How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_MonkeyKing]

3 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Most of Russian troops already on left bank. UKR troops advance with cautions, because many mines on the roads, destroyed bridges and hazard of ambushes

I am having hard time seeing this as not a lost opportunity for the Ukrainians if most of the Russians get out.

All the troops that get out are going to have to be squished at some point, somewhere. Now the odds would be nicely in Ukraine's favor.

[Probus]

1 minute ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

I am having hard time seeing this as not a lost opportunity for the Ukrainians if most of the Russians get out.

All the troops that get out are going to have to be squished at some point, somewhere. Now the odds would be nicely in Ukraine's favor.

What if

 

[Haiduk]

Just now, The_MonkeyKing said:

I am having hard time seeing this as not a lost opportunity for the Ukrainians if most of the Russians get out.

All the troops that get out are going to have to be squished at some point, somewhere. Now the odds would be nicely in Ukraine's favor.

Reportedly HIMARSes yesterday night worked at targets on left bank. Also today 4 missiles hit targets in Melitopol area

[cesmonkey]

Rybar and some other Russian telegrammers are quite unhappy about the developments in Kherson.  Maybe one of our members more familiar with the Russian blogosphere can provide a general summary of the views that are being expressed?

[Haiduk]

Abandoned Russian fortifid position

 

[Battlefront.com]

32 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So what is The_Capt talking about?

A lot of damned cool stuff, that's what   I think we should put a pin in our discussion as Kherson should be the focus now.  We can once again wax poetic when there is a lull at the front.

Steve

[FancyCat]

We saw with Lyman that Russia can hold an urban position for a decent amount of time, destroying Kherson, killing untold numbers of civilians and risking the deaths of soldiers does not benefit Ukraine vs allowing Russia to withdraw their troops.

Edited November 10, 2022 by FancyCat

[Battlefront.com]

20 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Most of Russian troops already on left bank. UKR troops advance with cautions, because many mines on the roads, destroyed bridges and hazard of anbushes

If that is correct, then it is indeed a disappointment that more weren't trapped on the right bank.

I am very curious to know how the Russians were able to do it.  My guess is they packed the ferries and had troops walk over the damaged bridges.  Both methods would allow for rapid removal of forces, however it would necessitate leaving large amounts of equipment behind.

If Russia managed to do this then it means they also executed a very successful rearguard delaying action.  Another indication of what the Russians can do when they have decent units and clear headed leadership.  We should be thankful that both seem to be exceptions to how Russia has fought almost all of this war so far.

Steve

[The_MonkeyKing]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

If that is correct, then it is indeed a disappointment that more weren't trapped on the right bank.

I am very curious to know how the Russians were able to do it.  My guess is they packed the ferries and had troops walk over the damaged bridges.  Both methods would allow for rapid removal of forces, however it would necessitate leaving large amounts of equipment behind.

If Russia managed to do this then it means they also executed a very successful rearguard delaying action.  Another indication of what the Russians can do when they have decent units and clear headed leadership.  We should be thankful that both seem to be exceptions to how Russia has fought almost all of this war so far.

Steve

I am sure a retreat operation from a bridgehead is the thing to motivate the RUS troops to give all they got. Back against the wall so to say.

But disaster can still strike. I am skeptical most troops would have gotten out already. Ukraine would(or should) have collapsed the fronts the moment RUS started pulling back in significant amounts.

Or maybe that was what we saw when the Kherson front started moving a while back, but RUS managed to stabilize and hold.

[Battlefront.com]

5 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

We saw with Lyman that Russia can hold an urban position for a decent amount of time, destroying Kherson, killing untold numbers of civilians and risking the deaths of soldiers does not benefit Ukraine vs allowing Russia to withdraw their troops.

This is true, for sure.  And it answers the question that The_Capt asked about how quickly mobiks could transform into "fanatics".  In Lyman we definitely saw determination to hold positions even under great strain.  However, this situation is quite different.

Lyman was an critical to holding Luhansk, something that I think all Russian forces agree needs to be held.  I don't think Russians have the same opinion of Kherson.  The fact that Russia announced the retreat and then executed it shows that their motivation towards Kherson is different than Lyman.

More importantly, the Lyman defenders had multiple paths of retreat available to them which they could use when they found holding positions too difficult.  In other words, holding Lyman wasn't inherently a suicide mission.  Kherson, on the other hand, is largely cut off before the Ukrainians even get to the city outskirts.  It is a suicide mission.

This is the difference between a "fanatic" Russian unit and a "fanatic" Islamist.  Russians remain largely grounded in pragmatism, not blind fanaticism.  Russians might be willing to die for their beliefs, but only under certain circumstances.  An ISIS group would willing die defending a storage container if they thought it would get them those much hyped virgins in heaven.

