is a different between branching off of a main axis and the axis itself.  If you include branches, then there's probably 12 of more in the war as we now see it.

In a normal maneuver war, branches are sometimes problematic.  Yes, they can produce unanticipated victories, but it can also produce disastrous overreaches.  There are many examples, especially on the Eastern Front, where the Soviets lost significant forces, gained ground, and momentum because a branch got defeated and left the main effort in trouble.

8 minutes ago, Zveroboy1 said:

It looks obvious the Russians are facing lots of issues and their performance has been far from stellar to put it mildly, but surely this is something generals must have studied at the military academy. Could they simply have forgotten all this stuff lol ?

The assessment that AKD posted clearly indicates that the Russian military planners should have known their plan could not possibly work because Putin's war aims were extremely unrealistic.  Hell, I knew it was unrealistic and I'm not a military planner and I only study this stuff as a hobby.

Khodarenok also brought up the fact (and it is a fact) that many Russians think of Ukrainians as an inferior race.  Hitler thought the same of the "Slavs" and came up with a similarly unworkable military plan based on a similar superiority complex.  Same result.

Hey, just another way Putin has allowed us to accurately compare him to Hitler.  Well done Putin!

Steve

[akd]

Well, martial law comes to Russia today…

[dan/california]

More fascinating tire analysis. The same conclusion but more so.

[billbindc]

2 hours ago, dan/california said:

This is the single most useful piece of information I have seen all week.  Really informative, his whole feed is excellent. We need to get a copy of the game.

There is an excellent response to this thread that explains they they aren't even the correct tires for these vehicles but instead cheap Chinese knockoffs. So, bad maintenance *and* ****ty procurement.

[Zveroboy1]

9 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Steve went into some of this, but it isn't so much that they didn't know it was a bad plan, as that they were afraid to tell Putin it was a bad plan.

True of course yes but I mean Putin didn't design the invasion plan himself. He defined military and political goals and the  top brass designed a plan to achieve these objectives.

Now if you mean that the objectives were impossible to fulfil in the first place yeah, hard to disagree with that.

I guess my point was that you can't simply divide the whole Russian army strength in 4 or 5 because you see that many thrusts. It is possible that some of these should only count for 1/2. That doesn't really change the overall picture though mind you.

[Battlefront.com]

12 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Steve went into some of this, but it isn't so much that they didn't know it was a bad plan, as that they were afraid to tell Putin it was a bad plan.

That is just one option.  The other is they could have believed Putin was right for a number of reasons and so willingly went along with his assumptions.  Earlier I suggested some might have given Putin the benefit of the doubt because, so far, Putin has been proven (mostly) right with his judgement.  Similar to how many German generals skeptical of conquering France went along with the invasion of the Soviet Union thinking "well, I was wrong before so I might be wrong again.  Maybe I shouldn't stick my neck out despite my doubts".

Hey look, another legitimate comparison between Putin and Stalin.  And the count keeps increasing!

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, Zveroboy1 said:

True of course yes but I mean Putin didn't design the invasion plan himself. He defined military and political goals and the  top brass designed a plan to achieve these objectives.

Now if you mean that the objectives were impossible to fulfil in the first place yeah, hard to disagree with that.

I guess my point was that you can't simply divide the whole Russian army strength in 4 or 5 because you see that many thrusts. It is possible that some of these should only count for 1/2. That doesn't really change the overall picture though mind you.

I think I might have corrected your misunderstanding of "equal" in my previous post.  I am not saying all 5 efforts are of equal strength (i.e. ground forces), just that they are of equal importance to the plan's success.

Another way to think of it is Operation Market Garden.  The efforts invested into each bridge varied and in total was dwarfed by the follow up land push.  But all of them had to go off without significant problems for the entire plan to work as intended.

Steve

[Zveroboy1]

Right yes, I liked the point of failures bit, more chances to fail because all the parts have to succeed in order for the whole thing to work. I was looking at it from a different angle.

