How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[dan/california]

7 hours ago, Seedorf81 said:

One thing I miss in the news about the upcoming US elections, is the mentioning of the possibility (a likely one, as I see it) that neither of the current candidates will be able to participate. Either because one of 'm suddenly drops dead or gets seriously ill, with Biden looking a bit more prone to do that first, and/or, since emotions are running exceptionally high between the two parties and fanatical loonies are everywhere, one of 'm gets assassinated.

I would be very surprised if both make it to november.

But, except for Kamala Harris, who does not look presidential material (Wow, to me she seems even worse than a sometimes senile looking Biden AND the crazy SOB Donald! That is really something), I haven't seen or heard anything about DECENT "back-up" presidential candidates from either party.

What are Ukraine's perspectives if neither Biden or Trump becomes the new US president?

It is brought up regularly, but so far they are both hanging in there. The world may literally hang on a badly assembled stage stair.

We will know a great deal more about the election shortly, the first debate is TONIGHT. That is one of the two biggest inflection points in the whole campaign, probably. The other card that has to be shown relatively soon is Trumps VP pick, he can wait another month at most on that one. Once we see both of those we will know a LOT more. Edit: Trump can't afford a bad VP pick, at least not Sarah Palin/Dan Quayle bad.

Edit: The thing is that even though both candidates are less than popular, if one of them did drop out that candidates Party would probably tear itself apart fighting over who got to replace them. That party might or, might not, be able to reassemble itself by election day.

Edited Thursday at 03:36 PM by dan/california

[cesmonkey]

South Korea's rebuttal to the most recent Russian threat:

 

[photon]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The end of the battleship as the core platform of naval power - and had been for at least two centuries - was vehemently opposed by the naval cultures of the day.

Apologies - this got long as I mused over your analogy. The shorter point is that it's not the machines, it's the theory of battle that the machines fit into. Whoever can shake loose of *that* fastest wins.

The transition from battleships to carriers is definitely a "slowly, then all at once" phenomenon, with inflection points at Taranto, the sinking of the Repulse, the creation of the Kido Butai, Coral Sea, and finally the creation and devastating use of TF38/58. Respectively, you've got proof that carrier borne aviation can sink capital ships at port, that (land based) aviation can sink capital ships at sea, that carrier based aviation can act as the primary power projection asset in a fleet, that naval battles need not involve ships firing at one another, and that carrier aviation can suppress and assault islands (which was previously deeply contrary to doctrine; the theory was that you can't sink islands). All of those seemed risky before they seemed inevitable.

I think the relevant think to think about is how each nation's *theory of battle* changed in the inter- and early war period. The Germans, British, French, and Italians did not have a coherent theory of naval battle, except that the Germans thought that commerce raiding was the way to go, either with submarines or with battleships. They envisioned their ships emerging from the fog or night, wailing on a convoy, and slipping away again. And that sort of worked for a while until the sheer productive power of the allies made it futile.

The Americans and Japanese, ironically, had the same picture of naval battle before Pearl Harbor: both battle lines would meet somewhere in the Phillipine Sea and slug it out in one decisive battle. Carriers would scout, and smaller ships and aviation would nibble around the edges until the battle lines could engage.

What made Pearl Harbor so shocking was that it was totally contrary to Japanese naval doctrine. And, weirdly, they never repeated its success, because they were *still committed to the pre-war vision of naval combat as two battle lines mauling each other*. Even in 1945! Both the Phillipine Sea and Leyte were totally misguided attempts to deliver a decisive battle.

The United States, on the other hand, quickly gave up on the idea of decisive battle and adopted something much more like corrosive warfare. Relatively few Japanese capital ships were sunk in things that an observer from 1915 would recognize as a "battle". It was submarines and airstrikes mercilessly attriting the Japanese fleet.

What does a land "battle" look like now that it's so distributed? I don't know. But it doesn't look like a heavy mechanized breach exploited by mechanized infantry supported by close air support. Whoever figures out a new theory of battle first is going to be in really good shape.

edit: To your point about old ideas dying hard, Halsely was still lured by decisive battle long after Spruance appears to have switched to a new paradigm, despite Spruance being a black shoe admiral.

Edited Thursday at 04:28 PM by photon

[acrashb]

More evidence of Putin's strategic genius leading to his three-day war:
 

For all those saying that Ukraine can't win (however winning is defined), the EU says otherwise. 

