How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[poesel]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Tanks are designed to be used en mass, in fact they are the very metric of military mass, that would be why they show in so many info graphics.  The snipey-peeky-pokey tactics of some CM scenarios is not the foundation of modern all arms doctrine…or at least it wasn’t.  

I have the feeling that reality came closer to CM. The all seeing eye (in CM) created a lot of unrealistic tactics. But now with the ever present drones this has become the new reality. So the tactics in real life have become more similar to the ones we already had in CM.

[The_Capt]

47 minutes ago, Grigb said:

I was talking about classical tank ranges. But while we are at it, I must warn about simple range comparison. We need to keep in mind that ATGMs (especially RU ones) are vulnerable as well. So, they must be kept at least 1 but better 2 km away from the front line (there is net of ATGM nests few km behind assault groups). As result tank operating 2-3 km away from front line mostly invulnerable against most RU infantry ATGMs. Hence both sides' tanks are trying to do that.

Drone enhanced lethality of the modern battlefield forced RU-UKR tanks out of 2+2 km area along the front line but also made them invulnerable because AT weapons were pushed away as well.

Lot to unpack here but I do not see this part.  Why?

UAVs are eyes in the sky and I can see how armor and large vehicle formations cannot hide, but what about two guys in a tree line?  Why are two guys in a tree line having to stand off the extra distance, beyond the fact that they can?  Given the biggest threat to infantry with ATGMs is arty, the extra couple kms is not going to help.

51 minutes ago, Grigb said:

Everything we see in this war we must treat carefully because none of the armies' possess NATO capabilities. It is kind of a unique situation that must not be used to judge blindly the relevance of NATO tactics. However, my point is not whether RU/NATO are right or wrong and not whether there is bigger shift.

Agree and disagree to some extent.  Some of this is unique, and some is building on a trend we have been tracking for some time now.  None of this is about tactics, those are just symptoms of shifts.  What we are seeing is collision of capabilities that are driving shifts in tactics.  

Now some capability issues are simple, they are local and scenario specific - eg Russian military sucks and never really had the capability anyway.

Some are not and are more universal - see unmanned systems and integrated ISR.

For me, I keep seeing things that do not jive and the challenge is trying to figure out which are local and which are universal.  Tanks hiding out in urban areas (which is just so crazy I can't believe I typed it) is an observed phenomenon, pretty widespread by your research.  So if it unique to this war, well we can learn from that.  If it is based on universal capability shifts...well that is something else.

At this point, there is no definitive answer....at least not yet.  That much we can agree on.  

[Battlefront.com]

25 minutes ago, Grigb said:

Yes! This is what I missed completely.

It is funny.  I was writing that post with only FSB in mind, then suddenly I thought "oh, GRU does this sort of stuff too" so I put them down as interchangeable perpetrators.  Then I went on to discuss thoughts about the "resistance" group and it clicked.

I agree that embarrassing FSB would not be a goal worthy of blowing up Dugin.  As you say, nice side effect.  I've been pondering the real reason and here are my thoughts...

25 minutes ago, Grigb said:

But what GRU could gain from assassination? I do not know - GRU is military, unlike FSB they are focused on military objectives. What military objective can be reached by assassination of Dugin daughter or Dugin himself? May be they are trying to use this FSB trick to increate RU Nats motivation for enlistment.

On the other hand GRU might decide to make a move in political game.

Anyway I believe we have insufficient info right now. I will need to sniff around RU Nats and will see.   

Yes, definitely too little information, however I do have a theory.

The RU Nats have been getting progressively more aggressive towards the military's handling of the war.  Now they openly mock ongoing military activities, going way beyond being critical of past results to various flavors of defeatism.  They are now sounding almost Ukrainian in their attitude towards the Russian military.  That is from their most ardent supporters?!?  Not very good.

We've also seen DLPR problems increasingly shown in public.  The statements by LPR forces that they won't fight even in Donetsk has got to be troubling for the Russian military command, especially because the Donetsk offensive has ground to a halt.  For all we know the GRU is concerned about a wider mutiny of DLPR forces, which would be quite a problem for Russia's military since they have relied so heavily upon them for so much of the hard fighting.  If such a mutiny was underway, I think the ones who started the whole nonsense would be involved.

Girkin is influential within the RU Nat community and, of course, is tightly tied into the DLPR gangs.  He's also tied very close to Dugin, who himself is closely tied to the DLPR gangs.  They are zealots and what to see Ukraine disappear and the DLPR expanded.  They might be deluded enough to think that if they become more independent of Russia they could do better.  This would be a direct challenge to the military and the GRU is there to protect the military's interests.

Killing Dugin (father or daughter or both) could be warning this influential group to quiet down and not make things worse in DLPR.

Steve

[The_Capt]

17 minutes ago, photon said:

Another thing I've been thinking about is the idea of "decisiveness", both during a battle and surrounding a battle. In the ancient world, to use @The_Capt's language, there were two ways to force a positive decision to a war: deliver a siege to the enemy's capital or destroy their army in the field. The defender had a choice whether to fight in the field, and could (in limited ways) degrade opposing LOCs. But ancient wars were decided by a pitched battle or a successful siege. And often by a single one of those things. Ancient societies (with the exception of the Romans, to everyone's consternation) were not capable of regenerating meaningful combat power during a campaign season. So if you win one battle handily or successfully deliver your siege, that normative decides the war.

