How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Astrophel]

42 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Another example of Russian propaganda at work.  This came to me by a friend who knows the publication is a propaganda rag, but was wondering what the real story was that was being distorted.  Obviously, people here know the answer.  I'm including it because it's a good example of the sort of crap that the right and left so easily fall victim to:
https://asiatimes.com/2024/09/biden-nato-effectively-declaring-war-on-russia/

Steve

Interesting.  This is being pushed out by the China channels one assumes, Asia Times being Hong Kong based.  The usual suspects have been banging the drum in Europe about Putin being serious about nukes this time, and Putin himself has made a speech indicating that Ukraine using long range missiles to attack targets in russia will be construed as an act of war by Nato.  Russia will thereafter be at war with Nato, he says, despite having presented the conflict as a clash with Nato since the early days.

One senses desperation from Putin.  Ramping up the nuclear rhetoric alongside the empty threat to stop exporting uranium all looks like Moscow is in panic mode.  Calling in the propaganda assets to amplify his message about being serious is equally desperate.

A desperate man with lots of nukes needs to be taken very seriously.  I am glad I am not the one to call his bluff.

[ArmouredTopHat]

46 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

There is still a very big need for these vehicles, but the tactics of using them has definitely become far more challenging.  There's also the usual question of cost.  Is this thing, which likely costs at least 10x more than a typical tank plow, worth the expense?  Or would it be more practical to have 10 outdated tanks outfitted with plows and be prepared to lose most of them?  I'm on the side of the latter.

Steve

Isn't the value of such a vehicle more than its ability to fire those explosive warheads through minefields, together with just being an engineering vehicle with all sorts of supplies and gadgets as well as the plough?

I would of thought the lesson was that western armies need to have a fair bit more of these sorts of vehicles. They are so few in number for most vehicles that most countries operate double digits of such vehicles at most. 

[The_Capt]

40 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

There is still a very big need for these vehicles, but the tactics of using them has definitely become far more challenging.  There's also the usual question of cost.  Is this thing, which likely costs at least 10x more than a typical tank plow, worth the expense?  Or would it be more practical to have 10 outdated tanks outfitted with plows and be prepared to lose most of them?  I'm on the side of the latter.

Steve

More sexy corporate sales videos. Well this one is in my wheelhouse at least.

This is the major problem. The military industrial complex and military force development have formed an unholy union. This has been decades in the making. First the political level reduces funding, which puts pressure on future procurement. Rather than being able to purchase capacity, we instead invest in increasingly capability-dense platforms. This keeps total costs down because we save on crews/human costs (which is a significant slice of military funding btw - for Canada "pay" is about 51% of our overall defence budget) and infrastructure. Per unit costs go through roof. In the end we do spend less and fit into political funding envelops, while keeping capability.  But something has to give...capacity.

We design and buy a tank that can theoretically kill 100 older tanks. It costs about as much as 100 older tanks but we are never going to get enough money to buy 100 newer ones. So we buy 10, put them in ever shrinking unit and formation sizes and tell ourselves "its ok, we can kill 1000 tanks with this unit."  Wait a decade or two and we are down to 5 super-tanks.

This beast is a classic example. So in last-gen mine breaching we spread these capabilities across no less than 4-5 platforms. But all those platforms come with crews and as budgets shrink or come under inflationary pressure we need to downsize. So we mash 4-5 capabilities onto a single platform and create "efficiencies". Super breachers that cost a freakin mint per unit but they can breach mines like no ones business. This is great for a peacetime military. We can roll these bad boys out on exercises, parades and the odd small war to show the politicians that they spent their money well. 

But is absolutely sucks for war. Beyond the capacity and manufacture issues, the problem tactically is that we create a single point of failure. An entire formation may have 4 of these monsters, needing at least two per breach. If you lose them the entire formation is screwed pretty quickly. No politician is going to shell out enough money to buy 100 of them, and industry could not make that many in a hurry anyway.

High cost, high capability but low capacity is exactly the wrong way to go...and this war is a shining example of why. Cheap, easy and fast is great. Smart cheap, easy and fast is freakin lethal.

[ArmouredTopHat]

33 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

More sexy corporate sales videos. Well this one is in my wheelhouse at least.

This is the major problem. The military industrial complex and military force development have formed an unholy union. This has been decades in the making. First the political level reduces funding, which puts pressure on future procurement. Rather than being able to purchase capacity, we instead invest in increasingly capability-dense platforms. This keeps total costs down because we save on crews/human costs (which is a significant slice of military funding btw - for Canada "pay" is about 51% of our overall defence budget) and infrastructure. Per unit costs go through roof. In the end we do spend less and fit into political funding envelops, while keeping capability.  But something has to give...capacity.

