How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_Capt]

3 minutes ago, A Canadian Cat said:

Anders Puck Nielsen's latest video "Why did experts fail to predict Russia's invasion of Ukraine?" is interesting.

His goal is to kick off a discussion about lessons's learned from those that got things wrong and those that got things right. Also a little crowing on his part  .

I like one of his main points: that people that got it wrong are now spinning a narrative that they were partly right so therefore they were not wrong. Instead of doing the hard work of digging into what they got wrong and why. Sound familiar? Yeah I agree  

In terms of what people got wrong the highlight in my opinion is the failure to empathize or place yourself into the Russian mind set and try to understand where they were coming from. The other, is the notion that states and their leaders are rational actors and make decisions based on a shared understanding of the world. 

There is an interesting point of possible disagreement or perhaps quibbling: "Putin has a long history of not understanding Ukraine". Anders implies that Putin is not a rational actor. This appears to fly in the face of one of Steve's main points - that he is. I think the quibble comes form how you define rational and it was the same thing that made me slightly uncomfortable with Steve's characterization of Putin as rational. Personally I don't think the exact definition of the word is the important point here and why I never challenged Steve on that. 

Steve's point, as I see it, is that Putin made perfectly rational decisions based on what he understood to be the facts as he "knew" them. In the basic literal sense that is totally correct. I was never comfortable with that because I believe that to be rational you have to also examine your facts and have a good grasp on reality. If you don't I don't really consider you rational. Where Steve was 100 percent correct was that he understood how Putin was looking at the world and then could accept that his decisions made sense in that context. Clearly that was correct, so arguing about the definition of a word is kinda pointless. Especially since it is actually a perfectly rational (pun intended) definition.

Anders is embracing the fact that states and leaders don't behave rationally using the definition that I would prefer. However his is not trying to say Putin is irrational and there for I have no idea what he's going to do. Instead he is saying forget about what the right decision to make is based on the reality we see and instead look at what Putin sees and then assess what decisions he might make. 

Same action, placing yourself in the other's shoes, same conclusion, Putin is likely to invade and it's not going to go smoothly. Different definition of the word rational.

Yes, none of this is particularly new we have been debating all these topics since this thread started. It is a nice summary video of the topic.

Relative rationality is the term I think you are reaching for. An actor may appear irrational from our own frame of reference, but from their own they are perfectly rational. The alignment between those two frames is key in warfare. Further, when we are talking subversive warfare, we are actually talking about attacking and/or shaping an opponents frame of reference - cognitive, conative and affective. 

I would argue that Putin is definitely relatively rational. Everything he is acting and reacting makes perfect sense from his frame of reference. Hard part is understanding what that reference really is or is not. 

[billbindc]

15 minutes ago, A Canadian Cat said:

Anders Puck Nielsen's latest video "Why did experts fail to predict Russia's invasion of Ukraine?" is interesting.

His goal is to kick off a discussion about lessons's learned from those that got things wrong and those that got things right. Also a little crowing on his part  .

I like one of his main points: that people that got it wrong are now spinning a narrative that they were partly right so therefore they were not wrong. Instead of doing the hard work of digging into what they got wrong and why. Sound familiar? Yeah I agree  

In terms of what people got wrong the highlight in my opinion is the failure to empathize or place yourself into the Russian mind set and try to understand where they were coming from. The other, is the notion that states and their leaders are rational actors and make decisions based on a shared understanding of the world. 

There is an interesting point of possible disagreement or perhaps quibbling: "Putin has a long history of not understanding Ukraine". Anders implies that Putin is not a rational actor. This appears to fly in the face of one of Steve's main points - that he is. I think the quibble comes form how you define rational and it was the same thing that made me slightly uncomfortable with Steve's characterization of Putin as rational. Personally I don't think the exact definition of the word is the important point here and why I never challenged Steve on that. 

Steve's point, as I see it, is that Putin made perfectly rational decisions based on what he understood to be the facts as he "knew" them. In the basic literal sense that is totally correct. I was never comfortable with that because I believe that to be rational you have to also examine your facts and have a good grasp on reality. If you don't I don't really consider you rational. Where Steve was 100 percent correct was that he understood how Putin was looking at the world and then could accept that his decisions made sense in that context. Clearly that was correct, so arguing about the definition of a word is kinda pointless. Especially since it is actually a perfectly rational (pun intended) definition.

Anders is embracing the fact that states and leaders don't behave rationally using the definition that I would prefer. However his is not trying to say Putin is irrational and there for I have no idea what he's going to do. Instead he is saying forget about what the right decision to make is based on the reality we see and instead look at what Putin sees and then assess what decisions he might make. 

Same action, placing yourself in the other's shoes, same conclusion, Putin is likely to invade and it's not going to go smoothly. Different definition of the word rational.

Yes, none of this is particularly new we have been debating all these topics since this thread started. It is a nice summary video of the topic.

It's fairly straightforward...Putin has irrational goals ("Russia must be a great Soviet style power again") he pursues in fairly rational ways. 

[danfrodo]

12 minutes ago, billbindc said:

It's fairly straightforward...Putin has irrational goals ("Russia must be a great Soviet style power again") he pursues in fairly rational ways. 

Yes, us humans we they are smart because they are so good at 'how'.  Sadly, we are not so good at 'why'.  

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://warontherocks.com/2023/05/u-s-military-observers-and-why-they-are-needed-in-ukraine/

U.S. Military Observers And Why They Are Needed In Ukraine

After his first ride through the city, Capt. George McClellan remarked that “Sebastopol is knocked into a cocked hat.” The siege works outside the Crimean city had been “ploughed & reploughed up by shot & shell–exploded magazines–ruined traverses–broken guns, disabled carriages–charred timber.” Cockaded caps, bent bayonets, and bloodied blouses lay around the French, British, and Russian bodies. British supplies flowed off steam ships and onto railroads that carried arms and reinforcements smartly from Balaklava to the siege lines. Flowing the other direction, telegraphs carried reports from the British command in Crimea back to Whitehall, as Florence Nightingale treated soldiers evacuated from Crimea back to Constantinople. 

