How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[G.I. Joe]

8 hours ago, danfrodo said:

Like I've said before, this is all ignoring the fact that Putin was not preparing for war at all.  He was preparing for a coup.  If he thought he was gonna have a fight he wouldn't have crossed the border. 

His goals could not be achieved militarily but he was so in love w his KGB-style internal subversion and assassination squads he wasn't worried about that. 

He's not the only blind planner in modern history, paraphrasing below:

Professor of modern middle eastern studies "what are you going to do when the shia and sunni start fighting each other?"

Dick Cheney lacky:  "We won't let that happen.  Why would they want to fight each other anyway?  It won't happen."

(not picking on Bush here, he was sold a bill of goods.  I don't think he's a bad guy, he just got conned.  he should've stayed as CEO of the Texas Rangers baseball team -- a great gig for sure.  I would way rather run a baseball team than be president)

...And that's worth a like for the baseball reference alone.  Western Oregon...at the risk of veering way OT, any chance you're a fellow Seattle Mariners fan? I know that by around the time you hit Corvallis heading down the I-5 it shifts to more San Francisco Giants fans (doesn't bother me...my dad's from the Bay Area and they're my favourite NL team). Up here, it's over 60% Toronto Blue Jays fans because of the "Canada's Team" cachet and their media presence, but Mariners fans are over 20% and the rest is divided among the other teams, especially the big-name and/or West Coast ones...

Getting more on topic, agreed on the last sentiment. I'd much rather run a baseball or hockey team than be a prime minister or president. I sometimes wonder if one of the problems with political power is that it tends to attract the kind of people who want it and put off some of the people most suited to hold it... (I know there are politicians with genuine good intentions, but I think there might be something to that).

Edited May 11, 2022 by G.I. Joe

[Haiduk]

Now 40th separate naval infantry brigade of Pacific Fleet from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy is a champion among most distant Russian units, moved to Ukraine - 7500+ km. 

This 18-years old conscript (2004 year of born) of this unit was captured in Kherson oblast. He was in a pair with sniper. Sniper was killed and this guy wounded and captured

 

Edited May 11, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

9 hours ago, billbindc said:

 

The east side of the river behind Kherson is getting plastered.  

This fires are on the territory of Black Sea Biosphere Reserve and around. The сause of this fires is not warfare, but natural causes or arson. Reportedly Russians don't allow to local firemen teams to extinguish theese fires. 

Edited May 11, 2022 by Haiduk

[Huba]

They look pretty chilled, considering:

 

 

[Ultradave]

3 hours ago, domfluff said:

I think a better match is likely to be a map game, like this:
http://www.wargaming.co/professional/details/britisharmy1956.htm

CMO is great, but the focus is not on the ground stuff, and won't give you a good idea of the kind of time/motion and engineering challenges involved here, and whether it would be possible to do this kind of thing in three days.

Clearly the data in the above is all derived from WW2 stuff, so it's not an exact match, but it'd be where I'd start if I wanted to get a feel for that.

In terms of more commercial stuff, https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/191989/next-war-poland is probably the best/most popular at the moment.

Yes, the ground war part of it is VERY elementary. There's really no where near the same level of detail to the effects of different weapons, and almost no attention to terrain at all. It's all very generic. From anything I've done, it's more there for flavor - like your mission is to land a bunch of troops at an airport or a beach, and by doing that you win or get VPs. Other than that, it can't be used to tell you anything of value.

In contrast to the air/naval part of the game, with is just awesome. Harpoon on steroids. The database itself is worth the price of the game.

Dave

[LongLeftFlank]

27 minutes ago, Huba said:

They look pretty chilled, considering:

 

 

Do you never worry?

Would it help?

 

 

[Haiduk]

 

Locals from Donetsk write in socila media about disaster with their 115th rifle regiment (conscripts). This regiment was formed mostly of 18-20 years students - they were conscripted 24th Feb and moved to Belgorod oblast of Russia and then to Kharkiv oblast. During two month they were without propper supply and their familiies didn't receive payment, due to them. After clashes, from whole military train with conscripts, which was departed to deployment of 115th regiment, only 107 men left - rest were killed, wounded and deserted. All they severly exhausted physically and mentally. Commanders threaten them with so-called "basement" (place of tortures in MGB jail), because many conscripts rejected to participate in combat actions. Now remains of regiment moved back to Donetsk and placed under guard on military unit territory. Commanders gave them three coises: death penalty, 15 years of jail or back to frontline. 

