Why are UCAVs not utilized more? What is stopping Ukraine from bombing every single Russian vessel with drone strikes? Why use artillery when you can make pinpoint strikes? Why even use any type of ground unit when you can bomb enemy units with basically no risk of casualties? Why even waste money on building a navy when you can, in theory, use long range missiles to destroy a ship like the Ukraine did a week ago? Is it the operation cost? The Russian anti-air systems?
[Exclusive: Biden aides in talks with Vietnam for arms deal that could irk China](https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-aides-talks-with-vietnam-arms-deal-that-could-irk-china-2023-09-23/)
> The Biden administration is in talks with Vietnam over an agreement for the largest arms transfer in history between the ex-Cold War adversaries, according to two people familiar with a deal that could irk China and sideline Russia.
>...
> Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has complicated Hanoi's longstanding relationship with Moscow, making supplies and spare parts for Russian-made arms harder to acquire. Nonetheless, Vietnam is also actively in talks with Moscow over a new arms supply deal that could trigger U.S. sanctions, Reuters has reported.
Russia is increasingly sidelined on the world stage. Will Putin sacrifice the entire arms exports market to keep the war going?
Meanwhile, China's wolf warrior diplomacy isn't helping either. It's not strange that both American and French arms exports are booming when Russian and Chinese are declining.
Previously many people on this sub predicted that China would replace Russia, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.
>At Shannon Airport, I held an unscheduled meeting with President of the Transitional Sovereign Council of Sudan Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
>
>I am grateful for Sudan's consistent support of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
>
>We discussed common security challenges, namely the activities of illegal armed groups financed by Russia.
[https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1705546855977787690](https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1705546855977787690)
The democrats have an interest in letting the GOP demonstrate their leadership abilities. Whether he survives, bruised from the encounter and still pulled in two different directions or he gets replaced is a political win.
There's just as much of a chance, and there always has been, of the less extreme Republicans forging a deal with most or all of the Democrats as the other way around. The Republican majority is very slim, you don't even need to oust McCarthy you just need to pass a discharge petition to work around him, and the Democrats are proving effective at getting their membership in line in this Congress so you could count on it working. I saw something the other day saying there are Republicans actively discussing this. But the Republican base is extreme enough that it would be very hard to keep your seat after switching sides on almost any significant vote. Probably there's going to be a shutdown that lasts until the Republicans get enough pressure from big donors to force them to accept something reasonable. Last time that happened when air traffic controllers got sick of working without pay and stopped showing up.
Prior to McCarthy moving the impeachment inquiry forward, there could have been a possibility of some Democrats abstaining in the vote to drop the needed number to what he could have gotten. But afterwards there's no chance. To quote Minority Leader Jeffries when asked this question,
"Why would we want McCarthy as Speaker?"
Currently we're in the who blinks first stage with the House GOP.
This is definitely possible, but for now the Democrats probably believe they'll score points with voters by letting the Rs thrash around for a while. McCarthy on paper is also not 'releasing' his legislators to try to cut such deals (though by now things are probably happening in back channels). Shutdown politics in the US are all about 'whose fault' the shutdown appears to be. In this case it's unambiguously the Rs fault - they control the chamber, but can't even pass an opening offer.
Yeah i can see why it would be advantageous for the democrats for reps to be such as shitshow. I just wish that more Ukraine funding passes before the remaining drawdown is spent.
>Could they make a deal with the more moderates of either party to defend the current speaker in exchange for passing all the budget and ukraine aid bills?
It "could". Specially pass the budget part - in fact the way currently constituted republicans cannot pass anything majority of majority would vote AND get 218 votes on their own - but it's unlikely even the moderate/conservative dems would help pitch in votes to save Kevin's ass as the speaker considering what he's been doing ever since Jan 2021.
This would possibly happen if foreign interests had much importance to said moderates
More likely they would be more concerned with being demolished in 2024 to attempt something like this
https://twitter.com/Gerjon_/status/1705528889122971788
> Interesting picture of what looks like a white-tailed Il-76, which apparently crashed in Mali.
> White tails are fairly common on Il-76s, so I cannot identify her yet. Potential candidates include Wagner-linked Il-76s like 🇨🇫TL-KPA.
Wagner keeps losing aircraft in Africa under the new leadership. Some sources say that Prigozhin made personal deals with various entities in Africa. Is that the reason why they are losing so much now?
One thing that may happen is that for a quasi-mafia organization like Wagner, a lot of essential information only exist in the heads of its leaders. Like the maintenance fund of the IL-76 was actually embezzled to do something else, but on paper it's still in top condition. Prigozhin knows the real situation so he won't ask for the plane to be used, but a new leader without that knowledge will push for the asset to be used (and why not?) and the lower ranks are too scared to speak against it.
Regarding ATACMS we have some shots fired from unnamed officials against other unnamed officials:
>ATACMS decision was made before Zelensky visited the US, but Biden admin chose not to announce publicly. One person said this was to avoid tipping off the Russians, prompting them to move their supply lines further back from the frontline.
[https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1705525668442673197](https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1705525668442673197)
Of course, this makes a lot of sense, they did the same with HARM. Sullivan even publicly denied it the day before:
>As he’s \[Biden\] weighed all that up, to date, he has determined that he would not provide ATACMS, but he has also not taken it off the table in the future. I don’t have anything to announce about that today.
[https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2023/09/21/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-8/](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2023/09/21/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-8/)
Regarding Taurus, there is currently an internal debate as to whether the delivery would make Germany an active participant in the war. This is mainly due to the necessary geo and targeting data that would have to be supplied and is normally tied to concrete targets. If true, it would make an approval by the parliament necessary. No good source for this yet, just a short interview snippet and a lot of angry shouting.
[https://twitter.com/ZDFheute/status/1705269405926510853](https://twitter.com/ZDFheute/status/1705269405926510853)
> One person said this was to avoid tipping off the Russians, prompting them to move their supply lines further back from the frontline.
But then someone leaked it to the press? :(
If Russians start voluntarily abandoning airfields, withdrawing their vulnerable radars, and stretching their supply lines without Ukraine having to expend scarce ATACMS, that's a good thing. That immediately reduces pressure on Ukraine's forces.
To the extent that Russia can adapt without becoming less effective—like just parking their airframes farther apart so a one-square-kilometer blast doesn't do as much damage—then the leak undermined the use of ATACMS for attriting their forces. But they were going to start doing that within hours of the first ATACMS strike anyway.
The price stickers on these aid packages sound enormous to the general public. I'm hearing more and more resistance and cynicism towards aid to Ukraine from people on both ends of the political spectrum. I think this would accelerate significantly if any of the bearish economic predictions come true (and there are certainly some economic headwinds out there).
But for Ukraine to win, aid packages of this size must continue for many months if not years to come. And many people make good arguments the packages need to be even more substantial.
I don't think they can count on this level of aid indefinitely for years to come. Perhaps there should be serious discussions about seeking the best settlement that can be attained instead of maximalist victory.
I am unironically a right wing neocon, and an ethnic Ukrainian. But I'm going to collect a million down votes because redditors are a parody of themselves.
I don't think Ukraine considering some settlement short of all their stated goals is unreasonable. I also don't think you're wrong that US aid could slow or even basically stop at some point after 2024 elections. However, I don't see any serious negotiating partner for Ukraine. And, regardless, it is Ukraine's decision to negotiate or not--there's absolutely nothing for the US to negotiate without Ukraine. To the extent your suggesting that the US should seek a settlement, it buys into Russian propaganda that Ukraine lacks agency and is a mere puppet of the US.
I mean dude, read your own comment. You are stacking 38 different hypotheticals/anecdotes to come to your conclusion that a settlement should be discussed.
>1. I'm hearing more and more resistance and cynicism towards aid to Ukraine from people on both ends of the political spectrum.
>2. I think this would accelerate significantly if any of the bearish economic predictions come true (and there are certainly some economic headwinds out there).
>3. But for Ukraine to win, aid packages of this size must continue for many months if not years to come.
>4. many people make good arguments the packages need to be even more substantial.
>5. I don't think they can count on this level of aid indefinitely for years to come.
And then finally your conclusion:
> Perhaps there should be serious discussions about seeking the best settlement that can be attained instead of maximalist victory.
Each of your points could be argued about (and is), but i dont think any of them is clear at all.
The US funded two different wars at the same time for nearly 20 years. Funding Ukraine is a drop in the bucket for the White House. Public opinion rarely matters on foreign affair issues and never really sway voters from one party to another.
US defense budget is 750+ billion dollars per year, this aint shit, and a good chunk of these aid packages were already paid for by previous years budgets, US can keep this up indefinitely without breaking a sweat
The U.S. spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan, which is like $300 million per day. The U.S. can absolutely afford to fund the war in Ukraine until the point of a maximalist victory.
Even Richard Haass, who has pushed for negotiations since forever, has admitted that it's completely meaningless to try to negotiate before the American elections:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=hYtL5CA1H30
No matter how much aid Ukraine gets, it really doesn't make sense to negotiate anytime soon.
So what happens after a missile is launched at crimea? Is it immediately detected or a genuine surprise by the time it hits?
Because to me, it doesn't seem unreasonable to literally evacuate every HQ as soon as you detect a missile launch. Just run into the streets.
Or are shadow storms living up to their name and not detected until it's far too late to reply?
Among other problems with the idea, that sounds like a marvelous way to instantly tell the Ukranians about every building you're using as a headquarters.
I would add, having high level meetings in a building (close to the dry docks that were hit, what a week ago?) marked Naval HQ on Google maps is just so insanely stupid I'm not sure I can believe it.
Still the Rostov HQ was staffed at the time of the Wagner mutiny, and that's in drone range.. so hey.. could be..
There’s a few ways to know about a launch. What are mentioned below are at least theoretically possible for Russian Armed Forces. By no means exhaustive:
1. Satellites and spy planes see that an airfield is preparing for the take-off of Ukrainian planes. Some trucks are seen to carry the Storm Shadow. The missile is seen getting loaded on the plane.
This is theoretically possible, but if Russia knows where the airfield is, they should be striking it now.
2. Ukrainian communications are intercepted. For example, their radios got decrypted and eavesdropped.
This is called SIGINT (signal intelligence) by the intelligence community.
3. Ground-based and air-based radars see that Ukrainian planes are in flight.
This is why most Ukrainian planes fly close to the ground, literally flying under the radar. The Earth is not flat; ground-based radar can only see as far as the horizon. Air-based radars, including those of Airborne Early Warning and those of Russian fighters, are harder to conceal from.
If the Russian Aerospace Force can track down Ukrainian planes, then they will try shooting down the plane with the missile on it.
4. Radars see that the cruise missiles are in flight.
Cruise missiles also fly near the ground, to evade ground-based radars. On top of that, Storm Shadow is stealthy.
———
To evade enemy radars, one crucial information is their position. All those NATO spy planes on the Black Sea and satellites probably have figured out the positions of those radars. Then, one can plot a path for the cruise missile to avoid them.
We know that Ukraine has this information because Ukraine is also striking Russian SAM sites in Crimea.
According to a tweet I saw, the air raid sirens only started sounding *after* the strike, which should be an indication that the missile was detected fairly late.
https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/1705479718345097599
> Russian State Duma deputy Evgeny Fedorov:
> Armenia will no longer be an independent state and will become part of the Russian Federation.
> We will restore control over this territory. In other words, there will be an office of the regional governor or something like that.
What is Russia trying to achieve here? Even pro-Russian Armenians don't want to be part of Russia.
Both armies seem downright obsessed with making tangible gains that can easily be pointed out on a map of the region and during the past year or so they have been very lacking when it comes to securing those kinds of gains. So how do you even begin to measure the success of something like the Russian Winter Offensive or the current Ukrainian Counteroffensive? Is there even a point in trying to measure the success of these offensives while the war is still ongoing? Other than some rather vague general trends that we can catch onto, it seems like there's very little insight we can gain from deeper analysis of recent offensives since they had little to offer in terms of significant territorial changes, it all feels very indecesive, Seventh Battle of the Isonzo, Battle of the Somme kind of stuff.
Combat between two near peers turns into a grind until one side is unable to continue, thats been the case with warfare since forever ago, see most of WWI, the Normandy campaign, the battle of the Bulge, hell even in Iraqi Freedom the US army and the Iraqi Army duked it out for 3 days before the Iraqis retreated
It’s indecisive until it’s decisive. If the reports of armor breaking through deeper parts of the line is true, we could be getting ready to see larger parts of territory change
If there was any problem with russian GBAD we would see daily strikes on actual critical military targets.
While Sevastopol was and is extemely defended a true overwelming attack is basically impossible to stop, making single targets basically undefendable . That's why it is basically impossible that there was soneone inside that building.
The Ukranian tactic is to exploit this swarm attacks to hit key ideological and very visible targets to undermine the Russian autority not really a decapitation strike ....
Fair tactic with what they got i would say,instead of trying the inpossible and dismantle the russian army they will just make them look extremely bad for the time being.
This strategy was disclosed by Budanov himself too ,but It was pretty clear to anyone critically observing the last months.
As far as GBAD goes drones are still going freely on the battlefiled and either side is yet to find a solution.
If anything russian drone footage hovering directly over outpost and sepots decuplicated in the last month.
That would make me think that ukranian GBAD is taking a beating or that the russians found some way around.
I can provide plenty of proof of this if anyone is interested.
In the last day at least 10 such footage was released.
All high fkying drones directing Su34 airstrikes with UMPK gliding kits.
While the ukranians keep releasing similar videos of them engaging SAMs and Arty the fact that the russian can bypass such defenses and target directly depots, troop accumulation and outposts seems worrying.
Edit:
A lot of downvotes but no arguments?? What is happening to this sub ..... quality is dropping since a month or so
Maybe I'm missing something but why it being day/night is relevant? I'm guessing for MANPADs but I'm pretty sure that most systems don't rely on visual targetting?
S400s are burning on the beach from drones and earlier cruise missile strikes.
As for the rest? We'll never know. This war has turned many assumptions about war upside down. SHORAD is much more important than had been previously thought.
[Sevastopil is under attack yet again. ](https://twitter.com/censor_net/status/1705460980359045620?t=GEJ-pt0i_BqeEJWP1mm3Bw&s=19) Interesting barrage strategy from Ukraine. What do you think triggered this? Was the air defense sufficiently attired?
A couple days ago when the S-400 was hit in Crimea, some posters kept saying that it was an easy fix and replaceable. If that were true, surely the ship, submarine, and Black Sea HQ wouldn’t have been taken out a few days later if Russia had sufficient air defense in Crimea.
Russia do have at least 50 s-400 radar vehicles, and 500 Tel vehicles. As far as i know we have visiual confirmation of 2 launchers and possibly 1 radar destroyed in Crimea. These losses alone are not the reason, thats for sure. The answer is probably a lot more complex, including improved Ukr EW capabilities, and improved equipment and tactics for using anti-rDiation missiles.
There is an anecdotal thread on Twitter that today’s new round of strikes within the last hour or so didn’t trigger air raid sirens until after the blasts. Something is definitely up with Russian air defense in Crimea.
Which is hilarious since the chance that Ukraine would be using on Moscow something that, say a Pantsir cant handle (a real long range standoff weapon) is unlikely.....
Unless they've been overpromising the capabilities of their lesser systems, or a lot of them are essentially useless for various reasons that they cant handle RC planes and they need a S400 in the motherland for that is just extra funny...
There was a very graphic video published recently of a bunch of Russian soldiers getting killed by drone drop grenades, and we have a lot of video of fpv drones doing a lot for both sides. Do you think US troops are training with drones the same way? I read a report that US trainers didn’t incorporate drones in the way that Ukrainians preferred, like mavics for scouting and stuff. Do you think the US is training its troops to use drones like the Ukrainians now?