The theory that you produce a decision all at once with a single blow has continued to be popular into the modern age even though I'd submit that it is no longer possible against anything like a motivated peer combatant. The Japanese were obsessed with it, hence Pearl Harbor, Midway, and the Philippine Sea, and Leyte, and the sortie of the Yamato. American commanders broke both ways: Spruance was an avowed cumulativist, and didn't seek to annihilate the Japanese fleet after the Philippine Sea, while Halsey chased the carriers at Leyte. Spruance is, I think well vindicated in no seeking a decision-in-one-action.

Certainly WW1 vindicated the cumulativist approach at the strategic level, WW2 reinforced that, and we're seeing the same thing in Ukraine: Russia's hopes of a single strategically decisive battle failed quickly, because modern forces can force a negative decision more effectively that they could even in WW1. It seems like the question on the table now is whether forcing a positive decision is possible for either side at the operational or tactical levels.

Even at the operational and tactical levels, the ability of the defender to produce negative decisions or undecide things is driven by the size of the bubble of lethality that they can project and how that compares to the bubble of lethality the attacker projects. Again, leaning on naval combat in the Pacific, the Japanese designed ships to decide a tactical battle in a single blow: night fighting with long range torpedoes. The planned operations to decide operational battles in a single blow: the destruction of the USN. They were spectacularly unsuccessful at this, because our carrier air power projected a bubble of lethality (except at night in close waters) that allowed us to refuse battle whenever we wanted.

I think one dynamic we're seeing now is that the undecision modern warfare imposed at the strategic level is now filtering down to the tactical level. I'm not sure how you end a war once that happens?

Whelp my work is done here: better put than any of my previous attempts.

My best guess is that strategies of exhaustion take priority until one side or the other collapses.  The culmination of negative decision becomes a positive?  This is my best working theory based on Phase I of this war.

Ukraine defence was about as negative decision as it gets.  They undecided Russian material and capability superiority, to the absolute shock of all parties.  They then created null decision and made the entire northern front go into paralysis.  The RA stuck around getting mauled until they had enough and left - very much a positive decision.

What is weird is that Ukraine did it without use of decisive battle (with the possible exception of Hostemel).  Ukraine won Phase 1 - and in reality this entire war by simply not losing.  They appeared to have done something with friction that I have never thought of, they projected it.  The projected it all along the Russian operational system...until that system collapsed.  And they are still doing it, this would be why WW1 level of artillery were buying the Russians very little, and now as we enter Phase 3, Ukraine is going onto the offensive.

But here again, I do not think they are looking for decisive battle as we understand it.  I have used the term fog eating snow, which is basically a series of small tactical undecidings that add up to the point that the Russian system collapses inward once again.  At least that is a working theory.

Landing on this I just get to more questions like - why can the UA do it now?  Have we seen this before in conventional warfare eg outside of insurgencies etc?  This is beyond defensive primacy and is starting to look like something else.

[The_Capt]

23 minutes ago, poesel said:

I have the feeling that reality came closer to CM. The all seeing eye (in CM) created a lot of unrealistic tactics. But now with the ever present drones this has become the new reality. So the tactics in real life have become more similar to the ones we already had in CM.

Now that is one helluva theory.

[Battlefront.com]

Follow up...

Just imagine Shoigu having to go to Putin and explain how 20-30,000 DLPR fighters suddenly refused to fight for a cause that is supposedly in their best interests.  What a fiasco that would be for Kremlin messaging both internally and externally.  I don't know that Shoigu would survive such a discussion.  Certainly lots of military heads would role no matter what.

Beyond the immediate PR headache, the military situation in Ukraine would instantly get much worse.  And that's saying something!  I'm not sure the frontlines would hold if DLPR defected.  And if they don't hold, guess what is next on the agenda?  Yes, total military collapse followed by regime collapse (or vice versa).

It all makes logical sense and is consistent with the facts as we know them, except that we don't know how bad relations between DLPR and Moscow really are.  Things could be fine for all I know.  However, if relations are in the process of fraying, then it's absolutely a sure bet that someone in the Kremlin is going to try and slow/reverse the problem before thing spiral out of control.  Targeted violence would almost for sure be a part of the counter moves if the usual corruption/coercion actions aren't having the desired effect.

My gut says the assassination has something to do with DLPR politics and the war effort, even if I don't know exactly what it might be.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

25 minutes ago, poesel said:

I have the feeling that reality came closer to CM. The all seeing eye (in CM) created a lot of unrealistic tactics. But now with the ever present drones this has become the new reality. So the tactics in real life have become more similar to the ones we already had in CM.

HAH!  I was having the same thought reading Grigb's posts.  I was thinking "man, those Russians are gamey bastards!". 

I think you're onto something.  Local commanders (on the Russian side in particular) are being asked to do things with inadequate resources necessary for traditional doctrine.  Yet the local commander is still expected to show results.  With fewer assets in hand, with little-to-no chance of reinforcements, it seems logical that decent commanders would start thing more like gamers (do what it takes to win) rather than officers (do what you were trained to do).

Steve

[photon]

10 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

They appeared to have done something with friction that I have never thought of, they projected it.  The projected it all along the Russian operational system...until that system collapsed...