We design and buy a tank that can theoretically kill 100 older tanks. It costs about as much as 100 older tanks but we are never going to get enough money to buy 100 newer ones. So we buy 10, put them in ever shrinking unit and formation sizes and tell ourselves "its ok, we can kill 1000 tanks with this unit."  Wait a decade or two and we are down to 5 super-tanks.

This beast is a classic example. So in last-gen mine breaching we spread these capabilities across no less than 4-5 platforms. But all those platforms come with crews and as budgets shrink or come under inflationary pressure we need to downsize. So we mash 4-5 capabilities onto a single platform and create "efficiencies". Super breachers that cost a freakin mint per unit but they can breach mines like no ones business. This is great for a peacetime military. We can roll these bad boys out on exercises, parades and the odd small war to show the politicians that they spent their money well. 

But is absolutely sucks for war. Beyond the capacity and manufacture issues, the problem tactically is that we create a single point of failure. An entire formation may have 4 of these monsters, needing at least two per breach. If you lose them the entire formation is screwed pretty quickly. No politician is going to shell out enough money to buy 100 of them, and industry could not make that many in a hurry anyway.

High cost, high capability but low capacity is exactly the wrong way to go...and this war is a shining example of why. Cheap, easy and fast is great. Smart cheap, easy and fast is freakin lethal.

I'm convinced that still Capt thinks I am a genuine Rheinmetall salesmen just because I shared a publicly accessible video. 

Eyerolling aside, while some of these points are valid, I cant help but feel a little bit of 'traditionalist' creeping in here. Cheap is great, but also not ideal in every situation. Typical tank ploughs have been shown not to be entirely ideal in Ukraine as we have seen by the literal hundreds of vehicles equipped with them striking mines and being knocked out. (Cursory examination shows that typically they can absorb a single mine hit before becoming useless, is this a general trend for mine ploughs?) Quality does in fact usually beat out on quantity, provided there is of course a supply of vehicles to maintain despite losses.

The thing that strikes me as something interested regarding the Keiler is that its meant to have a remote functionality, in effect giving it the option to be a UGV, which I suspect will be the future for mine clearing vehicles going forward. The question then becomes is it cost effective to simply focus on a platform with a good plough system and then separate the breaching charge system to another platform, or keep the platform rolled into one as seen here. 

Capt says this would suck for war, but after seeing entire companies of Russian tanks being lost in minefields because their plough systems are simply not up to snuff, I cant picture the notion of a cheap, quantity based approach working with regards to a plough system. Having lots of different specialised platforms trying to clear a minefield also runs the risk of concentrating a number of vehicle assets in one area to invite strikes, which our dear Capt keeps on reminding us is both impossible and unwise. Engineering vehicles already tend to attract a lot of munitions as it is. Having even more of them in one spot would probably invite the Russians for example to fire Iskanders at. 

I do think however, that long term some sort of UGV fleet of cheap, more disposable vehicles is going to be best for mine clearing long term. Its something I entirely agree with Steve on. Sadly we are a little ways away from that, especially with making such a platform cheap. 

[sburke]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Another example of Russian propaganda at work.  This came to me by a friend who knows the publication is a propaganda rag, but was wondering what the real story was that was being distorted.  Obviously, people here know the answer.  I'm including it because it's a good example of the sort of crap that the right and left so easily fall victim to:
https://asiatimes.com/2024/09/biden-nato-effectively-declaring-war-on-russia/

Steve

Just click on the author's name and see what else he writes - 3 articles alone on Trump shooting with multiple suggestions it was a "professional" hit job.

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

More sexy corporate sales videos. Well this one is in my wheelhouse at least.

This is the major problem. The military industrial complex and military force development have formed an unholy union. This has been decades in the making. First the political level reduces funding, which puts pressure on future procurement. Rather than being able to purchase capacity, we instead invest in increasingly capability-dense platforms. This keeps total costs down because we save on crews/human costs (which is a significant slice of military funding btw - for Canada "pay" is about 51% of our overall defence budget) and infrastructure. Per unit costs go through roof. In the end we do spend less and fit into political funding envelops, while keeping capability.  But something has to give...capacity.

We design and buy a tank that can theoretically kill 100 older tanks. It costs about as much as 100 older tanks but we are never going to get enough money to buy 100 newer ones. So we buy 10, put them in ever shrinking unit and formation sizes and tell ourselves "its ok, we can kill 1000 tanks with this unit."  Wait a decade or two and we are down to 5 super-tanks.

This beast is a classic example. So in last-gen mine breaching we spread these capabilities across no less than 4-5 platforms. But all those platforms come with crews and as budgets shrink or come under inflationary pressure we need to downsize. So we mash 4-5 capabilities onto a single platform and create "efficiencies". Super breachers that cost a freakin mint per unit but they can breach mines like no ones business. This is great for a peacetime military. We can roll these bad boys out on exercises, parades and the odd small war to show the politicians that they spent their money well. 