 

[ArmouredTopHat]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The end of the battleship as the core platform of naval power - and had been for at least two centuries - was vehemently opposed by the naval cultures of the day

I take issue with this a little, numerous countries invested and experimented with carriers, including the premier naval powers of the world at the time which all had proponents of carrier warfare. It was not a uniform opposition else said ships would have never seen service, yet they did pretty quickly. Navies could easily see the value of carriers as scouts at the very least, and in the space of literally a couple of decades they rose to prominence in the strike capability. In an era of ships taking years to build I think that's pretty damn fast adjustment of thinking. The only 'opposition' to carriers that I really see is simply the fact that people were not entirely sure how to use them to full potential and that if they would replace battleships or compliment them. The doctrine was new and required development. Cunningham for example was quite the 'old fashioned' type of admiral famous for using battleships near point blank against the Italians in the Med yet he saw Carriers as a very valuable asset, even in the confined waters of of his command. 

I feel like were using the power of hindsight a little too much here. Its easy to reflect on the past and see that Battleships were clearly becoming obsolete, its much less clear for the people at the time. Aircraft were still a very 'fresh' invention even in the 20s, the pace of technological development was truly shocking. I think we can forgive people for at least being cautious. Did opposition / battleship adherents exist contrary to the growing evidence of carrier power? Absolutely. But it was far from uniform, not when the main blue water fleets all introduced carriers within the same space of time. (USA, UK, Japan) In fact navies were quite used to pretty radical changes and innovations in that time period, considering the blisteringly fast speed of battleship development for instance. Doctrinal changes are usually always slower than technological, if only because humans usually need some time to figure out the shiny new thing and how to use it to full potential. Just look at the wacky tank / mobile warfare concepts and theories in the 20s and 30s that came up before mechanised warfare settled into place. 

Much as we see today, we are seeing some major innovations but we cannot guess the full consequences of how they are going to pan out. Its evident that tanks and perhaps even mechanised warfare are going to change in some key ways, but its far less easy to determine how exactly things are going to look like or what that will ultimately result in terms of a force structure. For all we know the technology pendulum might swing hard in the other direction and suddenly drones have it rough on the battlefield for whatever reason. We are very early into this radical shift of military operation, if it is indeed coming. 

It makes sense to me that modern militaries are investing into both drone solutions and experimentation while also looking to upgrade / replace / develop new vehicles and platforms better able to survive a drone heavy environment. Its an understandable level of covering your bets so to speak. I simply caution that we might be arm chairing a little too much here and might be deriding procurement industries a little too hard. Most countries are -very- interested in drones and their growing prominence in warfare. They are also interested in making sure their vehicles can operate in said environment as clearly all militaries still want a mechanised force of some sort. Until doctrine adjusts or there is sufficient momentum to change technology wise (Which is an if) we are unlikely to see countries going 'all in' on major changes until they know for certain that they do in fact offer wholescale improvements. 

My question you Capt would be this, I agree on a variety of points you made back in one of your posts about what the future priorities might be and the emphasis on ranged firepower and ISR, but how would this look like in a typical military unit. Has anyone actually developed a tactical unit in line with your ideas? I am genuinely curious. What would a brigade look like in terms of composition? I personally feel like were going to see more gradual changes, new generations of vehicles, proliferation of drones on the platoon / squad level and gradual integration of UGV to current units for instance. Do you envision something more radical in terms of changes?

[dan/california]

2 hours ago, photon said:

Apologies - this got long as I mused over your analogy. The shorter point is that it's not the machines, it's the theory of battle that the machines fit into. Whoever can shake loose of *that* fastest wins.

The transition from battleships to carriers is definitely a "slowly, then all at once" phenomenon, with inflection points at Taranto, the sinking of the Repulse, the creation of the Kido Butai, Coral Sea, and finally the creation and devastating use of TF38/58. Respectively, you've got proof that carrier borne aviation can sink capital ships at port, that (land based) aviation can sink capital ships at sea, that carrier based aviation can act as the primary power projection asset in a fleet, that naval battles need not involve ships firing at one another, and that carrier aviation can suppress and assault islands (which was previously deeply contrary to doctrine; the theory was that you can't sink islands). All of those seemed risky before they seemed inevitable.

