How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

Kilcullen was doing the rounds on the Australian national radio 5pm news on a Friday, back in early September, when there was that moment immediately following the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive operations in Kherson. When Russian bullcrap was very loudly claiming that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were being obliterated in mindless fashion, like extras in a schlocky contemporary Russian movie on WW2 or All is quiet in the Western Front.

Kilcullen's take was that, as "das experten" consensus at that moment was,  AFU had failed. His was one of many voices coming forward reasoning that the West had got this war wrong and that we were ruining our economies and causing undue suffering amongst Ukrainian people by supporting them, but without wanting to involve troops, planes and ships into it. That we should be offering an off ramp to Putin, and let Russia take whatever they fancy. That the Ukrainians were a corrupt, anarchic, lazy lot that probably were selling the secret of Steel to the Russians. And so on.

That same night first news came through about AFU breaking through the Russian lines, reaching the river Oskil in about 20 hours, in what by all reckoning was a stunning reversal. The rest is history.

The next Monday 5pm news opened up with 10 minutes of coverage of the Ukrainian victory, and das experten were quite confused.

I hope they had a chance to review any "advice for the future" before going to press... It's a different war, in a different land, with different motivations. This conflict cannot be further from the Afghan war. Yet I agree with the following: it is possible that the same mistakes are done.

To wit, that instead of offering terms when our side is winning (as should have been the case in 2007-2008 perhaps) we decide to double down and effectively wish for the annihilation of the adversary without willing to put forward the means to wage a war of annihilation. And vice versa, that instead of keeping a firm steering on policy, an off ramp is offered to the losing side when they were getting some respite, in a premature fashion, causing chaos, mayhem and 

 

Killcullen is an expert on COIN (or at least as far as we got one in the last round) and was trying to translate that cache into Grey Zone and now modern conventional war.  Biggest problem is that none of the theories translate well between those arenas.  This is odd given that he wrote about complex warfare in the early days (wiki says he was sole author but in uniform things really do not work that way).

He is another really smart, highly educated and experienced expert who got this war wrong, largely because they have been in a war like the in Ukraine about as many times as the rest of us….never.  They employed old metrics of success/failure to make their judgements and were way off.  I suspect most will be big enough to admit it and the really good ones will spend a lot of time figuring out why they were so off the mark - expect a LOT of post-Ukraine war books.

Personally, I would write about this thread itself and how stuff like this was happening everywhere.  Open source analysis was all over the place but in some places they got a lot more right than wrong and that is worth following up on why.  Was it micro-perspective based on wargaming?  Was it the mix of expertise and backgrounds?  Was it having the right people like Haiduk on the ground pulling in stuff?  I am not sure but even with our recent “Russia sux” leanings this thread was very accurate and often contrary to the experts getting paid to dot his out there.

[danfrodo]

2 hours ago, poesel said:

Do say, how many countries are participating in that 'world series' of yours?

well, players from all the baseball playing world at least are there, mostly Japan and Korea would stand out.  But a huge number of players are from Caribbean countries.  And I can safely safe that this is a world championship since no one outside US can field a better team than these two.  And I can safely say that almost no one in the world would care to.  

Back on task:  Why the heck would we make any comparisons b/w US in Afghanistan and current war in Ukraine????   These two things have almost nothing in common.  

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

It's even funnier that this post suggests - it looks like we have too much gas at the moment, time to turn up the heating

 

There's a Georg Kaiser joke in there somewhere.

[Probus]

41 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Open source analysis was all over the place but in some places they got a lot more right than wrong and that is worth following up on why.  Was it micro-perspective based on wargaming?  Was it the mix of expertise and backgrounds?  Was it having the right people like Haiduk on the ground pulling in stuff?  I am not sure but even with our recent “Russia sux” leanings this thread was very accurate and often contrary to the experts getting paid to dot his out there.

When I saw how much equipment Russia was moving west to the Ukrainian border, I knew something was up and started this thread.  You just don't move that much equipment to sabre rattle IMHO.  But it is also my opinion that you hit the nail on the head @The_Capt, it is all of the above.

[dan/california]

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/24/1062039/us-navy-swarms-of-thousands-of-small-drones/?truid=0664831fc7d6a10c183bbe706f36ff4a&utm_source=the_download&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement&utm_term=Active Qualified&utm_content=10-24-2022&mc_cid=1cc458b67f&mc_eid=4e7f8c9a8f

More evidence people are at least really thinking about what the NEXT war will look like.