Steve

[Haiduk]

21 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

Rybar and some other Russian telegrammers are quite unhappy about the developments in Kherson.  Maybe one of our members more familiar with the Russian blogosphere can provide a general summary of the views that are being expressed?

Some bloggers are scolding General Staff, some even daring to criticize Putin for "indicisovness", but all claiming that Kherson surrendering was "less evil" and now Russia must mobilize all strength to win this war. And only Girkin claimed Russia already lost the war. 

[Battlefront.com]

1 minute ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

I am sure a retreat operation from a bridgehead is the thing to motivate the RUS troops to give all they got. Back against the wall so to say.

But disaster can still strike. I am skeptical most troops would have gotten out already. Ukraine would(or should) have collapsed the fronts the moment RUS started pulling back in significant amounts.

Or maybe that was what we saw when the Kherson front started moving a while back, but RUS managed to stabilize and hold.

I agree.  I think there are still significant Russian forces on the right bank.  The Ukrainian capabilities to pursue are certainly vastly better than they were around Kyiv, but Haiduk's point about the need to be cautious is well founded.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Some bloggers are scolding General Staff, some even daring to criticize Putin for "indicisovness", but all claiming that Kherson surrendering was "less evil" and now Russia must mobilize all strength to win this war. And only Girkin claimed Russia already lost the war. 

Ah, Girkin is active again?  Interesting.

Well, I wonder if the bloggers will ever get sick of saying Russia needs to fully mobilize its strength.  They say that every time they have a defeat on the battlefield, which means they have said it a lot.

Steve

[The_MonkeyKing]

24 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

We saw with Lyman that Russia can hold an urban position for a decent amount of time, destroying Kherson, killing untold numbers of civilians and risking the deaths of soldiers does not benefit Ukraine vs allowing Russia to withdraw their troops.

All the troops that get out are going to have to be squished at some point, somewhere.

It is a matter of deciding where it is the most efficient to do.

[Haiduk]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Ah, Girkin is active again?  Interesting.

Well, I wonder if the bloggers will ever get sick of saying Russia needs to fully mobilize its strength.  They say that every time they have a defeat on the battlefield, which means they have said it a lot.

Steve

Many in Russian society, especially usual citizens, believed that Russian can't defeat Ukraine because it is not making "real" war yet and leaders just regret "usual Ukrainians" so Russian doesn't fight in full-strength. I don't know what they mean under this  - likely carpet bombings and tank division wedges. This opinion share and military bloggers, but with that difference, they didn't undedrstand why Russia didn't conduct strikes at power plants, bridges and railways to destroy logistic and electricity supply, when became clear thar Plan A (Kyiv for 3 days) is failed

[Haiduk]

Tamaryne, Mykolaiv oblast is liberated

 

[Haiduk]

Russian pontoon ferry sails on the Dnieper. You can see damaged barge bridge. Blogger says "now you can see the conditions of supply. To hold the large territory on right bank with such ways of supply is madness, but if there will be a will to fight we will try to playbacj this in some way"

 

Edited November 10, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

There are a dozens of videos, where UKR drones terrorizing Russians with small bombs, dropping them directly in foxholes. It enough brutal, so I don't post it here, but this one is enough typical - often on such videos you can see, that Russian soldiers either look at the sky and just wait until the bomb hit nearby, or even when the bomb fell directly near him, they anyway stay in place, even not trying to escape. Here the same thing - Russian soldier had at least 2-3 seconds to jump out the trench, but remained in place, awaiting for the explosion

 

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

Abandoned Russian fortifid position

 

I am looking at that position from a CM perspective.  Reverse slope defensive position from crest ~300m away.  Good lines of sight for a long ways left & right.  Trenches, boxes probably filled w dirt to make walls, keyholed cast concrete bunker.  As much as I wanted those RU soldiers captured, this could be a tough nut to crack if the defenders have ATGMs and other similar supporting locations nearby.  

[danfrodo]

36 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Tamaryne, Mykolaiv oblast is liberated

 

~30km from both nova kahovke & Kherson.  Closing in on artillery range to the crossing points.

When we talk about whether RU conducted a competent withdrawal we also have to look at the other details besides just extracting men.  Did they ruin all their abandoned vehicles, mortars, etc?  Did they destroy all their weapons caches?  Did they burn up all their fuel storage?  

We will probably only get info on this via anecdotes from soldier go-pros for a while.  But hopefully UKR will publish a nice accounting publicly to humiliate Putin even further.