But here again, I do not think they are looking for decisive battle as we understand it.  I have used the term fog eating snow, which is basically a series of small tactical undecidings that add up to the point that the Russian system collapses inward once again.  At least that is a working theory.

Landing on this I just get to more questions like - why can the UA do it now?  Have we seen this before in conventional warfare eg outside of insurgencies etc?  This is beyond defensive primacy and is starting to look like something else.

I think it's time for all the folks who have been focused on land war to read some naval history! In particular, Ian Toll's The Conquering Tide offers an example of exactly the sort of friction projection leading to collapse that you're describing at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. It also details how we build a military that was built around anti-friction capabilities.

At the tactical level: The friction of having to fly their Zeroes down the slot to engage Henderson field meant that a huge fraction of Japanese aviation losses were operational as opposed to combat for the duration of the Solomons campaign. Weather was the real killer. We projected more of that friction on them by degrading airfields further down the slot so that the Japanese would have to engage at long range. We built a system robust against that sort friction by incorporating self-sealing fuel tanks and by aggressively using PBY Catalinas and submarines to rescue downed airmen and return them to flying units.

At the operational level: we ran two offensive operations - the push in the southwest pacific under MacArthur towards Hollandia and Rabaul and the central pacific under Nimitz towards Saipan. This tick-tock operational cadence forced null decisions on the Japanese: the couldn't decide which offensives to mass against and consequently kept their battle fleet in being. That null decision also meant that the Japanese moved their ships around frequently without committing them to battle. More operational losses (and submarines!) and wasted fuel, which they had little of.

At the strategic level: our undersea blockade imposed enormous friction on the whole Japanese war industry - it's better to sink oilers than capital ships because without fuel, capital ships are lovely hotels. The Japanese navy bemoaned this, calling it the Hotel Yamato, because it would be too expensive to have it sortie regularly. Once the 3rd/5th fleet got up and running, that undersea blockade became something like modern deep strike. We could hit anywhere in the Japanese Empire with little warning, and we chose to disrupt their plane production and staging infrastructure regularly. That forced the Japanese to concede lots of territory without fighting for it, and to fight ineffectively and without reinforcement where they did decide to fight.

The whole Pacific Campaign was cumulativist friction projection onto the Japanese until their war machine collapsed into an armed mob. Of course, we could do that because our industrial might allowed us to put together the 3rd/5th fleet, essentially producing two whole additional US Navies during the war.

Here are some stay thoughts:

1. If your strategy is negative-decision focused, how do you maintain home-front morale without decisive battles? Abstract friction is great if you understand it. How do you sell that to people?

2. In WW1, the negative-decision strategy was one of exhaustion. Is there a negative-decision strategy that can win without that? We ultimately did engage in annihilational battles against the Japanese because we badly overmatched them by '44, and it still took a pair of nuclear weapons. Can you win without exhausting your enemy of without the shock and awe of some sort of annihilational capability?

3. What does a modern anti-friction capability look like in a military? What's the equivalent of self-sealing tanks and PBY Catalinas?

[Splinty]

23 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

HAH!  I was having the same thought reading Grigb's posts.  I was thinking "man, those Russians are gamey bastards!". 

I think you're onto something.  Local commanders (on the Russian side in particular) are being asked to do things with inadequate resources necessary for traditional doctrine.  Yet the local commander is still expected to show results.  With fewer assets in hand, with little-to-no chance of reinforcements, it seems logical that decent commanders would start thing more like gamers (do what it takes to win) rather than officers (do what you were trained to do).

Steve

The steady attrition of field grade and staff rank officers that Sburke has been tracking may very well play into that.

[acrashb]

1 hour ago, Grigb said:

get away back to cover as soon as possible before retaliation 

I see that as the key lesson, if we extend it to "always move".  Precision arty / other weapons can't find you if you displace periodically.  Etc.  This comes with it's own risks - breakdowns, fuel consumption, detection during displacement.  But stationary defences are readily located and dispatched - and here again, plenty of videos of entrenched troops effectively attacked with precision munitions, which even a drone-dropped grenade counts as.  

If we always move, now it's fog trying to eat fog.  To adapt a phrase.

We've seen lots of images of bunkered vehicles - the walls protect them from regular arty, not from precision anything.  Bunkers then have little value and the energy / effort to create them could be used on something else.  Or create N+K bunkers, and constantly shift between them (for vehicles, infantry, etc.).  So this changes the nature and use, generally, of fortification.

The "always move" is seen with UA use of HIMARS, with rocket packages placed in advance and launchers driving from one to the next.

With fall / winter coming and trees losing their leaves, this will be even more prominent.

Edited August 22, 2022 by acrashb

[DesertFox]

LOL!

 

 

[The_Capt]

23 minutes ago, photon said:

I think it's time for all the folks who have been focused on land war to read some naval history! In particular, Ian Toll's The Conquering Tide offers an example of exactly the sort of friction projection leading to collapse that you're describing at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. It also details how we build a military that was built around anti-friction capabilities.