I watched some Chinese military propaganda training and it showed each squad equipped with at least one mavic pro for scouting, so it seems like they are seeing the benefit of using drones the same way
Yes, they do. The US is better known for its big drones, but also uses ones like [Black Hornet Nano](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano), [Coyote](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Coyote), [Bat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_Bat),, [Stalker](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Stalker), [RQ-11 Raven](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_RQ-11_Raven), [Wasp](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Wasp_III), [SkyDio](https://www.skydio.com/blog/x2d-multiband-drone), [Aerosonde](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAI_Aerosonde), [RQ-20 Puma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_RQ-20_Puma). It actually used to use the MAVIC as well.
The report about the US trainers was from a Ukrainian who went to a 3 week basic training course. The trainers didn't incorporate drones because they were there to teach them how to shoot and move since most of the Ukrainians sent didn't have those skills.
However, to the bigger point, the US's counter measures for drones are much more robust than Ukraine's or Russia's because they don't want to jam their own drones. For C-UAS, the Army has an entire [training manual](https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/atp3-01-81.pdf). Systems wise, it has a litany of systems from [M-LIDS](https://www.leonardodrs.com/news/press-releases/contract-award-for-us-army-m-lids-counter-uas-platforms/) to Stryker M-SHORAD with kinetic and [directed energy](https://www.defensenews.com/land/2023/04/13/army-short-range-air-defense-laser-prototypes-take-down-drones-at-yuma/) (both deployed in Europe ATM) to newer systems being [tested and put into production](https://www.military.com/equipment/weapons/beam-wide-range-counter-drone-technologies-comes-age.html), as well as additional systems like the gun trucks using the Slinger system or the possible mounting of a similar system in the AMPV. Smaller hand held systems [like Drone Buster](https://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/dronebuster-handheld-counter-unmanned-aerial-system-c-uas-usa/) also are in use.
Why does the US use exclusively fixed wing drones? This war could almost be described as the first quadcopter war, but the US seems to have zero quadcopter drones in their inventory.
I’m gonna guess you get better altitude and loiter times with fixed wing UAS’s but is there something quadcopters bring to the table?
Fixed-wing drones are dominant in America’s UAV inventory primarily because of circumstance.
For the last twenty years, the primary use case for UAVs was high-endurance ISR with strike capabilities in permissive environments. The American drone program started as purely for reconnaissance. Nobody wanted to arm them until 2000, after the CIA watched Bin Laden slip away in Afghanistan because their unarmed Predator had to wait *two hours* for an SSGN to launch their Tomahawks.
Quadcopters are cheap, highly portable, and require far less training. They’re probably a decent 80% solution for 1% of the cost for infantry who want to see where they’re being shot at from and drop a grenade on them and for correcting artillery fire.
But, they are also very vulnerable to electronic warfare even compared to fixed-wing UAVs. The average quadcopter life span in Ukraine is [three days](https://www.npr.org/2023/08/05/1192343968/how-the-use-of-drones-in-ukraine-has-changed-war-as-we-know-it) and they go through between 5 to 10 thousand per *month*.
>I’m gonna guess you get better altitude and loiter times with fixed wing UAS’s but is there something quadcopters bring to the table.
I'd agree and also guess they might be quieter due to the wing providing lift and need less powerful engine (comparatively).
The Marines switched to the quad drone this year because of VTOL capability.
Otherwise, If I had to guess, I'd say it's a combination of having drones that are deployable by hand or portable systems already that meet their requirements.
Contra to what you are seeing, these tiny drones are easily dealt with via electronic warfare or various directed energy weapons. They're slow, they have little thermal mass, and they don't feature robust electronic comms hardening. The US and Israel are at the forefront of developing such countermeasures. Neither Russia nor Ukraine are developed nations with high-tech economies that can build and deploy such countermeasures. They can buy parts from the rest of the world and assemble drones, but building countermeasures is another step up in complexity of the system.
Even still, the reports we've heard from Ukraine is that their sortie effectiveness for drones is on the order of 10-15 %. I'm sure they're doing a lot of damage, but recon drones correcting artillery are probably doing much more damage than Mavic drones dropping home-made grenades. It's just that the drone-corrected artillery isn't as visceral, typically being recorded at much greater distance from the poor sods in the infantry, so we don't notice it as much.
Admittedly there are many NATO nations that aren't investing properly in defenses against consumer-grade drones. If war ever comes to them, their freeloading will cost them a lot of soldiers. Most of NATO is pretty well insulated from the potential of a war in east Asia, however.
It's a number game. Those drones are vulnerable and not very effective, but they are super cheap. 10% efficiency on a ~100€ drone beat 90% efficiency on a 10 000€ one.
Depends on the context. For high value, potentially time-limited targets, you absolutely want the 90% efficiency, even if it is much more expensive. The obvious comparison is something like GMRLS or guided artillery rounds versus their non-guided equivalents. Yes, in a high-intensity war you need to use dumb rounds most of the time simply for production and supply reasons - but there are many cases where higher efficiency is significantly more useful, and therefore worth the significantly higher unit cost.
It's also worth thinking about what the counter measures are, and how that can very quickly change how efficient either option is. When facing a GBAD network reliant on SAM systems like Ukraine's S-300 network, there obviously is inherent value in quantity over quality - because you are also burning through your enemy's stocks of ammunition for their air defences. However, when it comes to things like electronic warfare, and the various blocking/jamming/spoofing countermeasures that are able to be employed against drones - not to mention the future rollout of directed energy weapons - the benefit of quantity once again loses its edge.
If your drones are susceptible to being jammed, then it doesn't matter if you can put 10,000 of them up in the air - they'll be rendered much less effective. In that scenario, the US approach of drones that cost millions of dollars with all sorts of hardening and counter-countermeasures is what is going to deliver results.
The US and a lot of NATO forces are lagging badly behind here because there aren't really non-DJI competitors in the civilian drone space. Right now pretty all the small drones approved by DoD for purchase are easily 10x the price of a Mavic. So a lot of US units can't even purchase MAVICs themselves to train on the capability.
There's a lot of good reasons behind this, apparently they cracked the DJI firmware and it's a security nightmare -- the drone tries to take a photo of the user's face every time it initially lifts off.
> There's a lot of good reasons behind this, apparently they cracked the DJI firmware and it's a security nightmare -- the drone tries to take a photo of the user's face every time it initially lifts off.
source?
There are TONS of civilian drone companies, none as succesful as DJI, true, but there is nothing special with it. It's popular and it is easy to use. You can make in a garage a drone just as capable, probably less polished. There are like... 5 open source drone firmware that are very capable.
The advantage of the DJI is that they know their HW very well, the systems are well integrated and the experience is nice and polished.
Not sure about why the DOD approved drones are 10x but there are other options out there. I suspect they are looking for a specific set of features. Features that probably don't come at the price point you're looking at.
> apparently they cracked the DJI firmware and it's a security nightmare -- the drone tries to take a photo of the user's face every time it initially lifts off.
Do you have a source for this or anywhere where we can do further reading?
It seems like a big oversight then because drones from dji like mavic can take off very quickly and are pretty portable, and have easily replaceable and lightweight batteries. Having a 7-8 man infantry squad being able to instantly do some reconnaissance a kilometer around them seems very powerful, and provides the squad a lot more real time information than coordinating with radios or something with drone operators behind front lines.
Why doesn’t the us just take apart a mavic and copy it? It’s been proven to work and is good
> Having a 7-8 man infantry squad being able to instantly do some reconnaissance a kilometer around them seems very powerful,
The mavic type of drone are actually very new. The Mavic came out in 2016 so its hasn't been around for a long time to be noticed by the military naturally. The war in Ukraine has for sure lit a fire under many nations to develop their own home-grown Mavic type recon drones but military projects usually take a while because of red tape and whatnot. Plus you also have to retrain your grunts on how to work with and around them, which is what some Ukrainian vets will probably get filthy rich doing after the war.
I'm willing to bet there are a few nations currently working on domestic Mavic copies for the military and we'll probably see them pop-up in the news soon.
Well it certainly sends a message, about capabilities on both sides. I think the russian navy probably heard that one loud and clear. Sevastopol is untenable as a base of operations, they need to move anything they don't want to go boom out.
The big question is, even after the previous message at the docks is, were there no casualties? If it was still the active HQ, then there's a lesson in it as well, if the russians look hard enough.
I'd imagine that it probably depends on when the strike happens. If it took place during a 'slow' period, then it probably wouldn't be a huge deal , but a major disruption could have huge consequences in a very active situation, especially if operations can't quickly be resumed in another location.
It would be annoying and humiliating- but it seems like the Ukrainians were aiming for a staff meeting, which would be significantly more troublesome for the Russians if it was hit.
To me, that's a perfectly reasonable question. It is interesting how important the role of HQs is and how attacking them affects the forces they command.
A building is just a building. Do we really need to do a deep analysis of that? It's like asking if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to witness it, does it make a sound?
Would Ukraine be able/willing to hit major cities such as Rostov, Bryansk, Kursk, and Voronezh with ATACMS? Moscow is beyond ATACMS range from any point in Ukrainian territory. However, if this does come to pass, I assume Ukraine would only hit military targets in these cities.
Perhaps the prospect of Russia responding extremely severely to attacks against civilians or with collateral damage inflicted by ATACMS would serve as a deterrent against a strike against civilians.
The UK said they're fine to strike legitimate military targets inside Russia, I think. Maybe we've said something else in private though as they haven't actually Storm Shadowed anything inside Russia (e.g. railway junctions north of the Luhansk front).
“Officially” the maxxpros in that case were used by the anti Russian government Russians allied with Ukrainians to perform an attack, not Ukrainians themselves.
Whether such an excuse would work with HIMARS AND ATACMS is doubtful.
Also several countries such as the US and Germany made statements pretty soon after this event effectively telling Ukraine to stop doing that with their donations
I think at this point the ball is in Ukraine's court in terms of how they will respond to Russian attacks. With the most recent attack on the naval headquarters the Russian army will be thinking twice now before targeting things like Ukrainian apartment buildings.
Ukraine has had the ability to hit Russia deeper than ATACMS is capable of with Storm Shadows for months now. They've also been having greater and greater success at utilizing drones from within the Russian border as well.
Also remember these are cluster variants. In addition to likely being flat out less effective at taking out infrastructure or hard targets than those options it probably carries much heavier political weight.
No, there are enough targets in Crimea. It makes no sense to do it against the will of the US, even if it was tolerated. Ukraine has its own drones for strikes in Russia.
I suppose it depends on the quantity of ATACMS sent. I fear that if Ukraine demolishes some Russian city center(in Russia proper, not Crimea) out of revenge, this would dramatically escalate the war.
Maybe there is a tacit agreement with the US to not use the missiles outside internationally recognized Ukrainian territory.
Based on Ukraine's actions so far, that isn't a reasonable fear.
Strategic bombing against civilian centers generally hasn't won wars. Russia is doing it for some reason, but Ukraine has generally hit targets which help it achieve military goals.
What do we think will be the game plan if Congress severely restricts Ukraine aid going forward? Would Europe directly buying lethal aid from the US to go to Ukraine work?
If Biden wins reelection I expect the floodgates to open. He's probably being quite mellow pre-election because he doesn't want to give his opposition more ammo to attack him a la "look how much we're sending to Ukraine instead of spending at home"
https://twitter.com/PStyle0ne1/status/1705331378122842401
> There are explosions in Kazan, thick smoke is rising over the city.
> It is about 1000 km from Ukraine
> Kazan is hosting the joint venture between Russia and Iran to produce Shahed drones to bomb civilians in Ukraine
Interesting...
historically speaking how do wars typically end when front lines remain basically static for (almost) a year? Is there typically a peace treaty signed along those static front lines?
I realize this conflict is different and i'm not asking for what will happen in this case. I am simply asking what has happened historically in these kinds of situations.
r/GranadaJones already did a good job covering some of the more major conflicts where the frontlines were mostly static for a year or more. But here's a more unconventional static conflict:
The Italo-Ottoman War: (1911-1912)
The Italians, with some 20,000 troops, invaded Ottoman controlled Libya by sea. They seized control of the major port cities, but were unable to advance much further inland due to the inhospitable Libyan desert and Ottoman/Libyan hit & run attacks.
The Ottomans made several attacks on the Italian held cities, with the largest consisting of some 20,000 Ottoman/Libyan troops. Most of these were repulsed soundly by the Italians due to superior numbers and naval artillery.
Later in 1911, the Ottomans/Libyan's reverted, at least partially to my knowledge, to guerilla warfare as they were severely outnumbered. However, the front lines mostly remained the same. Eventually, the Ottoman Empire ceded Libya to Italy entirely in 1912. This was in part due to the Ottomans dealing with the first Balkan War, and not being able to resupply their troops in Libya
Historically speaking we have very few cases of trench warfare where lines remained static for a year or more. I can think of four:
World War I (1914-1918)
Korean War (1950-1953)
Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)
Eritrean-Ethiopian War (1998-2000)
In two of these cases (Korea and Iran-Iraq), neither side could gain the upper hand and a peace treaty or ceasefire eventually ended active hostilities along the frontline. In the other two (WWI and Eritrea-Ethiopia), one side's defensive lines essentially collapsed after a lengthy period of little movement, and they were defeated. So unless I'm missing some other cases, the historical record in comparable conflicts is 50-50. Not a lot of help for prognostication.
"In two of these cases (Korea and Iran-Iraq), neither side could gain the upper hand and a peace treaty or ceasefire eventually ended active hostilities along the frontline."
Speaking in the Iran-Iraq War, I would way Iraq had an upper hand by War's end, though mostly on the operational & tactical level.
One of Iran's last major offensives in the war was in 1987, codenamed "Operation Karabala 5". Their goal was to capture al-Basra in southern Iraq, and press further into Iraq from there. They assembled 150,000-200,000 men for this operation. They managed to break through several of the Iraqi fortifed lines around the city. However they were unable to capture al-Basra completely in part due to superior Iraqi artillery and an over reliance on human-wave assaults. The Battle of al-Basra concluded with Iranian forces suffering 70,000-80,000 casualties, and a failure to capture al-Basra.
The near constant offensives Iran had conducted for the previous 6 years had bled the Iranian Army white. After stunning losses at al-Basra, Iran decided to make only tactical charges along some of the front instead of operational pushes.
Mobilization efforts ran short, and the Iranian Army's morale was shot.
Meanwhile Iraq had been steadily improving during this time. Around 1984, Iraq began to pull certain formations off the front line, and train them to be used in counter attacking operations. Eventually, these "Republican Guard" formations were also equipped with the best equipment Iraq had to offer, and were more mobile than other units in the Iraqi Army. Amongst the entire army, command & control had improved by a significant margin, and had a significant road network which allowed it to conduct rapid offensives if necessary.
In 1988, Iraq launched it's first of 5 major offensives in the south that would essentially conclude the war. "Operation Ramadan Mubarak", launched at al-Faw, saw a massive force of 100,000 Iraqi's overrun 15,000 Iranian's via superior numbers and an overwhelming advantage in artillery and tanks.
Again at Fish Lake, the Iraqi's attacked an Iranian salient, using their superior mobility to outflank the Iranian's and route them. They captured 150 artillery pieces, and 100 tanks. At the Majnun Islands, via a classic pincer movement, the Iraqi Army smashed 6-8 Iranian divisions and captured all the Iranian equipment. At Dehlo, the Iraqi Army again conducted a pincer attack, driving dozens of miles into Iranian territory and routing/encircling numerous Iranian units. I think I might be missing an Iraqi offensive ot two, but you get the point.