I think the relevant think to think about is how each nation's *theory of battle* changed in the inter- and early war period. The Germans, British, French, and Italians did not have a coherent theory of naval battle, except that the Germans thought that commerce raiding was the way to go, either with submarines or with battleships. They envisioned their ships emerging from the fog or night, wailing on a convoy, and slipping away again. And that sort of worked for a while until the sheer productive power of the allies made it futile.

The Americans and Japanese, ironically, had the same picture of naval battle before Pearl Harbor: both battle lines would meet somewhere in the Phillipine Sea and slug it out in one decisive battle. Carriers would scout, and smaller ships and aviation would nibble around the edges until the battle lines could engage.

What made Pearl Harbor so shocking was that it was totally contrary to Japanese naval doctrine. And, weirdly, they never repeated its success, because they were *still committed to the pre-war vision of naval combat as two battle lines mauling each other*. Even in 1945! Both the Phillipine Sea and Leyte were totally misguided attempts to deliver a decisive battle.

The United States, on the other hand, quickly gave up on the idea of decisive battle and adopted something much more like corrosive warfare. Relatively few Japanese capital ships were sunk in things that an observer from 1915 would recognize as a "battle". It was submarines and airstrikes mercilessly attriting the Japanese fleet.

What does a land "battle" look like now that it's so distributed? I don't know. But it doesn't look like a heavy mechanized breach exploited by mechanized infantry supported by close air support. Whoever figures out a new theory of battle first is going to be in really good shape.

edit: To your point about old ideas dying hard, Halsely was still lured by decisive battle long after Spruance appears to have switched to a new paradigm, despite Spruance being a black shoe admiral.

 

53 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

I take issue with this a little, numerous countries invested and experimented with carriers, including the premier naval powers of the world at the time which all had proponents of carrier warfare. It was not a uniform opposition else said ships would have never seen service, yet they did pretty quickly. Navies could easily see the value of carriers as scouts at the very least, and in the space of literally a couple of decades they rose to prominence in the strike capability. In an era of ships taking years to build I think that's pretty damn fast adjustment of thinking. The only 'opposition' to carriers that I really see is simply the fact that people were not entirely sure how to use them to full potential and that if they would replace battleships or compliment them. The doctrine was new and required development. Cunningham for example was quite the 'old fashioned' type of admiral famous for using battleships near point blank against the Italians in the Med yet he saw Carriers as a very valuable asset, even in the confined waters of of his command. 

I feel like were using the power of hindsight a little too much here. Its easy to reflect on the past and see that Battleships were clearly becoming obsolete, its much less clear for the people at the time. Aircraft were still a very 'fresh' invention even in the 20s, the pace of technological development was truly shocking. I think we can forgive people for at least being cautious. Did opposition / battleship adherents exist contrary to the growing evidence of carrier power? Absolutely. But it was far from uniform, not when the main blue water fleets all introduced carriers within the same space of time. (USA, UK, Japan) In fact navies were quite used to pretty radical changes and innovations in that time period, considering the blisteringly fast speed of battleship development for instance. Doctrinal changes are usually always slower than technological, if only because humans usually need some time to figure out the shiny new thing and how to use it to full potential. Just look at the wacky tank / mobile warfare concepts and theories in the 20s and 30s that came up before mechanised warfare settled into place. 

Much as we see today, we are seeing some major innovations but we cannot guess the full consequences of how they are going to pan out. Its evident that tanks and perhaps even mechanised warfare are going to change in some key ways, but its far less easy to determine how exactly things are going to look like or what that will ultimately result in terms of a force structure. For all we know the technology pendulum might swing hard in the other direction and suddenly drones have it rough on the battlefield for whatever reason. We are very early into this radical shift of military operation, if it is indeed coming. 

It makes sense to me that modern militaries are investing into both drone solutions and experimentation while also looking to upgrade / replace / develop new vehicles and platforms better able to survive a drone heavy environment. Its an understandable level of covering your bets so to speak. I simply caution that we might be arm chairing a little too much here and might be deriding procurement industries a little too hard. Most countries are -very- interested in drones and their growing prominence in warfare. They are also interested in making sure their vehicles can operate in said environment as clearly all militaries still want a mechanised force of some sort. Until doctrine adjusts or there is sufficient momentum to change technology wise (Which is an if) we are unlikely to see countries going 'all in' on major changes until they know for certain that they do in fact offer wholescale improvements. 