But is absolutely sucks for war. Beyond the capacity and manufacture issues, the problem tactically is that we create a single point of failure. An entire formation may have 4 of these monsters, needing at least two per breach. If you lose them the entire formation is screwed pretty quickly. No politician is going to shell out enough money to buy 100 of them, and industry could not make that many in a hurry anyway.

High cost, high capability but low capacity is exactly the wrong way to go...and this war is a shining example of why. Cheap, easy and fast is great. Smart cheap, easy and fast is freakin lethal.

Norm Augustine published a bunch of plots showing the extrapolation of things like this in "Augustine's Laws".  One of them is that by 2050 or so, the USAF will be one aircraft and it will cost the entire US GDP.  Tanks are a bit cheaper than aircraft, so the US army won't be reduced to a single tank until maybe 2080.

[danfrodo]

41 minutes ago, sburke said:

Just click on the author's name and see what else he writes - 3 articles alone on Trump shooting with multiple suggestions it was a "professional" hit job.

A professional assassin who missed from ~150 meters?  Not very professional.  Fortunately for Trump the nutjob used an AR15 and not an actual hunting rifle.  

Back on subject, the TheCapt above discusses whether we'd be better off with more/cheaper than expensive high tech in the context of armored mine removers and armor in general.  Always an interesting tradeoff study -- better or more?  We all love WW2 panthers but having lots and lots of cheap T34s or shermans wasn't a bad way to go.  

[hcrof]

12 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

A professional assassin who missed from ~150 meters?  Not very professional.  Fortunately for Trump the nutjob used an AR15 and not an actual hunting rifle.  

Back on subject, the TheCapt above discusses whether we'd be better off with more/cheaper than expensive high tech in the context of armored mine removers and armor in general.  Always an interesting tradeoff study -- better or more?  We all love WW2 panthers but having lots and lots of cheap T34s or shermans wasn't a bad way to go.  

Apparently a Sherman would cost less than $1m today and even a tiger would be only double that. Of course the US economy is 6 times larger now so a modern Sherman would cost maybe $6m...

[ArmouredTopHat]

28 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

A professional assassin who missed from ~150 meters?  Not very professional.  Fortunately for Trump the nutjob used an AR15 and not an actual hunting rifle.  

Back on subject, the TheCapt above discusses whether we'd be better off with more/cheaper than expensive high tech in the context of armored mine removers and armor in general.  Always an interesting tradeoff study -- better or more?  We all love WW2 panthers but having lots and lots of cheap T34s or shermans wasn't a bad way to go.  

My understanding of why the West has gone high tech compared to high quantity is not so much as a result of some conspiracy within arms procurement but more as a result of force multipliers. Sophisticated, well used weapon systems can generate a terrifying amount of combat power which punches well above its weight, and almost always to the detriment of lower technology solutions. A single advanced tank outcompetes 5 far simpler tanks not just because it will be seeing, shooting and destroying them far more quickly while being more difficult to destroy, but also because it needs less of a footprint. Less fuel, less trucks needed to supply them ect. This is perhaps all the more relevant in a battlespace that has proven time and time again that concentrating a lot of vehicles in one spot invites a proportionate amount of fires. technological efficiency becomes even more critical when you might only be able to mass one or two vehicles in one spot to deliver fire support. 

We see this with air combat most prominently, where the nature of BVR engagements has put great importance on the sophistication of the Jet in question to decide who will win. To put it simply, 5th generation stealth fighters curb 4th gens so badly its hardly considered a fair contest. We see this with the extensive combat air exercises that have tested a variety of situations that show just how superior 5th gens are at in say, delivering a strike package on target. Even if there are less airframes. In certain environments you simply -have- to have the better technology or you will lose. Hard. 

When you factor in a battlefield filled with high tech platforms going up against less sophisticated platforms, the overmatch becomes even more severe and results in such things as Desert storm. Simply put, its more efficient in both manpower / lives expended and actual battlefield impact. Its why I find Capts assessment of things like Desert storm being a 'one off' so off the mark. It was not just doctrine that triumphed in Desert storm but technology. 

The cost of such an approach is one that has of course raised a lot of questions, sustainability being the big one as a result of the Ukraine war. Cheap drones having such a large battlefield impact has certainly brought this to the fore, though I suspect high technology solutions will win out in the end. This is not to say that you can absolutely approach such measures in the wrong way. Capt makes a very valid point that expecting a platform to 'do it all' is a usually foolish assumption / approach. This does not justify turning about hard and adopting a quantity approach however. Its simply not feasible for most of the west to do this for a variety of reasons. 