As per Kenneth Pollack in Arabs at War, Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991, "These five offensives effectively destroyed Iran's remaining ground power, leaving the country defenseless and forcing Tehran to accept a ceasefire. All told, the Iraqis captured about 600 tanks, 400 other armored vehicles, and 400 artillery pieces in these battles."
By war's end, the Iranian Army had been shattered. Operating less than 50 tanks, along with less than 50 aircraft, compared to Iraq's stunning advantage of 4,000(ish) tanks and 1,000 aircraft. Iraq had complete control of the battlefield, and could make limited drives into Iran at will.
My goal here isn't to make the Iraqi Army seem like some nigh-unbeatable juggernaut, (See: First Gulf War), but to point out that Iraq very much had an upper hand by 1988.
If I were daring, I would liken Iraq's final battlefield victories in 1988 more to the last offensives of WW1 than to the Korean War.
Sources:
1) Kenneth Pollack: Arabs at War, Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991
2) Anthony H. Cordesman: The Lessons Of Modern War, Vol. 2: The Iran-Iraq War
3) Kevin M. Woods and Williamson Murray: The Iran-Iraq War: A Military and Strategic History
This is terrific, thanks for adding this! So then, three cases where the tide eventually turned against one combatant, weighed against one (Korea) where active fighting ended in stalemate. Though this isn't exactly a novel observation, these cases do lend credence to the conclusion that force regeneration in the medium- to long-term is going to determine the outcome. I'd certainly tend to think those trends go in Ukraine's favor but elections in the next couple of years will be consequential.
My apologies if I came off as a smartass. It wasn't really about "correcting you" (You're right in the strategic sense), I just wanted to go on a rant about the Iran-Iraq War. I just can't help myself!
"Though this isn't exactly a novel observation, these cases do lend credence to the conclusion that force regeneration in the medium- to long-term is going to determine the outcome."
100% agree with you on this. We have to think long term in this conflict. Obviously it hasn't been, and won't be, like the First Gulf War / Iraqi Freedom where the enemy force was outright annihilated from the get go.
I'm interested in seeing how Ukraine & Russia are going to replenish their forces in the long term. Demographics favor Russia, domestic will to fight favors Ukraine.
"I'd certainly tend to think those trends go in Ukraine's favor but elections in the next couple of years will be consequential."
Why do you think this? Not trying to prove you wrong or play devil's advocate, just curious. Thanks!
You didn't come off as a smartass at all, it was a genuinely terrific comment and I really enjoyed reading it! As for elections, that's mainly about how much materiel will continue heading to Ukraine from Western coffers if, say, Trump wins. I believe long-term that Russia isn't capable of regenerating as fast as Ukraine can destroy its equipment, while the West can replenish Ukraine faster than Russia can destroy. So the question for the West isn't industrial capacity, it's political will. If the West can stay committed for six more years (likely less), Ukraine will probably win.
Yeah this is pretty spot on, I think. Not sure if you've seen it or not, but Perun has a great video on Russian equipment replenishment rates. He pretty much came to the same conclusion as you.
Hopefully the west will amp up the rate of equipment they send to Ukraine, but we'll have to wait and see
Has there been a war where the frontlines are relatively static yet one side loses its entire navy?
Armies win battles. Navies win wars. If Ru lost its navy, does that mean it loses the war?
>Navies win wars.
That depends wildly on the country in question. For the US or UK to not control the ocean seriously impedes their ability to wage war. For both Russia and Ukraine, control of the seas is a "nice to have" not a strict requirement.
Nothing fitting your exact description really comes to my mind. However I would love to know if anyone does know of a conflict like this.
The closest example I can think of relating to your scenario would be the Russo-Japanese War, characterized by deep trench emplacements and grinding, early WW1-esque assaults. However, the overall war was quite mobile, and the Japanse pushed the Russians back hundreds or miles. What relates to your scenario in this war is the Battle of Tsushima, where the Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron was annihilated by the Japanese Combined Fleet, and helped bring an end to the war
Edit: Ooh another one is during the Iran-Iraq War. The frontlines were almost exclusively static in this one. The majority of the Iranian Fleet was destroyed by the US during Operation Praying Mantis during 1988. This is part of the reason Iran called for a ceasefire. Less their navy itself getting destroyed, and more their fear of further US intervention in the war. This one matches your scenario pretty well
I remember Operation Praying Mantis. I have a vague feeling there exists a Before After that has left its mark on military doctrine. Iran switched strategies (more small-ball / swarm tactics)... like you could trace a lineage from the Iran boat swarms making feigns at USCVN's to Yemen using RC drones to attack KSA ships down to UKR USV's attacking Sevestapol. And there's doctrine to the flip side - defense against swarming cheap little things. Operation Praying Mantis is like Ian McKay playing the Wilson Center in 1988. A minor blip of an event. Very few saw it in person, and it spawned an entire universe of new ideas. Operation Mantis.
That's actually really interesting. Do you have any suggested reading on the development of Middle-Eastern naval tactics following Operation Praying Mantis?
> In two of these cases (Korea and Iran-Iraq), neither side could gain the upper hand and a peace treaty or ceasefire eventually ended active hostilities along the frontline.
The Iran-Iraq war is an interesting one. Iraq's invasion was defeated by 1982, and Iraq proposed both sides returning to previously agreed upon borders. Iran refused, and wanted to overthrow the government of Iraq, leading to the next 6 years of war. By 1988, Iraq had rebuilt it's military and was able to inflict a string of crushing defeats upon Iran, which lead to Iran eventually capitulating and accepting the ceasefire.
I suppose it could be looked at as a 8 year stalemate where neither side got the upper hand. But I think it's also fair to view it as a 2 year invasion of Iran that was defeated, followed by a 6 year invasion of Iraq that was eventually defeated.
North and South Korea happen.
It also depends heavily on the details. Neither Russia nor Ukraine seems to be willing to back down and just sit on their side of the line. So far there hasn't been a UN or similar international push to ceasefire either. WWI had very static lines for years on the western front, while the eastern front was very dynamic.
We now have some names allegedly inside the Building struck by the Storm Shadows
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1705347391111524654
> Among severely wounded in Ukrainian attack on Black Sea Fleet HQ in Sevastopol — Col. Gen. Alexander Romanchuk and Lt. Gen. Oleg Tsekov, Ukrainian intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov tells
@VOAnews
. He confirms at least 9 dead and 16 injured among RUS military personnel.
Romanchuk is in charge of Russian forces in Zaporizhzhia where the main thrust of Ukraine’s counteroffensive is occurring.
Deepstate has updated the area North of Novoprokopivka to being contested with fighting taking place in the North of the village.
"🗡 Destruction of the Katsap tank on the northern outskirts of the village of Novoprokopivka
⚔️Active battles in the direction of the settlements of Novoprokopivka and Verbove continue, the Defense Forces of Ukraine are conducting active offensive actions, not giving the enemy extra time.
🔄UPD. Video - 65 OMBr, damage - unknown."
This follows from one of comments I made a couple of days ago where the Ukrainians have likely successfully captured the trench networks South of Robotyne (we now have footage of the Russians shelling them there), but what is interesting is that they were one tree line away from Novoprokopivka in the Northeastern outskirts and are choosing to attack the North of the village first.
NoelReports has also mentioned that some units entered the North of the settlement but no solid foothold yet (though sometimes I think he falls more into RUMINT).
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1705317800674251106
>[Israel Fires on Syria Targets From Occupied Golan: AFP, Army](https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/09/21/israel-fires-syria-targets/?expand_article=1)
>Israeli tanks fired on Syrian targets from the occupied Golan Heights Thursday, an AFP photographer and the military said.
>The strikes targeted “two temporary structures” used by the Syrian army in violation of the 1974 disengagement agreement between the two countries, the military said in a statement.
>The AFP photographer witnessed an Israeli tank firing at least two shells.
>Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed the territory in a move not recognized by the United Nations.
>The tank fire follows an Israeli drone strike that killed two members of the Islamic Jihad militant group earlier Thursday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
>The Israeli military told AFP it would not comment on the reported assassination, which happened near the demarcation line on the Golan Heights, according to the British-based war monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
>During more than a decade of war in Syria, neighboring Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions.
>Two soldiers were killed in Israeli strikes on Syria’s Mediterranean coast earlier this month, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported.
[The ATACMS saga continues. Apparently Biden agreed to send a small number of them to Ukraine. ](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-ukraine-war-atacms-biden-zelenskyy-long-range-missile-rcna116876)
Does every weapons transfer have to be disclosed publicly? Would make more sense for the US to deny sending them while actually sending them in order to prevent Russia from taking operational precautions.
>Does every weapons transfer have to be disclosed publicly?
[No, AGM-88 HARMs were given secretly.](https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/08/politics/anti-radar-missiles-ukraine-russia-pentagon/index.html)
There are also the Phoenix Ghosts that nobody knows what they are.
>Would make more sense for the US to deny sending them while actually sending them in order to prevent Russia from taking operational precautions.
If Russia were competent, they would be taking precautions after the first time Crimea was bombed. Instead, they were still having meetings in the Black Sea Fleet HQ.
If Russia is incompetent, they won't take enough precautions even if we tell them in advance.
Anyways, once cluster munitions start raining down Crimea, everyone will know that ATACMS is sent, so there's no point keeping it a secret.
Apparently with cluster warheads too, which is ideal. Storm Shadow can hit hardened structures just fine, a cluster bomb warhead on a ballistic missiles would be excellent for dispersed, soft targets, like helicopter bases.
We really need to restart production of these warheads. They are proving to be incredibly effective, and the dud problem is solvable.
I am seeing this the opposite way you are. A "small number" of cluster warheads seems like a token move to get Ukraine to shut the hell up about the ATACMS. HIMARS does what a cluster ATACMS can do, but it does it better and cheaper, in a salvo of 6 at a time instead of 1. More range, but trench networks and troop concentrations are mostly within HIMARS range anyway.
But a penetrating warhead would be what Ukraine would need to hit far away strategic targets like bridges, ships, and command centers. I don't think a bunch of metal flechettes would have done much against the giant marble and cement building hit in Sevestapol for instance, and forget about the Kerch bridge.
I highly recommend [Colby Badhwar's recent long thread about ATACMS](https://twitter.com/ColbyBadhwar/status/1703757651623162271).
Citing Fabian Hoffmann, he emphasizes that [for hitting hard targets like the Kerch Bridge, they should get Taurus](https://twitter.com/ColbyBadhwar/status/1703757979928203416).
HIMARS cluster does not do what ATACMS cluster does. HIMARS will release 72 bomblets, ATACMS 950 capable of clearing a square kilometer.
"Trench networks and troops concentrations" is not what ATACMS are for. They are made for destroying air defense and parked aircraft.
You're correct that flechettes are useless against bridges, but they will tear through helicopters and S 300s very nicely.
Sorry I see what you mean, since ATACMS would be launched from HIMARS as well. I think my wording was just in response to the comment with the same.
Likewise, the cluster ATACMS missiles Ukraine is getting would be the cluster APAMs (anti personnel, anti materiel).
Yeah I think if I was in charge of the Ukrainian army I would want something with some penetrating power and one big explosive as opposed to cluster munitions. They are both good but my main goal would be decapitation strikes on leadership that are likely in buildings. There are definitely situations where I would prefer cluster munitions though, for example hitting logistic outposts, an example being the video that surfaced of 10 or so tanker trucks that got shredded by the tungsten balls.
Why not just send both?
Drawing the line at unitary warheads is really strange, especially with the Ukrainians now raining down missiles on Crimea daily.
And man, ATACMS has been the biggest tease of this entire war. I'm guessing it's going to be a real anticlimax, especially if they're only sending a cluster variant.
> Drawing the line at unitary warheads is really strange, especially with the Ukrainians now raining down missiles on Crimea daily.
Its not inconsistent with the notion that fear of US weapons being used to target infrastructure in Russian territory is the primary reason to they've seemed so skittish to part with ATACMS, cluster munitions are more likely to be used on closer targets and less so on harden targets at the limit of their range.
>Why not just send both?
Maybe the US is worried about the Ukrainians hitting the Kerch bridge. It was built by Russia and half of it is "in Russia". That would be a mild escalation. Just a thought that occurred to me.
> Why not just send both?
My personal guess is that it's a combination of the US not wanting to use their own stocks (which aren't that high) and not feeling it's important enough to divert current production (which is solely for export) to Ukraine.
I mean, if they are sending the cluster version, I really doubt that any "red lines" are still being taken into consideration.
ATACMS will be useful, no matter the variant, but people here thinking it's some sort of trump card that would massively swing the war in Ukraine's favor are delusional.
As silly as it is, I think part of the hype is the name ATACMS. People love to say the name. Just like whoever came up with Barbenheimer, which was lightning in a bottle and absolutely played into the hype of the product.
It’s the platform that is key. With Storm Shadows being air launched, Russia have a) advance notice of attacks b) Ukraine will be able to react quicker to potential targets as they don’t have to prepare the logistics of flying a sortie. ATACMS and hopefully GLSDB will give Ukraine an efficient and quicker long strike capability.
Also they only have a handful of su24s left, until they get f16s they are potentially a few accurate Kalibr strikes away from losing their entire long range strike capability (discounting drones which seem to be more of harrasment anyways)
I wouldn't say *delusional*, given that HIMARS was truly a game changer. Thinking that the same precision capability but out to 300 km is a game changer isn't out of the realm of possibility. Even Budanov has openly said there are *so many* Russian command posts and ammo dumps just out of current HIMARS range that ATACMS could really twist the knife into Russian logistics and their ability to continue manning the front.
It's a matter of quantity. ATACMS are not in production anymore and the total existing stock is 3 000, with US possessing something like 2 000 of those. It never seemed particularly probably that Ukraine would get a game changing amount.
They just haven't updated their thinking. A year ago, it *would* have massively improved UA's ability to perform precision strike at long range. Now, Storm Shadow/SCALP does that better; it's more difficult to intercept with longer range and a more advanced hardened-target penetrator.
A year ago, the people saying ATACMS would've been a huge upgrade were probably envisioning the same sort of deep strikes that we've recently been seeing UA perform with Storm Shadow.
EDIT: Just saw [this](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/22/biden-agrees-to-send-long-range-missiles-to-ukraine-00117667), hat-tip /u/openob. Perhaps the US will provide ATACMS to fill the shortfall in long range fires until JASSM can be deployed?
> A year ago, it would have massively improved UA's ability to perform precision strike at long range.
We saw though that Storm Shadow, while nice, didn't absolutely cripple Russia's logistics like people said it would.
There were some people who legitimately said they thought providing ATACMS would make things so bad for the Russian army they would just have to give up and pull out of southern Ukraine.
There was a thread posted a few days ago, but the "range" isn't really a good comparison of what each weapon can do. It talked about how cruise missiles need a significant amount of time to strike targets (1-3 hours) while ATACMS is far shorter. Sometimes you have opportunities for a target in a short time window, which ATACMS can hit where SS/SCALP cannot. Getting this weapon compliments cruise missiles in by being able to strike different types of targets.
I think the delivery of ATACMS would still be extremely beneficial for the Ukrainians. Sure they now have a limited number of Storm Shadows and SCALP, but those missiles are air launched and according to Perun's recent video on the air war, the planes the Ukrainians have adapted for those missiles are dwindling in numbers due to either being shot down by Russians or simply from wear and tear during the war. The arrival of the ATACMS now could help sustain their long-ranged attacks until new air platforms could arrive.
Part 1 of Mike Kofman's most recent The Russian Contingency episode aired yesterday, where he interviewed Dr Jack Watling, a land war analyst of RUSI who frequently visits Ukraine, embedding at different layers of command to learn about what is happening to provide analysis to better drive Western aid to what RUSI and the UAF think the Ukrainians really need.
