How Hot is Israel Gonna Get?

[Bulletpoint]

2 minutes ago, Probus said:

And mines.  Lots of mines.  

Yes, unfortunately. At least AT mines are not going anywhere soon.

But at the end of the day, those huge Russian minefields would not be able to stop the Ukrainians for very long if it had not been for modern drone assisted artillery and ATGMs killing anything trying to clear a path.

It's both the response time, range, and accuracy that has improved massively and make clearing next to impossible.

Anyway, that all belongs in the Ukraine thread. As for Gaza, I am not convinced the Israelis lost that many tanks. Even the bombs placed directly on the hull might not have worked - they are home made devices after all. I think if there had been several burning tanks, Hamas would have filmed at least some of them.

[Bulletpoint]

1 minute ago, Splinty said:

Speaking as a Bradley infantry guy. I'll have to disagree with the ground war could have been won with APCs part. I was with 1st Armored at Medina Ridge, and that was a hell of a fight. The Air War cleared the way for us, But it was the Ground War that finished the Iraqi military.

 

Well I am ready to admit it if I am wrong. So in your experience, the Coalition tanks were crucial in Desert Storm?

[Centurian52]

44 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Well I am ready to admit it if I am wrong. So in your experience, the Coalition tanks were crucial in Desert Storm?

I don't have any direct experience to contribute (I was about a week old when that war ended, and despite studying military history my entire life, I have never actually fought in a war (I did consider going to Ukraine, but I chickened out (I just didn't feel prepared to die))), so I can't replace a response from Splinty himself. But while airpower has been absolutely invaluable in every war from WW2 on, no war has ever been won by airpower alone. No matter how much the Iraqi military was degraded by air attacks, eventually a ground element was going to have to go in to finish them off. And that's what happened. The war ended after ground troops went in, not before. And as heavy as Iraqi losses were to air attacks, somewhere from half to most of their casualties (unfortunately there aren't exact records for Iraqi losses, so there is a lot of estimating going on) were taken in the four days of the ground offensive, with the other half to minority of their casualties being taken in the six weeks of the air campaign.

So, with the necessity of the ground offensive (hopefully) established, how essential were tanks to the ground offensive? I'm sure Coalition casualties would have been higher without tanks, but it might still be doable if you permit the Coalition to retain IFVs. It's hard to imagine how we could have fought battles like 73 Easting and Medina Ridge without either tanks or IFVs though. As things went, tanks and IFVs accounted for a huge proportion of Iraqi losses. Taking those assets away certainly would have meant harder, more prolonged fighting, with higher Coalition casualties.

Still, someone could easily point out that the Iraqis were hardly a top tier opponent, and the Gulf War was over 30 years ago in any case. So it doesn't prove the value of tanks in warfare in 2023 and beyond. We had TOWs and Dragons in 1991, but no Javelins and nothing like current numbers of drones. And that would be a fair point that I am not prepared to refute. While I am adamant that tanks are still important today, and I believe that it is pretty obvious that tanks were invaluable in the 1991 Gulf War, I will admit that the value of tanks in the Gulf War does not prove that they remain important today.

Edited November 20, 2023 by Centurian52

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Probus said:

That's a Steve ( @Battlefront.com ) and @The_Capt kind of answer! (Not to mention a few others)

Someone rang?  Oh good a tank argument.  The problem with tanks as we are observing in Ukraine is 1) not all about tanks - get over to yourselves tank lovers.  The issue is much larger than a single platform regardless how much you might love the thing.  Mechanized mass is currently in the wind.  2) It isn’t that tanks are dying.  It is that tanks are dying before they can deliver the effects we want the tank to do. They cannot mass. They cannot break in, through or out.  We are seeing sniping and indirect fires (seriously wtf?) as their primary roles on the ground right now.  And 3) those who come out defending the tank really do not fully understand just how fundamental the shifts are appearing.  Mass as we knew it is failing.  Force ratios are out the window.  Denial appears to have battlefield primacy.  The tank, along with a lot of other things are being dislocated from their ability to deliver results.

Now could a massive NATO mech force still roll over a smaller less capable force?  Sure.  But the cost is likely going to go up significantly.  To the point operational and strategic calculus will need to change.  If we run into a force empowered by a supporting great power’s C4ISR and the levels of precision and autonomous systems we are only seeing hints of on the modern battlefield, we are going to be in serious trouble.  We do not have effective counters.  The other thing the tank lusters also tend to gloss over is that the current wars we are seeing are last-Gen technology.  The more modern stuff has not even appeared on the battlefield.  The trend for mechanized mass is not good overall.

Yes, people have been predicting the end of the tank since the 60’s….what if they were right?  We have never seen modern armor tested in an environment like Ukraine.  We talked and “exercised” a lot of threat reality away back in the 90s and leapt headlong into confirmation bias as we crushed Iraq (freakin Iraq?!).  I am strongly suspecting that the tank was in trouble back in the 80s.  As of 2023, the entire mechanized edifice is in trouble.  

Lastly, narrowing this back down to tanks.  The other reality that is getting sidestepped (conveniently) is that a tank is part of a much larger system extending back to the factory.  We can wrap tanks in APS and bubble wrap but the fuel trucks, ammo resupply, maintenance and spare parts are strung out on highly visible and vulnerable supply chains.  Even if the tank manages to pull off what it is supposed to deliver, we likely cannot sustain it.