In 1855, war was changing.

 

This is a  better article that leads With George McClellan's assignment to observe the Crimean War. Now given his performance few years later it obviously isn't a miracle, but the author seemed to think it benefited the Union Army as a whole. It discusses the issue up through the Yom Kippur War, before advocating for a much larger and more focused effort in Ukraine. 

I clearly need a coffee cup with something pithy from Jon S on it, just to provide that nice morning kick...

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

There was considerable interest and observation taking place with the 1905 Russo Japanese war which was pretty much an accurate representation of WW1 conditions. They did not 'ignore' observations as such, but were simply not entirely sure how to answer them and were scrambling to come up with something. (which was a fair assessment given the nature of the war, there was in fact no obvious option for many years that did not result in wholescale slaughter)

We don't like the answer so we are going to ignore it is the very thing we are trying to do some minuscule part to avoid.

 

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

Even though he wont answer it, this is still stupidly inaccurate.

There was considerable interest and observation taking place with the 1905 Russo Japanese war which was pretty much an accurate representation of WW1 conditions. They did not 'ignore' observations as such, but were simply not entirely sure how to answer them and were scrambling to come up with something. (which was a fair assessment given the nature of the war, there was in fact no obvious option for many years that did not result in wholescale slaughter)

You can find plenty of examples of pre ww1 exercises that show how the umpires were flat out telling their officers that their entire units had been killed, both for infantry and cavalry. Generals fully understood the firepower of their forces. They were not stupid. 

Once again a far better post that sums up the situation from a qualified historian on the subject: 
 

 

TLDR: countries were in fact hastily adjusting their field manuals and experimenting with how to attack trench fortifications well before the war actually started. 

Capts view on the first world war and its doctrine development is very much one rooted in previous / older historiography and is somewhat obsolete these days. Ironic I know. 

Nah, he's spot on and everything you just quoted supports it.  You are, again, completely misunderstanding how large organizations are inherently resistant to change.  You are also doing your usual gross simplifications in order to support your chosen narrative.

Example:

"Generals fully understood the firepower of their forces. They were not stupid. "

How many generals out of the total understood this and were not stupid?  Surely some, but were they the ones in positions of setting policy?  Because if they weren't, or they weren't effective in doing so, then what does it matter other than making for an interesting footnote in history?

And then, mysteriously, you post this quote and then don't connect the dots:

" I think there was at least some dabbling, but probably not a whole lot. "

And then you conclude:

"TLDR: countries were in fact hastily adjusting their field manuals and experimenting with how to attack trench fortifications well before the war actually started. "

Define "hastily", because I think we have a very different definition of that.  "Hastily" is not compatible with the concept of "dabbling".  "Hastily" is a good descriptor for what both Ukraine and Russia are doing now to deal with unmanned systems, but both prior to 2022 not so much.  They "dabbled".  Institutions don't like to move fast even when it's clear that they likely should.

 

 

By way of example, I did a paper on the Maginot Line back in uni.  It was good enough that my professor had it entered into some symposium, it was selected, and I had to drive 3 hours away to present it to a room full of other professors.

One of the themes throughout was that there were French generals and politicians that "fully understood" that it wasn't likely going to work.  And then, when funding was pulled back without finishing it, pointed out that the questionable strategy wasn't even fully implemented, even more likely to fail.  Yet nothing changed and that was because those who "fully understood" were not the ones making the decisions.

There are some examples of institutions showing flashes of innovation and brilliance.  Ironically, the Germans did that when they came up with their solution to the Maginot Line.  The German military, institutionally, didn't think it could be done.  Hitler tipped the scales and the ones who had the brilliance to see the solution were suddenly put in charge.  That worked out great for Germany in 1940, but then Hitler tipped the scales back to "do the same thing even though it's not working" and the needed flashes of brilliance were ignored because they were inconvenient.

So back to WW1...

The fact is that both sides went into WW1 without being prepared for it, despite there being plenty of historical evidence to suggest that their concepts of warfare needed to be adjusted. Once they discovered the harsh reality that they had f'd up their prewar planning, they switched to the old tried and true "if at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer".  And millions died because of it.

Steve

[Vlad]

2 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

TLDR: countries were in fact hastily adjusting their field manuals and experimenting with how to attack trench fortifications well before the war actually started. 

Luigi Cadorna didn't get the memo, or the Blackadder-like banging your head against a brick wall the same way 12x in a row at Isonzo was part of the experiment?

The British didn't improve much until later. On Somme they did pretty much the same, but the French did something different and it provided better results.

Edited October 10 by Vlad

[A Canadian Cat]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Relative rationality is the term I think you are reaching for....

I would argue that Putin is definitely relatively rational.

Now we have a third definition. Wonderful  It's all good as long as we know how we are using that word and make it clear.

I kinda like "relatively rational" because using it will make people go - what?!?!? do you mean fella and you can have a discussion.

For example if I am in the camp that believes you can only be rational if you behave sensibly and have a grasp on actual reality; then someone saying Putin is rational without defining what you mean will make me think "well you are just wrong" when actually we actually agree.

I am flexible about how people use rational - as long as I know how they are using it of course. It is understandable if someone has incorrect information and a poor understanding of something - that is going to happen. Those people can still be considered rational - in my opinion. However at some point if they just seem to refuse to process the clear information that is right in front of them and cling to their erroneous views at some point I start to have trouble continuing to view them as rational. Clearly if I want to understand them I have to think of the world as they do but I just cannot bring my self to call them rational any more.

Example, that stays out of politics: flat earthers. No one has convinced me that these people should be granted the label rational for this view. They are clearly willfully blind to just reality around them and I would not call that rational.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Nah, he's spot on and everything you just wrote supports it.  You are, again, completely misunderstanding how large organizations are inherently resistant to change.  You are also doing your usual gross simplifications in order to support your chosen narrative.

