How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Battlefront.com]

6 minutes ago, Beetz said:

hat struck me the most by your comparison of the old prussian doctrine and russian motorized and mechanized forces performance on the battlefield is to remind me that speed without proper combined arms is very old warfare indeed.

Yes, and of course that Prussian doctrine was itself based on methods of warfare stretching back thousands of years.  The Mongols didn't expand their empire by moving slowly and cautiously

6 minutes ago, Beetz said:

If you look at the Blitzkrieg as the culmination of old prussian doctrinal warfare and pick the breakthrough at Sedan and advance to the channel as a classic example and compare it to the US army 1st InfDiv advances through Iraq during Desert Storm and then compare it to the Russian advances in the first three days. Then you'll come up with the same estimate around 2-2.5 km per day operational tempo for every operation although the outcomes of the first two and the later were vastly different.

I haven't measured advance rates for various conflicts, but my sense is the same as yours... there's some sort of equalizing forces in warfare that keep advance rates kinda similar despite major advances in the tactical speed of the vehicles involved.  The exception being advances achieved with the aid of aviation, of course.

6 minutes ago, Beetz said:

I think what makes it different from a modern style fighting besides the doctrine is to keep up the tempo over a prolonged period of time which the Russians failed to achive.

That and the thoroughness of the advance itself.  The West is always very concerned about flanks and rear exposure to bypassed troops and potential counter thrusts.  Russia, going way back, less so.  There's countless examples of spectacular Soviet breakthroughs in WW2 winding up with massive losses and greatly reduced or restricted gains.  That is more akin to what we saw in this war.  Reckless advances effectively countered to the point that most of the gains were lost within weeks.

Steve

[Beetz]

sorry I meant 2-2.5 km per hour of course. I'm not good with numbers and it also was a quick and rough estimate so take that with a pinch of salt but I found the coincidence was still kinda interesting.

7 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

That and the thoroughness of the advance itself.  The West is always very concerned about flanks and rear exposure to bypassed troops and potential counter thrusts.  Russia, going way back, less so.  There's countless examples of spectacular Soviet breakthroughs in WW2 winding up with massive losses and greatly reduced or restricted gains.  That is more akin to what we saw in this war.  Reckless advances effectively countered to the point that most of the gains were lost within weeks.

Steve

oh yeah, they messed that up pretty badly. they didn't see what was in front on the side and in the rear and got handled that way.

 

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, JonS said:

As they say around here: yeah, nah.

Kilcullen and Mills have some pretty specific recommendations about how the ANA could have been set up which respected the culture, traditions, and national capabilities (including sustainment) within which the ANA would have had to operate once NATO and the rest departed. However, none of those recommendations rely on the lazy "eh, all Afghanis are venal murderers so we just needed to train and equip and pay them to murder better" trope. The authors are, not surprisingly, very firmly in the 'you can't kill your way out of an insurgency' camp.

Oh, I for sure agree that there was vastly better options for setting Afghanistan for success that weren't as brutally crass as what I said in my previous post.  I was simply saying that paying a bunch of locals to hunt down and kill off the competition would likely have worked better than the method that was actually tried.

Early on in the Afghanistan conflict it was pretty clear that if building a modern and stable Afghan state was the goal, dumping planeloads of money and giving it away like candy wasn't going to do it.  What was needed instead was the Western partners effectively running a carefully calibrated governmental system for the Afghanis while vetted locals could be taught the basic skills required of responsible self governance.  Corruption and political infighting could have been minimized while at the same time creating solid institutions that qualified locals could then take over when the timing was right.  The same thing could have happened within the ANA.

Unfortunately, the flawed concept of handing over responsibility and being done with it ASAP was chosen over the longer term models used in Germany and Japan after WW2.  Ironically, I think Afghanistan could have been built into a functional country in half the time as it took to prop up a dysfunctional one.

The relevance to this discussion is something we covered several times now.  Defeating Russia requires defeating its government, ripping it out by the roots, and starting over again.  It doesn't seem likely that the Russians will do it themselves and there's no scenario I can see where the West gets agency as it had in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Therefore, whatever theories we have about Afghanistan aren't applicable to Russia.

Steve

[Butschi]

39 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Ekhmm....you know human societies are not computer nodes, right?

To my constant chagrin I'm reminded of this every day.

39 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Because we cannot simply apply mathematical thinking to describe living human beings.

I agree, and I don't see at what point I suggested otherwise. What I said was this: Assuming that the current war is the first of its kind (you may disagree but that was the underlying assumption of my post), then we have only two countries who, so far, fought a war of this kind (what I called modern war). In that case saying the party who currently performs worse in this war "sucks at modern war" is not very useful. Just like saying that Ukraine is a master at modern war is not very useful. Both statements would only make sense in comparison with many others because "sucks at" or "is a master of" are "values" on an absolute scale instead of a relative one. Saying "Ukraine is much better at modern war than Russia", a relative statement, instead seems perfectly justified.

Note, my post was not about Russias general "suckiness". Chechnya was not a "modern war" in the sense I used (again, you may disagree, as Steve does).

41 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I disagree.  The reason why it's so easy to point to Russia's failings is because we have solid examples to compare to.  The 1990/91 Gulf War pitted a similar Coalition force similar in size and composition as the Russians against a much larger and better equipped conventional Iraqi army.  Even though this was 30 years ago the Coalition performance was dramatically better than the Russian performance in 2022.  We can dig deeper and analyze the components of each and then compare them to each other in a way that is both fair and defendable.  Doing that shows, by comparison at least, "Russia sux" at this sort of warfare.

We can look to other battle spaces, in particular Iraq 2003+ and Afghanistan, for more examples.  Even though the circumstances of the fighting might be quite different, the components utilized by the "modern" forces are the same as those Russia is attempting to utilize now in Ukraine.  Again, the results are highly unfavorable to Russia.