My question you Capt would be this, I agree on a variety of points you made back in one of your posts about what the future priorities might be and the emphasis on ranged firepower and ISR, but how would this look like in a typical military unit. Has anyone actually developed a tactical unit in line with your ideas? I am genuinely curious. What would a brigade look like in terms of composition? I personally feel like were going to see more gradual changes, new generations of vehicles, proliferation of drones on the platoon / squad level and gradual integration of UGV to current units for instance. Do you envision something more radical in terms of changes?

 

Quote

 

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Origins-of-Victory-Audiobook/B0BZQCPLL1?ref_pageloadid=uwbCWt4LiqGtX6yy&ref=a_library_t_c5_libItem_B0BZQCPLL1_14&pf_rd_p=80765e81-b10a-4f33-b1d3-ffb87793d047&pf_rd_r=4G71HWXMBMPZDHFT796S&pageLoadId=hYe5YMUpAwBmpQbT&creativeId=4ee810cf-ac8e-4eeb-8b79-40e176d0a225

• The Origins of Victory

• How Disruptive Military Innovation Determines the Fates of Great Powers

 

This book has a very good history of the development of carriers, including doctrine, and the naval exercises that helped develop that doctrine.

• Quote

   

  • https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/arms-of-the-future-9781350352988/
  • The Arms of the Future analyses how the emergence of novel weapons systems is shaping the risks and opportunities on the battlefield. Drawing on extensive practical observation and experimentation, the book unpacks the operational challenges new weapons pose on the battlefield and how armies might be structured to overcome them.

   

  This book takes an excellent first cut at it. He does a very good job with sensors, and the fact that combat is rapidly becoming a NLOS game. I think he underestimated the pace of drone development that we have seen in the last year, though. 

Edited Thursday at 06:16 PM by dan/california

[photon]

1 hour ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

My question you Capt would be this, I agree on a variety of points you made back in one of your posts about what the future priorities might be and the emphasis on ranged firepower and ISR, but how would this look like in a typical military unit.

I think the more important, bigger question is this: What's the winning theory of battle in an illuminated precision-soaked battlefield? If someone articulates a theory of battle that produces victories in the current environment, we can rapidly (if expensively) make whatever machines we need.

 

@The_Capt has tentatively offered up corrosive warfare enabled by massed precision fires. That seems to work (?) on the defensive, inasmuch as its enabling a badly outmanned and outgunned Ukraine to punch way above their weight, while slowly giving ground.

What's the theory of battle on the offense? Russia is maybe trying something like, "overwhelm their precision fires complex with numbers", which is a strategy not available to most belligerents given their stockpiles of materiel and manpower.

Edited Thursday at 06:40 PM by photon

[dan/california]

3 hours ago, The_Capt said:

That is old school (and quaint) sci-fi. 

So is the war in Ukraine for the poor bleeps in the trenches.

[holoween]

The problem i see with investing only in drones and little in the defense against them is that the result is to win you have to kill the enemy faster than he kills you and that can easily end up simply costing even the winning side an unacceptable ammount of casualties.

So dedicated and general counters are an absolute necessity.

And drones arent particularly special in this regard. If your oponent has an airforce and you cant deny it youre screwed, if your oponent has afvs and you cant deny them youre equally screwed. If your oponent has drones and you cant deny them youre also screwed.

[cesmonkey]

 

[cesmonkey]

https://t.me/dva_majors/46273

Quote

Our comrades report that the enemy has begun to switch to so-called "low frequencies" in drone control.

Now our drone detectors and electronic warfare are less effective. New developments are needed again.

 

The Eternal Battle of "Sword" and "Shield"

Two Majors

Telegram

Above us are only the StarsZOV26

It is confirmed that the khokhols have started flying on new frequencies. Bulats and other things are now not all able to notice the signals of birds and land them.

In this war, to win, you need to change something all the time, and so far we are only trying to adapt to the enemy...

 

[kimbosbread]

1 hour ago, photon said:

I think the more important, bigger question is this: What's the winning theory of battle in an illuminated precision-soaked battlefield? If someone articulates a theory of battle that produces victories in the current environment, we can rapidly (if expensively) make whatever machines we need.

I would say “illuminated battlefield with prolific PGMs in a variety of flavors and from very cheap to expensive that can destroy any known vehicle”.