First video I saw out of this Israeli conflict was a tank getting nailed by a UAS…the idea has gone viral.  Normally I really would not care if the tank, or IFV or whatever was going obsolete but given that we are likely going to looking at billions in investment in the old fleets to keep them “competitive” I think it is a damned important conversation to have.  Personally I would double down on C4ISR, UAS/UGV, PGM and light fast highly empowered infantry because it has pretty much been definitively proven that on the current battlefield that is what works on the defence at least.  Solving for offence is likely going to be the challenge of the next decade.

But hey, we will always have CM.

[Splinty]

2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Well I am ready to admit it if I am wrong. So in your experience, the Coalition tanks were crucial in Desert Storm?

Absolutely. We out ranged the Iraqi T 72Ms by quite a lot and that made all the difference at Medina Ridge. We stopped on a reverse slope and let them have it. 73 Easting was a much closer ranged fight, but the results were the same.

BTW Capt., I agree with you in terms of the tanks effect to cost ratio, I do think that this time the tank's primacy on the battlefield is almost over.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Splinty said:

BTW Capt., I agree with you in terms of the tanks effect to cost ratio, I do think that this time the tank's primacy on the battlefield is almost over.

And no one take this as me thinking it is good news.  I would have been very happy to see mechanized forces doing what we expect them to.  The bad news is that if they had, and if air power still worked along with it, Kyiv would probably look like Gaza as the RA would have rolled over them.

But in the face of significant shifts of some pretty fundamental stuff like surprise and mass we are kinda off the map.  Now I expect some renormalization as counter systems kick in but the speed at which miniaturization, computing power/machine learning and information technologies are advancing I am concerned that we could be playing catch up for some time.  It is in disruptive times like this that warfare gets pretty rocky.  

[Anthony P.]

On 11/21/2023 at 12:41 AM, The_Capt said:

Yes, people have been predicting the end of the tank since the 60’s….what if they were right?  We have never seen modern armor tested in an environment like Ukraine.  We talked and “exercised” a lot of threat reality away back in the 90s and leapt headlong into confirmation bias as we crushed Iraq (freakin Iraq?!).  I am strongly suspecting that the tank was in trouble back in the 80s.  As of 2023, the entire mechanized edifice is in trouble.

 

On 11/21/2023 at 4:07 AM, The_Capt said:

The bad news is that if they had, and if air power still worked along with it, Kyiv would probably look like Gaza as the RA would have rolled over them.

 

I think you might be coming at the argument from the wrong end.

Sure, Iraq wasn't a "neer peer", and Russian mechanised warfare didn't work in Ukraine (which really shouldn't have been a neer peer to the Russians)... but I'd argue that the "problem" isn't whether or not the enemy's been appropriate, but rather whether or not the initiating side was actually capable of coordinating and executing mechanised warfare.

Russia patently was not capable of that. They invaded Ukraine with a severely under trained, under equipped and incompetent army: the career force of professionals reorganised to more Western-ish standards (as opposed to old Soviet tech and doctrine) wasn't nearly as large and comprehensive as the Russians had made them out to be for so long; the graft and corruption was so bad that even supplies on hand had been stolen and sold by troops who thought they were just on exercise; and most of all, chronic under financing meant that no peacetime maneuvers of that scale which should've prepared staff and field officers had taken place since the collapse of the USSR. The Russians struggled with mechanised warfare even against Georgia, and that's a war they actually won.

Mechanised warfare worked in Iraq both times because the US military had capable of initiating it in the first place.

 

TLDR; mechanised warfare failing in Ukraine may have more to do with the actors attempting it lacking the means and training to pull it off, rather than modern technology making it impossible.

[The_Capt]

1 hour ago, Anthony P. said:

 

 

I think you might be coming at the argument from the wrong end.

Sure, Iraq wasn't a "neer peer", and Russian mechanised warfare didn't work in Ukraine (which really shouldn't have been a neer peer to the Russians)... but I'd argue that the "problem" isn't whether or not the enemy's been appropriate, but rather whether or not the initiating side was actually capable of coordinating and executing mechanised warfare.

Russia patently was not capable of that. They invaded Ukraine with a severely under trained, under equipped and incompetent army: the career force of professionals reorganised to more Western-ish standards (as opposed to old Soviet tech and doctrine) wasn't nearly as large and comprehensive as the Russians had made them out to be for so long; the graft and corruption was so bad that even supplies on hand had been stolen and sold by troops who thought they were just on exercise; and most of all, chronic under financing meant that no peacetime maneuvers of that scale which should've prepared staff and field officers had taken place since the collapse of the USSR. The Russians struggled with mechanised warfare even against Georgia, and that's a war they actually won.

Mechanised warfare worked in Iraq both times because the US military had capable of initiating it in the first place.

 

TLDR; mechanised warfare failing in Ukraine may have more to do with the actors attempting it lacking the means and training to pull it off, rather than modern technology making it impossible.

Ah yes, the "Russia Sux but We Don't" argument.  I don't buy it to be honest.  Russia did over extend but we are seeing far too many symptoms of something fundamental changing that cannot be explained by "Russian's simply do not get it".  And then there is the uncomfortable reality that if Russia doesn't "get it", then this Summer has shown that Western trained and equipped Ukrainians "don't get it" either.  That is far too many "not getting its" to make me question our high ground.

Read Kill Chain by Brose, he concisely points out that we walked away with some very bad lessons out of the Gulf War and Iraq 2003.  We learned in those wars that if someone tries to employ Soviet era dumb-mass against modern western mass, while we also can establish air supremacy, we will win, easily.