Its just a matter of fact that war is getting more and more complex and those who embrace the technological side of things without getting 'too deep' into it will be the ones emerging victorious. While the west has made plenty of mistakes on that road (not having suitable supplies of ammo for artillery as an example) they have also shown to of made a lot of correct moves as well, such as the general push towards superior aircraft that so completely dominate their potential opponents. 

This is all just my personal take on things and could be entirely wrong of course. 

Edited Saturday at 07:00 PM by ArmouredTopHat

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, hcrof said:

Apparently a Sherman would cost less than $1m today and even a tiger would be only double that. Of course the US economy is 6 times larger now so a modern Sherman would cost maybe $6m...

More than a few factors conspire against new amor and mech:

- Environment - more lethality means more protection. Detection, APS, amor and mobility

- Opponents - we need to sustain an competitive advantage so we are kind of in a perpetual arms race

- Inflation - military inflation is brutal, higher than commercial for a bunch of reasons

- Disruptive tech - so somebody invents something and our current fleets need to react. This costs money. Drones are just one of a long line of examples.

- Logistics - support costs. For every new system or kilogram, more support is needed to keep these things fielded.

- Manufacture and supply chains. Tied to inflation. Basically if we are not producing systems in large numbers manufactures have to offset, or they go make something else.

These are pretty much the exact same things that impact ships and airplanes as well. Our old structures and fleets have been under increasing cost pressure since the 90s. To keep them viable and in the field get more and more expansive. We reduce field force sizes to offset. Reduce ammo stores etc. The whole thing was headed towards only really rich nations being able to afford modern forces. But like love, war finds a way. 

[photon]

1 hour ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

technological efficiency becomes even more critical when you might only be able to mass one or two vehicles in one spot to deliver fire support. 

What makes this analysis tricky is that technological superiority isn't well ordered. It's not even obvious to me that it's ordered at all. Example from my area of reading - naval warfare.

There are many ways in which the Japanese build ships and planes that seemed technologically superior to what the Americans were putting in the field (until maybe 1944). The Japanese night fighting optics were much better than ours. Their torpedoes were technologically way ahead because they had things like functioning detonators and double the range of ours. Their carrier planes (with maybe the exception of the D3A) were top flight. They were flying B5Ns at a time when the Royal Navy's torpedo bomber was a canvas skinned biplane and ours had the range and payload capacity of a small inland duck.

But it turns out that their technological superiority was in the wrong things, which they discovered in the crucible of the war. Night fighting optics are all fun and games until you're fighting a fleet with accurate centimetric targeting radar and semi-automatic 6" guns. Turns out that high performance fighters get ground to a nub by crappier fighters with self-sealing fuel tanks. Submarines with great torpedoes and reconnaissance floatplanes don't matter much if the enemy can produce more ships than you can torpedoes.

So, if you stack up like against like in a slugging match, sure, technological overmatch matters. But what we're seeing in this war is that like rarely gets to fight like. Asymmetric capabilities at incomparable levels of technology deny the crap out of technologically advanced systems in really surprising ways. That makes it hard to know what technological advancement is worth the money.

What's the modern mechanized equivalent of self sealing fuel tanks? Or of centimetric radar? Of, even less obviously, of flooding the fuel lines with inert gas before you take an enemy airstrike? I don't think we know what the right technologies to invest in are right now, except maybe to say that the persistent ISR picture seems super important.

[ArmouredTopHat]

49 minutes ago, photon said:

What makes this analysis tricky is that technological superiority isn't well ordered. It's not even obvious to me that it's ordered at all. Example from my area of reading - naval warfare.

There are many ways in which the Japanese build ships and planes that seemed technologically superior to what the Americans were putting in the field (until maybe 1944). The Japanese night fighting optics were much better than ours. Their torpedoes were technologically way ahead because they had things like functioning detonators and double the range of ours. Their carrier planes (with maybe the exception of the D3A) were top flight. They were flying B5Ns at a time when the Royal Navy's torpedo bomber was a canvas skinned biplane and ours had the range and payload capacity of a small inland duck.

But it turns out that their technological superiority was in the wrong things, which they discovered in the crucible of the war. Night fighting optics are all fun and games until you're fighting a fleet with accurate centimetric targeting radar and semi-automatic 6" guns. Turns out that high performance fighters get ground to a nub by crappier fighters with self-sealing fuel tanks. Submarines with great torpedoes and reconnaissance floatplanes don't matter much if the enemy can produce more ships than you can torpedoes.

So, if you stack up like against like in a slugging match, sure, technological overmatch matters. But what we're seeing in this war is that like rarely gets to fight like. Asymmetric capabilities at incomparable levels of technology deny the crap out of technologically advanced systems in really surprising ways. That makes it hard to know what technological advancement is worth the money.