 

 Meanwhile during mop up operations in Kharkiv oblast, UKR forces is catching more LDPR conscripts and Russian soldiers 

On the first video - LPR conscripts. UKR border guard inspects the body and says, there is information 30 conscripts hidden somewhere in that direction

More captured (Tsyrkuny area). On the first viseo - mix of Russsian VDV and Rosgvardia + conscriptsof  115th regiment DPR. Second video, more likely conscripts

This is also Kharkiv oblast, probably Russians

 

[Ultradave]

3 hours ago, SeinfeldRules said:

But the infantry commander on the ground? He doesn't have time to wait on his FSO to mess around with his target mensuration software, squinting at a blurry satellite image and making sure that he is picking the right tree in the forest that's hiding the machine gun position. He needs suppressive fires now, and needs it for the next 30 minutes so he can organize his troops and maneuver on the enemy.

Nice to know this has not changed over the years, has it? As an FIST Chief and later as a Bn FSO, both my commanders told me - "If I spin around and don't smack you with my elbow, you are too far away from me".  Bn Cdr must have taught the Co Cos because they all used the same words   And every time it was always a case of just as you say - "I want fire [there] and I want it right ***** now!" 

It was nice to be appreciated

Dave

Edited May 11, 2022 by Ultradave

[Haiduk]

"Kraken" liberated Pytomnik village N from Kharkiv and Ruska Lozova

 

[Huba]

18 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

"Kraken" liberated Pytomnik village N from Kharkiv and Ruska Lozova

 

Tongue in cheek (but not fully), it looks like the road to Belgorod is open for the breakthrough force to exploit. Looking at the map, pushing into Russian territory to say, put the city in range of artillery fire might be a better option to cut the whole Izium region from supply than trying to force the crossing through Donets. It would force Russians to withdraw some units to protect the city, and it would deny it's use as (safe) staging and resting area. If political considerations weren't a problem, that's what I'd be doing.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Huba

[Taranis]

 

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, JonS said:

Is fast and quick really that important? You know what the say about the triple constraint of projects ...

Pick any two you want, and watch the third suffer.

(except in combat case the corners would be something like time, casualties, and resources)

 

Anyhoo, what I had in my mind is basically a smaller scale implementation of your proposal for the UA offensive against the hypothetical RA defence of the Donbas. Ie, the one where UA isolates and reduces each company position before moving on. Except in the case of NATO vs UA it'd be finding, isolating, and reducing each platoon or section position, before moving on. It's not going to win many Rommel-esque style points, but it'd get the job done at tolerable cost in casualties, I think. In other words, I'm choosing to sacrifice Time in the above triangle in favour of Casualties and Resources.

And, of course, logistically in the hypothetical NATO vs UKR war it'd be UKR in the strat log position that RUS is currently in (no friends, no suppliers), rather than being the beneficiary of an endless magical conveyer belt of free splodey goodness.

I would say “yes”, I mean the idea of fast manoeuvre and quick decisive action kind of underpins the entire western doctrine of offensive manoeuvre warfare.  If we cannot do that then we need another doctrine.  This is based on the idea that speed and tempo equals initiative and options.  Our entire system is based on that…so I would have to again say “yes”.  I guess we (modern militaries) take the hit on cost but this depends on what scale we are talking.  A fast war is very expensive up front but cheaper than a long one.  I think that is what has driven us to build more expensive and harder to generate standing militaries, which has led to the “come as we are” warfare dynamic.  

Very cool idea to build an in-game scenario on this, I think simulations and experimentation is critical at times like these.

[JonS]

Conceptually, is it plausible to layer a whole bunch of slow actions to create a quick overall operation through simultaneity?

[chuckdyke]

Just now, JonS said:

Conceptually, is it plausible to layer a whole bunch of slow actions to create a quick overall operation through simultaneity?

It is information warfare. Once the shooting starts it will become obvious who had the correct information. 

[The_Capt]

16 minutes ago, JonS said:

Conceptually, is it plausible to layer a whole bunch of slow actions to create a quick overall operation through simultaneity?

Whoa, that is an idea....a good idea.  I think the answer is yes with a "but".  So in COIN, insurgents do exactly this very broadly; however, they normally do not result in quick operations.  They can produce broad and simultaneous effects though.  

I think you would need some things here to do this and higher precision is one of them.  You would also need a nearly perfect theory of your opponent, knowing exactly where to apply all that slow pressure at exactly the right place and time.  You would also need encompassing enablers and integration.

This is why I keep coming on this forum, that is a very interesting concept - could we do slow grinding at the right place and times simultaneously to create critical collapse in an opponent at the operational level?  Is that what we have seen in this war?  Ukraine has not been employing rapid operational manoeuvre, they have been providing "slow grinding" almost everywhere and it has arguably led to the Russian operational system to buckle and fail. 