We merrily went on investing in bloated defence projects to buy slightly better versions of the military we already had.  Problem is that warfare itself shifted.  The lowering of entry costs for precision/lethality/range and ISR meant that anyone can project massive Denial in the modern battlespace.  A collection of dispersed MANPADs working via social media platforms can do what a multi-billion dollar IADS used to do.  Unmanned has essentially broken what we understood as military mass.  The largest shift has been C4ISR.  Ukraine created a home grown version of JADC2 in weeks. Battlefield Illumination is so high right now that tanks and heavy hot vehicles have to disperse or risk being hit at very long ranges.  One cannot employ surprise or tempo of one cannot mass before an opponent can do anything about it.  This is a significant problem for all conventional militaries around the world.

So looking ahead, our problem is not fighting Russia, it is fighting a force built and set up like the Ukrainian Army.  Our LOCs are exposed because we have to project a looong way.  Sustainment of our traditional manoeuvre forces is very expensive and vulnerable.  Even if we do find a safe haven, we are hot heavy and very visible.  

Here I will give you a tactical problem and you can please demonstrate how US superiority is going to play out.  The timeframe is now.

You are a Bn commander who needs to cross a water obstacle.  You are facing an opponent in a 3rd party nation that is fighting hybrid, is supplied by Chinese modern weaponry and is plugged into Chinese strategic and operational ISR.  We tried air supremacy but it was impossible because modern A2/AD systems are far to small and portable...the best we can achieve is local air superiority for short periods...over 5000 feet.  Below 5000 feet it is the Wild West - Chinese fully autonomous UAS are immune to EW that cuts the operator link.  They come in all sizes, each one carrying a DPCIM round.  The Chinese have supplied your opponent with the HJ-12, which is basically a Javelin knock-off with better range and killing power.  They have also provided them with long range artillery and rockets that look a lot like Excalibur and HIMARS.  They can see and hit you from beyond your range of conventional air cover.  They can see and hit you from tactical air cover we cannot stop. And they will see you.

Now go be "mechanized manouevrey".  If it sounds like a problem, well with the exception of "fully autonomous" it is exactly what the RA is facing right now.  Russia can't solve for this.  Ukraine can't solve for this.  To assume we can because "we are 'Merica/NATO" is extremely dangerous. 

[Anthony P.]

43 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Ah yes, the "Russia Sux but We Don't" argument.  I don't buy it to be honest...  And then there is the uncomfortable reality that if Russia doesn't "get it", then this Summer has shown that Western trained and equipped Ukrainians "don't get it" either.  That is far too many "not getting its" to make me question our high ground.

 

I'm not American, so I'd say I'm fairly immune from being accused of some inherent bias in that regard.

 

The Russian ground forces objectively do "sux". You simply cannot keep a half a million man army equipped mainly with Soviet era relics on a shoestring budget that rarely if ever carries out large scale exercises and is suffering from insane levels of corruption... and still have a competent army. It's just not within the realm of reality. Sh*t costs money and needs upgrades to work.

Of course Ukraine hasn't managed it either, how could they ever have? Only a few battalions were ever trained and equipped along Western lines and doctrine, and only quite recently at that. Their military too is plagued by corruption and antiquated Soviet doctrines: actually transforming the Ukrainian military to be an effective Western style military that could go toe to toe with Russia would have taken decades of stable Ukrainian democracy, as well as constant Western military and economic support throughout that period.

You can't achieve huge changes like that by training just a few battalions, in the middle of an active, costly war.

 

43 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

We merrily went on investing in bloated defence projects to buy slightly better versions of the military we already had.  Problem is that warfare itself shifted.  The lowering of entry costs for precision/lethality/range and ISR meant that anyone can project massive Denial in the modern battlespace.  A collection of dispersed MANPADs working via social media platforms can do what a multi-billion dollar IADS used to do.

 

Respectfully, that sounds an awful lot like the kind of nonsense we've heard for over a decade now about the supposed superiority of Russian tech over "bloated" Western tech like the F-35.

Dispersed MANPADS can absolutely, categorically and objectively not replace an actual IADS. If it had been able to do so, both sides wouldn't have been relying on dense IADS nets to practically shut down any enemy flights above low level. A MANPADS isn't going to do squat to a plane flying >15,000ft or cruise missiles. If there hadn't been a substantial IADS network in Ukraine, nothing would've stopped the Russian airforce from bombing at will or even conducting leisurely formation flight training at altitude above any kind of social media platforms coordinated MANPADS network.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Anthony P.

[The_Capt]

15 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

Of course Ukraine hasn't managed it either, how could they ever have? Only a few battalions were ever trained and equipped along Western lines and doctrine, and only quite recently at that. Their military too is plagued by corruption and antiquated Soviet doctrines: actually transforming the Ukrainian military to be an effective Western style military that could go toe to toe with Russia would have taken decades of stable Ukrainian democracy, as well as constant Western military and economic support throughout that period.

Ah so "Ukraine Sux"  Those "few battalions" are actually around 60 thousand troops by now and the main criticism has been that we are the ones "out of date".  But hey if everyone sucks and we don't we are just fine..right?

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-russia-training-nato-west-military/

Lot more of this out there.

To be fair "only" about 36k were ready for the summer offensive - that is about 10 brigades, give or take.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/politics/ukraine-military-training.html

18 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

Dispersed MANPADS can absolutely, categorically and objectively not replace an actual IADS. If it had been able to do so, both sides wouldn't have been relying on dense IADS nets to practically shut down any enemy flights above low level. A MANPADS isn't going to do squat to a plane flying >15,000ft or cruise missiles. If there hadn't been a substantial IADS network in Ukraine, nothing would've stopped the Russian airforce from bombing at will or even conducting leisurely formation flight training at altitude above any kind of social media platforms coordinated MANPADS network.