At the tactical level: The friction of having to fly their Zeroes down the slot to engage Henderson field meant that a huge fraction of Japanese aviation losses were operational as opposed to combat for the duration of the Solomons campaign. Weather was the real killer. We projected more of that friction on them by degrading airfields further down the slot so that the Japanese would have to engage at long range. We built a system robust against that sort friction by incorporating self-sealing fuel tanks and by aggressively using PBY Catalinas and submarines to rescue downed airmen and return them to flying units.

At the operational level: we ran two offensive operations - the push in the southwest pacific under MacArthur towards Hollandia and Rabaul and the central pacific under Nimitz towards Saipan. This tick-tock operational cadence forced null decisions on the Japanese: the couldn't decide which offensives to mass against and consequently kept their battle fleet in being. That null decision also meant that the Japanese moved their ships around frequently without committing them to battle. More operational losses (and submarines!) and wasted fuel, which they had little of.

At the strategic level: our undersea blockade imposed enormous friction on the whole Japanese war industry - it's better to sink oilers than capital ships because without fuel, capital ships are lovely hotels. The Japanese navy bemoaned this, calling it the Hotel Yamato, because it would be too expensive to have it sortie regularly. Once the 3rd/5th fleet got up and running, that undersea blockade became something like modern deep strike. We could hit anywhere in the Japanese Empire with little warning, and we chose to disrupt their plane production and staging infrastructure regularly. That forced the Japanese to concede lots of territory without fighting for it, and to fight ineffectively and without reinforcement where they did decide to fight.

The whole Pacific Campaign was cumulativist friction projection onto the Japanese until their war machine collapsed into an armed mob. Of course, we could do that because our industrial might allowed us to put together the 3rd/5th fleet, essentially producing two whole additional US Navies during the war.

Here are some stay thoughts:

1. If your strategy is negative-decision focused, how do you maintain home-front morale without decisive battles? Abstract friction is great if you understand it. How do you sell that to people?

2. In WW1, the negative-decision strategy was one of exhaustion. Is there a negative-decision strategy that can win without that? We ultimately did engage in annihilational battles against the Japanese because we badly overmatched them by '44, and it still took a pair of nuclear weapons. Can you win without exhausting your enemy of without the shock and awe of some sort of annihilational capability?

3. What does a modern anti-friction capability look like in a military? What's the equivalent of self-sealing tanks and PBY Catalinas?

1.  The answer in this was seems to be information superiority.  A steady stream of micro-victories (T72 hole in one’s) all over social media punctuated by high profile tactical explody shows.  It look like you only need sell that we are killing “them” a lot does the trick.  However not sure if we can take that to the bank.

2.  Tough one.  A strategy tailor made for negative decision was subversion, which was Russia’s A-game right up until 24 Feb.  I am not sure how else one could do it to be honest.  Exhaustion and annihilation are kind of central to war.  The only other one is extermination but that is the nuclear option which is also suicidal.

3.  Textbook answer is C4ISR, but I am beginning to suspect it is a lot more than that.  We may need an entire system overhaul if this gets big enough. 

Edited August 22, 2022 by The_Capt

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, acrashb said:

I see that as the key lesson, if we extend it to "always move".  Precision arty / other weapons can't find you if you displace periodically.  Etc.  This comes with it's own risks - breakdowns, fuel consumption, detection during displacement.  But stationary defences are readily located and dispatched - and here again, plenty of videos of entrenched troops effectively attacked with precision munitions, which even a drone-dropped grenade counts as.  

Yes, I think we're seeing a "it's risky to move, but even riskier to stay put" calculation going on.

This reminds me of some winter fighting on the Eastern Front in the 1943/44 positional fighting in the steppes, probably in and around Ukraine.  The Germans made some elaborate tree reinforced bunkers for their StuGs.  They would move the StuGs out when needed, then bring them back to their bunkers until needed again. 

The similarity here is that the Germans realized that if they stayed in a position for any length of time would no doubt be spotted and targeted with something.  Yet it was impractical to continually build new places to hide/protect the StuGs every time they were used in all the places that they were needed.  This is not dissimilar to what we're seeing in this war, though for different reasons.  In the StuG example it was because the steppes offered no concealment, in this war it is because drones (and other capabilities) strip away natural concealment like it wasn't there.  Same solution it seems.

Steve

[The_Capt]

49 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

HAH!  I was having the same thought reading Grigb's posts.  I was thinking "man, those Russians are gamey bastards!". 

I think you're onto something.  Local commanders (on the Russian side in particular) are being asked to do things with inadequate resources necessary for traditional doctrine.  Yet the local commander is still expected to show results.  With fewer assets in hand, with little-to-no chance of reinforcements, it seems logical that decent commanders would start thing more like gamers (do what it takes to win) rather than officers (do what you were trained to do).

Steve

Couple problems here:

- Russia is not winning, so whatever these tactics are, gamer or evolutionary, they do not appear to scale upward.  A CM match is fun but in war if you cannot tactical upscale then there is no real point - at least in theory.

- This is drastically narrowing the role of the tank, to in-effect sniping TD.  So what is filling the capability that a tank used to have?  If the answer is nothing than Russian conventional warfare is broken.  This is not gamey, it is all they can do.  If the Russians are forced to hide their tanks behind buildings (or in the churches of sburke) to “pop up” shoot and move, they are not able to mass direct fires - which is kinda important cause it is pretty central to any form of manoeuvre.

