How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[chuckdyke]

It is a little like the Spanish civil war. Condor Legion on one hand and the Soviet Union was taking sides against Franco. Learning lessons for the upcoming WW2. Objectives St Petersburg, Moscow and Volgograd. The other side London, Paris and Berlin. No wonder Putin is trying to influence the US elections. The US taking the path of isolationism and staying neutral in world politics is gaining support. 

Edited 1 hour ago by chuckdyke

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/DroneCombat/comments/1fx1p1s/ukrainian_forces_used_gmlrs_and_storm_shadow/

Ukrainian forces used GMLRS and Storm Shadow strikes against Russian command posts in the Avdiivka area, hitting Russia's 35th and 27th Motorized Rifle Brigades, as well as RU 2nd Combined Arms Army command/control centers. Published October 5, 2024

 

Not insignificant if that is what is going boom.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, omae2 said:

Okay but how? I thinking about this and i wonder if a guy in the command vehicle would have a drone out covering in front of the convoy about a kilometer away would it make any difference? I mean it might have, but realizing that there is a BTR in ambush and saying and than the command making a decision and giving orders all the while the convoy is moving with a steady pace. Is it even make any difference? They were under arty fire it seems like i might be wrong. If they turn tails the BTR might roll up behind them and blast the back end of the convoy. It would have been better than what happened but this is hindsight.

So my main issue is how to do that type of exploitation without losing what almost a company? You need some sort of intel gathering or armor to withstand the fire an ambush would put on you. But time is of the essence in the same time and you have to move in force. So how?

Now this is an excellent question.

First of all, the defender always has an advantage because it's much easier to know "the enemy is coming down X road at 60kmh" than it is "the enemy is hiding in these trees, but not any of the other ones".

All the fancy stuff on the battlefield doesn't change the fundamentals.

Then it comes down to which side has better awareness of what each side is doing.  Although the defender may have an inherent advantage, it doesn't mean it can't be overcome.  That is the primary purpose of UAS, though there are others.

The other reason the defender has an advantage is that, generally, the defender is sitting still.   Harder to detect and also not facing any sort of competing interests such as time tables and objectives.  To put it crudely, they are sitting there waiting.

Recon takes time and time is generally a problem for an attacking force.  The faster the attacking force is going, the more problematic recon becomes.

OK, so back to this specific circumstance of this Ukraine video.

In theory UAS should have flown ahead of them and scoured the area along the established advance route.  Because the route is known this is fairly straight forward.

However, the advancing force would have to wait until they got the "all clear" from whomever was operating the UAS.  That's probably fine if you're doing quick hops, but if you're trying to do a sustained lightning drive into the enemy's rear this is really impractical.  Waiting for recon could screw the whole mission.

So what happened?  Ukraine decided to risk moving fast vs. moving safely.  This is a classic example of maneuver warfare and sometimes it doesn't work out so well.  In this case clearly it did not.  But it did work in many other places, so overall the strategy of moving fast vs. moving safely paid off.  Not for these guys, obviously, but for the operation as a whole.

Steve