We need to distinguish between the various types of illumination too:

• Quadcopters and squad level surveillance drones
• Orlan-10 and the like; longer range drones with 10 hour endurance, but still very cheap ($100k per system or so)
• Baryaktar and the various poverty-predators
• Big expensive American fixed wing drones with satcom
• AWACS, Signint aircraft
• Ground-based platforms
• Space

That last one is the big one. Taking out stuff in orbit is nontrivial, especially higher orbits. Taking out a system like Starshield is basically impossible. How many nation states have the ability to shoot down several thousand satellites, and then do it all over again when SpaceX can launch a bunch of new ones (100+ tons of satellites per Starship launch) overnight?

[cesmonkey]

https://t.me/dva_majors/46255

Quote

Two majors
Kherson direction, they write to us:

🖋Good health, comrade majors! Marines in touch! I would like to clarify about the water problems, I saw your post in the secretariat about water problems and diseases.

We were told that there are already [figure] fatalities from typhoid fever and cholera, and the number of diseases is growing.

To understand the water situation: one soldier has 12 one-and-a-half-liter bottles for two weeks maximum, in connection with which those who carry out assigned tasks along the Dnieper bank or go as part of the RG to the islands do not have enough water at all, and have to drink from the river, filter water through a cloth, take water from abandoned wells and boreholes, which is why this situation has arisen.

On the islands in the summer, if you work deep in the floodplains, you drink two to three times more water than usual: it is like a jungle there, and there is no way to get clean water there to boil, because it is far from the riverbed.

The situation is better in the conventional rear: we go and buy water at our own expense. Dropping water from a drone is already becoming a routine. I would have no complaints if the same problem had not occurred last year.

No one wants to learn from their mistakes and solve the problem, and asking volunteers to bring a million bottles of water in the third year of the SVO is even ridiculous.

I hope someone's shoulder straps will fly for this. The rear rats already have enough medals, maybe it's time to punish someone? Just not a private soldier or a sergeant.

Two majors
Telegram
Secretariat of the Two Majors
The boys are writing from the direction:

At the moment there are serious problems with water. Personnel often collect water from wells in nearby settlements or springs, which leads to increased cases of typhoid fever and cholera. Since June 15, recorded...

 

[cesmonkey]

 

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

I take issue with this a little, numerous countries invested and experimented with carriers, including the premier naval powers of the world at the time which all had proponents of carrier warfare. It was not a uniform opposition else said ships would have never seen service, yet they did pretty quickly. Navies could easily see the value of carriers as scouts at the very least, and in the space of literally a couple of decades they rose to prominence in the strike capability. In an era of ships taking years to build I think that's pretty damn fast adjustment of thinking. The only 'opposition' to carriers that I really see is simply the fact that people were not entirely sure how to use them to full potential and that if they would replace battleships or compliment them. The doctrine was new and required development. Cunningham for example was quite the 'old fashioned' type of admiral famous for using battleships near point blank against the Italians in the Med yet he saw Carriers as a very valuable asset, even in the confined waters of of his command. 

I feel like were using the power of hindsight a little too much here. Its easy to reflect on the past and see that Battleships were clearly becoming obsolete, its much less clear for the people at the time. Aircraft were still a very 'fresh' invention even in the 20s, the pace of technological development was truly shocking. I think we can forgive people for at least being cautious. Did opposition / battleship adherents exist contrary to the growing evidence of carrier power? Absolutely. But it was far from uniform, not when the main blue water fleets all introduced carriers within the same space of time. (USA, UK, Japan) In fact navies were quite used to pretty radical changes and innovations in that time period, considering the blisteringly fast speed of battleship development for instance. Doctrinal changes are usually always slower than technological, if only because humans usually need some time to figure out the shiny new thing and how to use it to full potential. Just look at the wacky tank / mobile warfare concepts and theories in the 20s and 30s that came up before mechanised warfare settled into place. 

Much as we see today, we are seeing some major innovations but we cannot guess the full consequences of how they are going to pan out. Its evident that tanks and perhaps even mechanised warfare are going to change in some key ways, but its far less easy to determine how exactly things are going to look like or what that will ultimately result in terms of a force structure. For all we know the technology pendulum might swing hard in the other direction and suddenly drones have it rough on the battlefield for whatever reason. We are very early into this radical shift of military operation, if it is indeed coming. 