Steve

Ok, you obviously use "modern war" in a far broader sense than I did. I was thinking of this war with drones, modern ATGMs, modern C4ISR, precision artillery, all the things we are seeing first time in a large scale near-peer or peer-peer war. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think Gulf War 1 or Afghanistan qualify for this - not only because of the different kinds of weapons but also because neither Iraq nor Afghanistan were even close to near-peer by any stretch of imagination.

I didn't say Russia doesn't suck. I said (see above) that "Russia sucks at modern war" is not a useful statement when (by my definition, and that may be flawed) there are only two data points.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Butschi

[kevinkin]

https://www.reuters.com/world/top-us-russian-generals-hold-first-talks-since-may-official-2022-10-24/?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d

Fly on the wall ...

Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff : "You know Val, Russia really does suck at modern war. It's time to end this folly."

Russian military Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov: "Mark, just low level details. Can't be bothered ... дерьмо ... what's modern about the Tsar Bomba anyway?"

[dan/california]

7 hours ago, Haiduk said:

MRB is a brigade. LDPR brigades correspond to Russian TO&E, maybe with some minor distinguishes

Got it, I was reading battalion, not brigade. 

[keas66]

Actually on the whole question of  Russian  Military  prowess and their abilities to fight a modern war - and this may be in a little  bad taste  considering the real war being waged right now - but  I have a wealth of  Gaming material  representing mid eighties hypothetical  conflicts with the Soviet forces - actually it is quite an enormous pile  - including Combat Mission Cold War  . I look at this pile of  materiel now and wonder  just how accurate it is -  what sort of assumptions it is all based on .  I'm hoping  they are all still reasonable  simulations and the Russians of the 80's were indeed a scary military power  that could drive for the Fulda Gap .

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Does Russia have a military that fits the Western definition of a "modern combined arms force" that integrates all arms of warfare into a singular tool to successfully execute national priorities?

I am not sure we even know what this still means to be honest.  Didn’t JonS and I lock horns over what exactly “modern combined arms” actually means?  I would argue that the RA BTG concept, the one they carried over from 2014 is more in line with our contemporary definitions of “combined arms”.  In phase I of this war some of those units, flaws and all did conduct some pretty deep advances.  The UA on the other hand has not been employing traditional combined arms by any stretch.  The appear to have reinvented it by combining C4ISR, unmanned, light infantry and precision fires.  My point being that the metric of “modern combined arms military” is in the wind and I would not lean on it for assessments at least for a few years.

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I disagree.  The Russians claimed to have a force that would not make such a mess of all three levels of warfare against an inferior force defending against an attack at a time of Russia's choosing.  Western experts by and large agreed with this assessment.  And yet, they absolutely do not have such a force as demonstrated by the catastrophic failures at all levels of warfare.

And I think this is the crux of our disagreement,  I do not disagree that at many levels the “Russian Army sux”, peace on that.  My point is that this was not the determinative factor in the outcome of this war.  It was a lower standard force designed to fight along our former definitions of “combined arms”; however, even at that sub standard level it was not until it ran headlong into something that no combined force on earth would have been fully prepared for that the failures we are seeing became their destiny in this war.

More simply put it was is the Ukrainian redefinition of what combined arms really means in 2022 that led to Russian defeat, the “Russians sucking” was a contributing factor not the definitive one.  I stand by this thru the simple fact that if Ukraine had attempted to meet the same “sucky” Russian force as they had in 2014 we would have seen a very different result - the failure in expert assessment pre-war was to take this into account.  Hell if the west turned off the ISR and cut off PGMs tomorrow the UAs modern reinvention of combined arms would likely be at risk, even against the RA in its current shape - isn’t that what the concern is over US mid-terms?

I think we both agree the RA is pretty much done as a effective fighting force now - although I still see some signs of life - the outcome is now really down to where they are tied off, or a compete political collapse in Russia (now here the Russian political system sucking is a definitive factor).  My point is that no matter how badly the Russians do or do not suck is secondary to whatever the UA has managed to do here.  If the mighty US and it’s allies were waging this war against a Ukraine like entity I am sure we would not suck anywhere near as much; however, our casualties would likely be so high as to scare political leadership and very likely break our sustainment if it went on as long as this one has - our vehicles need gas, our aircraft are just as vulnerable to next-gen MANPADS and last I checked we were no better at stopping HIMARs if they were coming at us.

The Russian suck…ok, we got it.  So long as we keep that as an factor and not the entirety of analysis we are fine.  Otherwise we seriously risk undersubscribing what actually happened in this war and miss the points we need to for the next one.

[billbindc]

56 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Oh, I for sure agree that there was vastly better options for setting Afghanistan for success that weren't as brutally crass as what I said in my previous post.  I was simply saying that paying a bunch of locals to hunt down and kill off the competition would likely have worked better than the method that was actually tried.

Early on in the Afghanistan conflict it was pretty clear that if building a modern and stable Afghan state was the goal, dumping planeloads of money and giving it away like candy wasn't going to do it.  What was needed instead was the Western partners effectively running a carefully calibrated governmental system for the Afghanis while vetted locals could be taught the basic skills required of responsible self governance.  Corruption and political infighting could have been minimized while at the same time creating solid institutions that qualified locals could then take over when the timing was right.  The same thing could have happened within the ANA.

Unfortunately, the flawed concept of handing over responsibility and being done with it ASAP was chosen over the longer term models used in Germany and Japan after WW2.  Ironically, I think Afghanistan could have been built into a functional country in half the time as it took to prop up a dysfunctional one.

The relevance to this discussion is something we covered several times now.  Defeating Russia requires defeating its government, ripping it out by the roots, and starting over again.  It doesn't seem likely that the Russians will do it themselves and there's no scenario I can see where the West gets agency as it had in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Therefore, whatever theories we have about Afghanistan aren't applicable to Russia.