Edited November 10, 2022 by danfrodo
addition

[Haiduk]

Reportedly big explosion in Obryvka village (left bank), 15 km SW from Nova Kakhovka 

Also according unconfirmed info UKR troops struck Russian rearguard column near Chornobaivka, retreating to Kherson

According to locals in Kherson still many Russian troops. They looting, mining, set booby traps. No cell phone communication, only near Antonivskyi bridge. Russians are blowing up boiler facilities and has blown up TV-center.  

Edited November 10, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

Kachkarivka village is liberated by National Guard. 

 

[Haiduk]

 

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, Haiduk said:

There are a dozens of videos, where UKR drones terrorizing Russians with small bombs, dropping them directly in foxholes. It enough brutal, so I don't post it here, but this one is enough typical - often on such videos you can see, that Russian soldiers either look at the sky and just wait until the bomb hit nearby, or even when the bomb fell directly near him, they anyway stay in place, even not trying to escape. Here the same thing - Russian soldier had at least 2-3 seconds to jump out the trench, but remained in place, awaiting for the explosion

 

Not the least of the reasons the Russians are losing is that they have not rotated units properly. Due to some combination of command incompetence and simply not having enough forces, they have left forces on/in line for far too long. At some point, The studies from WW! and 2 say somewhere between forty and eighty days, people just start to lose any combat effectiveness. Up to and including just total non response to obvious danger. I strongly suspect that the raging alcoholism among the Russian troops doesn't make it better. A number of Russian units might just be hitting the point of complete exhaustion. I suspect, but can't prove that mobiks who were completely unready in the first place get to this point faster

7 hours ago, Zeleban said:

 

Who said that the Humvee is vulnerable to a mine explosion?

The following tweet has a top view of this event. Judging by the force of the explosion, it was an anti-tank mine

Shook it off and kept soldiering. Very sad about the driver. Every hour of every day the war costs, why we need to send the Ukrainians enough equipment to END it.

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

{Apologizing for a very long post up front - proceed at your own risk}

Ok now we are getting somewhere.  There is ample evidence that in 2014 the RA surprised the world in that it did not actually suck, there is your citation above and then from the references I posted:

"The Ukraine conflict has been described as “World War I with technology.”11 One aspect that stands out in the Ukraine conflict is the Russian employment of indirect fires. Combining separatist and regular BTGs, Russia has effectively degraded Ukrainian military forces with long range artillery and rocket fire. Russia’s preferred concept of operations has been to keep its fires units at a safe distance, while relying on drones, counter-battery radars, and other intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets to target over the horizon.12 The observed combination of increased range and precision tracks with a general trend noted worldwide, particularly with multiple rocket launchers. As a result, Russia has on numerous occasions successfully blunted Ukrainian operations while avoiding significant casualties. Ukraine, on the other hand, is estimated to have suffered 80% of its casualties from artillery fire.13 The increased lethality has required fewer rounds, yet Russia has also demonstrated that it retains the ability to mass large volumes of fires when necessary."

"A defining feature of Russian fires has been their speed. Ukrainian units report that once a
Russian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is spotted they may receive artillery strikes within
minutes."

https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NS-D-10367-Learning-Lessons-from-Ukraine-Conflict-Final.pdf

 

These by Karber - there is no grey area here and plenty more which we could fill pages with.  Yes, the Russian proxy forces did suck but these were not Russian "hybrids" by any stretch, it was not until summer '14 thru winter '15 that RA conventional forces got fully in the game, and even then highly constrained because - denial.  Once those conventional forces got into the game they appeared to largely dominate the battlespace and a series of major reversals on the UA ensued.  

This surprised the hell out of everyone - I was in FD at the time - because exactly as you note "Russia has been sucking" at conventional war since the end of the Cold War, from Chechnya thru Georgia.  Suddenly this yokel military was doing things that we could not do, particularly with integration of tactical fires.  But...and it is a big "but" (tee hee) even Karber saw some holes that point to the fact that all was not sunshine and roses on the RA side:

Ah ha!  To my old eye this speaks to 1) lack of PGM integration and 2) a rigid system that can deliver very fast but lacks agility to switch on the fly.  So what?  Well in the intervening 8 years the UA adapted to highly dispersed and more mobile warfare.  There is a lot more out there on how in 2014 the Russian's did not suck tactically and even hints they got their act together operationally - but nowhere near enough for 2022.  Finally the results also speak for themselves as the outcome of the war was clearly a Russian win - even with only gaining half of the Donbas, the Russian failure was translating a tactical win to a strategic one.  In fact it appears that Putin simply "post-truthed" the entire thing and called it a strategic win, when it was not.   We could fill a lot more forum space on this but in the end Ukraine was not cowed and subserviently accepting Russian dominance, they pivoted heavily to the west - we started our training missions there then - and conducted major military reforms exactly because they had suffered battlefield defeats.  It is on Putin and Russia for 1) giving Ukraine the breathing room and 2) convincing themselves of their own superiority.  Both factors led directly to the debacle of this war.  In fact Putin likely set in motion the very reasons for this war - a westward facing Ukraine looking seriously at NATO.