Russia may be fighting like a CM player; however, it is one on the worst end of a ROW tourney and can’t think of anything else they can do.

Edited August 22, 2022 by The_Capt

[The_Capt]

24 minutes ago, photon said:

I think it's time for all the folks who have been focused on land war to read some naval history! In particular, Ian Toll's The Conquering Tide offers an example of exactly the sort of friction projection leading to collapse that you're describing at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. It also details how we build a military that was built around anti-friction capabilities.

At the tactical level: The friction of having to fly their Zeroes down the slot to engage Henderson field meant that a huge fraction of Japanese aviation losses were operational as opposed to combat for the duration of the Solomons campaign. Weather was the real killer. We projected more of that friction on them by degrading airfields further down the slot so that the Japanese would have to engage at long range. We built a system robust against that sort friction by incorporating self-sealing fuel tanks and by aggressively using PBY Catalinas and submarines to rescue downed airmen and return them to flying units.

At the operational level: we ran two offensive operations - the push in the southwest pacific under MacArthur towards Hollandia and Rabaul and the central pacific under Nimitz towards Saipan. This tick-tock operational cadence forced null decisions on the Japanese: the couldn't decide which offensives to mass against and consequently kept their battle fleet in being. That null decision also meant that the Japanese moved their ships around frequently without committing them to battle. More operational losses (and submarines!) and wasted fuel, which they had little of.

At the strategic level: our undersea blockade imposed enormous friction on the whole Japanese war industry - it's better to sink oilers than capital ships because without fuel, capital ships are lovely hotels. The Japanese navy bemoaned this, calling it the Hotel Yamato, because it would be too expensive to have it sortie regularly. Once the 3rd/5th fleet got up and running, that undersea blockade became something like modern deep strike. We could hit anywhere in the Japanese Empire with little warning, and we chose to disrupt their plane production and staging infrastructure regularly. That forced the Japanese to concede lots of territory without fighting for it, and to fight ineffectively and without reinforcement where they did decide to fight.

The whole Pacific Campaign was cumulativist friction projection onto the Japanese until their war machine collapsed into an armed mob. Of course, we could do that because our industrial might allowed us to put together the 3rd/5th fleet, essentially producing two whole additional US Navies during the war.

Here are some stay thoughts:

1. If your strategy is negative-decision focused, how do you maintain home-front morale without decisive battles? Abstract friction is great if you understand it. How do you sell that to people?

2. In WW1, the negative-decision strategy was one of exhaustion. Is there a negative-decision strategy that can win without that? We ultimately did engage in annihilational battles against the Japanese because we badly overmatched them by '44, and it still took a pair of nuclear weapons. Can you win without exhausting your enemy of without the shock and awe of some sort of annihilational capability?

3. What does a modern anti-friction capability look like in a military? What's the equivalent of self-sealing tanks and PBY Catalinas?

Oh and before I forget there is definitely something to the porting over naval concepts.  This is almost land warfare through Denial as opposed to anything else we would recognize.

[danfrodo]

35 minutes ago, photon said:

I think it's time for all the folks who have been focused on land war to read some naval history! In particular, Ian Toll's The Conquering Tide offers an example of exactly the sort of friction projection leading to collapse that you're describing at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. It also details how we build a military that was built around anti-friction capabilities.

At the tactical level: The friction of having to fly their Zeroes down the slot to engage Henderson field meant that a huge fraction of Japanese aviation losses were operational as opposed to combat for the duration of the Solomons campaign. Weather was the real killer. We projected more of that friction on them by degrading airfields further down the slot so that the Japanese would have to engage at long range. We built a system robust against that sort friction by incorporating self-sealing fuel tanks and by aggressively using PBY Catalinas and submarines to rescue downed airmen and return them to flying units.

At the operational level: we ran two offensive operations - the push in the southwest pacific under MacArthur towards Hollandia and Rabaul and the central pacific under Nimitz towards Saipan. This tick-tock operational cadence forced null decisions on the Japanese: the couldn't decide which offensives to mass against and consequently kept their battle fleet in being. That null decision also meant that the Japanese moved their ships around frequently without committing them to battle. More operational losses (and submarines!) and wasted fuel, which they had little of.

At the strategic level: our undersea blockade imposed enormous friction on the whole Japanese war industry - it's better to sink oilers than capital ships because without fuel, capital ships are lovely hotels. The Japanese navy bemoaned this, calling it the Hotel Yamato, because it would be too expensive to have it sortie regularly. Once the 3rd/5th fleet got up and running, that undersea blockade became something like modern deep strike. We could hit anywhere in the Japanese Empire with little warning, and we chose to disrupt their plane production and staging infrastructure regularly. That forced the Japanese to concede lots of territory without fighting for it, and to fight ineffectively and without reinforcement where they did decide to fight.

The whole Pacific Campaign was cumulativist friction projection onto the Japanese until their war machine collapsed into an armed mob. Of course, we could do that because our industrial might allowed us to put together the 3rd/5th fleet, essentially producing two whole additional US Navies during the war.

Here are some stay thoughts:

1. If your strategy is negative-decision focused, how do you maintain home-front morale without decisive battles? Abstract friction is great if you understand it. How do you sell that to people?