Steve

The most succinct summation of Afghanistan I ever heard: it was a temporary occupation that was allowed to continue for two decades.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

In my previous post I said it is possible to conclude "Russia sux" and yet not turn off critical analysis.  I will attempt to prove that theory with this post

Even if the overall conclusion is "Russia sux", it is probable that such a conclusion doesn't apply equally to every aspect of this war.  Therefore, it is absolutely wrong to stop looking for what Russia is doing more right than wrong and to further identify areas of continued threat.  Here's a short list:

1. Russians will fight hard even when they don't want to or think they will survive.  There were doubts, including by me, that it still had this long standing trait going for it.
2. Tactically Russia seems to have learned and disseminated "lessons learned" to counter particular Ukrainian tactics.  The most obvious one is to avoid trying deep penetrations of Ukrainian lines, instead favoring consolidating initial gains.  Another is recognizing the threat of HIMARS and keeping supplies more mobile.
3. Although extremely wasteful with its artillery, that doesn't mean it is incapable of impressive tactical employment.  There's plenty of examples to suggest that dismissing Russian artillery response times and accuracy is an extremely bad idea.
4. It has shown that it has the ability to use EW effectively at times, though with limitations that apparently make it unwise or otherwise impractical to use full time.
5. Drone usage is generally good and limited mostly by other factors, such as generally bad ISR (drones do best when they have hints of where to operate and when), poor chains of communication, inflexible artillery doctrine, inadequate numbers, and too few operators.
6. Ability to quickly develop formidable defenses when properly resourced and manned.  Kherson is the best example of this, Kharkiv the worst.  This is important because there are two other fronts (Zaporizhzhia line and the Donbas) that Ukraine has yet to attack.  I think it would be wise to presume more Kherson than Kharkiv.
7. Russia's air defense capabilities appear to be stretched thin, but they are still formidable enough to require a significant and prolonged effort to make the skies safe for friendly air activity.
8. Although Russia's constraints on adaptability are many, they aren't absolute.  The purchasing and deployment of Iranian drones, under the direct guidance of Iranian trainers, is an example to be noted.
9. Russia's resourcefulness in reconstituting combat power, however inefficient and ultimately ineffective, should not underestimated.  They have repeatedly shown the ability to replace their losses sufficiently to avoid theater wide collapse.  The effectiveness of those replacements, both in terms of men and equipment, can be questioned, however the result of avoiding a complete failure to remain in this war (so far) is a fact.
10. Putin has successfully managed to keep domestic unrest to a minimum, even if he may be running out his margin of error to a dangerous degree.
11. Ukraine is suffering serious losses in order to regain its territory.  While Ukraine shows absolutely no signs of deterrence from continuing this war, it does have implications for how quickly it might end.
12. Russia's ability to slow and/or hide its economic decline continues to be sufficient to maintain the war while also not collapsing in the process.  For now, at least.

See, even though I think "Russia sux" I've not stopped looking for the ways Russia "doesn't sux as much"

Steve

And to my central point here Russia is still learning - this is a very good listing of evidence for that.  However it is not learning fast enough or anywhere near as fast as the UA.  The UA solved for operational offence on a battlefield I was not even sure that could be done, they may do it again before the snow flies.

Russia also keeps doubling down on old metrics and doctrine.  If I were in the RA and got a hold of 600 new UAS I would not be lobbing that civilian targets like they were V-1s in the late 40s.  Even their switch to Ukrainian power distribution is too little too late.  A definitive factor in this war seems to be the fact that UA has learned very quickly what modern warfare looks like; the UA has adapted their ways of war to this fight while Russia keeps trying for force this war to adapt them.  

[Battlefront.com]

49 minutes ago, Butschi said:

I agree, and I don't see at what point I suggested otherwise. What I said was this: Assuming that the current war is the first of its kind (you may disagree but that was the underlying assumption of my post), then we have only two countries who, so far, fought a war of this kind (what I called modern war). In that case saying that saying the party who currently performs worse in this war "sucks at modern war" is not very useful. Just like saying that Ukraine is a master at modern war. Both statements would only make sense in comparison with many others because "sucks at" or "is a master of" are "values" on an absolute scale instead of a relative one. Saying "Ukraine is much better at modern war than Russia", a relative statement, seems perfectly justified.

This is a very fair point, but it is a lot of fun to say that Russia sucks at its chosen vocation

Part of the reason for "putting Russia in its place" with a putdown like "Russia sux at war" is precisely because they have told us, and convinced many in the West, that they are really good at it.  In fact, they had claimed they were better at it than NATO.  The unfounded hubris does make a tempting target for ridicule.

49 minutes ago, Butschi said:

Note, my post was not about Russias general "suckiness". Chechnya was not a "modern war" in the sense I used (again, you may disagree, as Steve does).

Ok, you obviously use "modern war" in a far broader sense than I did. I was thinking of this war with drones, modern ATGMs, modern C4ISR, precision artillery, all the things we are seeing first time in a large scale near-peer or peer-peer war. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think Gulf War 1 or Afghanistan qualify for this - not only because of the different kinds of weapons but also because neither Iraq nor Afghanistan were even close to near-peer by any stretch of imagination.

I didn't say Russia doesn't suck. I said (see above) that "Russia sucks at modern war" is not a useful statement when (by my definition, and that may be flawed) there are only two data points.

Definitions do matter, for sure.  The way I define "modern warfare" is force structures that have all of the basic components of what we have today, plus or minus a few.  For example, a war in 5 years time will use mostly the same stuff we have today, including specific pieces of hardware, but for sure there will be something new that isn't on the battlefield right now.  Lasers and UGVs, for example.  When we get 5 years down the road I won't consider everything I learned this year to be irrelevant simply because there's something brand new.  Likewise, just because the Gulf War didn't have drones doesn't mean it's not "modern".  If you look at it, the Gulf War has almost all of the elements we have today, even if they were comparatively primitive or few in numbers compared to today.

It is also fair to point out the major differences in the battlespaces, be it the composition of forces, the weather, scale, terrain, operational goals, etc.  These things should be examined and taken into consideration, however they don't preclude meaningful comparisons.