What's the modern mechanized equivalent of self sealing fuel tanks? Or of centimetric radar? Of, even less obviously, of flooding the fuel lines with inert gas before you take an enemy airstrike? I don't think we know what the right technologies to invest in are right now, except maybe to say that the persistent ISR picture seems super important.

Oh for sure, I am distilling what is an extraordinarily complex subject into a rough line of thinking. Its not applicable everywhere, nor does it mean tactics, strategy or approaches are irrelevant, far from it.  

Your example for instance, certainly carries weight. Technology can only go so far, though I would argue it was not like the Japanese had parity in all things technological. In fact as you mention, they had several major deficiencies that really did hurt them in the long run, such as on the radar front. Technology is also meaningless without the ability to produce it in quantities that matter of course, though I would describe that as a double edged sword. 

Its why the example F-35 example I so frequently use is so important. Its not just a cutting edge jet produced in penny packets, but an advanced 5th gen jet in widespread service by a lot of NATO countries and now well over the 1k production number mark. Su-57 can boast of perhaps a dozen or so frames at most, and its an inferior platform all the same. 

Sherman tanks were war winners because they were mass producible, but also stuffed full of soft technological edges that made them great fighting machines. Good radio sets, optics and other such things contribute as much to fighting power as armour or gunpower. Really the allies sharing a lot of their technology where they had strengths was one of the reasons they did so well in the war. The bulk of complex navigation electronics going into American bomber aircraft for example were derived from British designs for instance. 

As with all things, there is a fine balance, though as technology continues to develop, it serves to make sure to remain at the head of the curve. 

 

Edited Saturday at 09:07 PM by ArmouredTopHat

[The_Capt]

35 minutes ago, photon said:

What makes this analysis tricky is that technological superiority isn't well ordered. It's not even obvious to me that it's ordered at all. Example from my area of reading - naval warfare.

There are many ways in which the Japanese build ships and planes that seemed technologically superior to what the Americans were putting in the field (until maybe 1944). The Japanese night fighting optics were much better than ours. Their torpedoes were technologically way ahead because they had things like functioning detonators and double the range of ours. Their carrier planes (with maybe the exception of the D3A) were top flight. They were flying B5Ns at a time when the Royal Navy's torpedo bomber was a canvas skinned biplane and ours had the range and payload capacity of a small inland duck.

But it turns out that their technological superiority was in the wrong things, which they discovered in the crucible of the war. Night fighting optics are all fun and games until you're fighting a fleet with accurate centimetric targeting radar and semi-automatic 6" guns. Turns out that high performance fighters get ground to a nub by crappier fighters with self-sealing fuel tanks. Submarines with great torpedoes and reconnaissance floatplanes don't matter much if the enemy can produce more ships than you can torpedoes.

So, if you stack up like against like in a slugging match, sure, technological overmatch matters. But what we're seeing in this war is that like rarely gets to fight like. Asymmetric capabilities at incomparable levels of technology deny the crap out of technologically advanced systems in really surprising ways. That makes it hard to know what technological advancement is worth the money.

What's the modern mechanized equivalent of self sealing fuel tanks? Or of centimetric radar? Of, even less obviously, of flooding the fuel lines with inert gas before you take an enemy airstrike? I don't think we know what the right technologies to invest in are right now, except maybe to say that the persistent ISR picture seems super important.

This is why they call it “disruptive”. For example, investing in direct fire support only makes sense if in however this turns out direct fires are still dominant on the battlefield. If direct fires are going to be the exception and not the rule, investment in better DF is a waste of money. This is like investing in swords when ranged fires began dominating the battlefield. And militaries in the 19th century did exactly that. For the longest time it was held that the “push of the bayonet” was the key to forcing decision.

The best way I can think of is to not get focused on a single technology or platform - an no JonS, I never said “UAS and nothing else.”  In fact the major impact on the battlefield is not drones, it is C4ISR. The networks that connect the drones and relay it back into an operating picture. The larger ISR enterprise that makes the use of drones so effective because it knows where to send them. We already had highly lethal long range systems. We have been building them for years. The problem now is that they are all connected and talking to each other. That, is what is making precision like we have seen it possible. 

So what? Well what technologies are going to excel in the type of environment this new reality is creating. I honestly do not know. But my best guess is highly agile and dispersed, cheap many and redundant, and long range, precise and smart. Whatever system we build needs to have these attributes. At least that is how it looks today, ask me again tomorrow.

[ArmouredTopHat]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

This is like investing in swords when ranged fires began dominating the battlefield. And militaries in the 19th century did exactly that. For the longest time it was held that the “push of the bayonet” was the key to forcing decision.