[BeondTheGrave]

46 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

The military looks at this and says that by their calculations they need a minimum of two efforts; one for Odessa

For the southern direction I think you can also see three major axis of attack (huge violation of Soviet operational doctrine as I understand it). One thrust to Odessa to relieve a probable naval infantry landing. One to cross the Dnepr and begin to pressure Kiev/Central&western Ukraine. And one to open a land bridge up to the DR and capture the highly contested city of Mariupol. Instead of one concentrated attack the Russians planned three and none of them went anywhere. I suspect that the reason why now weve seen a lot of movement in the south re: Mariupol is, in part, because Russia concentrated its effort on this axis at the expense of the others, they only just maybe took Kherson today. 

 

49 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

And there, folks, is where the big mistake was made.  Not in planning out an offensive with 5 efforts.  No, that is a logical and fairly sound approach to what was asked of the military.  The mistake was the military should have said it can not be done.  Let me say that again...

I personally dont think the flaw is in the five axis (really seven) attack. This to me seems like a mixture of A) the geographic opportunities offered by a friendly Belarus, plus B ) a classic Soviet style deep battle. I see three major levels of this war, from an operational perspective. You have pinning attacks in the contest DR region and potentially around Kharkov. This is the tactical battle. An effort is designed to outflank Kharkov to the west and open up envelopment from that direction. You have another thrust in the south that can meet the aforementioned flank around and turn eastward, creating a pocket situation and leading to a decisive operational victory. Then you have the decapitation/Coup de Grace strike at the capital to bring about a strategic victory. The genius, in theory, of the attack at multiple levels is that the success of any pair, or the solo capital raid, will bring about a decisive victory. Win in the DR/LR and youve won a major tactical victory. Win around Kharkov and link up with the southern attack, youve set the conditions to win a major operational victory. Win outside Kyiv, take the capital, and arrest these drug addicted neo-Nazis I've heard so much about, you win a strategic victory. Then combine it with a six/eight axis via a vertical envelopment. All together these paralyze the defender (hopefully) and destroy his operational tempo. Maybe the Ukrainians win in the center, but as theyre holding their graves are dug from behind. Maybe they rush back to save Kyiv and pull out of the noose, then theyre caught on three sides by the thrusting forces. To win you need numbers (which the Ruskies have, though more on that one in a sec) and coordination. 

The problem I think is something @The_Capt said, like, last week some time? The killer was the assumptions. Russia assumed the Ukrainians would freeze up or crack up. They did neither. They assumed that force ratios would be in their favor. They werent. They assumed their troops would fight well. They havnt. They assumed air superiority and a thorough degradation of UA C3i capabilities. It didn't happen. IMO the plan was sound, it was in tactical execution and strategic calculus that the army failed. Putin made bad guesses about Ukraine and NATO and then bet big on these assumptions. As he was slowly proven wrong he did not, or felt he could not, reverse course. So he threw his troops into what was probably going to be a meat grinder, and did it peace meal. Then tactically they sure as **** didn't do themselves any favors. Really the tactical failures of the RA on the first two days saved Ukraine. It gave them adjustment and transition time. It also gave them time to counter the numerical inferiority with very motivated and enthusiastic militia which, I bet, has evened the force ratio to 1:1 or worse for the RA. Sure theyre not well trained, but when youre throwing in conscripts who dont know where they are and just want some warm tea and babushka? Its a bad combination. 

Operationally Putin needed to confront a fundamental problem: How do you deal with a rather geographically large country, dominated by a few significant terrain features (ie the Dnepr, wouldn't want it to turn in to the Vistula ca 1921) and with a well supplied and dug in, but forward deployed, opposing force. If you want to blame anything, we could speculate how things would have happened if the full force had crossed the border on days 1 & 2. Maybe weather was a deciding factor there, but it also seemed to abdicate the superiority in numbers the Russians had.... 