[akd]

What it’s like being a Chinese reporter covering the sports competition in Ukraine:

 

[The_Capt]

5 hours ago, SeinfeldRules said:

And mass isn't about blasting every treeline - it's about bringing all your available assets to bear at the same time to achieve a desired effect- sometimes that's a rear area command post, sometimes that's a platoon in a trench in a treeline. And a lot of times it's not even about killing the platoon in the trench - it's about keeping their heads down until my infantry can maneuver in and shoot them in the face

Let me say, this is also good discussion because it has led to dilemma, and in my experience that is a sure sign we are onto something.

So let me paint things out a bit (begs for patience):  So back in 1945, infantry could basically effect about 200m versus tanks, and maybe 1000m vs other infantry.  They had ISR in the form of intel feeds, which were often daily, and what they and those in radio range could see.  Now in 2022, those same infantry, in modern militaries, are able to effect armor of all types out to 80kms (Switchblade 600, NLOS ATGMs such as Spike) and employ UAVs and other sensors to see at least as far.  They also can do the same to other dismounted infantry; however, those are harder to find than armor, and infantry still need armor in the modern battlefield in order to attack (maybe?)

So what?  Well this means that, as we have seen in this war, that infantry - light infantry in particular - have far more range, lethality and accuracy than at any other time in human history.  They are also just as hard to see.  What has appeared to have happened in this war, at least as far as I can tell, is Ukrainian defence has relied on light infantry to do most of the heavy lifting.  I have no doubt Ukrainian conventional mech has been engaged, particularly at key points; however, Ukraine did not, and does not have anywhere near enough conventional mass to defend the frontages it has - enter hybrid warfare.  This is a game changer, as light infantry can essentially deny swaths of the land domain battlespace.  Further, they now have ranges that inflict attrition and friction well past the formation level.  When combined with integrated ISR, and their own through UAVs along with effective comms, and UA artillery, they have hammered Russian logistics to the point I suspect it broke - leading to the collapse of an entire front in the North.  This demonstrates a much higher level of both tactical and operational levels of precision than the Russians have been able to muster.

So What?  Russian mass, in all its forms is not working.  And based on this entire discussion, I am coming to a hypothesis as to why and it jumps from your statement up there: that is exactly how Russia fought and won in 2014, and likely thought it could fight and win in 2022.  In 2014 they demonstrated repeatedly that they could bring their assets to bear faster and with more accuracy than UA forces.  They believed they could suppress and then kill in detail with superiority like they did in 2014...so what changed?  Well Ukraine developed an C4ISR system apparently, and one that can do one helluva better job at bringing assets to bear.  I also suspect an organic C4ISR system emerged within local Ukrainian defence; Haiduk has already described how everything from sensing to logistics to killing has been crowdsourced in this war.  This created a major dilemma for the Russians, and it would be for us too - how can we bring our assets to bear to achieve effects when they were designed for another opponent?  You noted that we use mass fires to hit moving armor - what happens when your opponent offers you no moving armor?  What happens when an opponent can hit your operational LOCs from that treeline?  They can take out  your lead F ech armor at a nearly 1-1 munition kill ratio?  And because you are carrying so much mass, for miles behind you, they can see you coming for days...and you can't see them at all?

The dilemma is that, and you are correct here, all-precision is not practical.  Your slide example demonstrates that. However, mass as we understand it is not working and it is likely because how we have designed it was for a centralized mass-v-mass war...and people don't need mass to stop mass anymore, or at least that is what I suspect we are seeing here. In order to combat what we are seeing, yes we would need to blast every treeline OR we really up our ISR game to the point we can see a person in every treeline 40 kms out, which as far as I know is also not an option.  In your case up above, those infantry died in their vehicles before we could even figure out which treeline to hit.  I suspect that is why, as we have seen in other post the Russians are employing WW2 style approaches of "recce by death" to try and suss out Ukrainian defence.  All this adds up to a really slow and grinding advance, while ones logistical trains are being destroyed.

5 hours ago, SeinfeldRules said:

I'm sorry, but I don't buy the logistical issues. Army's have been firing unfathomably large amounts of howitzer rounds since World War I, with much worse logistical transportation equipment.

Ok, so I am not a Logistician either, but I do have a fair amount of experience in this field - I went through an Operational Support phase for about 5 years. Your example is perfect.  Since WW1 Army's have been firing "unfathomably large amounts"...it is also exactly how Germany lost that war. 