For example, in Desert Shield and Desert Storm the Coalition air forces focused on degrading Iraq's ability to contest the skies and command its forces.  This was a complex campaign that required a highly skilled and versatile air force, ISR, and patience.  Prewar experts predicting this is what Russia would do in Ukraine, yet it did not.  What attempts it did make were half assed and largely ineffective.  This was a surprise to the prewar experts but not as much to even me, a ground pounder centric guy.  Why was I not surprised?  Because I did not think Russia had the capacity to conduct such a campaign.  Shortly after the war started more learned airpower folks chimed in and said the same thing, except backed up by specifics instead of my general sense of things.

Another example is more universal, which is the contributions professional officers and NCOs make on low level tactical abilities.  This has been studied for decades and over that time we've come to appreciate more and more what the Western leadership style has to offer that the traditional Russian style does not.  We don't even need to look at actual combat for examples, we can just look at how each force trains in peacetime.  Specifically, Western forces put their units through as realistic a training environment as possible, which means chaos and unfavorable circumstances are emphasized.  Russia conducts large scale scripted PR events and "competitions".  One should not be shocked that the battlefield performance of the Russians isn't very good as they literally weren't trained to be good!  How the prewar experts missed this fact, not to mention decreasing quality and participation in even the scripted exercises, is beyond me.

We can even extrapolate things like drones from past experiences.  The US, for example, has fantastic equipment and procedures for coordinating forces.  This stretches back to WW2.  Russia never has had it and certainly doesn't have it now.  Throw drones at the US force and you should expect them to be tightly integrated and highly leveraged.  Throw drones at the Russians and you can pretty much be assured they won't live up to their full potential even if the Russian drone operator is as good as any US operator.  That's because the backend support for the US is excellent and Russia is poor.

The list goes on and on and on.

This is the sort of stuff that the prewar experts apparently didn't really look at.  And it shows, because all the information to know that "Russia sucks" and that "Ukraine rocks" was there to see.  Even a part timer amateur like myself saw it pretty clearly, so I for sure know it wasn't hard to find.

Steve

[kevinkin]

17 minutes ago, keas66 said:

I look at this pile of  materiel now and wonder  just how accurate it is -  what sort of assumptions it is all based on .  I'm hoping  they are all still reasonable  simulations and the Russians of the 80's were indeed a scary military power  that could drive for the Fulda Gap .

It's all based on playability of a games based on potential real life scenarios. They used simple approaches like giving the Soviets lots of equipment and low modifiers and NATO the opposite. At some point in the Cold War, Soviet weapons became obsolete and their wiliness to train and field armed forces became too costly for the USSR. Their conscripts began to see dying for nothing is foolish. Designers could accurately simulate this with extreme rules against the Warsaw Pact. But what kind of challenge would that be? I am not an expert, so I am not sure at what point in history would extreme rules need to be applied to the Soviets. But the tipping point is probably in the 80's if I needed an answer. 

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I am not sure we even know what this still means to be honest.  Didn’t JonS and I lock horns over what exactly “modern combined arms” actually means?  I would argue that the RA BTG concept, the one they carried over from 2014 is more in line with our contemporary definitions of “combined arms”.  In phase I of this war some of those units, flaws and all did conduct some pretty deep advances.  

Again, Germans got to Paris pretty rapidly on foot and horse, so I don't credit the Russians' ability to drive fast down paved road surfaces against thin and unorganized resistance to be a great accomplishment.  Especially because it directly led to catastrophic losses once the Ukrainians got their bearings on what the Russians were doing.  Therefore, I don't look at Phase 1 as being something Russia should be particularly and uniquely proud of.  Others have done it much better than they did with far less against more capable defenders.

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

The UA on the other hand has not been employing traditional combined arms by any stretch.  The appear to have reinvented it by combining C4ISR, unmanned, light infantry and precision fires.  My point being that the metric of “modern combined arms military” is in the wind and I would not lean on it for assessments at least for a few years.

Ah!  Fresh meat on the table.  Yum

My assessment is Ukraine's success came in large part because they understood that the Russians would try to employ a method of warfare that they suck at.

We've touched on how a NATO force would do against a Ukraine type capability.  We don't have any examples to draw from, but I think we can be safely assured that it would NOT look like the Russian fiasco. 

At the highest level the overall strategic plan would have been shaped more realistically to conform to the forces available.  Second of all, there would have been a strong emphasis on gaining command of the skies to allow for close air support.  That would likely ensure NATO a better outcome no matter what variables were changed (fewer axises, slower pace, fewer tactical objectives, etc.)

At the operational level NATO would have kept its forces more consolidated, even if it meant sacrificing speed, breadth, depth, etc.  They might still get whacked by a couple of defenders hiding in the bush, but those guys would likely be dead shortly after.  Logistics would likely have been better protected, if not from the start then soon thereafter (remember, US had some bad experiences in Iraq 2003 that it hasn't likely forgotten).  Artillery assets would have been made available and been on call to respond to unforeseen situations.  Airpower... yeah, there would be tons of that available.  And if Unit A got into a pickle, Unit B would be right there next to it to provide support.  Etc. etc.

At the tactical level the ability of NATO forces to coordinate a response to a tactical surprise would be equal, if not better, than the people popping the surprise.  A squad of defenders might get the jump on the tip of the spear, but when it tried to withdraw it might find that someone had moved in around it to cut off retreat.  As stated above, artillery and/or air would be plentiful and painful to any defenders found during or before the battle.  And there's another point, NATO ISR would make it more difficult for the defenders to form up for some sort of action because that activity may get them spotted and if spotted attacked before becoming a problem. 

MOST IMPORTANTLY, I think it's a stretch to think that NATO forces would abandon perfectly good equipment because they wanted to go home.  They certainly wouldn't be poking holes in their gas tanks.  What percentage of the Russian attackers were in some form of retrograde activity at any given time during Phase 1?  Even a conservative 5% would be massive, as that's the equivalent of taking 5% casualties without the defender firing a shot.