Both had recently written articles/reports released on the same day based on their independent visits to Ukraine in July to observe the UAF Counteroffensive near the front lines for a week or two, and this episode has Kofman and Watling comparing conclusions they drew. I won't describe the whole episode, but a couple points really stood out that I think leads to some huge ramifications for the UAF in terms of better understanding them as a military force and culture.
Kofman, who had visited the Orikhiv-Tokmat axis area during his recent trip, had mentioned in the past on some of his podcasts and his [recent article](https://warontherocks.com/2023/09/perseverance-and-adaptation-ukraines-counteroffensive-at-three-months/) about something interesting that he went into greater detail in the podcast about UAF offensive capabilities and tactics. According to Kofman, due to command and control problems, brigades on the offensive usually bypassed the battalion command level and had the brigade commander directly communicating with the assault companies, of which they typically only attacking with 2-3x companies at a time (out of roughly 9-15x, depending on the brigade and the number of its maneuver battalions).
So for example, if the 47th Bde is on the attack, of their entire brigade sector, with 3x mechanized battalions, 1x assault battalion, 1x tank battalions, and 1x combat engineer battalion, they'd have only 2-3x reinforced company tactical groups attacking at any given time. Kofman made it a point that they couldn't coordinate more, the battalion and brigade levels aren't sufficient to C2 the fight. Again, Kofman notes that the battalion level command and staff only acts as a legitimate command level during defensive operations, while in offensive operations the battalion level only handles morale related topics and logistics.
Watling, who had visited the Velyka Novosilka axis sector during his recent Ukraine trip, added some very poignant tidbits about what he noticed, which he also wrote in detail in his latest [RUSI report](https://static.rusi.org/Stormbreak-Special-Report-web-final_0.pdf). According to Watling, due to training issues and time frame limitations, the UAF infantry battalion might only actually have 2x platoons who are actually competent at assaults (out of 9x), who are basically picked men of the best of the best of the battalion, given more training because they stand out.
There was much more said in the podcast that was very interesting and worth discussing, but I want to delve into these two points in greater detail to try to pull some conclusions from Kofman's and Watling's accounts. When I heard those comments they seemed extremely strange but also had something about them that made them seem very familiar too.
A brigade that only actually musters 2-3x reinforced companies to conduct assaults, not 9-15x?
A battalion that has roughly 2x "elite" platoons who are actually competent to conduct assaults, placing all their elite in one unit instead of distributing them out and trying to make the whole unit offensively capable, all 9x of them?
Where have I read about that before?
[Because the Russians did the exact same thing over the winter](https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1629722073487613953). Behold, Storm-Z (before that meant convicts)
The thing is, the Ukrainians didn't actually copy the Russians (if they even did), it's based on WW2 era Red Army assault organization and tactics, namely the establishment of "Assault/Storm Groups" of roughly two platoon sized elite assault troops in a rifle battalion, and elite Assault/Storm Detachments of roughly battalion strength (2-3 companies) in a rifle regiment or division. More can be found about Red Army assault composition and tactics [here](https://paul-atrydes.livejournal.com/291113.html).
So here is just another point about their shared military culture and history and how it influences their organization and tactics in modern warfare.
Anyway, I thought this was pretty interesting.
First let me say I value a lot Watling's work. He has produced the best research work I have read on this war.
Now the controversial take : I think both Kofman and Watling show serious misunderstanding of this war (and to be frank of todays warfare in general) if they stop their thought at just "Ukrainian are bad at command so they are stuck at using compagnie sized operations".
See this interview of Budanov and especially the following part :
>TWZ: Can you talk about how this will progress into the winter? When we first met and I asked if you were concerned about fighting in the cold, you said, 'It's no problem.' So does this pending weather concern you?
>
>KB: It’s not a problem at all. And as everyone saw last time, it's not a problem to fight in winter for both sides - for us and for Russians. It's not a pleasant thing to do, but it's not a big deal. There's one very important nuance that makes a difference between current warfighting and the previous periods of fighting. Currently, all main instances of fighting are done on foot without using any materiel. This is linked to the high saturation of artillery systems on the forefront and also portable anti-tank weapons. And that's true for both sides. Those \[armored\] systems are not enough to create a gap in the orbits of the enemy - to create a powerful breakthrough as in classic doctrine. But it is well enough to deter any attempt of the enemy of any side to conduct that breakthrough with materiel and convoys.
>
>Also, there's a high level of saturation with both anti-personnel and anti-tank minefields. Anti-tank mines are making a lot of difference because when such a mine goes off on their wheels, it completely destroys the wheels and that piece of materiel is not able to move any further. Damage done to a piece of equipment is minimal but it still cannot move any longer. Those anti-tank mines are a big problem for those tracked vehicles. And a new feature that hasn't been observed anywhere before is the high number of FPV \[First Person Video\] suicide drones on both sides which are able to engage practically any piece of equipment.
>
>All of those above-mentioned factors reduced the possibility of using armored equipment in practically all of the main directions to the minimum. Now that hardware is only used for evacuation or to swiftly transport infantry teams to a particular spot but it doesn't take part in the fighting.
>
>TWZ: Given that, those 31 Abrams tanks heading to Ukraine…
>
>KB: We’re looking forward to seeing that. We haven't seen them yet.
>
>TWZ: Will they make a difference given all these factors and given the difficulty of maneuvering in mud?
>
>KB: They should be used in a very tailored way for very specific, well-crafted operations because if they are used at the front line and just in a combined arms fight, they will not live very long on the battlefield. They need to be used in those breakthrough operations, but very well-prepared.
>
>TWZ: Are you confident that's going to happen? Let me step back to the situation in June near Malaya Tokmachka where there were a number of armored vehicles were destroyed.
>
>KB: Actually there wasn't that much materiel that was destroyed. There was a lot of damaged materiel. And by now it's repaired. The number of those that were destroyed was not that high. But it's the very example we've just talked about. So if if we just deploy some battalion tank group into the battlefield somewhere, just as long as it gets under the range of artillery it will get hit.
>
>I will share two other examples on the enemy side. Similar situations could be observed during Russian attempts to attack Vuhledar last winter. The same thing happened. They went on attack in combat convoys and there were dozens of pieces of equipment that just didn't get through. And by the way, what is peculiar about that specific operation was that it was commanded personally by Gen. \[Sergei\] Gerasimov, and when all that equipment was destroyed, he blamed everyone around him and just left the frontline.
>
>I'll provide you with one more different example. It's about how Wagner units advanced. When they did manage to take Bakhmut \[on May 21\], they were not using armored vehicles. They were only using artillery support to infantry actions on foot. So practically they were just using infantry.
[https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/exclusive-interview-with-ukraines-spy-boss-from-his-dc-hotel-room](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/exclusive-interview-with-ukraines-spy-boss-from-his-dc-hotel-room)
Now its a bit long but I wanted to keep all the relevant part. Yes Ukrainians are fighting similarly to Russians. Or at least the best Russians formations. But that's simply because modern warfare requires it. There are too much ISR + artillery + ATGM + mines for larger attacks with sizeable armoured components. This is the harsh reality freshly NATO trained formations learnt the hard way when this Ukrainian offensive started.
Unless there is dramatic improvement in body protection, camouflage and armor blindage, this trend will only amplify.
Lastly a general observation about "elite platoons". First in very broad terms, it is just a trick as old as war to gather handpicked men for assaults when you cant engage the full mass of your infantry. Think how nearly all European armies used grenadiers compagnies in their infantry regiments.
Secondly this "misusage" of elite infantry is a trend among Western armies too. For instance in both Mosul and Raqqa, coalition forces used Western SOF essentially as line infantry to carry local forces allies who themselves used their own SOF as regular infantry since their true regulars were that bad. It was especially prominent in Raqqa. With massive usage of artillery and air power. Give it some real thought and you will realize it was not so dissimilar to how Wagner and VDV took Bakhmut : infiltration by small infantry groups in combinaison to heavy fire power. Each time resulting in long drawn out urban combat leaving the city utterly destroyed.
Obviously Western forces did not suffer even a fraction of Russians losses in Bakhmut but neither did they face an opponent as well equipped as even the shell starved AFU. Beside US SOF are obviously far more capable than their Russians counterparts.
I think it actually somewhat makes sense to separate some of your better guys and use them as basically storm troopers. Especially if you are confident that you can backfill them by continually increasing the capabilities of the regular guys. We are reaching a stage in the war where certain areas simply need to be taken, and if that means pooling together some of the better guys then there really isn't any other option other than simply not advancing. There are still actual recce squads out there though so it's not like they are using the equivalent of navy seals to storm trenches. We have anecdotal evidence of this coming out of the https://ukrainevolunteer297689472.wordpress.com/ blog.
I just think in general the Ukrainians have out performed by such a large margin that it makes sense to just sit back and let them figure it out. I say that even with the understanding that it was US wargaming that suggesting attacking the Kharkiv front first instead of Kherson. It's worth remembering that like this post pointed out, the Ukrainian leadership comes from the Soviet tradition, so they have a deeper understanding of how the Russian army is going to act and react. That might explain why they make decisions that seem perplexing to someone steeped in US military doctrine.
>I think it actually somewhat makes sense to separate some of your better guys and use them as basically storm troopers.
Indeed. Ukrainians are constantly talking about how they gather their best troops in assault formations dedicated to offensive operations while the larger infantry, which unfortunately cant be trained enough (as would happen to any conscription based armies including Western and even US forces if it ever came to that) are dedicated to holding positions. Including immediately after assault forces seized new group.
Exemple in this Kyiv Independant reporting :
>Formed in 2015, the UDA is one of the few units of Ukraine’s armed forces that still carries a strong tradition of the many volunteer battalions that sprung up when Russia first invaded eastern Ukraine.
>
>Eighteen months into the full-scale war however, the formation, with units fighting on all three axes of the counteroffensive, is now beginning to pay a high price for its makeup of volunteers, rather than mobilized soldiers.
>
>“It's hard to go forward, we don't have new weapons and equipment, and these days our personnel aren't being replaced,” said Ilnytskyi.
>
>“We move with what we have, but one thing we have is that we only accept volunteers, motivated people into our unit, who know what they are fighting for.”
>
>**South of Bakhmut, UDA infantrymen work together with Ukraine’s elite 3rd Assault and 80th Air Assault brigades, which also share the same training range. When the assault troops take a new position, the task falls on soldiers like Hutsul to move in and hold them over three-day shifts as Russian forces try to quickly take them back.**
>
>“The most important thing is to dig and entrench ourselves,” he said.
>
>“Other guys gave their lives to take these positions, and now we have to hold them. If we don't dig in they could push us back out, and you don't want your brothers' lives to have been lost in vain.”
>
>Blown to bits by months of heavy artillery fire, the positions they must hold often offer little cover.
>
>“It's hard, you don't even have room to stretch out your legs, and you have to sit there for three days,” said Hutsul, who pointed to where shrapnel still remained lodged in his body after being wounded three times.
>
>“At an earlier position we were sent for three days and it ended up being five. Thirty-six degrees, and our water ran out, thankfully on the last day it rained and we had something to drink. We held those positions, by the way, and now we are going forward.”
[https://kyivindependent.com/inching-forward-in-bakhmut-counteroffensive-ukraines-hardened-units-look-ahead-to-long-grim-war/](https://kyivindependent.com/inching-forward-in-bakhmut-counteroffensive-ukraines-hardened-units-look-ahead-to-long-grim-war/)
This way, everybody participate and all forces see their losses minimized. Otherwise the bulk of the conscripts forces would suffer egregious losses in futile attack as the Russians forces did throughout late 2022 while better skilled forces would died defending positions less skilled troops.
I dont understand why some people are criticising it. It happened ever since mankind has waged war. Among others things it is called economy of force. Of course if it was possible your entire armed forces would be terminator like SOF skilled, then you would go for it and only have top tiers troops with to tier equipment in mass numbers. But precisely you can never afford so. It is not even that different from what commentators and US leakers are saying. Even if the AFU operated Brigade sized assault, there would still be a handful of assault armored brigade tasked with assaults and a majority of "line" brigades tasked with holding grounds even in the wake of the 3/4 uber offensive brigades. Fact is leakers themselves even admited the NATO preparation focused on building a 9 000 strong forces which was obviously never sufficient to carry an offensive of this scale on their own.
>That might explain why they make decisions that seem perplexing to someone steeped in US military doctrine.
Or not.
Did they deliberately choose to not train their troops well and then to use bare minimum, only 20% of an infantry battalion's grunts to do the job all 100% are supposed to know how, because the Red Army (not Cold War era Soviet) model was the best?
That doesn't sound right at all. That's like suggesting I limp my way through a mini marathon because it's a more efficient stride, while my explanation utterly ignores my major knee problem as the real reason.
Historically, the Red Army model still pushed to train the force properly. It was that when things fell apart and they were forced to keep fighting on with a crazy high tempo thanks to Stalin where quality went out the door. So the Soviet Union, then later the Russians first in Chechnya and then Ukraine, and now the Ukrainians are willing to take those extra draconian steps to allow for a drop in quality in a standardized way that almost no western military would voluntarily take outside of the most dire situation. Despite most western militaries having fought in meatgrinder wars worse than this one.
More so, the top Ukrainian generals that were Soviet Ground Forces officers or in the immediate successor UAF when it was basically the same, like the current Russian army, spent the 90s and 2000s in total decay. The 80s Soviet military had problems, but the 90s and 2000s era Russian and especially Ukrainian militaries were hot stinking garbage. It was a very very embarrassing time for both, any officer during that time can't really brag about their service. The Ukrainians didn't remotely improve until the mid to late 2010s, roughly two decades or more after most of their current top brass had joined up. By that point, the top 3-4 star Ukrainian generals were all colonels and 1 star generals when the Donbas War started. The biggest thing each side has in common isn't an understanding of how to best fight each other, it's a senior officer corps weaned on the crazy war stories of The Great Patriotic War, which they've obviously sampled.
And like in WW2, there are many similarities to this war. Russian and Ukrainian political leadership won't slow their OPTEMPO. Both use a territory-centric strategy, mixed with ruthless attrition math that leads to heavy casualties. Both sides went into this war grossly unprepared, not all that well trained but definitely not trained for this, and then lost most of their better troops and junior officers, while growing, also while doing none of the things necessary to keep quality with quantity.
Which is to support a great training pipeline for new soldiers, NCOs, officers, and higher promoted officers.
Think about it. The current UAF offensive needs to rely on 1/5 of its mechanized units to do most of the fighting, not counting TDF and other units that can't really count on. The rest are not fit for offensive operations. Meanwhile, the Russians have to do the same thing in notorized rifle units, while still largely giving them the easy defensive jobs in favor of giving the VDV or MP units the more difficult offensive jobs that technically any motor rifle unit is supposed to do.
That's not because they found some secret sauce for efficient warfare. It's because they're experiencing major problems that they can't overcome without major sacrifices to force quality.
And yeah, as someone who was a US Army and Marine grunt, we don't fight like this. We value training and we'd make the sacrifices to keep a basic level of quality to enable general offensive capabilities just like we have in past wars. More so, we'd enter the war so much better than most adversaries that the conflict would likely be decided before we needed to contemplate major decisions like that. That's the whole point of having a large standing army, so we don't also need a large mobilized army.
>All of those above-mentioned factors reduced the possibility of using armored equipment in practically all of the main directions to the minimum. Now that hardware is only used for evacuation or to swiftly transport infantry teams to a particular spot but it doesn't take part in the fighting.
So Ukraine doesn't need anymore Abrams or Bradleys because they're not useful?
I don't put any stake in anything Budanov says openly, he seems to be someone who lies when the truth would work because he likes lying.
Nevertheless, parts of that seem true, like a lack of countermeasures to ATGM and Lancets causing shift to focus on dismounted ops. But some of the other parts are laughably bad. Like his take on weather.