[acrashb]

23 minutes ago, Probus said:

I knew something was up and started this thread.

Post 2 led us to this link with this text from  ISW: "Russian forces attacking on the scale and along the axes of advance laid out in the reported plan would nevertheless likely achieve their military objectives of destroying the Ukrainian military’s ability to continue fighting and encircling major Ukrainian cities ... the outcome of the initial fighting itself is not in doubt."

Like so many predictions, it hasn't aged well.

[kevinkin]

Philly fans are really toasting it up:

https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-720342

And more sports this morning:

https://www.besoccer.com/new/shakhtar-want-iran-to-be-replaced-by-ukraine-for-world-cup-1195632

 

 

[danfrodo]

1 minute ago, kevinkin said:

Philly fans are really toasting it up:

https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-720342

And more sports this morning:

https://www.besoccer.com/new/shakhtar-want-iran-to-be-replaced-by-ukraine-for-world-cup-1195632

 

 

What Iran is doing is despicable.  Is it because it needs the money?  Or just to poke the US in the eye via proxy war?  It's straight up terrorism.  Hasn't been much said about this by world leaders yet, maybe there's hope for some behind the scenes negotiation hoping Iran will stop? -- note I don't think this likely.  Also I think Biden is waiting until after the Nov 8 elections before speaking out more forcefully about the war.

[A Canadian Cat]

22 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Very interesting analogy but not quite there to my mind.  The cargo cult as you outline is an emulation without actual capability behind it - it looks like an airfield built by people with no idea how an airfield works.  I do not believe the Russian military is in this camp…well at least not at the start of this thing.

I don't think you are wrong to point out that cargo cult was a bit too much but the corruption that was exposed is astounding. Troops without proper food, old helmets, no / fake body armour, way less top of the line tanks and IFVs than officially available not to mention pulling vehicles and small arms in terrible condition out of storage.

I would instead call the Russian army a parade square army instead of cargo cult. They always had on hand enough cool new tech to look good at the May day celebrations and on the staged "exercises" for the cameras but they were not doing all the things that they should have been doing to be truly ready.

7 hours ago, The_Capt said:

- Phase I - <snip>

Phase 2 - <snip>

Phase 3 - <snip>

None of that was conducted with a qualitatively good military - you get what you pay for - but it was/is not illogical.
<snip>

Yep.

They were exposed as a parade square army because they met some competent and prepared resistance. They have had these problems for a long long time but they got away with their previous adventures because the opposition tripped them up but not enough to break their Phase 1 type actions so they were able to just gloss over the issues and keep doing photo shoots.

[Beleg85]

Now we have another Great Mystery of this war...WarGonzo apparently did shot himself for propaganda prusposes:

Btw. @CAZmaj good stuff, especially the one about complexities of Ukrainian history and term "Rus", nuances of which may be difficult to grasp for many non-CEE viewers.

[A Canadian Cat]

5 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

Is it because it needs the money?  Or just to poke the US in the eye via proxy war?  It's straight up terrorism.

Yes.

The Iranian government is happy to do **** that checks all the boxes whenever they can.

Edited October 24, 2022 by IanL
spelling

[Battlefront.com]

7 hours ago, TheVulture said:

That's something Dan Carlin (historical podcaster) had mentioned several times: other people may have copied the concept of the Greek hoplite or the Roman legion, but without the whole apparatus of the culture, mindset and society that created them, you don't actually have a hoplite of legion and it doesn't function the same way. You just have something that looks similar on the surface.

And likewise the western military system is something that the west evolved as an effective way for people from western cultures to fight. It isn't automatically going to work the same way if you just copy it and plug in people with different culture, social norms and attitudes.

Very true. The same cultural differences also explain Russia's battlefield behavior.  Brutality and suffering are something that they're used to in their daily lives to an extent unfamiliar to Westerners.  You could no sooner make an army of Westerners that is focused on raping, pillaging, and fighting in hopeless conditions than you can make a Russian army fight according to Western standards.

Since we're talking about this now, I have to say this is one of the biggest reasons behind major miscalculations of how well Russia would fight in this war.  The prewar experts saw all the bling and bravado coming out of Russia and accepted it, but people like me looked at the cultural history and didn't see the sort of improvements necessary to back it up.  As with the military improvements, Russia's cultural improvements have been largely superficial and expedients, not systemic and fundamental shifts.