Example:

"Generals fully understood the firepower of their forces. They were not stupid. "

How many generals out of the total understood this and were not stupid?  Surely some, but were they the ones in positions of setting policy?  Because if they weren't, or they weren't effective in doing so, then what does it matter other than making for an interesting footnote in history?

And then, mysteriously, you post this quote and then don't connect the dots:

" I think there was at least some dabbling, but probably not a whole lot. "

Dabbling, and not a whole lot of it, seems to be consistent with what The_Capt just outlined.

And then you do your overstatement thing again:

"TLDR: countries were in fact hastily adjusting their field manuals and experimenting with how to attack trench fortifications well before the war actually started. "

Define "hastily", because I think we have a very different definition of that.  "Hastily" is a good descriptor for what both Ukraine and Russia are doing now.  "Evolving" seems to be a better term for what was going on before WW1 broke out, which is the whole point... institutions don't like to move fast even when it's clear that they likely should.

 

 

By way of example, I did a paper on the Maginot Line back in uni.  It was good enough that my professor had it entered into some symposium, it was selected, and I had to drive 3 hours away to present it to a room full of other professors.

One of the themes throughout was that there were French generals and politicians that "fully understood" that it wasn't likely going to work.  And then, when funding was pulled back without finishing it, pointed out that the questionable strategy wasn't even fully implemented, even more likely to fail.  Yet nothing changed and that was because those who "fully understood" were not the ones making the decisions.

There are some examples of institutions showing flashes of innovation and brilliance.  Ironically, the Germans did that when they came up with their solution to the Maginot Line.  The German military, institutionally, didn't think it could be done.  Hitler tipped the scales and the ones who had the brilliance to see the solution were suddenly put in charge.  That worked out great for Germany in 1940, but then Hitler tipped the scales back to "do the same thing even though it's not working" and the needed flashes of brilliance were ignored because they were inconvenient.

So back to WW1...

The fact is that both sides went into WW1 without being prepared for it, despite there being plenty of historical evidence to suggest that their concepts of warfare needed to be adjusted. Once they discovered the harsh reality that they had f'd up their prewar planning, they switched to the old tried and true "if at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer".  And millions died because of it.

Steve

Ya know it is so easy to just do a little extra work and back up whatever comes into one’s head…or not:

https://wartimecanada.ca/sites/default/files/2023-08/Infantry Training Book (1914).pdf

So we used the same as the UK manuals. And most European nations had the same approaches. Note the date.

So, dear reader, skip past the first 7 chapters on drill (insert eye roll) and move onto “At War” on ch 9. Now I am only a 36 year military veteran with a post-graduate degree in Defence Studies but that entire section is still preaching and training for Offensive Primacy. I will direct attention to page 134 specifically.

Then if you read Ch 11 on Defence, you can see that in 1914 they had the same philosophy as we do - prioritize Active Defence as a temporary condition. Passive Defence, which is a close as Trench doctrine got, gets all of a page and half of treatment.

Keep in mind, this is after US Civil War and Franco-Prussian, and the Sino-Russian War. As well as observations in the Balkans. So, I do not know where this whole “WW1 Generals tried their best” nonsense is coming from but we can establish pretty quickly that 1) there was ample evidence of a shift in warfare primacy well before WW1 and 2) the sum total of Western military professional imagination as what to do about it failed for a lot of reasons. What is absolutely clear is that those same generals and military complexes should have known better that Defensive primacy was back (and I say “back” deliberately because it is cyclical) and failed to do enough before they trained up several million young men with this f#cking manual, and got many of them killed through trying to establish offensive dominance on a battlefield where that was impossible.

In fact this exact “watcha gonna do….hey let’s get more of what we had” sentiment that is extremely dangerous now. Warfare is shifting and one cannot argue with it, only try and stay ahead of it. They failed before 1914, Allies failed again before WW2…and if we follow the thinking of at least one poster on this forum, we will be doomed to do so again.

Edited October 10 by The_Capt

[ArmouredTopHat]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

We don't like the answer so we are going to ignore it is the very thing we are trying to do some minuscule part to avoid.

 

They were not ignoring it. The initial solution was to literally take the best of a series of bad choices (Attack and occupy fortifications instead of sit in front of them and die)

What means technologically were available to WW1 generals in 1914 to deal with trenches? Very little. There was very little they could practically do outside of massing firepower and they knew any solution was going to be horrific with casualties  They were keenly aware of this as the quoted writing shows, and the manuals beforehand. 


 

 

25 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Nah, he's spot on and everything you just quoted supports it.  You are, again, completely misunderstanding how large organizations are inherently resistant to change.  You are also doing your usual gross simplifications in order to support your chosen narrative.

If you want to take issue with a literal first world war historians arguments that are literally part of a book and his sourced documents, go right ahead:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/vjq5dg/cult_of_offensive_in_wwi/

His arguments are in there, as are links to stuff has translated from French manuals. I personally think he makes a lot of good points. There is a lot more nuance at play here than a bunch of generals being entirely backward in thinking. (though of course there were bad generals) 

 

20 minutes ago, Vlad said:

Luigi Cadorna didn't get the memo, or the Blackadder-like banging your head against a brick wall the same way 12x in a row at Isonzo was part of the experiment?

The British didn't improve much until later. On Somme they did pretty much the same, but the French did something different and it provided better results.

Improvements were a constant, matched by German improvements on the defence. Every year saw an increasing sophistication of attack vs defence. 1916-1917 alone saw radical improvements and changes in pre attack bombardments and creeping barrages as countries wrestled with how best to take a fortified position. To say nothing of gas, tanks, improvements in firepower, sapping and other methods. 

Blackadder and other media that followed the 'lions led by donkeys' trope came from the legacy of the war just being so damn brutal and costly, the notion that generals were a bunch of butchers with zero innovation has been largely downplayed in more recent historiography. Four years of war saw a lot of innovation and changes in both doctrine and approach from most sides. The reality was though that mass industrialised warfare of that nature and intensity is going to result in piles of bodies no matter what. That is what collectively scarred Europe for generations. 