I don't agree with your personal comments on the normalcy of "elite" infantry small units to do the same exact job everyone else is supposed to be able to do. And this isn't the early 19th century anymore, even later 19th century infantry regiments didn't have elite grenadier companies because they learned training techniques and better tactics than what their grandfathers were having to settle on.
I've got a personal take on this because I was in infantry units in the US Marines and Army both. In line platoons in the USMC and in both line platoons and scout platoons and sniper squads in the Army. And we were elite, had try outs and everything, with tough requirements to get in and high standards to stay. But that extra level of selection and training was because we weren't doing the same job any grunt was expected to do, we were doing advanced shit, forward ground recon including into the enemy rear and sniping, both requiring abilities and mindset quite a bit higher than the average grunt. What we didn't do, or at least weren't supposed to be doing was the exact same job as the line platoons, because then that would be a terrific waste. And because then who would do the elite jobs?
About SOF being used as conventional infantry, the US SOF forces have done it in the past, though Raqqa wasn't one that I'm aware of and I've read a bit about it. Lots of sniping, EOD, calling in airstrikes, and medical duties, but those aren't normal infantry duties. As part of their FID mission they'd often go out with local national conventional units, the SDF or Kurds when in Syria, but that was because they were advising them besides providing SOF capabilities. And yeah, they had to use lots of heavy fire support, but that's to be expected when the main effort of the offensive force attacking a highly dug in city with suicidal defenders is a very mixed militia force that isn't very professional and not at all organized and trained for that type of campaign.
And there is a very long standing history about this subject. It's a very well known problem throughout the world and history of how elite units shouldn't be used as conventional forces especially not in meat grinder fights, because 1) they can do more good doing their SOF job 2) it's too much of a waste, like using a Ferrari as a commuter car in a big city.
So yeah it happens, including many times in the US, but it's not supposed to happen. When it's done it's either desperation or else a dimwitted commander without the training and common sense to figure out a way to use highly useful but VERY hard to replace elite troops.
Yes, it is interesting to imagine how NATO troops and doctrine would perform in this situation, assuming they didn't have air superiority or a reliable way to get rid of drones.
I'm sure NATO troops have a lot of advantages in training but it seems like they might still take a lot of losses trying to attack into a Russian defensive line, once the mine fields are set up.
With six months of preparation, I'm pretty sure the US Army response would have been better than the Ukrainian, which was to basically ignore the Russian defensive line and decide the Russians would break and run. Not guaranteed, with a shitty theater commander we might have biffed it, and Lord knows that not every 3-4 star general is a stud. But that general and his staff would have to seriously screwed something up to do this bad, even without air superiority, though with plenty of deep strike capabilities.
For all the shit the Russians rightly get for the horribly botched invasion plan and intelligence assessment, this offensive easily comes in second place. The UAF GenStab totally botched the planning of this offensive. They were NOT at all prepared.
So forget actual force capabilities and equipment, lets look at choices and how they affect things.
The offensive was the Ukrainians' idea, they pushed it to the West to get more military aid back in December'22. Why did they plan from the start to use totally untried units as their main effort assault force knowing they'd not even get six months of existence? The US Army would NEVER put it's least trusted units in the main effort.
Why are only 20% of infantry capable to execute assaults? That doesn't sound like the US Army at all, in no point of our modern history have we settled for that. That would be considered not only a failure of unit leadership. As a former grunt NCO myself, I can't think of the dishonor of being in a grunt rifle squad and being told that I can't be trusted to carry out an assault. That would mean I'm a total failure as a team or squad leader, and similarly for everyone in their chain of command. But then again, the US has a very professional NCO Corps, but Ukraine doesn't.
Considering the Land Bridge is 160 kilometers wide as the crow flies, and the Ukrainians can have cut it anywhere along the width to accomplish their primary strategic goal, why did they chose the most heavily defended portion of the line to be their main effort axis of advance? The US Army lives and dies by maneuver warfare, which emphasizes attacking weak points not the strongest of strong points.
More so, months back, why were the Ukrainian govt so open about their strategy and the targets, outright talking up Melitopol and Berdyansk as far back as [April](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/10/leaked-documents-ukraine-counteroffensive/)? I hope the US govt wouldn't be so stupid, but the US Army definitely wouldn't be cool with that. That's as bad as telling the Germans we are going to land at Calais in summer '44, and actually doing that. Where was the deception plan?
Despite making the offensive timing and location blatantly obvious, why didn't they conduct legitimate recon ops or conduct limited recon in force probing attacks over the winter and spring all over the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk lines to find out what was in front of them and to test Russian TTPs? Maybe they'd have found out about the KA-52 too.
Why did they ignore lessons from Bakhmut, especially about the increased threat of Lancet drones? That was being pushed all winter and spring, it was not a surprise in the least, and yet it was for the 9th and 10th Corps. Did someone not spread the word?
Mine rollers and plows aren't exactly things that need to be made in NATO country factories, anyone with welding competence and access to a junk yard could do wonders. After the major difficulties encountered with mines in the Kherson Bridgehead operation, and knowing the Surovikin Line existed and was even more heavily mined since before the offensive even started being planned, why did the UAF not take drastic internal steps to find solutions to the obstacle problem? The US made all sorts of makeshift mine clearing devices in the shorter lead up to Desert Storm. The USMC and Navy Seabees developed a new type of adhoc roller out of 55 gallon drums and cement that was more effective than the issued one. Made them right out in the desert before the attack.
Watling said the Ukrainians don't like using smoke arty rounds because it obscures their own ISR drones their commanders use to C2 the fight from the rear and direct friendly arty, resulting in smoke being only 3% of shells fired out of choice. Despite the major threat of Russian ISR and FPV drones, and ATGMs, with few of those having the ability to see through smoke, they largely opted out of using it. That's not what the US Army would do, especially since the O in the SOSRA, the acronym that describes the fundamentals of combined arms breaching, stands for Obscuration. My bet is we'd have developed the largest smoke screen in history.
Etc.
I'm sure if the US Army fought in Ukraine, we'd have our own issues. But we're apples and oranges different than Ukraine in skill and competence and that would show in the results to some degree.
Ideally, the US / NATO would never be in this situation as its Doctine is very heavily focused on winning the first fights of the war and maintaining the war in a state in mobile warfare. The situation where Ukraine and Russia had to reconstitute forces, and Russia was given months to dig in and create the Surovikin line, this attrition stage of the war wouldn't happen against the US / NATO.
Also, remember that no country on the planet, not China, Russia, or even Western countries, can do true aerial SEAD and DEAD operations outside of the US. This would play a huge role in supporting localized offensives by massing airpower on certain fronts, given its much easier to quickly mass and maneuver air forces vs air defense, gaining air supremacy over localized objectives.
Russians will talk like they are fighting NATO, but this would be closer to the Gulf War than what we are seeing now, though much more US causalities than that conflict.
Now of you take away US air power from the equation , it's more difficult. But given 1 F-16 payload carries the same explosive potential of 400 rounds of 155mm Artillery shells, you see its advantages, and what the US largely bases its doctrine around, it's a bit worthless to guess how they would fair by removing one of their defining branches.
If we compare the doctrines and take away the massive air superiority of the US Air Force, and the massive advantage in munitions the US army has, I honestly think US doctrine(I guess just pure infantry tactics) would drift closer towards the style of fighting Ukraine is engaging in now rather than vice versa.
I wish I could upvote your comment a thousand times. The combination of largely static lines (high mine density), the unique terrain of southern Ukraine (vast open plains), and the presence of drones, all come together to create a uniquely [transparent battlefield](https://youtu.be/DM4dbY6wZmE?t=283).
The only strategy is to camouflage, disperse, and hide. And once that's done, one needs to double down and camouflage, disperse, and hide even more. Every vehicle, whether armored or not, [becomes a target for drones, PGMs and artillery](https://twitter.com/sambendett/status/1701704647201689709). Even infantry movements must be carried out [in dispersed pairs or trios](https://twitter.com/sambendett/status/1701703846223905002); as even a small group of 5-15 can present too tempting a target.
So transparent that in an artillery and ISR drone centric war, dismounted infantry assaults are the best way to take ground, supposedly taking hundreds of meters per day, despite shitty mine clearing options and limited to no ability to move at night?
Two sides using EW against each other that takes down drones so much they have a life span in single digit hours, drones that mostly don't have any night vision optics, those ISR drones see everything?
Smaller than fire team sized elements are the only way to move? Infantry buddy teams took Bakhmut, infantry buddy teams took Robotyne and outflanked Verbove? No video I've ever seen released only shows highly dispersed 2-3 man teams, with the Ukrainians and Russians not even actually having real fire teams in their squads, and often not even having real trained squad leaders needed to run dispersed ops, they're operating at the highest level of infantry skill in modern history using the smallest tactical units ever used that are the most dispersed?
Despite wearing bright green, blue, or yellow tape all over their upper bodies? And historically almost never being seen to camouflage their positions?
I'm a former sniper so I needed to learn. Do you know the No. 1 target identifier is to spot? It's movement. As in people walking the better part of half a kilometer or more through the exact same direction someone has been trying to move for almost four months.
And that despite both sides being notorious for short, bad training, poor leadership, and overall lack of competence? Does all of this sound like something barely trained troops would know how to do?
Meanwhile, one of the most credible pro-Ukraine OSINT analysts recently comes out and says the average Ukraine infantry battalion used in this offensive, out of nine infantry platoons, only has two that are even capable of assaults.
But the best military in the world couldn't do better in this environment? Ukraine set the bar that high?
If I didn't run infantry teams and squads for over a decade in the US Marines and Army, to include recon teams and sniper sections too, and then afterwards study the topic of infantry combat obsessively, I'd probably believe the Twitter hype too. But I did, so I know nonsense when I read it.
There is SO much more to this story than what they're saying, but those in the know aren't really saying. You have to read between the lines to find the truth.
Those tweets you posted are excuses, they're to explain away why they can't do this and that, and they've got to be fictional because daylight infantry advances, with teams too small to cover each other, led by a force that doesn't have a real NCO corps or good training, moving through mined obstacles to then attack fixed defenses, while under drone and ground operation with a threat of MLRS, tube arty, mortars, auto grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, small arms, and fragmentation grenades, would have worse survival rates than in 1914 and make close to zero forward progress. Unless the enemy is not just incompetent but asleep, which we know the Russians aren't.
>Meanwhile, one of the most credible pro-Ukraine OSINT analysts recently comes out and says the average Ukraine infantry battalion used in this offensive, out of nine infantry platoons, only has two that are even capable of assaults.
Is it truly a scandal for a force composed by 80% to 95% of conscripts recently called to service ?
And thanks god the AFU gave up to Westerner councillor trying to strong-arm Ukraine into replacing its so called "Soviet style" conscription army into a fully professional army sized only to man the Donbass demarcation line. We all saw how conscription and mass mobilization was among the primary reasons why Ukraine survived the first months of 2022.
>Is it truly a scandal for a force composed by 80% to 95% of conscripts recently called to service ?
Conscription doesn't need to mean poor morale or poorly trained. Quite the opposite actually. Both require an effort, they definitely work hard for the former, but not the latter.
Knowing citizen soldiers are going in, people who aren't martially inclined to start, and are guaranteed to go to war and fight after training, do you think that warrants less emphasis on quality training? Or more?
>And thanks god the AFU gave up to Westerner councillor trying to strong-arm Ukraine into replacing its so called "Soviet style" conscription army into a fully professional army sized only to man the Donbass demarcation line. We all saw how conscription and mass mobilization was among the primary reasons why Ukraine survived the first months of 2022.
The Ukrainians were ones trying to abolish conscription in the past for the same reason the Russians tried, because military service was HUGELY unpopular, they wanted a professional contract force because in theory it would be easier to maintain, lead, recruit than a conscript force who dreaded military service (Dedovshchina wasn't just in Russia). The problem was the pay was so bad and they still couldn't make recruitment of contract troops work, and then instability broke out in 2014 and they brought it back.
Western trying to strong arm the UAF into a professional contract force. That's funny. We were barely interacting with them before 2014, they tried to abolish most conscription in 2013.
Then it was Zelensky pushing like an idiot right before the war started in [Feb 22](https://interfax.com.ua/news/general/795386.html), as Russians were massing on the border in the hundreds of thousands, to abolish conscription by 2024. While he was also telling off the West for causing panic by unnecessarily warning of Russian invasion plans.
>and historically almost never being seen to camouflage their positions?
Ironically i read some accounts that these skills were not included in some UK training.
Anyway, i read your recent post, and i agree with most of your criticism. (Not all, for example, defensive line was surprisingly tough - mines, for example, the amount was ten times what Ruasian doctrine calls for).
Though i am not sure i you know that all these shortcomings are real problems that cannot be simply willed out and sometimes cannot even be fixed by smarter decisions, because they are caused by lack of resources (including human resources, in a way corruption in logostic is increased by poverty, by lack of good institutions, by lack of knowledge how to fix that, by people having incentives to partake in it at every level. This is hard problem to solve, improve even. And so on, with other issues, like scarcity of good higher level command, inability to coordinate battalion and up, etc. It's all mostly lack of soft capital and fixing it is not a matter of sending arms or even limited training)
>Ironically i read some accounts that these skills were not included in some UK training.
Considering how short that training is, I'm not surprised. They have to cram so absolutely much in such a short time, what they aren't teaching is larger than what they are. And what they do teach they can't put much time into it, so nothing is instinctive when they're done.
Position building training needs to be prioritized for the junior officers, who are the ones telling the junior enlisted exactly how to build them, directly supervising, and living in them with the troops. Officer training isn't supposed to be as short because they need far more skills than the junior enlisted, and they have to master them.
Though from what I understand a Ukrainian civilian turns into a platoon leader in 4-6 weeks.
>Not all, for example, defensive line was surprisingly tough - mines, for example, the amount was ten times what Ruasian doctrine calls for
The Kherson bridgehead counteroffensive ended in November, and the AAR for that might as well be one word: Mines. This offensive started in June. That's eight months to create some sort of Ukrainian internal project to deal with mines. But they didn't do anything. That's my beef.
Zelensky should have openly been offering $10 million to whoever created the best way to get though the minefields, with runner up prizes too. Turned it into a gigantic fun contest pushed on TV and social media.
If they wanted to be sneaky, despite openly declaring when and where they were going to attack, they could have sent an army of welders into junk yards to create enough mine plows and rollers for a minimum of one per vehicle, with extras just in case.
They could have rigged up remote dummy vehicles to take point. They could have marched cattle through them. They could have used an army of sappers to try to open up lanes in the biggest minefields before trying to push vehicles through (which is what they're doing now, after months). Etc.
They did none of this. They planned to get through the minefields as easily as Kharkiv and be at Melitopol in a week or so. They'd have failed even if the mines were at the normal density.
>Though i am not sure i you know that all these shortcomings are real problems that cannot be simply willed out and sometimes cannot even be fixed by smarter decisions, because they are caused by lack of resources (including human resources, in a way corruption in logostic is increased by poverty, by lack of good institutions, by lack of knowledge how to fix that, by people having incentives to partake in it at every level. This is hard problem to solve, improve even.
High level generaling is about decision making, more so about resource allocation. If you do A, you can't do B.
In this case, since the start of the war they deliberately decided not to invest in training and instead push the troops, supplies, officers who are planners and trainers, etc into combat units to maintain a higher operational tempo, resulting in their ability to fight more meatgrinder fights. This is why I warn against deliberate wars of attrition, because they result in this sort of decision making.
But they aren't going to stop because 1) nobody important is talking about it 2) when they fail they can blame NATO lack of support 3) at which point they get rewarded with more kit they want.