2. In WW1, the negative-decision strategy was one of exhaustion. Is there a negative-decision strategy that can win without that? We ultimately did engage in annihilational battles against the Japanese because we badly overmatched them by '44, and it still took a pair of nuclear weapons. Can you win without exhausting your enemy of without the shock and awe of some sort of annihilational capability?

3. What does a modern anti-friction capability look like in a military? What's the equivalent of self-sealing tanks and PBY Catalinas?

wow, great post, Photon.  Interesting and clever compare b/w US pacific strategy and Ukraine.  Those Ian Toll books were just about the best history books I've ever read.

On your item #2, I'd say Ukraine doesn't have to do what the US did to reach an end point.  Ukraine doesn't have to attack RU territory at all. It just has to get RU to leave UKR territory, so this is more like a pacific campaign where the islands are the end game, not Japan itself.  

[photon]

12 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

On your item #2, I'd say Ukraine doesn't have to do what the US did to reach an end point.  Ukraine doesn't have to attack RU territory at all. It just has to get RU to leave UKR territory, so this is more like a pacific campaign where the islands are the end game, not Japan itself.  

That's what I'm not sure about. There's a great anecdote about MacArthur at the end of Toll's Gotterdamerung, that when he landed with his command staff in Japan, he told them to leave their sidearms in the plane. Practically, what're you going to do with a 45 against millions of Japanese?, but Toll notes that the real motivation was a flex: we have beaten you so thoroughly and you know  that we have beaten you so thoroughly that we don't need to carry firearms. The decision was decided in a way that the Japanese would not undecide. And it stuck. The Japanese, for all their ferocity of weeks before, stopped.

So the real end of the war was a decision by the Japanese not to continue it (driven by the Emperor's decision to stop the fighting after Hiroshima). Even if the Ukrainians push the Russians back to the border, that doesn't end the war. They Russians have to decide that it is over, and that they'll cease lobbing cruise missiles at civilian areas and firing artillery across the border, and that they'll allow free passage of the Azov sea. How do you compel them to decide that given that marching to Moscow is off the table? That where I think the role of indirect communication and information supremacy will be really important. Can projected friction alone do that? I don't know. The point of a decisive battle is that everyone sees that it's decisive. How do you shape opinion without that?

Edited August 22, 2022 by photon

[photon]

Oh - and Toll is indeed fantastic. But I still tip the hat to Morison. In the same way that this forum has a better understanding of the generalities of the current war for understanding the particulars of things, Morison's detailed account of every action the navy undertook is fantastic for understanding the war as a whole. You just have to saddle in for 10 kilopages of text...

[Battlefront.com]

20 minutes ago, photon said:

I think it's time for all the folks who have been focused on land war to read some naval history!

I enjoyed reading that!  Thanks for bringing it into the discussion as it certainly is relevant.

I'll take some quick stabs at your thoughtful questions:

20 minutes ago, photon said:

Here are some stay thoughts:

1. If your strategy is negative-decision focused, how do you maintain home-front morale without decisive battles? Abstract friction is great if you understand it. How do you sell that to people?

I'm not sure you can if the fight is considered central to the nation in question.  For example, the war in Afghanistan was largely a "negative decision" war for many years prior to the pullout.  There absolutely were no decisive battles since, well, ever?  The Surge produced a few notable battles, so maybe 10+ years of none.  But the war wasn't considered central and therefore this didn't create friction in the sense we're talking about it.

But for a country like Russia, where the war is considered central to the nation's (even the culture's) survival, I don't think you can keep up morale without some sort of positive decision that results in a significant battle that ends with a favorable conclusion.  Russia's got none of those on the horizon.

Ukraine, on the other hand, does.  Even in the worst moments of the war there was always something Ukraine was doing to show that it could win.  Even after Mariupol fell and pressure was building through Izyum, Ukraine had plenty of tactical successes to show off.  Literally, thanks to drones and cellphones.  Plus, for Ukraine every day that goes by where they don't surrender is, in itself, a victory.  So I think a country successfully fighting for its right to exist has a lot more leeway.

20 minutes ago, photon said:

2. In WW1, the negative-decision strategy was one of exhaustion. Is there a negative-decision strategy that can win without that? We ultimately did engage in annihilational battles against the Japanese because we badly overmatched them by '44, and it still took a pair of nuclear weapons. Can you win without exhausting your enemy of without the shock and awe of some sort of annihilational capability?

Yes.  Italy got knocked out of the war by a combination of bad battlefield results and "palace intrigue".  Italy certainly could have fought a lot longer if it had chosen to.  Yes, with German assistance, but that's not relevant.  The UK might have surrendered if the US didn't back it to the hilt and Ukraine would likely been conventionally defeated if it wasn't for the help of the West.  But if the UK or Ukraine lacked the will to fight, the aid would not have mattered.

I'm hopeful that Russia in this war will be more like Italy in WW2.  Still technically capable of fighting, but a major defeat (Kherson for example) causes something to happen and the shooting war ends as a result.

20 minutes ago, photon said:

3. What does a modern anti-friction capability look like in a military? What's the equivalent of self-sealing tanks and PBY Catalinas?

Neutralizing Russia's propaganda and influence campaigns has helped with the effort to keep Western countries and the majority of the world on the same page.  This was a lesson learned from 2013-2015 in particular.