Off topic but this is a painfully inaccurate assessment of what was going on in the 19th century when it comes to firearms or just military development in general for that time period. No one was 'investing' in melee weapons in preference of firearms at this point outside of ceremonial swords for officers. Cavalry were armed with firearms just like everyone else, short of edge cases like French Cuirassiers (and look where that got them at Sedan) Rather there was active debate about bayonets being useful or not (Boer war suggested they were less useful, 1905 Russo-Japanese war suggested the opposite for clearing positions) 

Militaries were rapidly developing evolving small arms so fast that a system would often be obsolete by the time it entered service. 1840-1890 saw at least half a dozen major revolutions to firearms design alone. Militaries went from flintlock smoothbore guns to rifled, smokeless powder magazine bolt actions in less than 80 years. Similar advancements happened to artillery. It was a blistering pace of development. 

The 'cult of the bayonet' is a somewhat exaggerated phenomenon as well, largely tied to French military thinking and more applicable to offensive action rather than the specific use of the bayonet. French infantry during the Franco Prussian war were readily slaughtering Prussian infantry with their superior rifles in numerous instances. As always, things are a little more complex than that.  Lets stop acting like all the generals were approaching this conflict with tactics from the 18th century please.

This little snippet explains it better than I could, perhaps there are trends of thinking that could be applied to the current conflict. Some of the problems certainly ring eerily true of the current conflict with regards to defence being a hell of a lot easier than the offense. 

Quote

Right...this is very much in my wheelhouse (and my main current area of research). It's also very heavily mythologized, and most of what people think about the Cult of the Offensive makes absolutely zero sense when you read what the professional officers were actually writing at the time.

To understand the cult of the offensive, you have to look at the reaction to the Russo-Japanese War. This was, for all intents and purposes, a modern trench war. In fact, it was so accurate a preview of what the Western Front would look like that you can take the observer reports from some of the battles in Manchuria, swap out "Russian" and "Japanese" with "German" and "British", and pass it off as an account of First Ypres.

This was a massive shock to the system for all of the European powers observing the conflict. The problem, which the officers at the time correctly identified, was that the technology of the defence had so outstripped the technology of the offense that it had become impossible to take a fortified position without getting mauled in the process.

So, from 1905-1914, when it came to infantry combat, the question that everybody was trying to figure out was how to deal with trenches. Quite literally, in the RUSI archives, there is a grand total of one article about infantry combat that is about manoevre warfare (and it is by a fellow named J.F.C. Fuller, and reading it you get the sense that Fuller had completely disconnected from reality).

The book I'm (very slowly) working on right now is about the degree to which the European officers were putting their heads together and sharing notes to solve this problem. Everybody started modernization programs. And, everybody even came to similar solutions - the doctrine of Germany, France, and Britain were all combined arms doctrines in which the infantry and artillery were to work together, and positions were to be approached using fire and movement, prepared via artillery bombardment, and then cleared with close infantry assault (you can find the British and German doctrine on Archive.org, but if you want to read the French doctrine, you'll have to shell out for my translation of it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/192753755X).

But, none of this solved the basic problem: if you attack an enemy trench, you are going to get mauled. The imbalance between defence and attack was so bad that avoiding it was effectively an impossible task. The only thing you could do was:

1. Win before the other side could dig in.

2. Take the casualties to drive the enemy from their position, and then prevent them from digging in again.

None of these were good options, and the officers of the time recognized this. It was very much a "this option is terrible, but everything else is worse" situation. As Grandmaison points out in Training of the Infantry for Offensive Combat in 1908 (another book I translated and published: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1927537517), if you're in the field in front of an enemy position, the only way to win is to attack - if you attack, you'll take lots of casualties, but at least there's a chance you can drive them from the position and win...if you don't attack, modern small arms fire is so lethal that you'll just get shot to pieces and everybody will die.

So, it wasn't mindless aggression, or delusional aggression - it was aggression based in desperation. If a war started, you could either win fast through very aggressive action, or get slowly bled out.

This became known as the cult of the offensive.

The problem for studying it is that there was this fellow named Basil Liddell Hart, who basically poisoned the well of WW1 scholarship for decades. Hart had this bizarre disinterest in what people were actually doing before the war, and so from him we got this idea that the officers were stuck trying to implement 18th century warfare (that's not a typo, by the way - that's what he writes in The Real War) on a 20th century battlefield. Another problem is that a number of scholars who have worked on this since Liddell Hart died have not been very good about differentiating between those who were part of the professional military debate and those who had been marginalized from it and were trying to foist nonsense on the public.

So, to answer your final at the end:

1. They understood exactly what they were dealing with in 1914, and were doing the best they could with some truly bad options.