It makes sense to me that modern militaries are investing into both drone solutions and experimentation while also looking to upgrade / replace / develop new vehicles and platforms better able to survive a drone heavy environment. Its an understandable level of covering your bets so to speak. I simply caution that we might be arm chairing a little too much here and might be deriding procurement industries a little too hard. Most countries are -very- interested in drones and their growing prominence in warfare. They are also interested in making sure their vehicles can operate in said environment as clearly all militaries still want a mechanised force of some sort. Until doctrine adjusts or there is sufficient momentum to change technology wise (Which is an if) we are unlikely to see countries going 'all in' on major changes until they know for certain that they do in fact offer wholescale improvements. 

My question you Capt would be this, I agree on a variety of points you made back in one of your posts about what the future priorities might be and the emphasis on ranged firepower and ISR, but how would this look like in a typical military unit. Has anyone actually developed a tactical unit in line with your ideas? I am genuinely curious. What would a brigade look like in terms of composition? I personally feel like were going to see more gradual changes, new generations of vehicles, proliferation of drones on the platoon / squad level and gradual integration of UGV to current units for instance. Do you envision something more radical in terms of changes?

I think we can set aside the niggling on battleships because the underlying point is pretty much unassailable - with very few exceptions, militaries are highly conservative organizations that are slow to adopt, adapt and pivot.  The historical proof of this trend is really beyond debate, from gunpowder to nuclear weapons, militaries have been behind in concept development.  They normally try and take disruptive technology and adapt it to them as opposed to the other way around.  A couple notable exceptions are inter-war Germany (however, there was tremendous pushback on “blitzkrieg” as a concept), and AirLand Battle out of the US as it was forced politically to move towards joint integration by Goldwater-Nichols.

Regardless, the instances where a military organization leaned too far forward to fatal results are nearly non-existent. I am wracking my brain on an example where a military fatally overreacted to shifts in warfare. Yet conversely we have a laundry list of examples of it going the other way.  To the point that the history of warfare is as much scrambling to catch up to stuff missed or ignored before the major conflict as anything else - this war is definitely no exception.

As to my concept of a future force for this environment, well we have covered this before in some detail but to my mind take our current organizations and throw them out.  Start with a blank sheet/white board and build structures and capability based on environmental realities as opposed to trying to fit reality around what we already have.  What really happens will wind up in-between.

C4ISR - without competitive capability in this sphere any military is done before it leaves garrison.  The ability to network, integrate and process massive amounts of data is a must.

Clouds - the future of ground warfare is much more like weather to my mind - hi and lo fronts, clouds in collision, non-linear effects/consequence, emergent objectives etc.  We will need to create fluid and mobile clouds of effect on the battlefield.  As opposed to lines on the map.  Distributed forces that do not have formation until it is pulled together at the last moment.  The front edge of this thing will likely be heavily unmanned/autonomous as we pair up UAS with UGVs and small human control nodes.  That lethal thing is designed to find an opponent and swarm them in depth. An acid cloud if you will.

Thunder and lightening - Deep precision fires of all types are the future.  We are moving away from a manoeuvre towards a firepower age. Engagement will be a race to concentrate, create decisions and disaggregate against an opponents ability to bring deep precision fires to bear.  Data, fires and independent speed on a C4ISR backbone will define the pace at which a military can do this effectively.  That space will become highly competitive.

Swords, shields and umbrellas - the outstanding question is whether Clouds, Thunder and Lightening are enough to conduct the full requirement?  From this war, denial and defence are definitely doable by those elements.  But offence remains a mystery.  Theoretically a cloud, thunder and lightening system that can cause an opponents system to collapse should be able to keep going - creating  and shaping weather patterns as it goes.  But we have not seen it yet.  I would expect that heavier more conventional units which are the norm now will become specialist reserved for specific scenarios. These formations will be human-heavy as they will be needed for operations spaces too complex for unmanned fully autonomous systems.

Wagons - the last area is still a bit of a mystery to me.  How do we design logistics for this sort of system?  It would also have to be distributed.  Less about natures of supply and more about delivery of platforms directly into a system.  It will have to be cellular and very self sufficient - think manufacturing and energy storage, not beans and bullets.  Good news is that fewer humans and heavy reduces logistics load greatly but now there is the problem of distribution and non-linearity of formation.