EW comes to mind for dealing with drones, but it's still early days on that.

I don't think there's any way to mitigate top attack ATGMs and PGMs in any meaningful way, so a wholesale shift is required there.

Steve

[Grigb]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Lot to unpack here but I do not see this part.  Why?

UAVs are eyes in the sky and I can see how armor and large vehicle formations cannot hide, but what about two guys in a tree line?  Why are two guys in a tree line having to stand off the extra distance, beyond the fact that they can?  Given the biggest threat to infantry with ATGMs is arty, the extra couple kms is not going to help.

Because it is not a couple of guys with launcher and 4 missiles. It is around several guys with dozens of missiles and car. And the thing is commercial drones with thermals can see a couple of guys in any tree line from around 500 meters and closer. Riflemen can deal it that because they can quickly get down and crawl away. RU ATGM team cannot do the same especially if launcher is set up. As result RU tactics is to set them up at elevated positions at least 1 km back from front line.

[sburke]

34 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

- This is drastically narrowing the role of the tank, to in-effect sniping TD.  So what is filling the capability that a tank used to have?  If the answer is nothing than Russian conventional warfare is broken.  This is not gamey, it is all they can do.  If the Russians are forced to hide their tanks behind buildings (or in the churches of sburke) to “pop up” shoot and move, they are not able to mass direct fires - which is kinda important cause it is pretty central to any form of manoeuvre.

 

Churches?!!!  Blasphemy!  

Actually, what made me think of parking garages wasn't cause I thought it out much...(no really!) but thinking back on the fighting for Grozny and how the Chechens dug into an urban environment.  granted that was mostly infantry, but the urban environment tends to have a huge impact on tactical behavior as noted in this discussion the limitations on drone use that has been such a huge factor overall. So yeah maybe tanks are really limited in this scope but a covered keyhole position that isn't observable so readily to C4ISR is much more realistic than elsewhere.  Doesn't help the tank mass much as yeah they are relegated to being a big ass sniper that to your earlier points still has a logistical trail.  So my new proposal to the defense dept. includes an attached gas station to the mobile parking garage,...

[Battlefront.com]

30 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Couple problems here:

- Russia is not winning, so whatever these tactics are, gamer or evolutionary, they do not appear to scale upward.  

A point I constantly make -> just because it is gamey doesn't mean it wins battles.  It's not so much that they don't scale upward (that could be part of the problem), it's that the goal of the tactic might not be the best thing for the war effort.

In this case the tactics Grigb describes likely do reduce the losses by Russian forces so that they are available to fight another day.  Success?  Not if your force is tasked with doing more than firing harassing shots or dissuading Ukrainians from attacking.  And even then you have the odds thing going against them.  Each time you move out to shoot is a time you might not survive.  The peekaboo game that Russia is playing has to work every time for it to be successful.

30 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

- This is drastically narrowing the role of the tank, to in-effect sniping TD.  So what is filling the capability that a tank used to have?  If the answer is nothing than Russian conventional warfare is broken.  This is not gamey, it is all they can do.  If the Russians are forced to hide their tanks behind buildings (or in the churches of sburke) to “pop up” shoot and move, they are not able to mass direct fires - which is kinda important cause it is pretty central to any form of manoeuvre.

Absolutely.  It's similar to how Russia lost the airwar in Ukraine.  Sure, it retained more aircraft by not conducting daily seek-and-destroy missions over all of Ukraine's airspace, but the downside of that is that Ukraine has both air and air defenses.  So the day they decided "hey, let's not fly over Ukrainian territory" is the day they effectively lost the airwar.

Similar story with Russia's naval capacity.  It's effectively out of the war because they won't risk ships going to where they are needed because they'll likely be sunk.

Trillions of Dollars spent by Russia over dozens of years on armored forces and for what?  To have the few that remain hide in the shadows of tall buildings out of fear of being zapped by a largely light infantry enemy?  Yeah, that's not a good payback on that investment.

30 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Russia may be fighting like a CM player; however, it is one on the worst end of a ROW tourney and can’t think of anything else they can do.

I can't either.  Which is good

Steve

[Cederic]

19 hours ago, sburke said:

Not true in an urban environment.  Parking garages etc provide plenty of opportunity for covered locations.  Maybe the Russians just haven't figured that out.

Hermit tanks from Howondaland? Look away for just a moment and a cluster of garden sheds appears, long snouts peeking out?

I'm not mocking, if I was a Russian tanker I would absolutely looking for lightweight profile changing misdirection that'd confuse the NLAW and Javelin.

[sburke]

well this seems to be Russia's latest story on the car bombing.  Interesting as given the details it seems easily verified or not... like passport control and photos at a border crossing.  More of the usual just throw stuff out there and not worry about any authenticity.

 

Quote

 

Russia blames Ukraine for nationalist's car bombing death | AP News

MOSCOW (AP) — Moving quickly to assign blame, Russia on Monday declared Ukrainian intelligence responsible for the brazen car bombing that killed the daughter of a leading right-wing Russian political thinker over the weekend. Ukraine denied involvement.

Darya Dugina, a 29-year-old commentator with a nationalist Russian TV channel, died when a remotely controlled explosive device planted in her SUV blew up on Saturday night as she was driving on the outskirts of Moscow, ripping the vehicle apart and killing her on the spot, authorities said.