It is trite to go with "professionals talk logistics" (I think Bradley was really saying professionals see the entire system); however, logistics is the critical path for warfare, and has been for a long time.  Why?  Because it is how one can sustain all that mass.  Without it military mass breaks down and fragments, so many historical examples of this, a the Russians have re-affirmed this truth.

Back in the day, I had the same sentiment - "they always winge about that but someone will figure it out."  I suspect some Russian commanders had the same idea.  Problem is that based on all that stuff I pointed out before re: light infantry -and frankly we should know this from 20 years of small crappy wars- there is no such thing as a rear area anymore.  Russia has lost nearly 1000 logistical vehicles (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html) and it shows.  I strongly suspect they keep stalling out because their logistics system strains and then fails, which directly effects the Russian A-game of mass.  This makes mass unaffordable, mainly because it is not working anywhere near quickly enough - it is in an upside down battlefield calculus.

So what is our dilemma?  We do not have an answer to what we are seeing in Ukraine right now.  We have excellent C4ISR but it has limits and finding light infantry in bushes is one of them - we learned that one the hard way.  We have mass but it won't help if we cannot find the thing to hit with it, and it creates weight we need to support.  We have excellent logistics to support it; however, it is highly visible and vulnerable at the ranges we are talking about.  We have airpower, but we even saw in Iraq that we can lose air superiority below 2000 feet.  This lead me back to something that has been nagging me for about 20 years...what does superiority even mean anymore?  We had all of it and it did not seem to matter.

We do not have the precision to combat this type of fight, and our mass will not work either.  We would no doubt do better than the Russians for all the reason we have explored here but I am more and more convinced that warfare has been shifting for some time and has shifted here again.  This shift has pushed us into a dilemma space we need to figure out.  Maybe it is not that bad, and we can mitigate with what we already have.  Maybe it is worse than we think.  All I know is that we need to figure that one out because the Chinese are watching this as closely as we are and if I wanted to really mess up a western proxy nation intervention in 5 years I already know what I would do.

Edited May 11, 2022 by The_Capt

[Combatintman]

51 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Whoa, that is an idea....a good idea.  I think the answer is yes with a "but".  So in COIN, insurgents do exactly this very broadly; however, they normally do not result in quick operations.  They can produce broad and simultaneous effects though.  

I think you would need some things here to do this and higher precision is one of them.  You would also need a nearly perfect theory of your opponent, knowing exactly where to apply all that slow pressure at exactly the right place and time.  You would also need encompassing enablers and integration.

This is why I keep coming on this forum, that is a very interesting concept - could we do slow grinding at the right place and times simultaneously to create critical collapse in an opponent at the operational level?  Is that what we have seen in this war?  Ukraine has not been employing rapid operational manoeuvre, they have been providing "slow grinding" almost everywhere and it has arguably led to the Russian operational system to buckle and fail. 

It also depends on how you define quick.  Afghanistan wasn't a bad example of a series of 'slow' simultaneous operations leading to a fairly quick collapse; however, I don't want to stretch the comparison overly far because although, it wasn't readily apparent in May 2021, a whole lot of shaping in terms of doing deals with various tribes, elders and minor warlords had clearly taken place and this must have taken time to put in place.  Nevertheless, JonS's concept seems pretty sound and, as Afghanistan proved, once you hit a tipping point and have some exploitation forces with the freedom of action/manoeuvre to exploit, the tempo then increases.

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

It also depends on how you define quick.  Afghanistan wasn't a bad example of a series of 'slow' simultaneous operations leading to a fairly quick collapse; however, I don't want to stretch the comparison overly far because although, it wasn't readily apparent in May 2021, a whole lot of shaping in terms of doing deals with various tribes, elders and minor warlords had clearly taken place and this must have taken time to put in place.  Nevertheless, JonS's concept seems pretty sound and, as Afghanistan proved, once you hit a tipping point and have some exploitation forces with the freedom of action/manoeuvre to exploit, the tempo then increases.

Right?!  I also suspect it is what we saw in Ukraine.  The Ukrainian defence created enormous friction for the Russians along all those axis, at the same time.  That slow grinding, combined with deep strikes on Russian logistics created the conditions for that tipping point collapse in Phase 1, which Steve has been going on about for some time.  I think the Russian's may be headed for another one in the Donbas.  By creating simultaneous slow grinding everywhere the Russian system may have buckled under its own weight.

It is a working theory at least, and a good one...good enough that I resent JonS for arriving at it before me.

The next big question is, can it be used in the offence?  And here the Afghanistan example suggests, "yes"".