Into this one can load any number of plausible units etc. How best to structure a cloud/thunder/lightening system could take years to optimize. Hell, in the end AI could be doing the optimization on the fly and we wind up without standing structures.  Advantage to the side that can adapt a structure in motion to a given circumstance.  Unmanned and AI do not need to do drill, they just do what is programmed.

So I guess my answer to “what does a tactical line unit look like” is that there is no one template.  I can have 100 sub-cells of a “unit” but they are a snapshot in time and will morph into something else in 20 mins as a different set of sub-cells is pulled together. To my thinking the “tactical unit” as a static template may be dead.  Advantage will go to whoever can build an adaptable unit capable of rapid restructuring on the fly as part of a larger operational system. Once this system suffers too much attrition it will become rigid and brittle, signalling collapse.

If we remove humans as central resource in the direct application of warfare, moving them to coordination, control and management, all sorts of options open up. I suspect we are entering into a really messy interim period until that concept becomes reality.  The new soldiers are the ammunition we used to carry but now has become independent enough to wage war at a distance without us.

 None of this removes human suffering.  In fact it may get worse, not better.  Unprotected humans are essentially walking corpses in this sort of environment. There is a very scary line where that acid cloud becomes a WMD, especially in an urban area.  Our biggest failing right now is thinking that this sort of stuff is “30 years away”.  It is not, it is more likely 10 years away at the rates of change we are seeing.  30 years ago if I was told “ya so, you are going to have AI support in the field” I would have thought you nuts, yet here we are.

[Vanir Ausf B]

1 hour ago, kimbosbread said:

 

• Space

That last one is the big one. Taking out stuff in orbit is nontrivial, especially higher orbits. Taking out a system like Starshield is basically impossible. How many nation states have the ability to shoot down several thousand satellites, and then do it all over again when SpaceX can launch a bunch of new ones (100+ tons of satellites per Starship launch) overnight?

This question gets too little attention. The answer is probably "no one" presently but that could change. What happens to your C4ISR without satellites?

[The_Capt]

6 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

This question gets too little attention. The answer is probably "no one" presently but that could change. What happens to your C4ISR without satellites?

If one has a couple million UAS/UGVs all acting as hotspots...?  The only real answer to full space denial is nuclear level EMPs but that is a bit of a dead end discussion.

[Vanir Ausf B]

5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

If one has a couple million UAS/UGVs all acting as hotspots..

I have no idea if that is technically feasible, but it's an intriguing idea. Is any one looking into doing this?

Quote

 

The only real answer to full space denial is nuclear level EMPs but that is a bit of a dead end discussion.

 

Nations can threaten nuclear retaliation for just about anything. North Korea and Russia do it every few days. How credible those threat are is another matter. I don't think it's a given that nuclear EMPs in space mean nuclear war on the ground.

[The_Capt]

Just now, Vanir Ausf B said:

I have no idea if that is technically feasible, but it's an intriguing idea. Is any one looking into doing this?

Nations can threaten nuclear retaliation for just about anything. North Korea and Russia do it every few days. How credible those threat are is another matter. I don't think it's a given that nuclear EMPs in space mean nuclear war on the ground.

I have seen battlefield networks built around these little hockey puck things designed to be lobbed by guns or off aircraft like mines.  Pretty sure it is solvable.

Problem with nukes in space, beyond escalation risks, is that space does not care which side you are on. A large EMP will blind everyone, so it is a form of mural destruction from the start.  And the. There is capacity, nothing to stop a nation from lobbing more micro satellites by the ton load. So a denial side has to fire multiple nuclear weapons into space - do we think that might trip a few wires?

Offsets also exist at high altitude. Weirdly the Chinese balloons are far better suited for strategic ISR than strike.  We live in an age of the Internet of Things, it does not go away easily.

[ArmouredTopHat]

51 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I think we can set aside the niggling on battleships because the underlying point is pretty much unassailable - with very few exceptions, militaries are highly conservative organizations that are slow to adopt, adapt and pivot.  The historical proof of this trend is really beyond debate, from gunpowder to nuclear weapons, militaries have been behind in concept development.  They normally try and take disruptive technology and adapt it to them as opposed to the other way around.  A couple notable exceptions are inter-war Germany (however, there was tremendous pushback on “blitzkrieg” as a concept), and AirLand Battle out of the US as it was forced politically to move towards joint integration by Goldwater-Nichols.