Soooooo... what am I trying to say other than I don't think NATO sucks?  I'm saying that the principles of traditional Western style combined arms doctrine, properly applied, would have created a vastly different outcome for a Ukraine type situation.  Still bloodier than any NATO country would ever want to have it be, but I think it could be successful.  Which means the effectiveness of the Ukrainian method of countering a modern mechanized force is likely heavily dependent upon the attacker sucking at basic modern mechanized warfare.  Fortunately for Ukraine, Russia does indeed suck at it

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

And I think this is the crux of our disagreement,  I do not disagree that at many levels the “Russian Army sux”, peace on that.  My point is that this was not the determinative factor in the outcome of this war.  It was a lower standard force designed to fight along our former definitions of “combined arms”; however, even at that sub standard level it was not until it ran headlong into something that no combined force on earth would have been fully prepared for that the failures we are seeing became their destiny in this war.

See above for why I disagree with this premise.

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

More simply put it was is the Ukrainian redefinition of what combined arms really means in 2022 that led to Russian defeat, the “Russians sucking” was a contributing factor not the definitive one.  I stand by this thru the simple fact that if Ukraine had attempted to meet the same “sucky” Russian force as they had in 2014 we would have seen a very different result - the failure in expert assessment pre-war was to take this into account.  Hell if the west turned off the ISR and cut off PGMs tomorrow the UAs modern reinvention of combined arms would likely be at risk, even against the RA in its current shape - isn’t that what the concern is over US mid-terms?

Ah, a second course!  I'm getting full, but I can't resist digging into more

To restate my above point, I think you're only looking at half of the equation.  The Russians sucking was a contributing factor to its defeat, sure enough, but I do think it was a definitive one.  I think a force truly versed in modern mechanized warfare (aka NATO) would have fared vastly better and Ukraine vastly worse in 1st Phase.  Which would set up a very different scenario for the 2nd Phase because the attacker wouldn't be decimated and the defender would be worse off than in the current war.

Not that I am not saying that the outcome of the war would be any different.  It is entirely possible that the Ukrainian method of combating a larger mechanized opponent might yield the same result against a NATO type force.  I'm just not as confident as you that it would.

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

I think we both agree the RA is pretty much done as a effective fighting force now - although I still see some signs of life - the outcome is now really down to where they are tied off, or a compete political collapse in Russia (now here the Russian political system sucking is a definitive factor).  My point is that no matter how badly the Russians do or do not suck is secondary to whatever the UA has managed to do here.  If the mighty US and it’s allies were waging this war against a Ukraine like entity I am sure we would not suck anywhere near as much; however, our casualties would likely be so high as to scare political leadership and very likely break our sustainment if it went on as long as this one has - our vehicles need gas, our aircraft are just as vulnerable to next-gen MANPADS and last I checked we were no better at stopping HIMARs if they were coming at us.

Yup, and I acknowledge that I could be very wrong.  I also suspect that the West's ability to take casualties before the public yelled "make peace, you fools!" is completely spot on.  However, in my mind I'm gaming things without those sorts of restrictions and I'm seeing it play out more favorably for the attacker than you envision.  Hopefully we'll never figure out which one of us is correct

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

The Russian suck…ok, we got it.  So long as we keep that as an factor and not the entirety of analysis we are fine.  Otherwise we seriously risk undersubscribing what actually happened in this war and miss the points we need to for the next one.

And now for desert  Fully and totally agree with this.  Which is why I made the follow up post to show that it is possible to hold an extraordinary low opinion of Russia's overall capabilities, yet still give credit where credit is due.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

27 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

It's all based on playability of a games based on potential real life scenarios. They used simple approaches like giving the Soviets lots of equipment and low modifiers and NATO the opposite. At some point in the Cold War, Soviet weapons became obsolete and their wiliness to train and field armed forces became too costly for the USSR. Their conscripts began to see dying for nothing is foolish. Designers could accurately simulate this with extreme rules against the Warsaw Pact. But what kind of challenge would that be? I am not an expert, so I am not sure at what point in history would extreme rules need to be applied to the Soviets. But the tipping point is probably in the 80's if I needed an answer. 

I have always held the opinion that if the Soviets and the Western Allies started fighting on the Elbe River in 1945 that the Russians would make VAST gains before the Western Allies managed to stall them enough that both would agree to a ceasefire.  Kinda like the Korean War.

This is because technology played a minor role in the warfare of the day.  As technology became more important to securing battlefield results, the Soviets fell further and further behind.  Not just with the equipment produced, but also the methods for producing that equipment. 

I agree that the 80s tipped the balance decidedly and forever towards the West.

Steve

[Bulletpoint]

There has to be at least some level of competence on the Russian side, or the war would be over by now.

We see all the videos of Russians getting killed, but still, Ukraine is suffering thousands of casualties too.

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

There has to be at least some level of competence on the Russian side, or the war would be over by now.

Stubbornness is a form of competence I guess

5 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

We see all the videos of Russians getting killed, but still, Ukraine is suffering thousands of casualties too.

Right, but we saw thousands of Chechens getting slaughtered by Russians and I don't think anybody can make an argument that the Russians were using a competent modern mechanized army to do it.  Put another way, we're not discussing whether Russia has the capacity to kill large numbers of people and rubble vast areas, because obviously they do.  And they're pretty good at it too.  What they suck at is modern warfare.

Steve

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, keas66 said:

Actually on the whole question of  Russian  Military  prowess and their abilities to fight a modern war - and this may be in a little  bad taste  considering the real war being waged right now - but  I have a wealth of  Gaming material  representing mid eighties hypothetical  conflicts with the Soviet forces - actually it is quite an enormous pile  - including Combat Mission Cold War  . I look at this pile of  materiel now and wonder  just how accurate it is -  what sort of assumptions it is all based on .  I'm hoping  they are all still reasonable  simulations and the Russians of the 80's were indeed a scary military power  that could drive for the Fulda Gap .

This is a very good question.  Having spent a lot of time studying the Cold War - as one would hope, I think it depends on when.  The Soviet Army and it “scariness” is really time sensitive across what was a 40+ year period.  In the late 80s, say after 1984, my estimate is that “no” the Soviet military for multiple reasons would have failed gloriously in the ETO.  Western capability was far to advanced and integrated into an operational system that would have seen the Soviet forces die in significant numbers and achieve very little.