[dan/california]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I think I might have corrected your misunderstanding of "equal" in my previous post.  I am not saying all 5 efforts are of equal strength (i.e. ground forces), just that they are of equal importance to the plan's success.

Another way to think of it is Operation Market Garden.  The efforts invested into each bridge varied and in total was dwarfed by the follow up land push.  But all of them had to go off without significant problems for the entire plan to work as intended.

Steve

Ironically impassible mud, and therefore being channeled onto not nearly enough road is what sunk that one, too. Or it was right up there, after being a bad plan, made with bad intelligence to start with. 

[Battlefront.com]

10 minutes ago, akd said:

Well, martial law comes to Russia today…

Holy crap.  Well, if the Russian people haven't figured out yet that things are going well in Ukraine, this will surely get them thinking that might be the case:

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3418415-on-march-4-russia-set-to-impose-martial-law-ukraines-nsdc-secretary.html

If (or perhaps when) Martial Law is implemented in Russia, the entire game changes.  This will allow Putin, theoretically, to push aside all kinds of constraints on his ability to go "all in" for the war in Ukraine.

To us in the West, this is an obvious admission that the war is going very, very, very badly for Russia.  Probably worse than we think.  I expect a lot of people will get arrested in the first couple of days.  This is going to look like the purges of Stalin days but perhaps with less people getting shot on the spot.

Steve

[The_Capt]

44 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

  

New topic.

I've seen this criticism from a lot of the experts and I do not disagree with it at all.  However, this is all fairly minor points when analyzing Russia's failure.  For some reason nobody out there is really talking about where the pooch was really screwed.  I will remedy that

Putin and his top troublemakers came up with a grand plan -> take over eastern Ukraine and the coast so quickly there won't be meaningful resistance, dismember the country before the international community gets their act together, then have a stronger Russia that nobody will want to mess with.

Obviously Putin and his cronies were convinced it was possible to achieve all of this, even if it is objectively stupid to have thought that.  So what would Putin and his goons do next?  Get the military guys in to design a means of achieving the first, and most critical, part of the plan - the seizure of a huge amount of territory very quickly before the Ukrainians can react.

The military looks at this and says that by their calculations they need a minimum of two efforts; one for Odessa and at least one for everything east of the Dnpr.

Effort Count 1 + 1 = 2

A closer look at the eastern part shows there's too much territory to start in one place and take everything over.  There needs to be at least two equidistant efforts.  So one from the northeastern corner and one from the south out of Crimea.

Effort Count is now 1 + 2 = 3

Looking at it again, Keiv is a massive urban area and really requires its own effort in order to ensure it is taken and the rest of the ops aren't slowed down.

Effort Count is now 1 + 3 = 4

Hmmm... well, right in the middle of one of the biggest axis of advance is Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv.  That's probably going to slow things down some.  OK, divide up the push from the north into a northern group to take everything between Kiev and Kharkiv and a central group to push through Kharkiv.

Effort Count is now 1 + 4 = 5

Final conclusion, it will take 5 simultaneous efforts to achieve the desired outcome within a short period of time.

And there, folks, is where the big mistake was made.  Not in planning out an offensive with 5 efforts.  No, that is a logical and fairly sound approach to what was asked of the military.  The mistake was the military should have said it can not be done.  Let me say that again...

There was no militarily sound way to achieve the result Putin was looking for with anything less than 5 main efforts.  Therefore, the plan itself was an appropriate solution to the problem Putin asked to be solved.  The real problem is the military was asked to do something beyond it's strategic capacity and produced a plan that either

1. they were dumb enough to think had a chance in Hell of working
2. they were too afraid to tell Putin he needed to rethink his overall strategy
3. they suspected it might not work, but figured the risk of trying it vs. refusing Putin was the safer option

 

And there you have it.  The 5 effort plan shouldn't be criticized as a bad plan for the objectives Putin laid out.  Any other plan would have no chance of achieving the necessary objectives to secure Putin's war aims even under the most wildly optimistic assumptions.  Blaming the 5 effort plan for this mess is like blaming a bunch of chickens for only producing eggs instead of blaming the guy who thought chickens could be milked to produce cheese.