Maybe you should spend some time on the Ukrainian thread.  The Starstreak MANPAD has a ceiling of 23 thousand feet for starters so "leisurely" flight altitudes are no longer what they were.  It will be a matter of time until someone sticks that system on a UAS and then all bets are off.  Sure IADs are still in use, and will continue to be, but they do not explain why tac aviation has to stay 10+km back from the front line, along with the tanks.  The levels of mutual Air Denial are insane in this war and no small amount has been delivered by cheap very accurate portable systems. 

None of this solves for the unmanned problem, or the C4ISR problem.  Most amateurs start by trying to defend platforms but were are talking system level changes that run much deeper.  This has created an asymmetry that we have not seen for some time.  No point on arguing "if it is real" because we have to take it as real until proved otherwise, the risk is far too high.

If we want to succeed we need to essentially accept that we are behind the curve until we can prove definitively that we are not.  If we sit back after this war and go "ya but" a few thousand times, we are dooming ourselves to serious failures in the future - would it be that we never did that before (insert rolleyes).

I started this war like everyone else.  I had assumptions and suspicions, based largely on what I had seen in Iraq and Nagorno-Karabakh.  But hey I come from conventional warfighting schools and was ready to start thinking long run western supported insurgency -might be nice to be on the other side of that equation for once.  Then as we saw more and more evidence mount.  Force ratios did not add up, even accounting for Russian "sucking"; they could still marshal and project mass (they reached WW1 levels of fires at Severodonetsk).  Then we began seeing insane stuff like tac UAS chasing RA soldiers around trees to kill them.  It is just adding up too much and too far to be theatre specific.

The reality is warfare has shifted, it tends to do this, and we need to determine what is an anomaly of this war and what is enduring.  My sense is that this is WW1 as far as those shifts - half baked and last gen technology.  What comes next is far more impactful.  UGVs are just getting started.  Fully autonomous is happening right now.  ATGMs and self-loitering are seeing insane lethality rates at insane ranges.  A platoon can now hit at operational ranges with weapons like Spike LR.  That precious F-35 is not going to be beat by a superior Russian aircraft or multi-billion IADS - it is going to be blown out of the sky by 20 unmanned systems carrying cheap missiles, that all together cost a fraction of that the F-35 does.  That is if we can even keep the airfield it needs safe from whatever deep strike system that flies at bird levels, taking breaks to re-charge along the way. 

Here is what I suggest.  Take "Russia Sux" and "Ukraine Sux" and put them to the side.  Assume that they do not actually suck.  Now go spend some time at RUSI and ISW, and then come over to the Ukraine thread on the Black Sea forum.  Once you collect enough evidence and observations you will likely see that neither Ukraine or Russia "suck enough" to explain what has happened in this war...let alone explain what will happen in the next one.

 

[Anthony P.]

xxx

Edited November 28, 2023 by Anthony P.

[Anthony P.]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Ah so "Ukraine Sux"  Those "few battalions" are actually around 60 thousand troops by now and the main criticism has been that we are the ones "out of date".  But hey if everyone sucks and we don't we are just fine..right?

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-russia-training-nato-west-military/

 

Ukraine does also "sux" at much because again, it's a much smaller country which was thrown into war with a much larger neighbour at very short notice. You seem to interpret objective judgements about what can be achieved with very limited means as insults to national character. If all you can afford is a beat up second hand Volvo and you don't have much time to train, you won't do well competing in Formula 1.

The (obvious, I'd have thought) issue is that 60,000 soldiers trained over the course of two years soon aren't going to be one united group serving together: many of the first "batch" had become casualties or rotated out for other reasons by the time the second "batch" of Western trained Ukrainians arrived.

What you really should take into account is exactly how "Western training" can be qualified. As your first article plainly states, "NATO can only currently offer Ukrainian soldiers basic training". Basic training for individual soldiers obviously will not go any way towards changing doctrine in an army a quarter of a million strong.

A few months of basic training for a small number of soldiers is nothing compared to decades of institutional and doctrinal knowledge, training and experience at staff level, which is what actually affects real change.

The article goes on to state that battalion training and addon training is still performed mainly in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian doctrine, so even junior field officers are mainly being trained "Ukrainian" rather than Western.

 

Quote

Maybe you should spend some time on the Ukrainian thread.  The Starstreak MANPAD has a ceiling of 23 thousand feet for starters so "leisurely" flight altitudes are no longer what they were.  It will be a matter of time until someone sticks that system on a UAS and then all bets are off.  Sure IADs are still in use, and will continue to be, but they do not explain why tac aviation has to stay 10+km back from the front line, along with the tanks.  The levels of mutual Air Denial are insane in this war and no small amount has been delivered by cheap very accurate portable systems.

 

That's... we have a saying here that goes "as Satan would interpret the Bible" which comes to mind.

The Starstreak sure may reach 23,000ft straight up. So if you're flying at 23,000ft and the operator on the ground times his firing perfectly (to within a millisecond), he'll just exactly reach up and hit you, if you're so kind as not to take evasive maneuvers or use flares. That's not a substitute for a radar guided SAM which can knock down anything that comes within 75 miles (without having to be right above it).

Drones have carried IR missiles for several decades now. A Reaper took a shot at an Iraqi MiG with a Stinger during Desert Storm (and was promptly shot down in return by said MiG), and there's to date not been a single instance of a drone actually hitting anything with it... and obviously, the more capable the air to air munitions you stick on a drone, the larger and easier to find it'll be for actual fighters.