[ArmouredTopHat]

5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Ya know it is so easy to just do a little extra work and back up whatever comes into one’s head…or not:

https://wartimecanada.ca/sites/default/files/2023-08/Infantry Training Book (1914).pdf

So we used the same as the UK manuals. And most European nations had the same approaches. Note the date.

So, dear reader, skip past the first 7 chapters on drill (insert eye roll) and move onto “At War” on ch 9. Now I am only a 36 year military veteran with a post-graduate degree in Defence Studies but that entire section is still preaching and training for Offensive Primacy. I will direct attention to page 134 specifically.

Then if you read Ch 11 on Defence, you can see that in 1914 they had the same philosophy as we do - prioritize Active Defence as a temporary condition. Passive Defence, which is a close as Trench doctrine got, gets all of a page and half of treatment.

Keep in mind, this is after US Civil War and Franco-Prussian, and the Sino-Russian War. As well as observations in the Balkans. So, I do not know where this whole “WW1 Generals tried their best” nonsense is coming from but we can establish pretty quickly that 1) there was ample evidence of a shift in warfare primacy well before WW1 and 2) the sum total of Western military professional imagination as what to do about it failed for a lot of reasons. What is absolutely clear is that those same generals and military complexes should have known better that Defensive primacy was back (and I say “back” deliberately because it is cyclical) and failed to do enough before they trained up several million young men with this f#cking manual, and got many of them killed through trying to establish offensive dominance on a battlefield where that was impossible.

In fact it is this exact “watcha gonna do….hey let’s get more of what we had” sentiment that is extremely dangerous now. Warfare is shifting and one cannot argue with it, only try and stay ahead of it. They failed before 1914, Allies failed again before WW2…and if we follow the thinking of at least one poster on this forum, we will be doomed to do so again.

Its almost like attacking was seen as a better option rather than sitting in front of the fortifications to get blown to pieces...

Its not like they paid no attention to defence either:

 

Quote

The problem is that what everybody had learned in the Russo-Japanese War was that the modern battlefield was all about trenches. So, the puzzle they are trying to solve is how to defeat a trench system without bleeding yourself dry in the process. And that's one of the reasons you see an emphasis on how to fight pitched attritional battles - as far as they knew, that was what the modern battlefield would look like.

That said, the French army doctrine of 1913 had a developed understanding when it came to the defensive. Here's what the summary section at the beginning of the December 1913 regulations has to say about it:

Form of combat, offensive and defensive. Both regulations state that only the offensive succeeds in breaking the will of the opponent and that the defensive never gives the victory. Both rules recognize, however, that defense may be necessary for some of the forces involved, under certain circumstances. But they differ in the definition of these circumstances, that is to say, in the justification of the defensive.

The 1895 decree considers the defensive as a means of “attracting the enemy to a terrain where one believes one can fight under good conditions.” From there, to accepting that the value of a position could determine the command to prefer defense to attack, it is not far, and no conception is more dangerous. In order to avoid any misunderstanding on such an important point of doctrine, the new regulation admits only one justification for defending in combat, namely the need to save troops on certain points, in order to devote more forces to attacks.

Understood in this way, the defensive is now strictly speaking only an auxiliary to the offensive, but it is necessary for the command to be able to demonstrate the full capacity of resistance of the units to which it has ordered to contain the enemy on a given front. This resistance must be, like the attack, pushed to the end, that is to say, to the point of complete sacrifice.

It follows from the preceding considerations that, in a battle, offensive by its whole, certain secondary units, such as the division, can receive from the higher command a purely defensive mission. This is why the new regulations, after having exposed the principles of offensive combat, which is the normal combat, devote a special chapter to the defensive combat of the division.

(Unfortunately, I can't quote anything from the actual section on the defensive, as I haven't gotten that far in the translation cleanup yet.)

 

[dan/california]

 

Quote

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/DroneCombat/comments/1g0jffx/ukranian_soldier_throws_grenade_on_top_of_two/

Ukranian soldier throws grenade on top of two Russian soldiers from nearly point blank after a drone drop.

 

Now this is what I call close support.

[kimbosbread]

On 10/9/2024 at 10:01 AM, The_Capt said:

So here we are. We need to get very smart on how to rebuild for the next war because the misalignment between that one and the wars we have been fighting is significant.

I want to highlight this because I think we are on the cusp of a revolution in weapons systems. Until recently cutting edge weapons systems required decades of development and then once you had them, tranches of upgrades for billions of dollars more.

One of the neat things about hardware that is primarily driven by software rather than fancy physical design (like drones, from FPV-to-fully-autonomous) is that the upgrade cycle can be significantly quicker (assuming you have a competent software team and management), like on the order of days. Unfortunately additive manufacturing is still quite slow (at scale), so the hardware part of things cannot move nearly as fast unless it’s very small scale.

In any conflict with China, I can see our tactics evolving, and maybe we’ll see some innovation on COTS weapons systems like drones, but we won’t see a revolution in ship design, or a new class of ships being built, or anything like that. We’re more likely to have all sorts of silly space based weaponry, as that’s where the motivated parts of the private sector play.

[akd]

Russians gave up on mounted mech assaults on this position held by Battalion K-2, 54 OMBr and resorted to attacks on foot and mounted on light pickups. Almost incomprehensible behavior exhibited by the Russians here.

1.

2. https://youtu.be/TvXBWBw4m9U?si=_G7dp6uXNTeiL-Pq (this one is restricted and can’t embed)

3.

[The_Capt]

12 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

I want to highlight this because I think we are on the cusp of a revolution in weapons systems. Until recently cutting edge weapons systems required decades of development and then once you had them, tranches of upgrades for billions of dollars more.

One of the neat things about hardware that is primarily driven by software rather than fancy physical design (like drones, from FPV-to-fully-autonomous) is that the upgrade cycle can be significantly quicker (assuming you have a competent software team and management), like on the order of days. Unfortunately additive manufacturing is still quite slow (at scale), so the hardware part of things cannot move nearly as fast unless it’s very small scale.