I have to disagree with this entirely simply because war / militaries have literally spawned countless innovations with applications both suited for war and outside of it. Militaries can absolutely be conservative in structure but they can also be equally innovative and capable of rapid change in a manner of years. The key input I think is the pressure said military is under. Militaries are less inclined to change when not under duress (As with any human operated mechanism really) Its that same duress that has pushed Ukraine to innovate heavily in order to survive in its current situation with traditional methods out of its reach. Its why most military development happens in times of war. Adapt or die and all that. 
 

51 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

As to my concept of a future force for this environment, well we have covered this before in some detail but to my mind take our current organizations and throw them out.  Start with a blank sheet/white board and build structures and capability based on environmental realities as opposed to trying to fit reality around what we already have.  What really happens will wind up in-between.

So quite a radical approach then. Is it not possible that such extreme change has no guarantee of actually working in practise? This might explain why no one outside of the theoretical have made such attempts. Restructuring is one thing but to start from scratch is another. Its risky, expensive and not exactly an easy sell to a country population either. Why would a country pursue such a potentially risky policy? Why hasn't anyone done so yet? Simply calling every military on the planet conservative and unwilling to change feels like a simplistic answer at best. I dont disagree with your points in terms of what we should be aiming for, I just feel like there is little reason for any country to take such a drastic policy, most simply cannot afford the risk of something that might backfire or not work as ideally hoped. Logically steady reform makes more sense overall as a policy.

Edited Thursday at 09:35 PM by ArmouredTopHat

[ArmouredTopHat]

https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2751&context=parameters

This is a good read up on the topic. I really cant agree with the notion that modern militaries are monolithic entities incapable of change until forced to. 

[kimbosbread]

43 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

This question gets too little attention. The answer is probably "no one" presently but that could change. What happens to your C4ISR without satellites?

I think we can safely assume that SpaceX can put satellites into orbit faster than Russia can stick nuclear weapons in orbit.

[Vanir Ausf B]

10 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

I think we can safely assume that SpaceX can put satellites into orbit faster than Russia can stick nuclear weapons in orbit.

How many nukes would they actually need?

“It’s not a new concept and, as a concept, dates back to the late Cold War,” said one US official. But, they said, “the big fear with any eventual EMP device in orbit [is] it might render large portions of particular orbits unusable” by creating a minefield of disabled satellites that “would then prove dangerous to any new satellites we might try to put up to replace or repair the existing satellites.”

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/16/politics/russia-nuclear-space-weapon-intelligence/index.html

[kimbosbread]

46 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

How many nukes would they actually need?

I’d assume you’d need at least 20 to cover various LEO paths. Space, even LEO, is really big.

SpaceX’s launch and manufacturing costs makes the idea of disposable satellites realistic. It’s like meh, maybe they’ll last a week or two, that’s maybe 2x F35s.

[Vanir Ausf B]

53 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

I’d assume you’d need at least 20 to cover various LEO paths. Space, even LEO, is really big.

Less than that, I'd guess. One might be enough.

But the duration of the effect is a larger problem.

...the idea of a nuclear detonation in low earth orbit is something we're somewhat familiar about in the United States because we did several, uh, back in the sixties, I believe. And the most notable was the Starfish Prime Test. Uh, you can find it on Wikipedia. It's really quite [00:03:00] well documented there, uh, where we, we detonate a 1. 4 megaton warhead in LEO. Learned about the EMP effects of that on the Hawaiian islands. But more importantly, I think we learned that it. Over time, over a period of a week or two. Uh, the satellites that were operating in the low Earth orbit environment all died. Uh, their electronics died.

https://mitchellaerospacepower.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Dr.-John-F.-Plumb-Fire-Side-Chat-Transcript.pdf

“Several analysts do believe that detonation in space at the right magnitude in the right location could render low-Earth orbit, for example, unusable for some period of time,”

At the hearing, Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, wanted to know how long the weapon would leave low-Earth orbit unusable.

“Could it be a year?” asked Turner, who in February tweeted about a "destabilizing foreign military capability," which led to reports about Russia fielding a space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapon.

“I believe it could be.”

https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2024/05/russian-space-nuke-could-render-low-earth-orbit-unusable-year-us-official-says/396245/

Edited Thursday at 11:41 PM by Vanir Ausf B