So rather than playing "Russia Sucks" and "No It Doesn't - UA rulez" because it is frankly going to get us nowhere lets have a conversation on what the real issue is in the early assessment of this war and why it went largely wrong.  I offer it had nothing to do with "Russia Sucks" or "Russia Rulz" and everything to do with two key factors in the analysis - context and scaling, the pitfalls of effective military assessment. (that is right folks, the deep truths are very often the least sexy).

So the primary issue with pre-war assessments - and I am talking for both the west and Russia - as far as I can can tell is that they took the tactical performance of the RA in 2014 1) out of context, 2) failed to properly understand the challenges of scaling and 3) applied very poor alignment of that scaling.

So what is The_Capt talking about?

Well context is the first daemon people did not slay.  Karber glanced off it and many cautioned against directly translating the phenomenon of 2014 over to this war but it looks like everyone did it to some extent anyway. 

In other work we studied global pandemics for various reasons, the fact we were in one being the primary, and we found that pandemics are not unlike wars when looking at macro and micro social constructs.  It causes similar tensions, vertical and horizontal, and reaches deeply into human psyche.  But that is not my point here, the major conclusion was that pandemics are like wars in that each has commonality between events but also is each unique in its context.  There will only ever be one COVID-19 pandemic.  In ten years COVID could take a twist to the left and do its gig, but the context will be very different.  Primarily, it would occur in a post-COVID 19 world.  The trick in pandemics and wars is being able to identify what is a trend and what is an isolated phenomenon, and how we do this is through careful analysis of context.  

So the 2014 war was very small by the standards of this one.  Russian involvement at the strategic level had major issues - one of which I just explained up there.  Russia demonstrated acumen in strategic subversive warfare - and frankly I have read and heard plenty that we probably over estimated this as well - however, they had no strategic follow through and displayed a lot of poor assumptions and biases both going into and out of 2014.  It was no strategic masterpiece and we should have expected a strategic mess in this war as this was a visible trend from way back to Chechnya.  Further it was made unfixable largely due to political interference.

Next, there were signals that at the operational level the RA was still operating under an old ruleset.  My take away from Steve's posted citations was likely problems with the RA logistical system and the lack of operational enablers.  The Russian issues with operational level of warfare were not really that evident but there were plenty of indications that all was not perfect either.

Tactically, we have already discussed at length but here is where context left the building.  Ok, so 4000 RA conventional troops, which is what? about 3 BTGs? - managed to score some pretty impressive points against a military that was clearly not prepared for what they brought.  But this does not immediately translate to the entire RA, nor does it mena the RA could do this at a different scale.  Assessing tactical success or failure without context is nearly useless - we learned that in places like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan the hard way.  Further onto the real punchline - tactical success or failure without full understanding of scaling is not useless, it is dangerous as hell.

So scaling can go up or down, and the major failure in understanding this war from a lot of the experts was the assumptions on scaling the RA in both directions.  First there was taking the tactical performance in 2014 and upscaling it.  It was a huge leap, and frankly pretty amateur for the pay grades of some of these experts, to take the observed RA tactical "wows" and upscale them through the operational level to the strategic. The level of complexity and investment to make those "wows" happen on a larger scope and scale, let alone synchronize them is a challenge for the US military who is spending the most on military capability in the history of our species (ok, and before the Prussian, Mongol and Spartan lovers jump in...per capita exceptions accepted...gawd, I hate all you so much).  It was an enormous leap of logic to think that Russia would walk out of phonebooth as a super-military able to do something the US and western allies would think twice about - the upscaling challenges were (and are) frankly humbling.

Now because chaos rules in this universe, it is a bit less of a leap to say badness upscales, I will give you that; however, it is also a risky venture.  Less so for outcomes but it masks a whole lot of the macro-issues, which frankly if Russia ever did solve for, we should be concerned because by definition it will mean they understand their weakness and can learn from them.