This sort of examination of cultural influence on militaries is tough to do.  It smacks of "racism" when the conclusions are negative.  It for sure can be, but sometimes a pile of crap isn't really a chocolate cake.

We've discussed this topic many times over already.  I believe the key difference between an honest assessment of a culture and "racism" centers around the capacity to change.  Racists believe there's no chance, Humanists believe that there is even if it is difficult and long term.  The problem the Humanists face is that sometimes the conditions necessary for true change are so long term that even they have to "write off" meaningful improvement even within several generations.  Humanists look for signs of change more than they do change itself.  There's lots of signs of change in Russia, but I agree we're nowhere near systemic positive change.

Steve

[acrashb]

8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

people like me looked at the cultural history [...]

People like me did not.  I work in tech, and my exposure to Russians - going back to the early '90s - has been people who were educated and urban, which I assumed reflected the general population.  I expect that this would be similar for analysts like ISW, and while they have less excuse, this type of exposure would skew the thought process.

This goes beyond sloppy / easy macro quantitative vs. harder-work micro-qualitative and into cultural assumptions.  I'm still trying to build a full picture of why (almost) every analyst was wrong.

 

Edited October 24, 2022 by acrashb

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, JonS said:

t was written in a rush - a rush of time, and a rush of anger - and it shows. However, one of the more coherent points they make is that, clearly, Afghanis can fight. And fight. And fight. What the ANA couldn't do, however,  was fight effectively within the construct of the pseudo-western military that had been forcibly grafted onto them, and which then had vital enablers - which the ANA couldn't generate or sustain for themselves - withheld right at the time they were desperately needed.

This.  Here's where we get into the icky world of Realpolitik/Machiavellian thinking.  The most effective way to have dealt with the Taliban was to arm a bunch of local militias and pay them to kill Taliban however they saw fit.  Taliban problem would have gone away very quickly.  It would also have resulted in a lot of fighting between militias and generally kept things unstable internally so that another Taliban like group would rise up sometime down the road.

This is, in fact, how the West has operated until fairly recently.  "They might be bastards, but they are our bastards" mentality and not worrying about what "our bastards" might do further on down the road.  Let's remember that "our bastards" were the guys that later on became al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Once the Western population began to understand this is where their tax money was going to, they (rightly in many ways) demanded it be stopped.  Westerners were not comfortable with arming, training, and de facto commanding forces that raped nuns or used children as fighters.  Quite rightly from a Humanist standpoint, I might add.  The alternatives, however, aren't very good for shorter term problems.

Steve

[billbindc]

45 minutes ago, Probus said:

When I saw how much equipment Russia was moving west to the Ukrainian border, I knew something was up and started this thread.  You just don't move that much equipment to sabre rattle IMHO.  But it is also my opinion that you hit the nail on the head @The_Capt, it is all of the above.

I came latish to this board after being tipped off by some folks that the analyses here were often of a very high grade. That assessment held up. My take why is two fold. First, I don't think anyone here is making their beer  money in doing that kind of analysis in a public facing way where their professional reputation is on the line. That creates a lot of freedom from group think or lowers the hesitation to revise a previously held opinion. Second, the experience/expertise level on this board is quite high and unflinchingly unleashed on bad analysis. That scares off most of the look-at-me pontificating and provides real insights that simply aren't available in a commercial publication.   

This place has been an extremely useful go-to on this war and I suspect it's been more useful than we realize. 

Slava, etc.

 

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, IanL said:

I don't think you are wrong to point out that cargo cult was a bit too much but the corruption that was exposed is astounding. Troops without proper food, old helmets, no / fake body armour, way less top of the line tanks and IFVs than officially available not to mention pulling vehicles and small arms in terrible condition out of storage.

I would instead call the Russian army a parade square army instead of cargo cult. They always had on hand enough cool new tech to look good at the May day celebrations and on the staged "exercises" for the cameras but they were not doing all the things that they should have been doing to be truly ready.

Yep.

They were exposed as a parade square army because they met some competent and prepared resistance. They have had these problems for a long long time but they got away with their previous adventures because the opposition tripped them up but not enough to break their Phase 1 type actions so they were able to just gloss over the issues and keep doing photo shoots.