2. No, a passive general like Bazaine would not have been able to obtain a better success.

 

Edited Saturday at 10:39 PM by ArmouredTopHat

[LongLeftFlank]

(never mind, need coffee to absorb all this properly)

Edited Saturday at 11:20 PM by LongLeftFlank

[Butschi]

4 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Less fuel, less trucks needed to supply them ect.

Where do you get that from? Modern tanks like the latest M1 and Leo 2 models are all getting increasingly heavy due to advanced armor, electronic systems, APS, you name it - all the stuff that is supposed to keep them alive on the modern battlefield. The M1's turbine engine basically inhales fuel. Compare that to older T72 version and I don't think you are going to see an advantage in fuel efficiency there.

[ArmouredTopHat]

1 hour ago, Butschi said:

Where do you get that from? Modern tanks like the latest M1 and Leo 2 models are all getting increasingly heavy due to advanced armor, electronic systems, APS, you name it - all the stuff that is supposed to keep them alive on the modern battlefield. The M1's turbine engine basically inhales fuel. Compare that to older T72 version and I don't think you are going to see an advantage in fuel efficiency there.

M1s are pretty unique in that regard due to the gas turbine, you would still have to provide a lot less fuel for one modern tank vs five. (Sparing the T-80 of course)

As for weight, the new potential designs for platforms like Leo 2 or the M1 are looking to reduce weight. That is certainly the aim of the M1E3 as it stands. (M1 was especially heavy, much like Challenger 2) The complexity angle is a fair point, though one could argue all equipment in general on the battlefield is getting more complex. Just look at the equipment a typical squad carries over what they had in the 60's and you can see what I mean. 

Edited Sunday at 12:19 AM by ArmouredTopHat

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

This little snippet explains it better than I could, perhaps there are trends of thinking that could be applied to the current conflict. Some of the problems certainly ring eerily true of the current conflict with regards to defence being a hell of a lot easier than the offense. 

 

Individual vehicles are extremely vulnerable to attacks from all sorts of precision weapons.  The Ukrainian spearheads in 2023's summer counter offensive were defeated by a combination of attack helicopters, ground mounted ATGMs, artillery, drones, and even the mines they were tasked with removing.  ISR is a larger problem which makes all of these things more likely to succeed in taking out engineering vehicles.

There are even more lethal capabilities being developed, and to some extent fielded, as we speak.  I have seen absolutely zero evidence that industry has come up with a solution that solves all of the existing challenges as well as the near future ones.  At best industry has a limited set of very expensive proposals that nibble at a subset of current threat environment.

It is wishful thinking to conclude that someone has created a vehicle that can stand up to all of these threats and achieve it's mission.  Certainly if a company has invented a magic want to solve all of these problems, they have not waived it over a pile of metal yet.  Meaning, there is absolutely no vehicle in existence in any form, including on paper, that effectively changes the current threat/survivability equation.  NONE.  At best, there are theories about some vehicles in some conditions being able to do marginally better at some things at least some of the time.  Oh, and it will cost a lot more and far fewer will be produced as a result.

OK, so about Rheinmetal's Ogre engineering vehicle...

It is clear that breaching heavily defended lines is extremely difficult on engineering vehicles.  As a result, it is probable that loss rates for engineering vehicles will be high.  Because a vehicle lost needs to be replaced within minutes or hours if the mission is to have any hopes of continuing, this means there needs to be sufficient vehicles in immediate reserve for there to be a reasonable expectation of success.  Further, the quantity of these vehicles needs to be sufficient for a large number of simultaneous breaching attacks in order to have any hope of achieving anything even close to long standing Western maneuver doctrine.  Further still, an attritional warfare situation requires that a force have enough vehicles in reserve for a large number of simultaneous breaching actions AND not be exhausted after one operation.

So no, I don't think the Ogre is a smart move.  I think it would be far better to expend the same money on expanding the number of vehicles needed to breach and develop doctrine that presumes very high loss rates.  That is far more likely to succeed.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

4 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

M1s are pretty unique in that regard due to the gas turbine, you would still have to provide a lot less fuel for one modern tank vs five. (Sparing the T-80 of course)

You have to provide even less fuel for the M1 if it is knocked out of action. 

The primary reason to have multiple vehicles is to have a replacement for one that is lost in action.  Because no amount of fuel savings helps when breaching a defensive belt.

Second point is that that one M1 can only be in one place at one time.  You could take 2x T-72s and breach in two places concurrently and still have 3x T-72s as backups.

Your predictable answer to this is either:

1. magically have enough M1s as you'd have T-72s
2. have an M1 that is indistructable

Neither are realistic.