In the CMCW timeline ‘79 to ‘82/83 we have the point of last real parity.  In this timeframe I think the Soviets could have had a real shot and would have been pretty a pretty close run against the West.  Going earlier the Soviet chances get better through the early 70s as western militaries abandoned mass without on offset.  The the 60s get weird as western powers still had a lot of mass and the Soviet system was somewhat antiquated.  I think we might have even seen a western advantage in the 60s but again close to parity.  Post war and 50s by my estimate belong to the Soviets.  They had mass and the operational system on a scope and scale well outside the western powers.

So short answer “yes” and “no”.  I would say that one cannot compare the Soviet Army to the RA in ends, ways or means.  I am sure the Soviet military had corruption and poor leadership but they had so much capacity and depth back when it still really mattered.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Again, Germans got to Paris pretty rapidly on foot and horse, so I don't credit the Russians' ability to drive fast down paved road surfaces against thin and unorganized resistance to be a great accomplishment.

Ok, you keep mentioning this.  Moving several hundred thousand troops anywhere on an offence, even shoddily is incredibly hard.  You are really undersubscribing the difficulty of this under ideal conditions, now compounded by the UA who can see that entire line of advance back to the border from space.  Further the UA has precision fires and ATGM systems that are fire and forget out to 3+km hitting with 90% accuracy.  The fact the Russians got as far as they did should not be tossed aside so easily.  

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

My assessment is Ukraine's success came in large part because they understood that the Russians would try to employ a method of warfare that they suck at.

You would have to back this up.  I have never heard anyone thinking this, nor the UA having the luxury to pull this off while being invaded.  What I saw was the UA adapting quickly with what they had and were likely surprised by the outcome as well.  That is one helluva assessment and I would need to see some facts before I bought off on it.  Have they learned how to exploit RA weakness over time, definitely.  But the idea that they specifically and deliberately tailored their operational and tactical approaches before the war because they knew exactly where the Russian suck is a reach with the info we have.

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

I'm saying that the principles of traditional Western style combined arms doctrine, properly applied, would have created a vastly different outcome for a Ukraine type situation.  Still bloodier than any NATO country would ever want to have it be, but I think it could be successful.  Which means the effectiveness of the Ukrainian method of countering a modern mechanized force is likely heavily dependent upon the attacker sucking at basic modern mechanized warfare. 

And here we fully disagree.  Would we have done better, likely.  Would it have been easy or would our strategic objectives be guaranteed..I am not sure at all for all the reasons I listed before.  Our logistics are just as vulnerable, for example how does one secure a 5km wide corridor for 100kms? Against dismounted infantry?  How does one hide mass and ours is just a big and hot as Russia’s.  In Iraq insurgents shut down US operational logistics with IEDs for days at a time, here we are talking an opponent with next-gen ATGMs and C4ISR - we would have to bake space to take out their assets, knocking ours out at the same time. UAVs everywhere, hell ISIS drove us nuts with Amazon drones and they  were nowhere near this level.  AD, we needed full stacks of SEAD for places like Libya let alone an opponent with next gen MANPADS plugged into a C4ISR system the UA have.  No, I am sorry but to say “we would be fine and the UA only won because Russia sucks” smacks of western hubris which is exactly what the European powers did with the lessons they observed in the wars leading up to WW1.

I could go on at length.  And even with setting pre-conditions and actually conducting joint targeting I am not convinced the west would have simply rolled through against an opponent armed, supported and fighting like the Ukrainians.  In fact we likely would have stuck ardently to our doctrine which would have gotten us into a lot of trouble when we also ran out of gas, let alone when the body count escalated.

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

See above for why I disagree with this premise.

 See western bias and hubris above.

I also do not think Russia would have won this if they “sucked less” because no one (or at least very few) predicted the impact the new realities of the modern battlefield would have.

I argue that while we fully agree on the Russian qualitative assessment, the outcomes do not lead to it being determinative.  Make the Russians better at combined arms, even joint fires and they they might have lost slower but they were not going to achieve their objectives because their entire system was built for a battlefield that does not exists anymore - giving them a faster horse is not going to make a difference against a bird in a vertical race.  Make the UA worse by taking away the advantages they had and their success does some into question, as it was back in 2014.  Those two factors alone point to the determinative factor as the performance of the UA in a modern environment driven largely by technological change and not the Russian military sucking (which again was definitely contributing).

Hell we can test some of this in CM right now for that matter - fight to emulate a proxy war with someone backed with China.  We can’t directly attack Chinese C4ISR and they have outfitted our opponent with all the bells and whistles (UAS, deep strike, PGMs and AD).  Let one side fight all modern combat armsy just like out doctrine says, and let then other fight like the UA, now that would be an interesting experiment.

 

 

Edited October 25, 2022 by The_Capt

[Vet 0369]

9 hours ago, sburke said:

as I noted earlier, yes you do.  The Russian student union at Stanford U has done events with the Ukrainian student union against the war.  Is it a lot?  No.  To say there are none however is false.  I am sure it isn't the only example in the US.

The Russian immigrant community and the Ukrainian Immigrant community joined together to provide support to the Ukrainian refugees who arrived in the Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. area, so not all Russian immigrants are “bad.” As SBurke said, I”m sure there are many similar occurrences happening all around the would that we never hear about.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

The most succinct summation of Afghanistan I ever heard: it was a temporary occupation that was allowed to continue for two decades.

I always liked “we brought a gun to a knife fight”.

[cesmonkey]

The Seattle Times had an interesting article about a local that returned from fighting with the International Legion in Ukraine (paywall)

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-vet-returns-from-harrowing-ukraine-front-line-duty/

An Iraq War combat engineer vet, he left because he was unhappy with how a incident was handled with a Ukrainian officer who he believes stole from their funds.  And, when digging trenches, they were able to easily dig out the dirt from some old, well-built German trenches from WWII.