 

IADS very much explains those things. Ground attack planes and helicopters do still operate at low level/MANPADS range because those are systems which they can still survive dealing with, whereas neither side has been able to crack the opposing side's IADS to allow them to fly at medium/high altitude.

 

Quote

The reality is warfare has shifted, it tends to do this, and we need to determine what is an anomaly of this war and what is enduring.  My sense is that this is WW1 as far as those shifts - half baked and last gen technology.  What comes next is far more impactful.  UGVs are just getting started.  Fully autonomous is happening right now.  ATGMs and self-loitering are seeing insane lethality rates at insane ranges.  A platoon can now hit at operational ranges with weapons like Spike LR.  That precious F-35 is not going to be beat by a superior Russian aircraft or multi-billion IADS - it is going to be blown out of the sky by 20 unmanned systems carrying cheap missiles, that all together cost a fraction of that the F-35 does.  That is if we can even keep the airfield it needs safe from whatever deep strike system that flies at bird levels, taking breaks to re-charge along the way.

 

That is a whole lot of conjecture about "what's coming tomorrow" (assuming that it indeed will be operational and practical "tomorrow"), and not placed into the context of how militaries will adapt to them once they are in service.

Sure "UGVs are just getting starterd"... you might be optimistic about just how "just" that is. The people who flew the first UAVs in actual practical service did that so long ago that they're in retirement homes now, and UAVs still aren't close to actually fighting other planes... so judging by that timeline, how close are we actually to UGVs doing anything more than hauling supplies and performing limited scouting?

Sure a platoon can hit tanks at operational ranges... if they actually spot a tank that far out... and there's no infantry around in between them and the tank... and the tank crew hasn't bothered hiding it.

Sure 20 cheap UAVs can kill an F-35... if they find it... and catch up with it (how many cheap drones are trans, let alone super sonic?)... and aren't jammed, or shot down by IADS (stealth drones sure aren't cheap either) or manned fighters with actual radars and medium-long range missiles.

[Probus]

We have a whole thread dedicated to Ukraine in the Black Sea directory. 

[The_Capt]

34 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

Ukraine does also "sux" at much because again, it's a much smaller country which was thrown into war with a much larger neighbour at very short notice. You seem to interpret objective judgements about what can be achieved with very limited means as insults to national character. If all you can afford is a beat up second hand Volvo and you don't have much time to train, you won't do well competing in Formula 1.

The (obvious, I'd have thought) issue is that 60,000 soldiers trained over the course of two years soon aren't going to be one united group serving together: many of the first "batch" had become casualties or rotated out for other reasons by the time the second "batch" of Western trained Ukrainians arrived.

What you really should take into account is exactly how "Western training" can be qualified. As your first article plainly states, "NATO can only currently offer Ukrainian soldiers basic training". Basic training for individual soldiers obviously will not go any way towards changing doctrine in an army a quarter of a million strong.

A few months of basic training for a small number of soldiers is nothing compared to decades of institutional and doctrinal knowledge, training and experience at staff level, which is what actually affects real change.

The article goes on to state that battalion training and addon training is still performed mainly in Ukraine, according to Ukrainian doctrine, so even junior field officers are mainly being trained "Ukrainian" rather than Western.

You prove my point for me as you embrace your central premise.  So Ukraine, a second-hand Volvo military of corrupt Soviet era equipped and trained gaggle, held off the Russian military - which has higher defence spending than the UK even accepting corruption.  Held them off when facing 12:1 odds north of Kyiv and multiple enemy axis of advance, some penetrating over 200km into their nation...and that was before we started training them?  

So the sum total of your position is that "we are fine, nothing to see here" because Ukraine Sucks, but Russia really sucks?

Your statement about basic training essentially demonstrates your ignorance.  Basic training is likely the most critical and intensive training requirement for any force generation effort.  Taking that load off is 1) enormously important to sustaining the war effort and 2) set the foundations for follow on training.  Considering the incredibly shortened timelines to getting these soldiers to the front, basic training is likely THE most important training they will receive.

You also miss the fact that we have been training those poor simple Ukrainian officers in western staff colleges and schools for nearly a decade.  Their doctrine is our doctrine. 

34 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

That's... we have a saying here that goes "as Satan would interpret the Bible" which comes to mind.

The Starstreak sure may reach 23,000ft straight up. So if you're flying at 23,000ft and the operator on the ground times his firing perfectly (to within a millisecond), he'll just exactly reach up and hit you, if you're so kind as not to take evasive maneuvers or use flares. That's not a substitute for a radar guided SAM which can knock down anything that comes within 75 miles (without having to be right above it).

Drones have carried IR missiles for several decades now. A Reaper took a shot at an Iraqi MiG with a Stinger during Desert Storm (and was promptly shot down in return by said MiG), and there's to date not been a single instance of a drone actually hitting anything with it... and obviously, the more capable the air to air munitions you stick on a drone, the larger and easier to find it'll be for actual fighters.

 

IADS very much explains those things. Ground attack planes and helicopters do still operate at low level/MANPADS range because those are systems which they can still survive dealing with, whereas neither side has been able to crack the opposing side's IADS to allow them to fly at medium/high altitude.