I definitely think there was an element of this within the RA, along with corruption and baffling strategic decisions.  However, recall that this was the same army that performed in 2014. https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NS-D-10367-Learning-Lessons-from-Ukraine-Conflict-Final.pdf

https://prodev2go.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/rus-ukr-lessons-draft.pdf

In 2014 it was Russia and Russian-backed that were tearing the UA a new one.  I suspect they were using that template for this war when the UA was really Cold War era in capability.  The intervening 8 years could be some of the most important in modern history for the region as Ukraine modernized pretty dramatically while Russia sat back and rolled around on Mayday, investing in boutique military capability instead of modernization.

Then in 2022..whoops, wrong war Russia.  And it has been a mad scramble to try and keep it together from day 1.  All the experts were pointing to UA attrition but it was the attrition on the RA that was doing serious harm.  Their best troops likely got killed in that first month and as capability eroded military objectives went with them - we have been watching the RA devolve ever since the beginning.

I think that if Russia had really been paying attention they would have entirely rethought their approach in Phase I.  If they could conceive that the UA had moved so much in nearly a decade and that western ISR was going to make their lives so difficult, they may have tried to prosecute a military strategy that isolated Ukraine from western support first, then went for the decapitation objectives.  Their’s was a fault of fatal assumptions and there is much that can be learned from that.
 

 

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, poesel said:

Do say, how many countries are participating in that 'world series' of yours?

The only two that matter?  Sorry, I couldn't resist

Steve

[A Canadian Cat]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Once the Western population began to understand this is where their tax money was going to, they (rightly in many ways) demanded it be stopped.  Westerners were not comfortable with arming, training, and de facto commanding forces that raped nuns or used children as fighters.  Quite rightly from a Humanist standpoint, I might add.  Then there was the problem of "they might be bastards, but they are our bastards.  Well, until they aren't, then we have to get other bastards to fight what used to be our bastards".

Indeed spot on. However the new way of trying to nation build and create infrastructure had a problem: it turned out we were funding the Taliban's insurgency with some of the cash that was supposed to be building stuff. As a tax payer I'm not find of that outcome either.

[dan/california]

6 hours ago, Holien said:

Could well be the case. But helmets will be needed to keep population safe from all that goes up - falling back down again!!!

And the bigger the round the bigger the problem. Land based C-RAM gatling guns use an he round that is set up to blow itself into small enough pieces that the inevitable rain of metal isn't terribly dangerous. The navel version uses DU slugs and they would be tearing clean through buildings miles away. Unfortunately there is at least a rumor the explosive rounds are in even shorter supply that the land based systems.

1 hour ago, Harmon Rabb said:

This forum has not invaded my dreams yet. But sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I almost reflexively grab my iPhone from the nightstand beside me, to see what folks in other time zones have posted here .

I always go straight to War-Monitor3. He seems to be the fastest of my continuous follows. Also the least accurate, which is probably related.. He is good enough to tell me if I should attempt real consciousness though.

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Killcullen is an expert on COIN (or at least as far as we got one in the last round) and was trying to translate that cache into Grey Zone and now modern conventional war.  Biggest problem is that none of the theories translate well between those arenas.  This is odd given that he wrote about complex warfare in the early days (wiki says he was sole author but in uniform things really do not work that way).

He is another really smart, highly educated and experienced expert who got this war wrong, largely because they have been in a war like the in Ukraine about as many times as the rest of us….never.  They employed old metrics of success/failure to make their judgements and were way off.  I suspect most will be big enough to admit it and the really good ones will spend a lot of time figuring out why they were so off the mark - expect a LOT of post-Ukraine war books.

Personally, I would write about this thread itself and how stuff like this was happening everywhere.  Open source analysis was all over the place but in some places they got a lot more right than wrong and that is worth following up on why.  Was it micro-perspective based on wargaming?  Was it the mix of expertise and backgrounds?  Was it having the right people like Haiduk on the ground pulling in stuff?  I am not sure but even with our recent “Russia sux” leanings this thread was very accurate and often contrary to the experts getting paid to dot his out there.

Write a book, preferably with Combat-Infantryman. Doesn't matter which war you guys want to write about. You two have too many lessons learned floating around your heads not to get it all down on paper for people smart enough to read it before the next round.

18 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

What Iran is doing is despicable.  Is it because it needs the money?  Or just to poke the US in the eye via proxy war?  It's straight up terrorism.  Hasn't been much said about this by world leaders yet, maybe there's hope for some behind the scenes negotiation hoping Iran will stop? -- note I don't think this likely.  Also I think Biden is waiting until after the Nov 8 elections before speaking out more forcefully about the war.