[Beleg85]

2 hours ago, Butschi said:

Assuming that the current war is the first of its kind (you may disagree but that was the underlying assumption of my post), then we have only two countries who, so far, fought a war of this kind (what I called modern war). In that case saying the party who currently performs worse in this war "sucks at modern war" is not very useful. Just like saying that Ukraine is a master at modern war is not very useful. Both statements would only make sense in comparison with many others because "sucks at" or "is a master of" are "values" on an absolute scale instead of a relative one. Saying "Ukraine is much better at modern war than Russia", a relative statement, instead seems perfectly justified.

Ok, but why you assumed this is first war of its kind? This is basically the same army that participated in other wars, more or less symatrical. In all of them it underperformed at literally the same fields from last...well 100 years at least. I would agree with you if it would be twitter or other flat social media, but nobody here stops on this sentence alone; that is why we have several pages of very detailed posts by Steve and Capt about what they meaned.

Fully agree "Russia sucks" is not very useful as a premise, however it is pretty sober as conclusion based on observeable performance in various wars; reasons for that, arguments and counterarguments, are scrutinized very deeply on this board. I see no point in turning this into excessive formal logic contest.

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

I haven't measured advance rates for various conflicts, but my sense is the same as yours... there's some sort of equalizing forces in warfare that keep advance rates kinda similar despite major advances in the tactical speed of the vehicles involved.  The exception being advances achieved with the aid of aviation, of course.

I think there is a maximum rate that even very competent infantry, even with sufficient numbers and ample support can do its job. I think we are only now seeing the glimmers of technology that would speed this up. Those little black wing drones being example A. There are also a fair number of attempts at the beginnings powered armor floating around various proving grounds, but they are NOT ready for prime time. I do hope the next game will allow the possibilities of powered armour suits to be explored though.

8 hours ago, The_Capt said:

And I would argue that the point you are missing is that on a strategic and operational level they took that “pretend force” and advanced deeply into the country they were invading and still hold over 20% of it.  We can slight their tactical capability all day (and do) and even though they have been a mess strategically and operationally there is nothing Potemkin or “cargo cultish” about the threat they pose or what they were capable of at higher levels of warfare, particularly at the beginning of this war.

It is as slippery a slope to under estimate the comparative tactical capabilities, as was demonstrated by many experts before this war.  They failed to downscale their strategic and operational assessments and we saw pretty quick the results on the ground quickly failed to meet predictions.  Hell three days into this thing we knew all of the higher level assessment were off because of what we saw on the ground.

Underestimating cuts both ways.  It is just as dangerous to try and take tactical shortfalls and upscale them directly onto the operational and strategic levels.  We have witnessed too many brilliantly conducted strategic campaigns with low quality forces in the VEO space to fall for that one.  Russian tried a form of combined arms that simply did not work; however, they still translated that into limited strategic/operational objectives.  

It was the Ukrainian way of war, supported by the west, and some emerging realities of warfare that broke the Russian system.  Ukrainian forces learned faster and better.  Without western support would we be talking about a Ukrainian offensive at all?  Without Ukrainian fast development of capability?  No, the RA was a hot mess and is a dumpster fire at this point but that was not the determinative factor in this war.  They had enough mass advantage, as ugly as it was, that if this was a battlefield of even a decade ago they might have pulled it off.  This is the biggest problem with the “Russia Sux” narrative, it is far too easy an answer.  It misses a lot of nuances and complex factors that we have literally been tracking right here.

The RA was a fumbling mess but it was at the gates of an enemy capital.  They still are resisting and will likely still be on occupied ground by this winter.  What I am on the lookout for are signs the Russians are actually learning.  For example, they bought a bunch of Iranian UAVs but they are using them as ersatz cruise missiles, not to improve their C4ISR game…which is a good sign they are still not learning.

Finally the biggest reason I am firmly against the “Russia just sux” narrative is that it encourages us to stop learning.  If that is the definitive unifying theory of this war then all phenomena can be explained by it, we have nothing left to learn.  This does nothing to inform us on the direction modern war is heading nor how we need to start thinking about it because it all boils down to “Russia Sux!”  Well 1) Russia is sucking but not everywhere, 2) that does not explain everything we have been seeing and 3) there are things happening in this war that “cargo cult” does not explain and we are way off if we start to thinking that way.

We do not have a good definition of what modern war means. My 2 cents is that the definition has changed more in the last thirty years than most people realized until about two weeks into this war. That all the possibilities enabled by the technology that runs our phones really has changed they way war is fought. What I am really looking forward to are books by the AFU general staff that tell us when THEY understood it

6 hours ago, The_Capt said:

This is a highly complex question with likely an entire eco-system of possible answers.  Fundamentally we have to accept that silence does not automatically equal support. True freedom of speech and a right to lawful protest is a tricky issue even we in Canada and the US are wrestling with. So if one comes from a nation of high oppression the impulse to protest is very often not well understood or even valued.  Plenty examples of this; did we see a massive uprising in Latino communities when US policy got draconian on illegal immigration?  How much actual diaspora marches have we seen on the Chinese Uyghurs?  How about Palestinians and current issues in Iran?  There are examples of diaspora weighing in on all of these but comparative to their populations these are very muted responses particularly when compared to Me Too and BLM. 

Does this mean that these groups support whatever crimes against humanity or injustice that is happening? Not necessarily.  Russians are coming from a highly oppressive power structure built on top of even more oppressive power structures - one could argue that the oppression is embedded into their culture at this point, having been inculcate for centuries. In fact, flip that, we all come from oppressive power government roots Russia has yet to shed them.

Lets go back to Afghanistan (sigh) - we realized early on that the insurgency was not a nice neat sub-group of Afghan society, it was more of a spectrum.  So we worked hard to get the Afghan people to rise up against the TB, which had been incredibly oppressive…and we won the war and went home (heh).  In reality most Afghans just wanted to be left alone.  Our war with the TB was like the weather, one tried to predict it but pretty much just endured whatever came.  Some Aghans took our money, or their money but there was never loyalty to either side.  So does this mean that all Afghans were TB and slathering AQ supporters…no.  Did it mean that inside every Afghan there was a US citizen yearning to come out…nope.  So what?  Well micro-social power is 1) incredibly powerful, 2) largely in stasis, locked in routine, culture and traditions and 3) has very short range, like 10km from where one is born type of stuff.  So translating that into a massive uprising/protest/movement, particularly in the direction an outside government wants is not really low hanging fruit.