  So wait a minute...we have a saying where I come from too, "sucking and blowing at the same time".  So the absolutely terrible "second hand Volvo" Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to field a layered IADs system to deny the airspace of all Ukraine pretty much from the start of this thing?  I mean, ok, I could buy the RA and RuAF, they invest billions and Ukraine had a pretty small Air Force to start with.  The failure of Russian airpower is now down to Russia Sucks, but somehow Ukraine Sucks at everything but creating a global class networked IADS in days?  They could do that but somehow the mystical dark art of combined arms manoeuvre eludes them? 

We can debate the future of AD and airpower all day, the blunt answer is "no one knows" but we need to figure it out.  My sense is that like other technologies the entry levels are lowering.  Creating an IAD system out of distributed lighter and cheaper but connected systems going to happen.  Why?  Because they can Deny air superiority.  They are much more difficult (and with MANPADS, basically impossible) to fully suppress....that is a their main feature and why people will invest in them.

34 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

That is a whole lot of conjecture about "what's coming tomorrow" (assuming that it indeed will be operational and practical "tomorrow"), and not placed into the context of how militaries will adapt to them once they are in service.

Sure "UGVs are just getting starterd"... you might be optimistic about just how "just" that is. The people who flew the first UAVs in actual practical service did that so long ago that they're in retirement homes now, and UAVs still aren't close to actually fighting other planes... so judging by that timeline, how close are we actually to UGVs doing anything more than hauling supplies and performing limited scouting?

Sure a platoon can hit tanks at operational ranges... if they actually spot a tank that far out... and there's no infantry around in between them and the tank... and the tank crew hasn't bothered hiding it.

Sure 20 cheap UAVs can kill an F-35... if they find it... and catch up with it (how many cheap drones are trans, let alone super sonic?)... and aren't jammed, or shot down by IADS (stealth drones sure aren't cheap either) or manned fighters with actual radars and medium-long range missiles.

And here we land on it.  They can spot the tank out at range...everyone can.  Here is the thing that most armchair generals completely miss, it is not about the platforms, it is how you pull them together.  The Ukrainian military is linked into the US and Western C4ISR, they can see everything. They have an integrated ISR system, from Tac UAS to satellites.  That is why nothing flies or drives or crawls without getting lit up.  Hell even the RA has enough ISR to deny Ukrainian mass we just saw that this summer.

That Ukrainian infantry platoon can see those tanks, after being cued by operational level, from 10kms away with their own UAS systems.  As to infantry support, I read a RUSI report that said a Bn would need to clear 25kms of linear frontage in order to "get between enemy infantry and tanks".  That is impractical and nearly impossible.

The enemy will see that F35 when it takes off.  It will get picked up by someone's cell phone.  That will cue other systems and voila, you get 20 UAS.

Conjecture on "tomorrow".  Another armchair general trope.  In Force Development there are levels of technological maturity used to determine how close these technologies are.  UAS are Tier 0 - they are already here en masse, in mass production and evolving fast.  UGVs are pretty much Tier 1 - into commercial production stages and already being fielded - there are social media feeds coming from Ukraine on how the UA has already fielded some.  Something like Nanotech is Tier 9, lot of conceptual but not even prototyped yet.  So that is not optimism, it is facing realities.

Here take a look: https://odin.tradoc.army.mil/WEG/List/ORIGIN_china--people-s-republic-of-d6ee02&DOM_land-53d795&DOM_infantry-vehicles-0a6516 

That is the US Army's TRADOC site, btw - before you go "pshaw" again. 

8 minutes ago, Probus said:

We have a whole thread dedicated to Ukraine in the Black Sea directory.

What he said.  If you really want to learn about where war is going head on over to the Black Sea thread and get an eyeful of where things are going.  Track it for a few weeks and then come back and we can discuss.   

Feel free to come on in and tell us all how it is....

[Anthony P.]

You can feel free to develop some fundamental social competence, and I'll bother continuing this with you.

As it is, I don't feel much like wasting time on a frankly rude stranger who seems mainly occupied with arguments of (dubious) authority and putting words in my mouth.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

You can feel free to develop some fundamental social competence, and I'll bother continuing this with you.

As it is, I don't feel much like wasting time on a frankly rude stranger who seems mainly occupied with arguments of (dubious) authority and putting words in my mouth.

Ok, a little huffy but good talk.  Dubious authority?  I have 35 years in the military and teach at a national war college (among other things), but hey you do you.

Edited November 28, 2023 by The_Capt

[Splinty]

4 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

You can feel free to develop some fundamental social competence, and I'll bother continuing this with you.

As it is, I don't feel much like wasting time on a frankly rude stranger who seems mainly occupied with arguments of (dubious) authority and putting words in my mouth.

NVM

Edited November 29, 2023 by Splinty

[Butschi]

4 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

As it is, I don't feel much like wasting time on a frankly rude stranger who seems mainly occupied with arguments of (dubious) authority and putting words in my mouth.

Come on, take a step back and think about what you are doing here. Those reputation points are not a very precise measure but The_Capt 10.4k vs Anthony P. 7 should tell you that a little modesty might be in order. Not to suck up to The_Capt but he has proven to this community that he knows what he is talking about. What are your credentials? Actually, I think he was very patient in answering your points, so I don't really get the "rude" here.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Butschi

[Anthony P.]

13 hours ago, Butschi said:

Come on, take a step back and think about what you are doing here. Those reputation points are not a very precise measure but The_Capt 10.4k vs Anthony P. 7 should tell you that a little modesty might be in order. Not to suck up to The_Capt but he has proven to this community that he knows what he is talking about. What are your credentials? Actually, I think he was very patient in answering your points, so I don't really get the "rude" here.