In any conflict with China, I can see our tactics evolving, and maybe we’ll see some innovation on COTS weapons systems like drones, but we won’t see a revolution in ship design, or a new class of ships being built, or anything like that. We’re more likely to have all sorts of silly space based weaponry, as that’s where the motivated parts of the private sector play.

Software vs hardware centric….totally stealing that.

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

So, dear reader, skip past the first 7 chapters on drill (insert eye roll) and move onto “At War” on ch 9. Now I am only a 36 year military veteran with a post-graduate degree in Defence Studies but that entire section is still preaching and training for Offensive Primacy. I will direct attention to page 134 specifically.

Boy, that's a depressing read but not a surprising one given how the war turned out.  There was nothing in those pages that discusses what happens if the enemy's fire doesn't get disrupted.  Not just for the isolated tactical battle in hand, but operationally or strategically.  And judging from the outcome of WW1, it's pretty clear they didn't put much thought into it prior to the war's start.  At least in terms of doctrine.

2 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

They were not ignoring it. The initial solution was to literally take the best of a series of bad choices (Attack and occupy fortifications instead of sit in front of them and die)

What means technologically were available to WW1 generals in 1914 to deal with trenches? Very little. There was very little they could practically do outside of massing firepower and they knew any solution was going to be horrific with casualties  They were keenly aware of this as the quoted writing shows, and the manuals beforehand. 


 

 

If you want to take issue with a literal first world war historians arguments that are literally part of a book and his sourced documents, go right ahead:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/vjq5dg/cult_of_offensive_in_wwi/

His arguments are in there, as are links to stuff has translated from French manuals. I personally think he makes a lot of good points. There is a lot more nuance at play here than a bunch of generals being entirely backward in thinking. (though of course there were bad generals) 

 

Improvements were a constant, matched by German improvements on the defence. Every year saw an increasing sophistication of attack vs defence. 1916-1917 alone saw radical improvements and changes in pre attack bombardments and creeping barrages as countries wrestled with how best to take a fortified position. To say nothing of gas, tanks, improvements in firepower, sapping and other methods. 

Blackadder and other media that followed the 'lions led by donkeys' trope came from the legacy of the war just being so damn brutal and costly, the notion that generals were a bunch of butchers with zero innovation has been largely downplayed in more recent historiography. Four years of war saw a lot of innovation and changes in both doctrine and approach from most sides. The reality was though that mass industrialised warfare of that nature and intensity is going to result in piles of bodies no matter what. That is what collectively scarred Europe for generations. 

Look, I read the Reddit stuff you posted and I see it being 100% compatible with what I've said.  Here's an example:

Quote

One of the more notable parts of Joffre's memoirs is his account of the 1912 annual manoeuvres, in which the initial French attempts to implement a more offensive doctrine (meaning attack, attack, and attack some more, no matter what the circumstances) ends up being a public embarrassment, and Joffre recounts that he spends the next two years trying to install sanity in the doctrine.

2 years prior to the war and the French are still doing maneuvers where the core principles are already known, by some (in this case Joffre), to be unworkable.  And yet... the maneuver goes ahead based on those unworkable principles with some (including Joffre) pushing for change.  Gee... if it was all so self evident to the generals, as you claim, then why did Joffre have to work so hard on "sanity"?

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, kimbosbread said:

I want to highlight this because I think we are on the cusp of a revolution in weapons systems. Until recently cutting edge weapons systems required decades of development and then once you had them, tranches of upgrades for billions of dollars more.

One of the neat things about hardware that is primarily driven by software rather than fancy physical design (like drones, from FPV-to-fully-autonomous) is that the upgrade cycle can be significantly quicker (assuming you have a competent software team and management), like on the order of days. Unfortunately additive manufacturing is still quite slow (at scale), so the hardware part of things cannot move nearly as fast unless it’s very small scale.

In any conflict with China, I can see our tactics evolving, and maybe we’ll see some innovation on COTS weapons systems like drones, but we won’t see a revolution in ship design, or a new class of ships being built, or anything like that. We’re more likely to have all sorts of silly space based weaponry, as that’s where the motivated parts of the private sector play.

This is why I think it is insane to continue designing, building, and fielding expensive weapons systems as if nothing has changed.  Instead, we should be looking to replace things like ships, tanks, helicopters, etc. with things that are inexpensive and readily able to be mass produced. 

If it were up to me, I'd withdraw 100% of the funding for any current MBT project (even the ones being done on paper) and divert it into something more pragmatic.  I'm open minded about what pragmatic is (could be an unmanned light tank for all I know) as long as politicians, lobbyists, and hidebound military officers don't get to redefine "pragmatic" to mean "what we're already doing".

Steve

[The_Capt]

2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Boy, that's a depressing read but not a surprising one given how the war turned out.  There was nothing in those pages that discusses what happens if the enemy's fire doesn't get disrupted.  Not just for the isolated tactical battle in hand, but operationally or strategically.  And judging from the outcome of WW1, it's pretty clear they didn't put much thought into it prior to the war's start.  At least in terms of doctrine.

Look, I read the Reddit stuff you posted and I see it being 100% compatible with what I've said.  Here's an example:

2 years prior to the war and the French are still doing maneuvers where the core principles are already known, by some (in this case Joffre), to be unworkable.  And yet... the maneuver goes ahead based on those unworkable principles with some (including Joffre) pushing for change.  Gee... if it was all so self evident to the generals, as you claim, then why did Joffre have to work so hard on "sanity"?

Steve

This is kinda the sad thing and we see a microcosm right here on this thread. There were professionals that saw what was coming. We had switched from Offensive to Defensive primacy during the era of sieges. And then back again with the invention of modern fires power. Some did note this and tried to move the needle. Fire and manoeuvre needed a re-think as the fundamentals had shifted. They saw it at Gettysburg, Richmond and Paris. 