I suspect just because Russian are living in relatively safe part of the world outside of Putin’s grasp that they, as a group, do not want to be singled out for anything right now. In some areas they likely support this war and buy into the Putin narrative. In others I have no doubt they oppose this war vehemently.  As to protest, there have been some but massive protest movements lie over tipping points that take a lot to build up to especially given the history and culture of power oppression in the region.  

Leaping to the “they are with us are agin us” conclusion is extremely dangerous as it will quickly alienate those who will be needed to fix Russia when this is over.  Those in the “let Russia burn camp” and support this “all Russians are evil…look they are not marching in the streets” are very emotional and letting that cloud the fact that a burning Russia is a fire that will spread quickly.  Treating all Russians as collaborators and 5th columnists is even dumber as we need Russian speakers and cultural experts, as well as political opposition for what happens next.

People are about as complex a problem as we can come up with - when I hear simple answers I stop listening.  Problem is that we are addicted to simple answers, to the point that I argue the most terrible things humans have ever done each other comes down to simple answers.  The Russians are using simple answers to try to solve their “Ukraine problem” right now and anyone promoting more simple answers in response is actually part of the problem and not the solution - and I know that isn’t where you were coming from Steve.

A very great deal of the ossification of the Russian state come from the fact that Moscow is the center of everything, yet Moscow should not exist. It is a city with no obvious economic or environmental rationale except to be an imperial capital. There is no great trading port, It has no exceptional competence in some critical bit of modern technology, the lands around it are not some sort of agricultural cornucopia. It can only exist in its current form by claiming most of the revenue from distant colonies that have no reason to surrender said revenues except the brute force that will be applied if they don't. Yet the goal of every ambitious Russian is to move to Moscow, and benefit from the vastly higher standard of living there relative to the rest of Russia. Thus the population of Moscow cannot threaten to bring down the regime without also threatening their own existence in anything like its current form. They are effectively trapped in the machinery of the Russian imperial state, which despite multiple changes in management works a lot like it did in 1815. Whip the money out the peasants backs, steal as much as you can get away with, and send the rest to Moscow, or else. 

I stole a fair bit of this from Galeev to give credit where credit is due.

 

1 hour ago, keas66 said:

Actually on the whole question of  Russian  Military  prowess and their abilities to fight a modern war - and this may be in a little  bad taste  considering the real war being waged right now - but  I have a wealth of  Gaming material  representing mid eighties hypothetical  conflicts with the Soviet forces - actually it is quite an enormous pile  - including Combat Mission Cold War  . I look at this pile of  materiel now and wonder  just how accurate it is -  what sort of assumptions it is all based on .  I'm hoping  they are all still reasonable  simulations and the Russians of the 80's were indeed a scary military power  that could drive for the Fulda Gap .

The entire subject of this thread in many ways is whether the Russians were always this bad, or have recent large scale changes in warfighting and communication technologies combined to make a system that sort of worked as recently as 20014-15 effectively obsolete.  The Iraqis got shredded in 1991, but everyone said it was just the Iraqis being incompetent. The Russians would fight much better if it came to it. I am not entirely sure we know the answer to that question. We may never know the answer to that question. What we do know is that the combination of Ukrainian bravery and flexibility, cell phone technology, and and maybe 25% of the latest tech that NATO could bring to the fight has stopped the Russians cold, inflicted massive casualties, and taken back a lot, but by no means all of the gains Russia made in the first push. It remains to e seen if the Russians can manage enough adaptation to achieve any outcome except complete and ignominious defeat. I would submit we want o give them as little time as humanly possible to figure it out, the less skilled player learns faster, usually, from playing games with a better one.

[dan/california]

36 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Hell we can test some of this in CM right now for that matter - fight to emulate a proxy war with someone backed with China.  We can’t directly attack Chinese C4ISR and they have outfitted our opponent with all the bells and whistles (UAS, deep strike, PGMs and AD).  Let one side fight all modern combat armsy just like out doctrine says, and let then other fight like the UA, now that would be an interesting experiment.

Yeah Steve, what he said, and when is that game coming out anyway? I mean you can sort of do it now with careful work in the editor, but it would be vastly easier with some new TO&E. It is worth pointing out that a lot of the benefits of the lastest C4ISR tech can be simulated pretty well by just playing the game at lower difficulty levels. Borg spotting and extremely fast supporting fires are great deal of what the latest revolution delivers, at least at the tactical level. Would it be hard to code the ability for two different players in a head to head game to be assigned different difficulty levels? Make the Russian player Iron difficulty, and the other side one of the much easier levels? The level assigned could even reflect the presumed EW environment of a particular engagement. It would be a decent short term fix to let people explore some of these issues while Charles does something more elegant. 

Edited October 25, 2022 by dan/california

[kevinkin]

1 minute ago, dan/california said:

The Russians would fight much better if it came to it. I am not entirely sure we know the answer to that question.

Media experts did not, but the Pentagon did. The US came to the conclusion that Russia was not the conventional threat as it once was. However, inside the beltway, keeping Russia on the board was beneficial. First, the US never wants Russia to be a threat again. Second, large organizations hate taking money off the table and Russia was a way to maintain funding even if the expenditures were on systems destined for the Pacific. So the general public was sort of left in the dark letting them believe Russia was a conventional threat to NATO while lobbyists and others continued to make out. Why kill the goose ... With pressure on military budgets, a little slight of hand is OK. Got to get one of those lobbyist gigs. It does come down to the guts Ukraine puts forward and their technical ability to use NATO weapons effectively. And not to mention Ukraine's ability to adapt fast. Can't accurately study those soft factors prior to war. So there was always a bit of nervousness surrounding a Russian attack. It's never helpful to take things for granted ... ask Yankee fans.