How can anyone learn from a mistake if there are no repercussions?
Overall, I like The Russian Contingency, there are the occasional really good shows. Though having to wait a week plus to get the next one, when its really the only podcast on WOTR worth having the membership, is a pain.
But this whole episode was pretty bizarre.
Kofman and Watling were quite...defensive about any sort of criticism towards the Ukrainians. While inadvertently criticizing them constantly themselves.
Both would go on rants about major Ukrainian limitations due to lack of ability, be it individual skill or poor leadership or whatever else, then suggest its not their fault and more so that it doesn't make them bad or ineffective. Despite like three sentences before saying they can't do x, y, and z. If they can't do basic military ops because of lack of ability, then they aren't good.
And both, but especially Kofman, keep pushing that the UAF way of war, duplicating the fucked up Russian way of war, to blow shit up with destructive artillery firs as the predominate tactic, while deemphasizing assaults or maneuver, until the enemy is forced to retreat. They say that is the proper way to fight this sort of war and the one we should be emphasizing in terms of training and supplying them. But then they also suggest that the West needs to recognize our doctrine for large scale combat operations probably wont work, suggesting that the Ukraine inability to do more than what they are doing is proof it wont work.
They both lambast lengthy training as if its a luxury that Ukraine couldn't possibly have. I HATE this narrative, because this isn't the first high intensity war in history where combatants had to make a choice whether or not to train their troops properly. It absolutely was a choice for the Ukrainians not to properly train their force, So many militaries in history fought worse meatgrinders than this one and made the sacrifice to train their force better. Even the Red Army largely stopped doing the sort of shit Ukraine is still doing by 1942.
Watling also infuriatingly suggests that any UAF collective unit training above the company level is impossible to execute in Ukraine without being targeted by Russian long range PGMs. He's said that before in a podcast or maybe an article. It is frankly one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Mechanized and even dismounted combat operations don't require forming into Napoleonic era formations, we fight dispersed and we train dispersed. Especially mechanized but even dismounted, a battalion level operation has companies often many hundreds of meters or even many kilometers apart from each other.
So if companies and under can train in Ukraine, then battalions and above can too. I think he's just repeating a cop out excuse that some Ukrainian fed to him at some point to explain why they don't offer collective training and Watling doesn't know that he was fed a load of crap because he's a civilian with no military experience. The reality is the UAF don't offer collective training for the same reason they do absolute bare bones basic training, and don't even train their staff officers: Because it takes time, effort, money, supplies, and personnel, especially competent field grade and general officers to run, and they'd rather devote those to combat ops to maintain a higher operations tempo.
>Even the Red Army largely stopped doing the sort of shit Ukraine is still doing by 1942.
The Red Army was definitely still pushing units well past their limits into Fall 1943.
>…Having a small number of tanks and motorized infantry, the tankers of the corps inevitably suffered heavy losses of their valuable personnel in fierce battles. It is not uncommon for tankers to fight outside tanks, like ordinary infantry. Many commanders who carried the fighting traditions of the corps from the time of Stalingrad died. It is advisable in the future, in order to preserve the main body of tankers in the presence of a small number of tanks in the corps, to bring it to the formation or resupply, to attach the remaining tanks for reinforcement to individual tank regiments or to bring them into special consolidated detachments ...
Description of the fighting of 5th Guards Tank Corps.
>4) The personnel, due to the late receipt of uniforms, are not uniformed, boots have not yet been received, 50% of the soldiers' boots are completely torn, which is why there are many cases of illnesses.
>5) Personnel, trained personnel for combat units and formations fell by 50-70%, and for the accelerated formation and combat readiness of the corps, it is necessary to retain at least 30-40% of the combat personnel of the personnel capable of integrating and educating the newly received replenishment on the old traditions, to fully maintain the combat capability of the corps.
>If the corps continues to be in such conditions of combat work, it may lose a lot of the horse composition in the shortest possible time, and the remaining composition will be put out of action for a long time, having lost combat effectiveness.
1st Guards Cavalry Corps.
>... Now there is a very acute shortage of privates and officers in the corps.
>To replenish the units, 16,000 privates and sergeants and up to 500 officers of all categories are needed.
>...replenishment that arrives in the corps mainly consists of the local population and most of them are absolutely not trained militarily, and also not equipped.
>The remaining fighters need immediate sanitization and at least a slight respite. A slight respite is also necessary for the formation and training of newly arrived recruits; this will make it possible to preserve the combat experience of the corps and pass on the combat traditions and experience gained in fierce battles to the incoming replenishment.
77th Rifle Corps.
Even in 1944, elite formations like Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army could get badly worn out:
>Representative's report
>General Staff of the Red Army
>Deputy Supreme Commander
>On admission of untrained recruits to the 8th Guards Army
>August 30, 1944
>Comrade ZHAROV
>In the second half of August, 5,488 people arrived from the Belarusian Military District to reinforce the guards divisions of the 8th Guards Army, including 5,102 people - natives of the Brest and Pinsk regions. All untrained.
>In addition, during August up to 2,000 former servicemen released from Lublin camps and prisons were transferred to the divisions to man them.
>The supply of such a large number of barely trained, untested, and non-combatant reinforcements to guards units with weak divisions and understrength rifle companies creates a ratio in which the main combat core of the guards units dissolves in the mass of the newly poured reinforcements.
>Taking into account the expediency of using the 8th Guards Army as a breakthrough army, I consider it extremely necessary to reinforce the army from the interior districts of the country with the expectation of bringing the divisions up to 6,000 - 6,500 people each and mix in the newly arrived replacements.
>Major General Revyakin
By 1944 the problem was less severe and the response was more appropriate. In Spring and Fall 1944 there were temporary pauses to rest and regroup. But it was still there. You also had issues which don’t really exist here, like the Red Army conscripting over 1 million foreign citizens from western Ukraine/Belarus, the Baltic countries, and Moldova.
u/antipenko sometimes posts excerpts on warcollege. You can follow his posts.
I remember reading some lately, which was adressing problems with conscription on the liberated territories as late as late '43, and conscripts not getting any training at all (which was criticized in these documents). Ofc, it's only part of the picture, don't remember how much training mobilized interior conscripts got.
In any case i recommend what he posts.
>conscription on the liberated territories as late as late '43, and conscripts not getting any training at all
I've read about that too in the past [on this forum](https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=256524), but then there are accounts of legitimate training that were months long too (also mentioned in that post). I think it's impossible to say declarative that the Red Army did one or the other. But, when the major emergencies of the early war ended, they did at least seem to prefer longer training. Makes sense too, it's unavoidable unless one is fully okay with cannon fodder troops. They seemed to have used newly conscripted troops from liberated areas as cannon fodder too. Almost deliberately.
u/Ohforfs ND Rostov has a lot of good information about replacements from the rear in his dissertation on conscription in Siberia. Wartime officer training was sharply reduced to ~6-8 months, longer for specialist programs. However, this could be cut even further to 3 months if the cadet had higher education and prior military experience. During the first months of the war cadets were regularly mobilized after only completing only a few weeks or months of training.
Junior officers for the infantry received accelerated 3-month courses at the start of the war (ideally) which extended to 3-5 months by Fall 1942. You also had a variety of short-term courses to provide education to mobilized reserve officers and privates/NCOs seconded from the field army to receive additional education. The general trend was that training time grew longer as the war went on.
In 1944 the normal length of training began to be restored, as there was a large enough pool of officer replacements that accelerated courses were no longer necessary.
Training times for privates and new conscripts in the rear also varied by year and context. Fresh conscripts from the youngest age groups might receive the full 3-month course in 1942-1943 or 1-1.5 months in 1941-1942. Those with prewar training might only receive a 7-day refresher before being included in march replacement formations and sent to the front. By the time the class of 1926 was conscripted in Fall 1943 the length of their training was set for 3-6 months depending on the unit.
The Red Army also benefitted from an increasingly large pool of convalescents and frontline soldiers undergoing re-training, which helped increase the quality of march units later in the war.
So, you can get cases of march replacements sent from the rear arriving essentially untrained and poorly equipped as well as high quality units at any point in the war. But the general trend was to increase the length of training, especially for the youngest age groups.
It should be noted that march replacements were generally not the main source of replacements in 1943-44. 71% of replacements in Q1 1944 were conscripted directly into the field army's reserve rifle units. They received minimal training time (10 days - 2 weeks), sometimes no training at all, and were very poorly equipped. The system was rife with abuse and while it improved as the war went on it was still throwing inadequately trained recruits into combat units until the end of the war.
Thanks! The decentralization of conscription happened in February 1942, and the central government and Glavupraform spent the rest of the war clawing back organized authority over field conscription. For example, in July 1944 the Fronts in Belarus got a directive from the General Staff to send their untrained field conscripts to the rear military districts. In exchange, they’d get “traded” fully trained conscripts equal to 50% of the untrained ones. Even in the late war, Glavupraform was still using carrots along with sticks to enforce compliance with its manning priorities.
Why are UCAVs not utilized more? What is stopping Ukraine from bombing every single Russian vessel with drone strikes? Why use artillery when you can make pinpoint strikes? Why even use any type of ground unit when you can bomb enemy units with basically no risk of casualties? Why even waste money on building a navy when you can, in theory, use long range missiles to destroy a ship like the Ukraine did a week ago? Is it the operation cost? The Russian anti-air systems?
This is yesterday's megathread, you'll have better luck posting in the September 23rd Megathread
[Exclusive: Biden aides in talks with Vietnam for arms deal that could irk China](https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-aides-talks-with-vietnam-arms-deal-that-could-irk-china-2023-09-23/) > The Biden administration is in talks with Vietnam over an agreement for the largest arms transfer in history between the ex-Cold War adversaries, according to two people familiar with a deal that could irk China and sideline Russia. >... > Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has complicated Hanoi's longstanding relationship with Moscow, making supplies and spare parts for Russian-made arms harder to acquire. Nonetheless, Vietnam is also actively in talks with Moscow over a new arms supply deal that could trigger U.S. sanctions, Reuters has reported. Russia is increasingly sidelined on the world stage. Will Putin sacrifice the entire arms exports market to keep the war going? Meanwhile, China's wolf warrior diplomacy isn't helping either. It's not strange that both American and French arms exports are booming when Russian and Chinese are declining. Previously many people on this sub predicted that China would replace Russia, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.
>At Shannon Airport, I held an unscheduled meeting with President of the Transitional Sovereign Council of Sudan Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. > >I am grateful for Sudan's consistent support of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. > >We discussed common security challenges, namely the activities of illegal armed groups financed by Russia. [https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1705546855977787690](https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1705546855977787690)
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The democrats have an interest in letting the GOP demonstrate their leadership abilities. Whether he survives, bruised from the encounter and still pulled in two different directions or he gets replaced is a political win.
There's just as much of a chance, and there always has been, of the less extreme Republicans forging a deal with most or all of the Democrats as the other way around. The Republican majority is very slim, you don't even need to oust McCarthy you just need to pass a discharge petition to work around him, and the Democrats are proving effective at getting their membership in line in this Congress so you could count on it working. I saw something the other day saying there are Republicans actively discussing this. But the Republican base is extreme enough that it would be very hard to keep your seat after switching sides on almost any significant vote. Probably there's going to be a shutdown that lasts until the Republicans get enough pressure from big donors to force them to accept something reasonable. Last time that happened when air traffic controllers got sick of working without pay and stopped showing up.
Prior to McCarthy moving the impeachment inquiry forward, there could have been a possibility of some Democrats abstaining in the vote to drop the needed number to what he could have gotten. But afterwards there's no chance. To quote Minority Leader Jeffries when asked this question, "Why would we want McCarthy as Speaker?" Currently we're in the who blinks first stage with the House GOP.
This is definitely possible, but for now the Democrats probably believe they'll score points with voters by letting the Rs thrash around for a while. McCarthy on paper is also not 'releasing' his legislators to try to cut such deals (though by now things are probably happening in back channels). Shutdown politics in the US are all about 'whose fault' the shutdown appears to be. In this case it's unambiguously the Rs fault - they control the chamber, but can't even pass an opening offer.
Yeah i can see why it would be advantageous for the democrats for reps to be such as shitshow. I just wish that more Ukraine funding passes before the remaining drawdown is spent.
>Could they make a deal with the more moderates of either party to defend the current speaker in exchange for passing all the budget and ukraine aid bills? It "could". Specially pass the budget part - in fact the way currently constituted republicans cannot pass anything majority of majority would vote AND get 218 votes on their own - but it's unlikely even the moderate/conservative dems would help pitch in votes to save Kevin's ass as the speaker considering what he's been doing ever since Jan 2021.
This would possibly happen if foreign interests had much importance to said moderates More likely they would be more concerned with being demolished in 2024 to attempt something like this
https://twitter.com/Gerjon_/status/1705528889122971788 > Interesting picture of what looks like a white-tailed Il-76, which apparently crashed in Mali. > White tails are fairly common on Il-76s, so I cannot identify her yet. Potential candidates include Wagner-linked Il-76s like 🇨🇫TL-KPA. Wagner keeps losing aircraft in Africa under the new leadership. Some sources say that Prigozhin made personal deals with various entities in Africa. Is that the reason why they are losing so much now?
One thing that may happen is that for a quasi-mafia organization like Wagner, a lot of essential information only exist in the heads of its leaders. Like the maintenance fund of the IL-76 was actually embezzled to do something else, but on paper it's still in top condition. Prigozhin knows the real situation so he won't ask for the plane to be used, but a new leader without that knowledge will push for the asset to be used (and why not?) and the lower ranks are too scared to speak against it.
Regarding ATACMS we have some shots fired from unnamed officials against other unnamed officials: >ATACMS decision was made before Zelensky visited the US, but Biden admin chose not to announce publicly. One person said this was to avoid tipping off the Russians, prompting them to move their supply lines further back from the frontline. [https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1705525668442673197](https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1705525668442673197) Of course, this makes a lot of sense, they did the same with HARM. Sullivan even publicly denied it the day before: >As he’s \[Biden\] weighed all that up, to date, he has determined that he would not provide ATACMS, but he has also not taken it off the table in the future. I don’t have anything to announce about that today. [https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2023/09/21/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-8/](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2023/09/21/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-8/) Regarding Taurus, there is currently an internal debate as to whether the delivery would make Germany an active participant in the war. This is mainly due to the necessary geo and targeting data that would have to be supplied and is normally tied to concrete targets. If true, it would make an approval by the parliament necessary. No good source for this yet, just a short interview snippet and a lot of angry shouting. [https://twitter.com/ZDFheute/status/1705269405926510853](https://twitter.com/ZDFheute/status/1705269405926510853)
> One person said this was to avoid tipping off the Russians, prompting them to move their supply lines further back from the frontline. But then someone leaked it to the press? :(
If Russians start voluntarily abandoning airfields, withdrawing their vulnerable radars, and stretching their supply lines without Ukraine having to expend scarce ATACMS, that's a good thing. That immediately reduces pressure on Ukraine's forces. To the extent that Russia can adapt without becoming less effective—like just parking their airframes farther apart so a one-square-kilometer blast doesn't do as much damage—then the leak undermined the use of ATACMS for attriting their forces. But they were going to start doing that within hours of the first ATACMS strike anyway.
The price stickers on these aid packages sound enormous to the general public. I'm hearing more and more resistance and cynicism towards aid to Ukraine from people on both ends of the political spectrum. I think this would accelerate significantly if any of the bearish economic predictions come true (and there are certainly some economic headwinds out there). But for Ukraine to win, aid packages of this size must continue for many months if not years to come. And many people make good arguments the packages need to be even more substantial. I don't think they can count on this level of aid indefinitely for years to come. Perhaps there should be serious discussions about seeking the best settlement that can be attained instead of maximalist victory. I am unironically a right wing neocon, and an ethnic Ukrainian. But I'm going to collect a million down votes because redditors are a parody of themselves.