But the problem was that militaries were largely personality based. There were no institutional force development, doctrine development was pretty much based more on culture than a real AAR process. Those generals, many from the aristocracy, had little vested interest in suddenly trying to break “the way things were”. Further, as constitutional monarchies took hold, they now had to argue with the money. So making arguments to pay for all this became harder. And suddenly turning around and going “well we are screwed so we need to spend a lot more money” was really not a great start point. I am reading Dreadnought by Massie and the navies of the world had already been through all this. Unlike armies, a navy was very much come as you are. So far more FD effort and focus was put upon them. Also the technology of the Industrial Revolution had larger impacts on naval warfare, or at least more visible.

Land warfare got short shifted to a greater or lesser extent. And “wild modern” ideas held little value and could bring political ire. There was back-pressure coming from several angles….just like today.

We can see it here. The idea of a new combined arms core is considered “radical”. Even though we can see the evidence daily that shifts towards that have already happened. And for many of the same reasons. I checked the French and German manuals as well…same thing the UK was doing. Press of the bayonet and offensive firepower and manoeuvre. No one was proposing attrition warfare or Defensive Primacy beyond a few “radicals” that were marginalized.

And here we are in 2024, with people clinging to old structures and capabilities. “We can solve for UAS with EW and sky guns. We have APS. Look, tanks were used at Kursk.” And any one who proposes anything else is ignorant, misinformed, jumping to conclusions or just dumb. I have zero doubt the same debate is happening inside the tent right now - in fact a I know so because it was when I left. I hope we are smarter and ready to take more risks, but I have my doubts.

[Battlefront.com]

15 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I hope we are smarter and ready to take more risks, but I have my doubts.

That article I linked to many pages ago where the US military is actively doing nothing was a depressing read.  The mentality of "wasn't invented here" has doomed many throughout history.

Steve

[ArmouredTopHat]

46 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

2 years prior to the war and the French are still doing maneuvers where the core principles are already known, by some (in this case Joffre), to be unworkable.  And yet... the maneuver goes ahead based on those unworkable principles with some (including Joffre) pushing for change.  Gee... if it was all so self evident to the generals, as you claim, then why did Joffre have to work so hard on "sanity"?

The point attempted to be made was that there wasnt really a solution present in pre 1914 for trenches, the attack doctrine was seen as the best of a bad series of options, which proved to be the case until technology caught up and allowed effective attacks to take place. Everything was costly all the same. Do feel free to explain what could of been done instead (outside of not fighting a war for dubious reasons!)

The issue was not breaching trench lines but exploiting them, something that was really the crux of the issue for everyone at this point. Defences could be overwhelmed with the correct planning, but exploiting that into something operational was seldom possible due to counter attacks and lack of reserves:
 

Quote

Ok, there is a big problem with your question right off the bat. Simply put, the armies of WWI did not get mowed down en-masse. This is an enduring myth of the conflict that has become so baked in popular culture is simply refuses to die. That's not to say it didn't happen, but it was the exception, and not the rule. Two things to keep in mind about WWI attacks are:

• A) They were mostly actually successful on a local level. Where attacks failed was not in the taking of the initial trenches - by about 1915/1916/1917, armies had gotten quite good at taking trenches (with caveats for which army, the opening stages of the Somme made it clear the British needed work, for example). When an attack was lost, it was because the attackers were usually slowly witted down in men and equipment from constant counter-attacks. So think less an attacking wave of men being mowed down by machine gun fire, but trenches changing hands back and forth.

• As always in modern warfare, the main killer was artillery. Estimates are about 60-70% of casualties were inflicted by it. For an example, look at the infamous Battles of the Frontier in 1914, where the French took appalling losses. This is generally blamed on two things, a) the "cult of the offensive", which u/Robert_B_Marks has made several posts on here clarifying exactly what this meant. I'd recommend searching his history for those posts, and b) the French wearing red trousers. In reality, those pants would have rarely, if ever, made a difference, as combat was either at a range short enough where pant colour wouldn't matter, or long enough were the main killer was (again) artillery.

 

Quote

Ah, this again.

No, they did not tactically regress. The bayonet was vital in WW1.

First, a quick primer on shock (bayonets/swords/etc.) vs. fire: firearms are a weapon of death - they are designed to kill the enemy at range. Bayonets are weapons of terror - they are designed to make the enemy run away. Or, put another way, when somebody is shooting at you, it is safest to hunker down in your position; if somebody is charging at you with something pointy, the safest place to be is somewhere else.

The general rule was that you use fire and movement to get close to a position, and then a charge with cold steel to clear it. It was vitally important that the position be "prepared" before the charge - this means being hit with artillery and small arms fire as much as possible to traumatize and demoralize the defenders before the charge. Charging an unprepared position was effectively suicide.

Once you get to the Western Front, the bayonet becomes even more important because of trench geography. Unlike what you tend to see in movies, WW1 trenches were not straight. They used what was called a traverse system, which meant that they were actually short segments with sharp corners (from the air they look like the crenelations of a castle wall as drawn by a drunk person). And this meant that the most useful (and commonly used) weapons for clearing trenches were the bayonet (which does not need to be reloaded) and hand grenade (which can be thrown over into the next segment), in that order. During trench clearing, rifles may have been more often fired to free the bayonet from a body than to shoot somebody in the melee.

So, the bayonet was not obsolete, nor was using it a regression. It was what was needed for the task of clearing a position, and that is how it was used.

What muddies the water is that after the Boer War, there was a serious question about whether shock was still a useful tool of warfare in the wake of the advent of the machine gun, and a number of military thinkers actually do declare it to be obsolete. The problem was that the Boer War didn't give a lot of good data to observers due to the fact that the Boers tended to withdraw from positions that were about to be overrun, instead of defending them. And this leads to an odd phenomenon of military thinkers between 1899 and 1904 trying to figure out what would happen if somebody tries to keep a trench. The British 1905 Infantry Training goes into great detail about how to approach a trench with fire and movement, but has almost nothing to say about what to do after that (I'm not kidding - it amounts to: 1. Approach trench using fire and movement; 2. ????; 3. PROFIT!).