Iran has set about proving that everything their enemies say about them is true. Or should I say they are proving it AGAIN.

13 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Now we have another Great Mystery of this war...WarGonzo apparently did shot himself for propaganda prusposes:

Btw. @CAZmaj good stuff, especially the one about complexities of Ukrainian history and term "Rus", nuances of which may be difficult to grasp for many non-CEE viewers.

Fingers crossed he gets an antibiotic that expired in 1999.

 

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, acrashb said:

As a for example, often used as a differentiator, Western ground forces teach NCO-level initiative.  But initiative is baked into Western cultures, so if one tries to teach Russian NCO's initiative, it is likely to fail and would certainly do so systemically.  So the RA and its weak NCO corp may actually be a reasonable adaptation to their culture.

I have a friend who trained Ukrainian junior officers as part of a US Army program back in the late 2000s.  At the time he said that he was encouraged because they were eager to learn.  He said they had difficulty with some of the basic concepts, thanks to their legacy Soviet culture, but even way back before 2014 they seemed to understand that there was a better way to soldier.  At the same time Ukrainians were equally curious and interested in learning more about Western economics, politics, and rule of law.  The mindset of the young officers was absolutely were not unrelated to what was going on in Ukraine as a whole.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Butschi said:

Is it necessarily a matter of German history? There are good arguments in favor of giving Russians who oppose the current regime -for whatever reason- a safe haven. Even if it's just for dodging the draft. There are different views on the topic and not only the Ukrainian one is valid.

True, however there's the pesky "for every good result there is a bad side effect" problem.  Russians have shown that they are happy to live in the West and still be supportive of their mother country's criminal activity.  That's not good.  On the plus side, Russia just lost a lot of men (and women) of child bearing/raising age that Putin has been desperately trying to increase.  On the bad side, this means the Russia will have a more difficult time repairing its economy and thus remaining unstable longer.  On the plus side, it means Russia will have a more difficult time repairing its war economy and thus remaining non-threatening for longer.  On the bad side...

It just keeps going on and on like that!  I personally have no thought as to the weight of bad vs. good that taking in Russian refugees means long term.  As the Science Officer Ash once said, "still collating data".

Steve

[Huba]

In it's last update from 15 minutes ago, UA General Staff informed about pushing Russians from a number of settlements in Luhansk oblast. Looks like Ukrainians finally hold full control of the Zherebets line and there are hardly any obstacles on the way to Svatovo - Kreminna.

 

[Baneman]

26 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

The only two that matter?  Sorry, I couldn't resist

Steve

Scotland is in the World Series ? 
 

( sorry, couldn't resist ) 

[Beleg85]

Also interesting short thread (PL and UA, autotranslate) about what Russians really may be doing in Kherson, with link to interview with Kiryl Budanov, chief of UA intelligence:

https://twitter.com/MarekKozubel/status/1584465779537637376

He basically thinks that Russian do not plan to evacuate Kherson but turn it into a fortress, and last withdrawals and panick in media was concious campaign on behalf of muscovites to empty region from civilians and take better defences. Worth to read both thread and a link even iy one does not agree, as Budanov was generally right till now in his assessments.

It is troubling concept, as it may mean that brutal fights awaits Ukrainians before they reclaim Kherson. It can be truth, though; it is not in Putin's style to abandon anything just like that.

Edited October 24, 2022 by Beleg85

[dan/california]

15 minutes ago, IanL said:

Indeed spot on. However the new way of trying to nation build and create infrastructure had a problem: it turned out we were funding the Taliban's insurgency with some of the cash that was supposed to be building stuff. As a tax payer I'm not find of that outcome either.

The hardest problem in human history is how to take a country that is a complete mess and make it a minimally decent place to live, and then get from their to at rule of law, human rights and so on. Ukraine was well on its way to making that transition when Russia decided it simply couldn't abide that happening in one of its former colonies. The utter transparency of Putin's attempt to smash Ukraine back down to its own level is why Russia has lost the information war about as badly as humanly possible, at least in "The West".

Speaking of books that need writing, for all of it flaws the ability of the IDEA of European Union to motivate countries in the right direction is no small thing. How the EU actually works, and how the folks inside feel about it is a different question. I would postulate they feel that way because being on the inside gives them the bandwidth to complain.