So at the beginning of this war, we had a lot of experts who had spent 8 years upscaling 2014 and then failed to down-scale when the war actually happened...seriously?!  A whole lot of wargames and operational research showed the RA in Kyiv in less than a week.  Wargames in the Baltics showed the same Russian blitzkriegs.  So, ok, lets forget that Russian superiority at the strategic and operational level was in doubt even from 2014, failure to downscale and actually test the Russian "wows" against what they were going to be facing at the tactical level (and we had a very good idea what the UA was capable of at the tactical level - we had been training with them for years).  In the business we call this macro-masking, which is where macro calculus fails to take into account micro-phenomenon across a broad range of samples. 

For example, if all the experts had loaded pre-war scenarios into CMBS they would have seen that battlefield friction had gone up significantly.  So if your dice rolls at the operational level say "the RA will advance in three days", well test out that advance across a range of tactical vignettes and lo and behold it did not go so well because it turns out that global ISR advantage, plus smart-ATGMs, plus PGM against what the RA could bring to the party pointed squarely to rethinking those stupid operational dice tables. 

So what?  Well over here in CM land we were looking for other things than those at the macro-table.  The (very expensive) experts with lot of letters behind their names were watching the big red lines on the country map because that is how they played their games.  We were looking at a lot of abandoned Russian equipment - and I mean a lot of very valuable equipment.  We were seeing a steady stream of hi res UAS video coming out of Ukraine on a daily basis when we should not be seeing anything.  We saw RA combined arms fall apart, right along with their logistics as demonstrated by F ech vehicles out of gas and burning re-fuelers.  It did not take a major leap at this altitude to know there was really loud dangerous sounds coming out of the RA engine room, while mainstream was waiting for Kyiv to fall.  However, we also understood upscaling as well.  The effect of the tactical mess spread along most operational axis was consistent - as was the complete lack of operational integration.  Targeting, air support, logistics and the list goes on - the RA was fighting 5-6 separate 2014s, not a coherent and integrated joint operation designed to collapse Ukrainian option spaces.  

So, so what?  Well sitting around and patting ourselves on the back is about as helpful as circle-jerking does for procreation. I think we have established we were, and still are to some extent ahead of the curve - no point dancing a jig on that one.  What we need to do is fully understand what is happening on the ground on this war, what is a trend and what is isolated context.  I am not really interested in what I think I know, I am interested in what I know I do not know.  For example, the old Capt has gone on about mass...at length.  Well if the utility of military mass has shifted, even slightly, the repercussions are profound - one need only study WW1 and WW2 to see why.  Do the principles of war even still apply?  Is conventional manoeuvre warfare still a thing? Is the tank dead? What the hell just happened?  

The point of a highly distributed collective "brain" as we have developed here on this little forum is to try and understand the events better - to inform and create cognitive advantage.  So this is not about sitting around and feeling good watching RA soldier have a bad last day, nor self-validation or promoting/reinforcing echo-chamber; it is about collective learning about war through what is happening in this one...and what better place to do that than a bunch of computer wargamers with far too much time on their hands? 

  

 

 

It seems like we need the new version of the game. Their seems to be enough info about the TO&E and how drones are are working NOW to make a decent pass at it. I realize that is not the only issue. I really think that "CM-the future" of war is probably one of the best ways available to evaluate the best paths for future development. Among other things we do, or soon will have enough data on real world, sort of even fights, to check the simulations results against. Just hoping that Steve's new military contracts are not so large the rest of us get deprioritized. Still like the idea of of doing the new game  with a significant Ukrainian fundraiser, but it is Steve's business, might be completely crazy on that suggestion. And there is also some issue of the Russians using the new game to improve their competence in some marginal way. Anyhow, we will buy it when you want to sell it to us. We might even have something intelligent to say afterwards.

Edit: I meant drones now in the technical/technology sense. We have a lot of evidence of what a DJI 300 ect can do. We also have a great deal of speculation about next generation military versions...

Edited November 10, 2022 by dan/california

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Probus said:

What if

 

If it is, it is the weirdest operational trap I have seen.  I mean if the city was filled with Russian supporters /insurgents one could argue a "war to the knife" baiting.  If the RA had any possibility of operational manoeuvre on the north side of the Dnipro, maybe.  If we were talking a Stalingrad long game to pull the UA in and then cross back over the Dnipro for an encirclement later...but seriously, no.  The RA don't even have superiority of fires anymore really so a retreat so "we can smash you when you enter" doesn't match up.

Serious headscratcher on the "trap" thing to be honest.  Only thing I can think of is a nuke, but we have flogged that one to death...and the Russians don't need all the pretense, they just toss a nuke.

I honestly think it is an RA withdrawal because even their pretty dense strategic military level figured out that trying to defend from the wrong side of a river with your LOCs all shot to pieces is a bad idea.  Snow saw the fog and decided not to get eaten further in detail.