 

The responses were somewhat rude right off the bat, starting with a gross strawman ("oh so you just think they sux" in response to arguments which were clearly more maturely constructed than that) followed by red herrings and bandwagon fallacies ("oh come over to this thread then where loads of others agree with me and say that"), and ending with an appeal to false/single authority ("I have X years of experience") when I at last pointed out that he was responding rudely and not objectively to my arguments. There are literally thousands of people with similar experience, more relevant experience, or both: not only are plenty of them  bound to disagree, it's also a questionable argument to bring to a PC gaming forum (why would you debate in a forum where you know in advance that >99.95% of users lack that experience if you will use it as some "dealbreaker" whenever anyone has an opposing view?).

[The_Capt]

54 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

 

The responses were somewhat rude right off the bat, starting with a gross strawman ("oh so you just think they sux" in response to arguments which were clearly more maturely constructed than that) followed by red herrings and bandwagon fallacies ("oh come over to this thread then where loads of others agree with me and say that"), and ending with an appeal to false/single authority ("I have X years of experience") when I at last pointed out that he was responding rudely and not objectively to my arguments. There are literally thousands of people with similar experience, more relevant experience, or both: not only are plenty of them  bound to disagree, it's also a questionable argument to bring to a PC gaming forum (why would you debate in a forum where you know in advance that >99.95% of users lack that experience if you will use it as some "dealbreaker" whenever anyone has an opposing view?).

Heh.  Well if we want the healing to begin, my viewpoint was that someone went and Dunning-Krugered all over themselves and then got huffy when it was pointed out.  I have met your type all over the place.  Here is the the thing, not once did you ask for a reference or citation.  That means you already know what you want to know.  You re-started a conversation with a countered-viewpoint that lacked any outside objective references and then never once followed it up.  You simply state your opinion of Russian forces as fact from the get go...that was not a good start.

Start here:

https://prodev2go.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/rus-ukr-lessons-draft.pdf

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/stormbreak-fighting-through-russian-defences-ukraines-2023-offensive

https://static.rusi.org/359-SR-Ukraine-Preliminary-Lessons-Feb-July-2022-web-final.pdf

And come back with some actual fact to back up your position.   I rarely offer my resume and that is not even the interesting parts to be honest.  But either I am just an internet loudmouth who has an opposing view, and yours is all sewn up.  Or I know a lot more than you (it is possible though hard to imagine) and you might learn something.

If I was harsh on the "Russia Sux comment" because the internet is thick with that one, right along with Ukraine Sux.  Good lord entire armed services are falling back on that one so you can definitely find experts that agree with you.  It is an ill informed and highly biased position that masks a lot of what is really going on under the hood.  It also smacks of a western superiority bias.  But seriously, if you are interested in learning more, come over to the Ukraine thread (and trust me, not everyone agrees with me over there).

 

[Anthony P.]

19 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

You can feel free to develop some fundamental social competence, and I'll bother continuing this with you.

As it is, I don't feel much like wasting time on a frankly rude stranger who seems mainly occupied with arguments of (dubious) authority and putting words in my mouth.

What I said still applies: I'm not interested in "debating" this further with you due to the reasons outlined above.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

What I said still applies: I'm not interested in "debating" this further with you due to the reasons outlined above.

Aw, that makes me sad.  Ok, well I will come here then.  I have to be honest I have not kept up on the tactical developments of this one but let's get this thread back on track and give this conflict some love.

[The_Capt]

On 11/7/2023 at 12:15 PM, Bulletpoint said:

I've been thinking about what Hamas and their backers are hoping to get out of this war. Because they must have known it would end up like this. They are fanatics and indifferent to human life, but I don't think they are stupid as such.

Not really sure which explanation is more correct, but I think it must be one of these two:

1) It's basically one big suicide attack, involving the whole organisation. They are already used to do what they call "martyrdom operations", so maybe they thought they'd just all go out in a blaze of what they consider glory and take as many Israelis with them as they can. Also damage Israel's reputation by provoking them to attack civilian targets, which has already happened.

2) Or maybe Hamas actually think they can mount a proper defence against the Israeli army. The purpose of the hostages is to prevent Israel from simply flooding their tunnels, which would be their major weak point. And then Hamas thinks they can keeping fighting and ambushing their enemies inside Gaza for a long time. Maybe indefinitely, if they can keep supplies coming in through tunnels to Egypt? So basically moving the battle to a place where they have the home advantage.

 

Oh this is a good one.  As this thing unfolds over the news stream I have been asking myself the exact same question:  What is the Hamas strategy here?

If all war is a combination of certainty, communication, negotiation and sacrifice...what is the certainty calculus for Hamas?  What is the certainty that they are promoting and is in collision with Israel's certainty?  Israel is easy, security of the state (with a cynical byline that Netanyahu is also desperately trying to keep eyes off of the worst NS failure in that nations history).  To do that they are very much going to make Hamas no longer be.  Fully stated as a strategic objective, no surprises there.

But Hamas?  What was the game here?  I mean there is lobbing rockets and sending a few suicide bombers...and then there is 7 Oct.  They must have known that it was going to get the massive response.  What is happening in Gaza is a lesson on modern urban warfare but in the end there is no way Hamas can expect an attritional win.  The overmatch is just too high. 

My best guess is that (and this one is weird) for Hamas, sacrifice was the certainty.  A standard VEO/terrorism strategy is to induce the state to over-react and then hope it drives a larger resistance by the oppressed populace.  In the case of Hamas, they also had to have aims to try and widen the conflict to a regional level - I am not sure that is working out, never has really.