But, once the Russo-Japanese War starts, military observers got to see a war where both sides would actually fight to keep their positions, and began to realize that the bayonet still had a place in modern warfare.

...BUT...not all of them were sold on this. The British, in fact, up to the beginning of the war thought that the bayonet was obsolete, and were caught off guard when soldiers kept having to use it and started demanding additional bayonet training. This left them scrambling to issue new bayonet training manuals.

A friend of mine, Aaron Miedema, did some very good research on this in his book Bayonets and Blobsticks: The Canadian Experience of Close Combat, 1915-1918 (full disclosure: I am the publisher of this book). I'd also recommend The Rocky Road to the Great War, by Nicholas Murray, and From Boer War to World War: Tactical Reform in the British Army, by Spencer Jones (with the caveat that I think he gives far too much weight to the Boer War and not enough to the Russo-Japanese War).

Its funny that the manual Capt showed and highlighted actually displays a section that was made use of well in small tactical offensive operations by infantry in the trench lines, specifically small groups of bombers backed up by bayonets advancing aggressively. Aggression was actually key in attacking trenchlines, something later emulated by the infiltration tactics used by the Germans later on. 
 

Quote

The 1916 manual on Training for Bombers describes trench-clearing parties being composed to two riflemen with bayonets fixed, followed by two bombers, and then two to four men carrying bags of bombs. The bayonet-men would direct the bomb-throwers on directionality, and shoot/stab anyone who came around the traverses. Bayonets were especially emphasized because first wave troops were always afraid of running short of rifle/MG ammunition.

The overall point is that most armies underwent considerable adaptions to the conditions, and there was awareness at some level of the difficulties that lay ahead pre 1914. It was the scale of death from large, powerful industrialised countries being at total war that was the true shock to the system, not the trenches. 

I am also curious what exactly you think they could have done better at the time with the technological limitations at hand. Sitting back on defence was just as costly for the participant as attacking (which is exactly what people had realised even pre ww1)



 

Edited October 10 by ArmouredTopHat

[ArmouredTopHat]

Lastly, just to prevent any further derailing, here is a nice little read by the guy I keep refering to that covers the evolution of WW1 historiography. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/psiyav/a_brief_summary_of_the_development_of_ww1/

The TLDR is that there is a pretty big overhaul in historiography on the subject, which has gone from the lions led by donkeys, to learning curve to the current line of thinking that really shows innovation and development in a nuanced way. It is really high time we put the caricature of first world war generals that made unimaginative attack after unimaginative attack from media representation to bed. 

There are parallels we can certainly draw from this to the current conflict as well. 

 

Quote

What is more likely, that all of the foremost military men from all the major powers of an entire era were all idiots, or that you are simply failing to understand the reality of the war they were fighting?

The idea that a major industrial war could have been won on the cheap is a delusion. The Napoleonic Wars were not won on the cheap. The US Civil War was not won on the cheap. The Second World War was not won on the cheap. Neither was the Great War. But why is it only the Great War generals who are held up for opprobrium and branded 'idiots'?

With regards to Haig in particular - Haig was kept in post as he was the best qualified person for the job, and arguably the most successful British General in history. Monash and Currie were Corps commanders, not Army Group commanders, and their successes were only possible within the political, strategic, logistical, doctrinal, tactical, and technological framework constructed by Haig.

The actual casualty rates of WWI were unremarkable. They were equaled and exceeded before and have been equaled and exceeded regularly since. Even the casualty numbers, in absolute terms, were easily exceeded by the second war.

Its simply a matter of perception, particularly in the English speaking world, that the Great War was somehow unique in its horror and carnage, and that's simply because it was the war in which the English speaking people played the largest role - that of engaging and defeating the main body of the main enemy on the main front of a general war, and therefore paid a price commensurate with that role.

Objectively, the Generals of the Great War oversaw changes in tactics and technology at an unprecedented pace. The battlefield of 1918 had more in common with the battlefield of 1944 than it did with 1914. Just some of these advances include:

• The rise and demise of the airship as a strategic bomber, the invention of the incendiary round and the the development of systematic air defences including searchlights and anti-aircraft guns.

• The war started with the largest armies having a handful of fragile aircraft suitable only for reconnaissance and ended with specialized strategic bombers, air superiority fighters, close air support machines, and reconnaissance aircraft equipped with cameras and radios, as well as the first instances of aerial re-supply to keep the momentum of an attack going.

• The creation of the world's first independent airforces

• The introduction of flamethrowers and chemical weapons, as well as the development of effective countermeasures.

• The development of the aircraft carrier, and the first widespread use of submarines for economic warfare.

• The invention of the tank and armoured warfare, and the first widespread use of motorised logistics.

• The implementation of squad automatic weapons. 1914 saw the British army with 2 machine guns per battalion. By 1918 these had been centralised into a Machine Gun Corp to able to provide direct and indirect fire, while platoons had up to two machine guns each.

• The invention of the hand grenade and rifle grenades in the format we now them.

• The invention of the mortar, in pretty much the same shape and form it exists today.

• Electronic and signals warfare, as well as the implementation of electronic countermeasures.

• The development of instantaneous artillery fuses, the ability to fire 'off map' without prior registration of the guns, flash-spotting and sound-ranging to identify and then suppress enemy batteries.

It took a little while for the appropriate technology to be developed and for doctrine to be devised, and then for the training and mass of material to be accumulated.

Once this was achieved, the allies delivered a crushing blow which almost certainly constituted the largest succession of uninterrupted victories of any campaign in history. Hardly the work of idiots.

 

Edited October 10 by ArmouredTopHat

[kimbosbread]

46 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

I am reading Dreadnought by Massie and the navies of the world had already been through all this. Unlike armies, a navy was very much come as you are. So far more FD effort and focus was put upon them. Also the technology of the Industrial Revolution had larger impacts on naval warfare, or at least more visible.

For the war with China, I’m more and more convinced we need to go with semi-submersible drone platforms. All the fancy long range antiship missiles won’t work against something that can just drop down to snorkle depth and have no radar signature. You don’t need a real submarine, but you do need stealth, and the ability to carry a lot of weapons. Something like the SMX-25, but way ****tier and cheaper and with a lot more launch tubes.