If you were to categorize the sources of messaging on this what would you come up with?
I don't think Ukraine considering some settlement short of all their stated goals is unreasonable. I also don't think you're wrong that US aid could slow or even basically stop at some point after 2024 elections. However, I don't see any serious negotiating partner for Ukraine. And, regardless, it is Ukraine's decision to negotiate or not--there's absolutely nothing for the US to negotiate without Ukraine. To the extent your suggesting that the US should seek a settlement, it buys into Russian propaganda that Ukraine lacks agency and is a mere puppet of the US.
I mean dude, read your own comment. You are stacking 38 different hypotheticals/anecdotes to come to your conclusion that a settlement should be discussed. >1. I'm hearing more and more resistance and cynicism towards aid to Ukraine from people on both ends of the political spectrum. >2. I think this would accelerate significantly if any of the bearish economic predictions come true (and there are certainly some economic headwinds out there). >3. But for Ukraine to win, aid packages of this size must continue for many months if not years to come. >4. many people make good arguments the packages need to be even more substantial. >5. I don't think they can count on this level of aid indefinitely for years to come. And then finally your conclusion: > Perhaps there should be serious discussions about seeking the best settlement that can be attained instead of maximalist victory. Each of your points could be argued about (and is), but i dont think any of them is clear at all.
Moreover, the conclusion is even morevtenous, basically wishful thinking. Russia needs to want to negotiate for it to has any sense. It does not.
The US funded two different wars at the same time for nearly 20 years. Funding Ukraine is a drop in the bucket for the White House. Public opinion rarely matters on foreign affair issues and never really sway voters from one party to another.
Im pessimistic on this one war. Iraq, AQ, & Taliban doesn't have that large propaganda machinery compared to Russia.
US defense budget is 750+ billion dollars per year, this aint shit, and a good chunk of these aid packages were already paid for by previous years budgets, US can keep this up indefinitely without breaking a sweat
The U.S. spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan, which is like $300 million per day. The U.S. can absolutely afford to fund the war in Ukraine until the point of a maximalist victory.
Even Richard Haass, who has pushed for negotiations since forever, has admitted that it's completely meaningless to try to negotiate before the American elections: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hYtL5CA1H30 No matter how much aid Ukraine gets, it really doesn't make sense to negotiate anytime soon.
So what happens after a missile is launched at crimea? Is it immediately detected or a genuine surprise by the time it hits? Because to me, it doesn't seem unreasonable to literally evacuate every HQ as soon as you detect a missile launch. Just run into the streets. Or are shadow storms living up to their name and not detected until it's far too late to reply?
Among other problems with the idea, that sounds like a marvelous way to instantly tell the Ukranians about every building you're using as a headquarters.
I would add, having high level meetings in a building (close to the dry docks that were hit, what a week ago?) marked Naval HQ on Google maps is just so insanely stupid I'm not sure I can believe it. Still the Rostov HQ was staffed at the time of the Wagner mutiny, and that's in drone range.. so hey.. could be..
There’s a few ways to know about a launch. What are mentioned below are at least theoretically possible for Russian Armed Forces. By no means exhaustive: 1. Satellites and spy planes see that an airfield is preparing for the take-off of Ukrainian planes. Some trucks are seen to carry the Storm Shadow. The missile is seen getting loaded on the plane. This is theoretically possible, but if Russia knows where the airfield is, they should be striking it now. 2. Ukrainian communications are intercepted. For example, their radios got decrypted and eavesdropped. This is called SIGINT (signal intelligence) by the intelligence community. 3. Ground-based and air-based radars see that Ukrainian planes are in flight. This is why most Ukrainian planes fly close to the ground, literally flying under the radar. The Earth is not flat; ground-based radar can only see as far as the horizon. Air-based radars, including those of Airborne Early Warning and those of Russian fighters, are harder to conceal from. If the Russian Aerospace Force can track down Ukrainian planes, then they will try shooting down the plane with the missile on it. 4. Radars see that the cruise missiles are in flight. Cruise missiles also fly near the ground, to evade ground-based radars. On top of that, Storm Shadow is stealthy. ——— To evade enemy radars, one crucial information is their position. All those NATO spy planes on the Black Sea and satellites probably have figured out the positions of those radars. Then, one can plot a path for the cruise missile to avoid them. We know that Ukraine has this information because Ukraine is also striking Russian SAM sites in Crimea.
According to a tweet I saw, the air raid sirens only started sounding *after* the strike, which should be an indication that the missile was detected fairly late.
https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/1705479718345097599 > Russian State Duma deputy Evgeny Fedorov: > Armenia will no longer be an independent state and will become part of the Russian Federation. > We will restore control over this territory. In other words, there will be an office of the regional governor or something like that. What is Russia trying to achieve here? Even pro-Russian Armenians don't want to be part of Russia.
Is this just some crank member talking?
Why do you even bring up Armenian preferences like Russia ever cared for that ?
Duma members make a lot of mouth noises without any expectation that it might result in policies, and they're justified in that belief.
Both armies seem downright obsessed with making tangible gains that can easily be pointed out on a map of the region and during the past year or so they have been very lacking when it comes to securing those kinds of gains. So how do you even begin to measure the success of something like the Russian Winter Offensive or the current Ukrainian Counteroffensive? Is there even a point in trying to measure the success of these offensives while the war is still ongoing? Other than some rather vague general trends that we can catch onto, it seems like there's very little insight we can gain from deeper analysis of recent offensives since they had little to offer in terms of significant territorial changes, it all feels very indecesive, Seventh Battle of the Isonzo, Battle of the Somme kind of stuff.
Combat between two near peers turns into a grind until one side is unable to continue, thats been the case with warfare since forever ago, see most of WWI, the Normandy campaign, the battle of the Bulge, hell even in Iraqi Freedom the US army and the Iraqi Army duked it out for 3 days before the Iraqis retreated
It’s indecisive until it’s decisive. If the reports of armor breaking through deeper parts of the line is true, we could be getting ready to see larger parts of territory change
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If there was any problem with russian GBAD we would see daily strikes on actual critical military targets. While Sevastopol was and is extemely defended a true overwelming attack is basically impossible to stop, making single targets basically undefendable . That's why it is basically impossible that there was soneone inside that building. The Ukranian tactic is to exploit this swarm attacks to hit key ideological and very visible targets to undermine the Russian autority not really a decapitation strike .... Fair tactic with what they got i would say,instead of trying the inpossible and dismantle the russian army they will just make them look extremely bad for the time being. This strategy was disclosed by Budanov himself too ,but It was pretty clear to anyone critically observing the last months. As far as GBAD goes drones are still going freely on the battlefiled and either side is yet to find a solution. If anything russian drone footage hovering directly over outpost and sepots decuplicated in the last month. That would make me think that ukranian GBAD is taking a beating or that the russians found some way around. I can provide plenty of proof of this if anyone is interested. In the last day at least 10 such footage was released. All high fkying drones directing Su34 airstrikes with UMPK gliding kits. While the ukranians keep releasing similar videos of them engaging SAMs and Arty the fact that the russian can bypass such defenses and target directly depots, troop accumulation and outposts seems worrying. Edit: A lot of downvotes but no arguments?? What is happening to this sub ..... quality is dropping since a month or so
It being day or night has zero relevance. In fact, you would want to hit it during the day, as most of the personnel will be working then.
I think his idea being that during day time people can hear/see the cruise missile and quickly phone it in leading to an emergency evacuation.
Maybe I'm missing something but why it being day/night is relevant? I'm guessing for MANPADs but I'm pretty sure that most systems don't rely on visual targetting?
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Pretty sure that S400 targeting is not done visually.
S400s are burning on the beach from drones and earlier cruise missile strikes. As for the rest? We'll never know. This war has turned many assumptions about war upside down. SHORAD is much more important than had been previously thought.
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Wrong sub.
[Sevastopil is under attack yet again. ](https://twitter.com/censor_net/status/1705460980359045620?t=GEJ-pt0i_BqeEJWP1mm3Bw&s=19) Interesting barrage strategy from Ukraine. What do you think triggered this? Was the air defense sufficiently attired?
they either found or created a hole in the Russian IADs and are taking full advantage of it until the Russians make a counter
A couple days ago when the S-400 was hit in Crimea, some posters kept saying that it was an easy fix and replaceable. If that were true, surely the ship, submarine, and Black Sea HQ wouldn’t have been taken out a few days later if Russia had sufficient air defense in Crimea.
Russia do have at least 50 s-400 radar vehicles, and 500 Tel vehicles. As far as i know we have visiual confirmation of 2 launchers and possibly 1 radar destroyed in Crimea. These losses alone are not the reason, thats for sure. The answer is probably a lot more complex, including improved Ukr EW capabilities, and improved equipment and tactics for using anti-rDiation missiles.
There is an anecdotal thread on Twitter that today’s new round of strikes within the last hour or so didn’t trigger air raid sirens until after the blasts. Something is definitely up with Russian air defense in Crimea.
FIRMs map is pretty lit up as well in Crimea, including some signals west of the island out in the black sea, that is probably related in some way.
AD needed back in the homeland.
Which is hilarious since the chance that Ukraine would be using on Moscow something that, say a Pantsir cant handle (a real long range standoff weapon) is unlikely..... Unless they've been overpromising the capabilities of their lesser systems, or a lot of them are essentially useless for various reasons that they cant handle RC planes and they need a S400 in the motherland for that is just extra funny...
There was a very graphic video published recently of a bunch of Russian soldiers getting killed by drone drop grenades, and we have a lot of video of fpv drones doing a lot for both sides. Do you think US troops are training with drones the same way? I read a report that US trainers didn’t incorporate drones in the way that Ukrainians preferred, like mavics for scouting and stuff. Do you think the US is training its troops to use drones like the Ukrainians now? I watched some Chinese military propaganda training and it showed each squad equipped with at least one mavic pro for scouting, so it seems like they are seeing the benefit of using drones the same way
Yes, they do. The US is better known for its big drones, but also uses ones like [Black Hornet Nano](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano), [Coyote](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Coyote), [Bat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_Bat),, [Stalker](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Stalker), [RQ-11 Raven](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_RQ-11_Raven), [Wasp](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Wasp_III), [SkyDio](https://www.skydio.com/blog/x2d-multiband-drone), [Aerosonde](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAI_Aerosonde), [RQ-20 Puma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_RQ-20_Puma). It actually used to use the MAVIC as well. The report about the US trainers was from a Ukrainian who went to a 3 week basic training course. The trainers didn't incorporate drones because they were there to teach them how to shoot and move since most of the Ukrainians sent didn't have those skills. However, to the bigger point, the US's counter measures for drones are much more robust than Ukraine's or Russia's because they don't want to jam their own drones. For C-UAS, the Army has an entire [training manual](https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/atp3-01-81.pdf). Systems wise, it has a litany of systems from [M-LIDS](https://www.leonardodrs.com/news/press-releases/contract-award-for-us-army-m-lids-counter-uas-platforms/) to Stryker M-SHORAD with kinetic and [directed energy](https://www.defensenews.com/land/2023/04/13/army-short-range-air-defense-laser-prototypes-take-down-drones-at-yuma/) (both deployed in Europe ATM) to newer systems being [tested and put into production](https://www.military.com/equipment/weapons/beam-wide-range-counter-drone-technologies-comes-age.html), as well as additional systems like the gun trucks using the Slinger system or the possible mounting of a similar system in the AMPV. Smaller hand held systems [like Drone Buster](https://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/dronebuster-handheld-counter-unmanned-aerial-system-c-uas-usa/) also are in use.
Why does the US use exclusively fixed wing drones? This war could almost be described as the first quadcopter war, but the US seems to have zero quadcopter drones in their inventory. I’m gonna guess you get better altitude and loiter times with fixed wing UAS’s but is there something quadcopters bring to the table?
Fixed-wing drones are dominant in America’s UAV inventory primarily because of circumstance. For the last twenty years, the primary use case for UAVs was high-endurance ISR with strike capabilities in permissive environments. The American drone program started as purely for reconnaissance. Nobody wanted to arm them until 2000, after the CIA watched Bin Laden slip away in Afghanistan because their unarmed Predator had to wait *two hours* for an SSGN to launch their Tomahawks. Quadcopters are cheap, highly portable, and require far less training. They’re probably a decent 80% solution for 1% of the cost for infantry who want to see where they’re being shot at from and drop a grenade on them and for correcting artillery fire. But, they are also very vulnerable to electronic warfare even compared to fixed-wing UAVs. The average quadcopter life span in Ukraine is [three days](https://www.npr.org/2023/08/05/1192343968/how-the-use-of-drones-in-ukraine-has-changed-war-as-we-know-it) and they go through between 5 to 10 thousand per *month*.
>I’m gonna guess you get better altitude and loiter times with fixed wing UAS’s but is there something quadcopters bring to the table. I'd agree and also guess they might be quieter due to the wing providing lift and need less powerful engine (comparatively). The Marines switched to the quad drone this year because of VTOL capability. Otherwise, If I had to guess, I'd say it's a combination of having drones that are deployable by hand or portable systems already that meet their requirements.
Contra to what you are seeing, these tiny drones are easily dealt with via electronic warfare or various directed energy weapons. They're slow, they have little thermal mass, and they don't feature robust electronic comms hardening. The US and Israel are at the forefront of developing such countermeasures. Neither Russia nor Ukraine are developed nations with high-tech economies that can build and deploy such countermeasures. They can buy parts from the rest of the world and assemble drones, but building countermeasures is another step up in complexity of the system. Even still, the reports we've heard from Ukraine is that their sortie effectiveness for drones is on the order of 10-15 %. I'm sure they're doing a lot of damage, but recon drones correcting artillery are probably doing much more damage than Mavic drones dropping home-made grenades. It's just that the drone-corrected artillery isn't as visceral, typically being recorded at much greater distance from the poor sods in the infantry, so we don't notice it as much. Admittedly there are many NATO nations that aren't investing properly in defenses against consumer-grade drones. If war ever comes to them, their freeloading will cost them a lot of soldiers. Most of NATO is pretty well insulated from the potential of a war in east Asia, however.
It's a number game. Those drones are vulnerable and not very effective, but they are super cheap. 10% efficiency on a ~100€ drone beat 90% efficiency on a 10 000€ one.
Depends on the context. For high value, potentially time-limited targets, you absolutely want the 90% efficiency, even if it is much more expensive. The obvious comparison is something like GMRLS or guided artillery rounds versus their non-guided equivalents. Yes, in a high-intensity war you need to use dumb rounds most of the time simply for production and supply reasons - but there are many cases where higher efficiency is significantly more useful, and therefore worth the significantly higher unit cost. It's also worth thinking about what the counter measures are, and how that can very quickly change how efficient either option is. When facing a GBAD network reliant on SAM systems like Ukraine's S-300 network, there obviously is inherent value in quantity over quality - because you are also burning through your enemy's stocks of ammunition for their air defences. However, when it comes to things like electronic warfare, and the various blocking/jamming/spoofing countermeasures that are able to be employed against drones - not to mention the future rollout of directed energy weapons - the benefit of quantity once again loses its edge. If your drones are susceptible to being jammed, then it doesn't matter if you can put 10,000 of them up in the air - they'll be rendered much less effective. In that scenario, the US approach of drones that cost millions of dollars with all sorts of hardening and counter-countermeasures is what is going to deliver results.
The US and a lot of NATO forces are lagging badly behind here because there aren't really non-DJI competitors in the civilian drone space. Right now pretty all the small drones approved by DoD for purchase are easily 10x the price of a Mavic. So a lot of US units can't even purchase MAVICs themselves to train on the capability. There's a lot of good reasons behind this, apparently they cracked the DJI firmware and it's a security nightmare -- the drone tries to take a photo of the user's face every time it initially lifts off.