So strangely, Hamas appears to have adopted a victory-through-losing strategy.  If they can lose hard enough and visibly enough global sentiment will somehow shift in their favour.  We can already see the narratives collide here in Canada.  Our own PM did not know where to land.  Hamas is playing very hard to the human security doctrines of the west.  Ok, but what is the end-state?  For Israel it really appears they are looking at a clearing out and long term occupation, which could easily drag them into a long painful insurgency.  Unless they are not going to let the Palestinians back into Northern Gaza at all.

And we cannot discount the major blind spot in Clausewitzian theory: irrationality.  Or as I prefer to see it, relative rationality.  From Hamas' point of view this all makes perfect sense. Israel appears to be set on a very deliberate course of action and will negotiate with the rest of the world afterwards.  Hamas?  I am still not sure what the negotiation calculus is.  In the end, I am fairly sure that it is not a military victory - if that was the plan it was a bad one. They are roughly in the same position as ISIL was at Mosul and it did not end well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016–2017)

Urban terrain does not offer the same advantages seen in Ukraine.  Wizz bang UAS and other technology has limited value and frankly who is back-stopping Hamas?  And at what levels?  No one is providing Hamas with C4ISR architecture.  This will become a nasty tunnel and rubble fight (already has).  

So overall with regard to this war, I think I can see what Hamas is doing but I am still not sure "why".

[The_Capt]

On 10/31/2023 at 12:30 PM, Centurian52 said:

I've got to second @Anthony P. here. Boyd is not a source to be taken seriously. Same goes for Sprey and the rest of the reformer lot. If it turns out they've gotten something right about modern warfare, then it's more likely a "broken clock is right twice a day" sort of situation, than any real insight on their part.

But in the interest of not straying too far off topic, does anyone have any details on how the ground operation is going? Looking at liveuamap it looks like the Israelis are cutting a path between Gaza city and Al-Mughraqa. Looks like a good path to isolate Gaza city without having to engage in too much urban fighting just yet. Last report is a few hours old so it's possible that they've already reached the coast by now.

https://israelpalestine.liveuamap.com/

Gonna push back on this one just a bit.  The original article is actually quite interesting in that tries to unpack what led to the massive security failures of 7 Oct.  The idea that Israel became to dependent on high tech solutions that lowered the reliance on human expertise kinda rings true.

I mean is you teach the troops to just push the big red button in case of emergency.  Emergency happens and the press the button but it is broken...well what do you expect?

Boyd's point - "   “People, ideas, machines – in that order!”

Is the exact opposite of what a lot of RMA "reformers" (not sure why that is such a dirty word here) were proposing. A lot of US and western military reform in the 90s was aimed at somehow fighting and winning using less people. And substituting high tech in their place.  We already know that was a dead end and never really came to fruition even if political masters liked hearing it because it was 1) less expensive and 2) less risky.  It is also a good one here in an examination of what factors led to a failure of this scope and scale.

As to Boyd himself, meh.  His loop is fine, it has been updated a lot in the targeting world but the central premise of out tempo-ing an opponent having a significant cognitive component still hold true.  Looks like he served in Thailand at  Nakhon Phanom, which was a spooky base doing spooky things about the time he commanded there.  So not like he is completely ignorant of the business end.

[Centurian52]

Just know that I haven't read all the posts that have been made over the last day or so, so I'm not entirely sure what we're arguing about right now. I'm only responding to this one post.

1 minute ago, The_Capt said:

"reformers" (not sure why that is such a dirty word here)

It isn't a dirty word. It's just what that lot happened to call themselves. It's the individuals who make up the "reformers" that I take issue with. Not the label "reformer".

My biggest issues are with Sprey. That idiot kept insisting to his dying day that the A-10 was a good plane (it isn't), that the F-35 was a terrible plane (it isn't), and that he designed the A-10 and the F-16 (he didn't). I have fewer issues with Boyd. The OODA loop isn't terrible by military acronym standards, but those are pretty low standards. It certainly isn't very helpful. "Think and act faster than the enemy" is already a pretty simple idea to explain to someone, and telling them to "get inside the enemy's OODA loop" really doesn't help to clarify anything. Boyd still isn't someone I could recommend citing as a source if you want to be taken seriously.

26 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

A lot of US and western military reform in the 90s was aimed at somehow fighting and winning using less people. And substituting high tech in their place.

That's exactly how we approached WW2. That's not a reform. That's a continuation of how we'd been doing things since WW2 (unless there was a period in the Cold War where we stopped doing things that way?). The mantra at the time was "steel, not flesh", meaning that we wanted to do as much of the work as possible with machines and firepower, leaving the humans to do as little dying as possible. And it worked.

You can't substitute people entirely of course (at least not until automation gets a bit better than it is now). Sooner or later someone needs to go forward to actually take control of a piece of ground. Being an Allied infantryman in WW2 was still a brutal and attritional job, despite our best efforts to back him up with as much firepower as possible. But it was a heck of a lot better than being a German or Soviet infantryman.

Probably the biggest thing going on in the 90s was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the "peace dividend". We could get away with smaller armies not because new technology enabled smaller armies to be just as effective, but because there was no longer a threat that required a large army to guard against. Armies shrank because governments didn't see the point of paying for large armies anymore. Of course I could imagine that senior leadership at the time, looking at their shrinking armies and equipment stocks and with the responsibility of figuring out how to keep their armies effective anyway, would hope that technology could provide the answer. Which may be why you might have noticed an increased emphasis on technology to offset manpower in the 90s.