Her father, Alexander Dugin, a philosopher, writer and political theorist who ardently supports Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to send troops into Ukraine, was widely believed to be the intended target. Russian media quoted witnesses as saying that the SUV belonged to Dugin and that he had decided at the last minute to travel in another vehicle.

 

The FSB said a Ukrainian citizen, Natalya Vovk, carried out the killing and then fled to Estonia.

In Estonia, the prosecutor general’s office said in a statement carried by the Baltic News Services that it “has not received any requests or inquiries from the Russian authorities on this topic.”

 

The FSB said Vovk arrived in Russia in July with her 12-year-old daughter and rented an apartment in the building where Dugina lived in order to shadow her. It said that Vovk and her daughter were at a nationalist festival that Dugin and his daughter attended just before the killing.

The agency released video of the suspect from surveillance cameras at the border crossings and at the entrance to the Moscow apartment building.

The FSB said Vovk used a license plate for Ukraine’s Russian-backed separatist Donetsk region to enter Russia and a Kazakhstan plate in Moscow before switching to a Ukrainian one to cross into Estonia.

Ukraine’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak denied any Ukrainian involvement in the bombing. In a tweet, he dismissed the FSB claims as fiction, casting them as part of infighting between Russian security agencies.

In a letter extending condolences to Dugin and his wife, Putin denounced the “cruel and treacherous” killing and added that Dugina “honestly served people and the Fatherland, proving what it means to be a patriot of Russia with her deeds.” He posthumously awarded Dugina the Order of Courage, one of Russia’s highest medals.

Russian Foreign Minisry spokeswoman Maria Zakharov said Dugina’s killing reflected Kyiv’s reliance on “terrorism as an instrument of its criminal ideology.”

In a statement, Dugin described his daughter as a “rising star” who was “treacherously killed by enemies of Russia.”

“Our hearts are longing not just for revenge and retaliation. It would be too petty, not in Russia style,” Dugin wrote. “We need only victory.”

The car bombing, unusual for Moscow since the gang wars of the turbulent 1990s, triggered calls from Russian nationalists to respond by ramping up strikes on Ukraine.

 

 

Edited August 22, 2022 by sburke

[Beleg85]

3 hours ago, Grigb said:

Yes! This is what I missed completely. Indeed, GRU and FSB are both at silent war with each other. And it is very plausible that GRU is behind the resistance group. But I do not think the purpose of the operation is just to hurt FSB. I think it was a nice bonus. 

But what GRU could gain from assassination? I do not know - GRU is military, unlike FSB they are focused on military objectives. What military objective can be reached by assassination of Dugin daughter or Dugin himself? May be they are trying to use this FSB trick to increate RU Nats motivation for enlistment.

On the other hand GRU might decide to make a move in political game.

Anyway I believe we have insufficient info right now. I will need to sniff around RU Nats and will see.   

Possible; Shoigu and company having enough of being called "plywood marshall" is believable; he wanted the head of somebody from these circles. But then, why not choosing Girkin, murz, or some old Donbas veterans? GRU trying to undermine FSB connections within nationalists movements is also possible. However, I think we can safely exclude "non-political mafia scores"- at this level no sane mafioso/oligarch would try to cross the lines with Kremlin killing persons Putin may find useful or under his protection. You know, "you killed my vassal, you are done" kind of things.

Ok, maybe let's try to close this topic unless new evidences come out. I don't think last couple of pages was lost, though; this can be very significant event in retrospection, perhaps (under proper circustances) beginning of Putin Purges. Or opposite- sign of rotting of Russian state apparatus we waited so long. Or nothing from above.

2 hours ago, photon said:

In the ancient world, to use @The_Capt's language, there were two ways to force a positive decision to a war: deliver a siege to the enemy's capital or destroy their army in the field. The defender had a choice whether to fight in the field, and could (in limited ways) degrade opposing LOCs. But ancient wars were decided by a pitched battle or a successful siege. And often by a single one of those things. Ancient societies (with the exception of the Romans, to everyone's consternation) were not capable of regenerating meaningful combat power during a campaign season. So if you win one battle handily or successfully deliver your siege, that normative decides the war.

This is much broader topic; generally our fetish of decisive battle come mainly from later, late Enlightment historians reading about Ancients. Modern historians shed more light on this and find it often untrue. Small wars, skirmishes, burning crops, pillaging the countryside and ambushes were default forms of combat, even among well organized polities. Forcing "political" settlement, like tribute or simply recognition of influence was desired and often more effective than bloody battles or even bloodier sieges. Also we shouldn't udnerestimate the power of raiding against logistics as well; it was analogue to HIMARsing nowadays, just made with cavalry or light infantry. You need only to cut off enemy from water and food, and he is done after several days. VERY effective form of forcing your enemy to bend the knee, and known and practiced by everybody, especially "cavalry-based" armies, but often Romans themselves as well.

It was "decisive battles" (or sieges) that were rare. There is a reason why Hannibal, Alexander or Caesar come as legendary commanders- they played very high risk/high reward game of open battles. But many pieces of serious military literature strongly dissuade this form of combat. "Smaller" warfare is advised in many Greek, Roman and most importantly Early Byzantine tactical manuals.

Edited August 22, 2022 by Beleg85