Steve

I can take a shot at it.  The 5 axis plan should have been the first warning light in my opinion. Without WW2 troop levels, complete air supremacy, info supremacy and an epic logistics plan, something this big and complex as this “solution” is nuts.  Even with all that you are still taking risks as there are only so many roads and rail in that country and you assume the Ukrainians are going to fix that. 5 lines of advance, all over 100kms, some over 200kms and that only gets you half the country, we are talking Barbarossa-level here.

If you need that many axis to try and ensure a quick and cheap war, you are fighting the wrong war.  They will be studying this failure for years but I suspect there is a complete disconnect between political objectives, strategy and operational/tactical level of warfare here.

Politically this was a demonstration.  A flexing of power in the near abroad to bring the Ukrainians in line and show that the west was weak and divided while Russia is strong like bear.

Strategically it was quick and cheap.  Built on a whole lotta bad assumptions this whole quick roll-over war was not aligned with the political as it was very risky and could actually demonstrate the opposite of what they were shooting for.

Operationally - the 5 axis plan to create the quick and cheap strategy.  What insanity led any of the Russian brass think “5 axis assault = cheap and quick”?  I can see them trying for quick here but cheap?!  Finally all the operational scene setting and enablers are missing, got dropped to keep the bill down?

Tactical - whatever the hell this epic fail is calling tactics.  We have seen armoured pulses, then infantry leading in some weird recon in force thing.  Flailing airmobile ops, some amphib action for those with that kink.  City smashing which is going nowhere but bad.  And an air campaign that is so tepid it borders on non-existence.

This whole freakin thing feels designed by committee to be honest.

So the real question is “how do you demonstrate quickly and cheaply, with the forces you have and acceptable risk?”  There were options but it sure wasn’t this. 

[Battlefront.com]

About General Mud... it's been a couple of days since I posted the weather report for northern Ukraine.  And even then there were signs of mud being a problem.  Now, though, it's gotten worse.  Check out this (probably from today).

This is another point of failure in the Russian plan.  There seems to have been ZERO inclusion of recovery and repair services to be deployed behind the combat elements.  So when something breaks down or gets stuck, it's effectively lost.  Could be as simple as a bad spark plug or a flat tire, so it seems.

https://twitter.com/_GlenGarry/status/1499176939130556417/photo/1

One BTR and at lest two tanks lost to mud.

Steve

[sburke]

25 minutes ago, dan/california said:

More fascinating tire analysis. The same conclusion but more so.

Tire grogs is now a thing...  so how do I set a parameter in CM for vehicle failure?

[The_Capt]

10 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Holy crap.  Well, if the Russian people haven't figured out yet that things are going well in Ukraine, this will surely get them thinking that might be the case:

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3418415-on-march-4-russia-set-to-impose-martial-law-ukraines-nsdc-secretary.html

If (or perhaps when) Martial Law is implemented in Russia, the entire game changes.  This will allow Putin, theoretically, to push aside all kinds of constraints on his ability to go "all in" for the war in Ukraine.

To us in the West, this is an obvious admission that the war is going very, very, very badly for Russia.  Probably worse than we think.  I expect a lot of people will get arrested in the first couple of days.  This is going to look like the purges of Stalin days but perhaps with less people getting shot on the spot.

Steve

If Russia is going for Marshal Law, it is a concrete sign that there is significant instability on the domestic front.  Putin may not be able to go all in if he needs those forces to hold onto power. There is also a point when the Russian military is going to say “nope”, this is not, NK Putin does not have an ideology to hold this together.  No ideology means no real control on perception or agency beyond legal frameworks.

[Cobetco]

Martial law? geez. your making the assumption that is because things are bad for Putin, and not because he's somewhere at the bottom of a lake. probably not what happened, but it is something that would happen after a coup.