This is of course impossible per the laws of physics that govern the circus known as US Navy procurement.

EDIT: Oh and it needs to be able to deploy semi-submersible jetskis packed with HE (ie Maguras) in the high tens if not hundreds

Edited October 10 by kimbosbread

[Battlefront.com]

13 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

The overall point is that most armies underwent considerable adaptions to the conditions, and there was awareness at some level of the difficulties that lay ahead pre 1914. It was the scale of death from large, powerful industrialised countries being at total war that was the true shock to the system, not the trenches.

Of course there was some awareness.  There were plenty of people who were aware Russia was going to get it's arse kicked if it did a full invasion of Ukraine.  But those people were not the ones calling the shots and so the decisions made (by all sides) were based on faulty information.

13 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

I am also curious what exactly you think they could have done better at the time with the technological limitations at hand. Sitting back on defence was just as costly for the participant as attacking (which is exactly what people had realised even pre ww1)

Well, anything I can come up with today is based on 100 years worth of hindsight, so this isn't an easy thing to ask.

Maybe I would have done two things:

1.  diverted all horse cavalry resources into procuring trucks

2.  had an established doctrine to recognize situations where offensive strategies were no longer workable and go on the defensive in those areas or just defensive for the whole front.  Pointless waves of death would not be in my doctrine

3.  retooled infantry into smaller and more adaptable concepts that allowed for smaller scale operations

Now, I'm not saying any of this would have worked because I think we're seeing the same thing in today's war and I see no ready solution for it either.  What I am saying is that it seems the Great Powers went into WW1 without a good understanding that their dreams of grandeur might not be practical no matter how many millions of your own people you killed and wounded trying to achieve them.

Steve

[The_Capt]

23 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

That article I linked to many pages ago where the US military is actively doing nothing was a depressing read.  The mentality of "wasn't invented here" has doomed many throughout history.

Steve

What is worse is that academia gets pulled into this direction too. Funding will favour the foregone conclusions. Counter-narratives will be tolerated but will not receive the same support. So we can expect all sorts of podcasts and articles telling us why this war, while interesting, does not reflect the next war. There is truth in that..,the next war will be worse.

[ArmouredTopHat]

34 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Maybe I would have done two things:

1.  diverted all horse cavalry resources into procuring trucks

2.  had an established doctrine to recognize situations where offensive strategies were no longer workable and go on the defensive in those areas or just defensive for the whole front.  Pointless waves of death would not be in my doctrine

3.  retooled infantry into smaller and more adaptable concepts that allowed for smaller scale operations

Now, I'm not saying any of this would have worked because I think we're seeing the same thing in today's war and I see no ready solution for it either.  What I am saying is that it seems the Great Powers went into WW1 without a good understanding that their dreams of grandeur might not be practical no matter how many millions of your own people you killed and wounded trying to achieve them.

1. Trucks were extremely temperamental machines at this time (ask the Americans their experience during the first world war: It directly contributes to the very tight American quality control that you see in WW2) They were also entirely unsuited to operation on the line of contact. They were  used all the same in logistics. French road of life springs to mind at Verdun. Same reason armoured cars were a thing in 1914 yet were only sparingly used due to the increasingly hostile terrain conditions. Tracks were required. 

2. Going on the defensive yielded the same level of casualties overall. The Germans got mauled just as badly at the Somme as the British. (And this was a offensive largely seen as having gone rather poorly)

 

Quote

No - this is a very common idea but it's a misunderstanding of how trench warfare worked. Movie scenes of machine guns mowing down line after line of attacker are wrong - only in places like the Nek where the attackers had no fire support did this happen. The reason for this is that attacks covered by a heavy bombardment forced the defenders to retreat to their rear trenches until the bombardment stopped. They would then rush to reoccupy the 'parapets' before the attackers reached them - assaults were therefore 'races to the parapets' and casualties during them were far less lopsided than you would think. If you look at the major offensives of the war, casualties were more often than not even. The only reason the war 'stalemated' in spite of this is the defenders, after losing their first line of trenches, would counterattack and push the attacker back to starting positions. Any army that refused to counterattack would quickly see its line penetrated, and its enemy in its rear.

3. They literally did this. Any cursory look of development of infantry sections in trenches for the British will tell you that. (Lewis guns, grenade bombers ect) The British had already done this to a degree pre WW1  after the Boer war with the tactical employment of infantry. They still got pasted by artillery all the same. 

The main issue is that none of these would of changed the reality of the war and its heavy casualties. Cavalry had already been widely recognised as pretty much useless outside of potential exploitation. There were other reasons to at least keep them to hand (they had their uses in other theatres at least) The war was going to be a bloodbath no matter what based on the technology at hand. 

It should be viewed that the western front armies and officers put in truly herculean attempts to transform their armies and doctrines to better fight despite the veritable tidal wave of technological changes that continued to shake up the foundations of war. That they did so in just a few short years is truly commendable as they tried to surmount the unsolvable problem they had been given. 

This does not remove incompetence of course (Luigi Cadorna existed)

Yet Haig presided over a force that went from something best suited to overseas colonial warfare to a titanic force able to pick sustained fights with Imperial Germany. Such an explosion of personnel is a massive change, let alone the additions of technological and the growing sophistication of operations, tanks, airforces ect. Modern historiography has been working hard to clear him of the backwards butcher title that he was portrayed as decades ago, when in fact he was easily one of the more innovative commanders of the time. He reminds me a lot of Grant in that respect. 

'Pointless waves of death' is something that simply didn't happen and seems something out of 60's historiography. Generals were not attacking for the sake of it without any point. Such a viewpoint is probably due to the 'slaughter of the innocents' incident at Ypres that is partially fact and partially fiction. (And an outlier in general)

There are some great new books out from the last decade that go into far better detail than I can. Some of my previous links reference a few of them. 

Edited October 10 by ArmouredTopHat