Mine plows/rollers mounted on tanks, even very old tanks, are very effective provided ISR doesn't spot them and direct precision standoff weapons to take them out.  M1s, Leos, T-72s, T-62s... it doesn't really matter.  Sure, the Western ones may survive a bit longer or be recoverable once they succumb to hits, but in a breaching situation that doesn't mean squat if the mission isn't finished and there's nothing left to keep things going.

Steve

[MikeyD]

Breaching static, reinforced, heavily defended positions is a 'worst case scenario' that was never easy, even before drones and ATGMs. Using this as a template for future wars is like claiming in 1916 that all future battles will resemble Verdun. No, Verdun was certainly an object lesson for the time but it was not a template for all future battles.

[Eug85]

The fundamental difference between a well-protected tank and a poorly protected one is the crew's confidence that they have the right to make mistakes. If the crew knows that if the tank is hit, they will fly off into space along with the turret, they will act much less boldly and aggressively than the crew of a tank that does not send its contents to the moon. This is simple human psychology.

The armies of the world have always strived to instill confidence in their soldiers in their weapons.

[Carolus]

2 hours ago, Eug85 said:

The fundamental difference between a well-protected tank and a poorly protected one is the crew's confidence that they have the right to make mistakes. If the crew knows that if the tank is hit, they will fly off into space along with the turret, they will act much less boldly and aggressively than the crew of a tank that does not send its contents to the moon. This is simple human psychology.

The armies of the world have always strived to instill confidence in their soldiers in their weapons.

How lucky for the Russians that the MoD told them that their tanks are superior in every way and cheaper at the same time than their Western equivalents!

[Fenris]

Tank ops 35th Marine Brigade.  Nothing particularly exciting, just some nice, detailed vision of an indirect fire mission from start to finish.

 

[Mattias]

Party old and basic material but she has good access. I would love to have more like her 93:Battle for Ukraine series.

 

 

[poesel]

6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

Individual vehicles are extremely vulnerable to attacks from all sorts of precision weapons.  The Ukrainian spearheads in 2023's summer counter offensive were defeated by a combination of attack helicopters, ground mounted ATGMs, artillery, drones, and even the mines they were tasked with removing.  ISR is a larger problem which makes all of these things more likely to succeed in taking out engineering vehicles.

There are even more lethal capabilities being developed, and to some extent fielded, as we speak.  I have seen absolutely zero evidence that industry has come up with a solution that solves all of the existing challenges as well as the near future ones.  At best industry has a limited set of very expensive proposals that nibble at a subset of current threat environment.

It is wishful thinking to conclude that someone has created a vehicle that can stand up to all of these threats and achieve it's mission.  Certainly if a company has invented a magic want to solve all of these problems, they have not waived it over a pile of metal yet.  Meaning, there is absolutely no vehicle in existence in any form, including on paper, that effectively changes the current threat/survivability equation.  NONE.  At best, there are theories about some vehicles in some conditions being able to do marginally better at some things at least some of the time.  Oh, and it will cost a lot more and far fewer will be produced as a result.

OK, so about Rheinmetal's Ogre engineering vehicle...

It is clear that breaching heavily defended lines is extremely difficult on engineering vehicles.  As a result, it is probable that loss rates for engineering vehicles will be high.  Because a vehicle lost needs to be replaced within minutes or hours if the mission is to have any hopes of continuing, this means there needs to be sufficient vehicles in immediate reserve for there to be a reasonable expectation of success.  Further, the quantity of these vehicles needs to be sufficient for a large number of simultaneous breaching attacks in order to have any hope of achieving anything even close to long standing Western maneuver doctrine.  Further still, an attritional warfare situation requires that a force have enough vehicles in reserve for a large number of simultaneous breaching actions AND not be exhausted after one operation.

So no, I don't think the Ogre is a smart move.  I think it would be far better to expend the same money on expanding the number of vehicles needed to breach and develop doctrine that presumes very high loss rates.  That is far more likely to succeed.

Steve

First, 'Keiler' translates to 'boar' not 'ogre' (which would be 'Oger'). It is also a small wordplay, with 'Keil' meaning 'wedge'. End of German lesson.

An ABV with a plow needs to have two things to be able to push it through heavyish terrain: traction and weight. The amount of available forward force is the multiple of the traction factor and weight.

For traction, tracks or wheels is not even a question. Since we are in a military context, using a military chassis like the one from the Leo 2 makes sense. Additionally, you want to make a breach roughly the width of a Leo 2.

An ABV can't have enough weight because that translates directly into available forward force. The limit being the ground pressure. The Keiler weighs 55t - 5t less than a Leo 2. That sounds good enough for everything except for the rasputiza.
And using armor plates to create that weight makes the crew happy. Important - at least for western armies.

So unless you deny that ABVs make sense in the first place, or you only need a breach of a lesser width, this vehicle makes a lot of sense.