Edited May 11, 2022 by The_Capt

[Taranis]

 

[cyrano01]

17 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

So what is our dilemma?  We do not have an answer to what we are seeing in Ukraine right now.  We have excellent C4ISR but it has limits and finding light infantry in bushes is one of them - we learned that one the hard way.  We have mass but it won't help if we cannot find the thing to hit with it, and it creates weight we need to support.  We have excellent logistics to support it; however, it is highly visible and vulnerable at the ranges we are talking about.  We have airpower, but we even saw in Iraq that we can lose air superiority below 2000 feet.  This lead me back to something that has been nagging me for about 20 years...what does superiority even mean anymore?  We had all of it and it did not seem to matter.

 

Fascinating debate. At the risk of going all old school Clausewitzian does a diffuse light infantry+long ranged weapons defence have an identifiable centre of gravity and if so how do you get at it?

Might it be the defenders logistics or does their lack of mass reduce this as a volnerability? If the defence is relying on being able to use lots of deep fires to hammer your LOC then they are going to need a fair amount of 'stuff'  brought into place to do that. Is that where air superiority might come in? If (and it is really only the US who can really do this) you have suppressed the enemy air defences to the point where you can operate freely above 10-12,000 feet then would that allow you to strangle the defenders' logistics. I guess an interdiction campaign like that is going to give up on your need for speed mind you. And for it to be effective you would probably need to maintain pressure on the ground so that the defenders used up their supplies more quickly so you would probably need lots of light infantry of your own to do that, perhaps not palatable for western armies?

 

 

[Taranis]

 

[The_Capt]

16 minutes ago, cyrano01 said:

Fascinating debate. At the risk of going all old school Clausewitzian does a diffuse light infantry+long ranged weapons defence have an identifiable centre of gravity and if so how do you get at it?

Might it be the defenders logistics or does their lack of mass reduce this as a volnerability? If the defence is relying on being able to use lots of deep fires to hammer your LOC then they are going to need a fair amount of 'stuff'  brought into place to do that. Is that where air superiority might come in? If (and it is really only the US who can really do this) you have suppressed the enemy air defences to the point where you can operate freely above 10-12,000 feet then would that allow you to strangle the defenders' logistics. I guess an interdiction campaign like that is going to give up on your need for speed mind you. And for it to be effective you would probably need to maintain pressure on the ground so that the defenders used up their supplies more quickly so you would probably need lots of light infantry of your own to do that, perhaps not palatable for western armies?

 

 

Very good questions.  And nothing wrong with Clausewitz, so long as one does not accept that his was the final word.

I think one has to attack that light infantry system along its length as well.  Cutting off supplies of relatively cheap ATGMs, and MANPADS, along with ISR (I have no doubt Russia would love to cut those western ISR feeds if they could), or all data for that matter, is a very important step.  This would push the ranges and lethality of that infantry back to "harassment" levels. 

The CoG for this sort of defence also appears to be "integration and synchronization".  Light infantry in ones and twos are a nuisance even with this weaponry.  It is when they are linked and can get out in front of an attacker, due in large part to info superiority, that they become something else.  If you can make that "two-guys in a treeline...in isolation" then I think we would be onto something.

Airpower, yeesh.  Some of those MANPADs we equipped the UA with have ranges up to 23,000 feet; that is also nuts.  So high altitudes are likely still where we can operate freely; however, integrating airpower way up there to ground level will be the challenge.  

And I think this raises a very important point.  What about UA offence?  I am not sure if they are employing this light infantry approach on the attack.  Something is definitely happening up around Kharkiv, but it is not clear if this is more traditional conventional operations or if they are doing something else.  I am not sure how we would employ this on the offence, I suspect it may be that Infiltrate, Isolate, Destroy idea, but I would want to see it in action.  I think if one employed the "simultaneous slow grinding pressure" idea until your opponent cracks, you could then swing back toward conventional offence.  Right up to the point an opponent started using distributed light infantry defence in depth, then you become the hunted, not the hunter.  This makes for a very interesting dynamic.

Edited May 11, 2022 by The_Capt

[akd]

1 hour ago, akd said:

What it’s like being a Chinese reporter covering the sports competition in Ukraine:

 

Bit more on this: apparently occurred 6km outside Mariupol on May 6th.  Would be very interesting to know what happened here.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, akd said:

What it’s like being a Chinese reporter covering the sports competition in Ukraine:

 

That is incredible footage.  So far we've mostly been seeing these explosions from up above.  To see this fully captured from the ground is really something.

Steve