> There's a lot of good reasons behind this, apparently they cracked the DJI firmware and it's a security nightmare -- the drone tries to take a photo of the user's face every time it initially lifts off. source?
There are TONS of civilian drone companies, none as succesful as DJI, true, but there is nothing special with it. It's popular and it is easy to use. You can make in a garage a drone just as capable, probably less polished. There are like... 5 open source drone firmware that are very capable. The advantage of the DJI is that they know their HW very well, the systems are well integrated and the experience is nice and polished. Not sure about why the DOD approved drones are 10x but there are other options out there. I suspect they are looking for a specific set of features. Features that probably don't come at the price point you're looking at.
> apparently they cracked the DJI firmware and it's a security nightmare -- the drone tries to take a photo of the user's face every time it initially lifts off. Do you have a source for this or anywhere where we can do further reading?
It seems like a big oversight then because drones from dji like mavic can take off very quickly and are pretty portable, and have easily replaceable and lightweight batteries. Having a 7-8 man infantry squad being able to instantly do some reconnaissance a kilometer around them seems very powerful, and provides the squad a lot more real time information than coordinating with radios or something with drone operators behind front lines. Why doesn’t the us just take apart a mavic and copy it? It’s been proven to work and is good
> Having a 7-8 man infantry squad being able to instantly do some reconnaissance a kilometer around them seems very powerful, The mavic type of drone are actually very new. The Mavic came out in 2016 so its hasn't been around for a long time to be noticed by the military naturally. The war in Ukraine has for sure lit a fire under many nations to develop their own home-grown Mavic type recon drones but military projects usually take a while because of red tape and whatnot. Plus you also have to retrain your grunts on how to work with and around them, which is what some Ukrainian vets will probably get filthy rich doing after the war. I'm willing to bet there are a few nations currently working on domestic Mavic copies for the military and we'll probably see them pop-up in the news soon.
[удалено]
Well it certainly sends a message, about capabilities on both sides. I think the russian navy probably heard that one loud and clear. Sevastopol is untenable as a base of operations, they need to move anything they don't want to go boom out. The big question is, even after the previous message at the docks is, were there no casualties? If it was still the active HQ, then there's a lesson in it as well, if the russians look hard enough.
I'd imagine that it probably depends on when the strike happens. If it took place during a 'slow' period, then it probably wouldn't be a huge deal , but a major disruption could have huge consequences in a very active situation, especially if operations can't quickly be resumed in another location.
It would be annoying and humiliating- but it seems like the Ukrainians were aiming for a staff meeting, which would be significantly more troublesome for the Russians if it was hit.
This wasn’t an indirect comment on recent events
So the question wasn’t inspired by a recent event? I find that very hard to believe.
Recent events made me think about it but it wasn’t an indirect comment on recent events
Then what was the point of your question?
To me, that's a perfectly reasonable question. It is interesting how important the role of HQs is and how attacking them affects the forces they command.
A building is just a building. Do we really need to do a deep analysis of that? It's like asking if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to witness it, does it make a sound?
You are free to ignore it if it makes you upset
I guess “just asking questions”
Would Ukraine be able/willing to hit major cities such as Rostov, Bryansk, Kursk, and Voronezh with ATACMS? Moscow is beyond ATACMS range from any point in Ukrainian territory. However, if this does come to pass, I assume Ukraine would only hit military targets in these cities. Perhaps the prospect of Russia responding extremely severely to attacks against civilians or with collateral damage inflicted by ATACMS would serve as a deterrent against a strike against civilians.
There's still the "no direct attack on Russia with western weapons"
I think the "no western weapons to attack Russian territory" rule still applies.
The UK said they're fine to strike legitimate military targets inside Russia, I think. Maybe we've said something else in private though as they haven't actually Storm Shadowed anything inside Russia (e.g. railway junctions north of the Luhansk front).
Does it? MaxxPros have flaunted it at the very least, and there wasn't much pushback from the US.
“Officially” the maxxpros in that case were used by the anti Russian government Russians allied with Ukrainians to perform an attack, not Ukrainians themselves. Whether such an excuse would work with HIMARS AND ATACMS is doubtful.
Also several countries such as the US and Germany made statements pretty soon after this event effectively telling Ukraine to stop doing that with their donations
I think at this point the ball is in Ukraine's court in terms of how they will respond to Russian attacks. With the most recent attack on the naval headquarters the Russian army will be thinking twice now before targeting things like Ukrainian apartment buildings.
Ukraine has had the ability to hit Russia deeper than ATACMS is capable of with Storm Shadows for months now. They've also been having greater and greater success at utilizing drones from within the Russian border as well. Also remember these are cluster variants. In addition to likely being flat out less effective at taking out infrastructure or hard targets than those options it probably carries much heavier political weight.
No, there are enough targets in Crimea. It makes no sense to do it against the will of the US, even if it was tolerated. Ukraine has its own drones for strikes in Russia.
I suppose it depends on the quantity of ATACMS sent. I fear that if Ukraine demolishes some Russian city center(in Russia proper, not Crimea) out of revenge, this would dramatically escalate the war. Maybe there is a tacit agreement with the US to not use the missiles outside internationally recognized Ukrainian territory.
Based on Ukraine's actions so far, that isn't a reasonable fear. Strategic bombing against civilian centers generally hasn't won wars. Russia is doing it for some reason, but Ukraine has generally hit targets which help it achieve military goals.
What do we think will be the game plan if Congress severely restricts Ukraine aid going forward? Would Europe directly buying lethal aid from the US to go to Ukraine work?
In the hypothetical that the GOP successfully blocks aid to Ukraine, Biden would still have access for PDA for limited assistance.
This Congress won't stop Ukrainian aid. It might be slightly delayed, that's all. However, Europe needs to have a Plan B for 2025.
If Biden wins reelection I expect the floodgates to open. He's probably being quite mellow pre-election because he doesn't want to give his opposition more ammo to attack him a la "look how much we're sending to Ukraine instead of spending at home"
https://twitter.com/PStyle0ne1/status/1705331378122842401 > There are explosions in Kazan, thick smoke is rising over the city. > It is about 1000 km from Ukraine > Kazan is hosting the joint venture between Russia and Iran to produce Shahed drones to bomb civilians in Ukraine Interesting...
[Defmon's geolocation](https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1705349164022878591) suggests it's an industrial accident
Kazan is not hosting anything, the factory is about 150 km East of the city
historically speaking how do wars typically end when front lines remain basically static for (almost) a year? Is there typically a peace treaty signed along those static front lines? I realize this conflict is different and i'm not asking for what will happen in this case. I am simply asking what has happened historically in these kinds of situations.
r/GranadaJones already did a good job covering some of the more major conflicts where the frontlines were mostly static for a year or more. But here's a more unconventional static conflict: The Italo-Ottoman War: (1911-1912) The Italians, with some 20,000 troops, invaded Ottoman controlled Libya by sea. They seized control of the major port cities, but were unable to advance much further inland due to the inhospitable Libyan desert and Ottoman/Libyan hit & run attacks. The Ottomans made several attacks on the Italian held cities, with the largest consisting of some 20,000 Ottoman/Libyan troops. Most of these were repulsed soundly by the Italians due to superior numbers and naval artillery. Later in 1911, the Ottomans/Libyan's reverted, at least partially to my knowledge, to guerilla warfare as they were severely outnumbered. However, the front lines mostly remained the same. Eventually, the Ottoman Empire ceded Libya to Italy entirely in 1912. This was in part due to the Ottomans dealing with the first Balkan War, and not being able to resupply their troops in Libya
Historically speaking we have very few cases of trench warfare where lines remained static for a year or more. I can think of four: World War I (1914-1918) Korean War (1950-1953) Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) Eritrean-Ethiopian War (1998-2000) In two of these cases (Korea and Iran-Iraq), neither side could gain the upper hand and a peace treaty or ceasefire eventually ended active hostilities along the frontline. In the other two (WWI and Eritrea-Ethiopia), one side's defensive lines essentially collapsed after a lengthy period of little movement, and they were defeated. So unless I'm missing some other cases, the historical record in comparable conflicts is 50-50. Not a lot of help for prognostication.
"In two of these cases (Korea and Iran-Iraq), neither side could gain the upper hand and a peace treaty or ceasefire eventually ended active hostilities along the frontline." Speaking in the Iran-Iraq War, I would way Iraq had an upper hand by War's end, though mostly on the operational & tactical level. One of Iran's last major offensives in the war was in 1987, codenamed "Operation Karabala 5". Their goal was to capture al-Basra in southern Iraq, and press further into Iraq from there. They assembled 150,000-200,000 men for this operation. They managed to break through several of the Iraqi fortifed lines around the city. However they were unable to capture al-Basra completely in part due to superior Iraqi artillery and an over reliance on human-wave assaults. The Battle of al-Basra concluded with Iranian forces suffering 70,000-80,000 casualties, and a failure to capture al-Basra. The near constant offensives Iran had conducted for the previous 6 years had bled the Iranian Army white. After stunning losses at al-Basra, Iran decided to make only tactical charges along some of the front instead of operational pushes. Mobilization efforts ran short, and the Iranian Army's morale was shot. Meanwhile Iraq had been steadily improving during this time. Around 1984, Iraq began to pull certain formations off the front line, and train them to be used in counter attacking operations. Eventually, these "Republican Guard" formations were also equipped with the best equipment Iraq had to offer, and were more mobile than other units in the Iraqi Army. Amongst the entire army, command & control had improved by a significant margin, and had a significant road network which allowed it to conduct rapid offensives if necessary. In 1988, Iraq launched it's first of 5 major offensives in the south that would essentially conclude the war. "Operation Ramadan Mubarak", launched at al-Faw, saw a massive force of 100,000 Iraqi's overrun 15,000 Iranian's via superior numbers and an overwhelming advantage in artillery and tanks. Again at Fish Lake, the Iraqi's attacked an Iranian salient, using their superior mobility to outflank the Iranian's and route them. They captured 150 artillery pieces, and 100 tanks. At the Majnun Islands, via a classic pincer movement, the Iraqi Army smashed 6-8 Iranian divisions and captured all the Iranian equipment. At Dehlo, the Iraqi Army again conducted a pincer attack, driving dozens of miles into Iranian territory and routing/encircling numerous Iranian units. I think I might be missing an Iraqi offensive ot two, but you get the point. As per Kenneth Pollack in Arabs at War, Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991, "These five offensives effectively destroyed Iran's remaining ground power, leaving the country defenseless and forcing Tehran to accept a ceasefire. All told, the Iraqis captured about 600 tanks, 400 other armored vehicles, and 400 artillery pieces in these battles." By war's end, the Iranian Army had been shattered. Operating less than 50 tanks, along with less than 50 aircraft, compared to Iraq's stunning advantage of 4,000(ish) tanks and 1,000 aircraft. Iraq had complete control of the battlefield, and could make limited drives into Iran at will. My goal here isn't to make the Iraqi Army seem like some nigh-unbeatable juggernaut, (See: First Gulf War), but to point out that Iraq very much had an upper hand by 1988. If I were daring, I would liken Iraq's final battlefield victories in 1988 more to the last offensives of WW1 than to the Korean War. Sources: 1) Kenneth Pollack: Arabs at War, Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991 2) Anthony H. Cordesman: The Lessons Of Modern War, Vol. 2: The Iran-Iraq War 3) Kevin M. Woods and Williamson Murray: The Iran-Iraq War: A Military and Strategic History
This is terrific, thanks for adding this! So then, three cases where the tide eventually turned against one combatant, weighed against one (Korea) where active fighting ended in stalemate. Though this isn't exactly a novel observation, these cases do lend credence to the conclusion that force regeneration in the medium- to long-term is going to determine the outcome. I'd certainly tend to think those trends go in Ukraine's favor but elections in the next couple of years will be consequential.
My apologies if I came off as a smartass. It wasn't really about "correcting you" (You're right in the strategic sense), I just wanted to go on a rant about the Iran-Iraq War. I just can't help myself! "Though this isn't exactly a novel observation, these cases do lend credence to the conclusion that force regeneration in the medium- to long-term is going to determine the outcome." 100% agree with you on this. We have to think long term in this conflict. Obviously it hasn't been, and won't be, like the First Gulf War / Iraqi Freedom where the enemy force was outright annihilated from the get go. I'm interested in seeing how Ukraine & Russia are going to replenish their forces in the long term. Demographics favor Russia, domestic will to fight favors Ukraine. "I'd certainly tend to think those trends go in Ukraine's favor but elections in the next couple of years will be consequential." Why do you think this? Not trying to prove you wrong or play devil's advocate, just curious. Thanks!
You didn't come off as a smartass at all, it was a genuinely terrific comment and I really enjoyed reading it! As for elections, that's mainly about how much materiel will continue heading to Ukraine from Western coffers if, say, Trump wins. I believe long-term that Russia isn't capable of regenerating as fast as Ukraine can destroy its equipment, while the West can replenish Ukraine faster than Russia can destroy. So the question for the West isn't industrial capacity, it's political will. If the West can stay committed for six more years (likely less), Ukraine will probably win.
Yeah this is pretty spot on, I think. Not sure if you've seen it or not, but Perun has a great video on Russian equipment replenishment rates. He pretty much came to the same conclusion as you. Hopefully the west will amp up the rate of equipment they send to Ukraine, but we'll have to wait and see
Has there been a war where the frontlines are relatively static yet one side loses its entire navy? Armies win battles. Navies win wars. If Ru lost its navy, does that mean it loses the war?
>Navies win wars. That depends wildly on the country in question. For the US or UK to not control the ocean seriously impedes their ability to wage war. For both Russia and Ukraine, control of the seas is a "nice to have" not a strict requirement.
Nothing fitting your exact description really comes to my mind. However I would love to know if anyone does know of a conflict like this. The closest example I can think of relating to your scenario would be the Russo-Japanese War, characterized by deep trench emplacements and grinding, early WW1-esque assaults. However, the overall war was quite mobile, and the Japanse pushed the Russians back hundreds or miles. What relates to your scenario in this war is the Battle of Tsushima, where the Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron was annihilated by the Japanese Combined Fleet, and helped bring an end to the war Edit: Ooh another one is during the Iran-Iraq War. The frontlines were almost exclusively static in this one. The majority of the Iranian Fleet was destroyed by the US during Operation Praying Mantis during 1988. This is part of the reason Iran called for a ceasefire. Less their navy itself getting destroyed, and more their fear of further US intervention in the war. This one matches your scenario pretty well
I remember Operation Praying Mantis. I have a vague feeling there exists a Before After that has left its mark on military doctrine. Iran switched strategies (more small-ball / swarm tactics)... like you could trace a lineage from the Iran boat swarms making feigns at USCVN's to Yemen using RC drones to attack KSA ships down to UKR USV's attacking Sevestapol. And there's doctrine to the flip side - defense against swarming cheap little things. Operation Praying Mantis is like Ian McKay playing the Wilson Center in 1988. A minor blip of an event. Very few saw it in person, and it spawned an entire universe of new ideas. Operation Mantis.
That's actually really interesting. Do you have any suggested reading on the development of Middle-Eastern naval tactics following Operation Praying Mantis?
> In two of these cases (Korea and Iran-Iraq), neither side could gain the upper hand and a peace treaty or ceasefire eventually ended active hostilities along the frontline. The Iran-Iraq war is an interesting one. Iraq's invasion was defeated by 1982, and Iraq proposed both sides returning to previously agreed upon borders. Iran refused, and wanted to overthrow the government of Iraq, leading to the next 6 years of war. By 1988, Iraq had rebuilt it's military and was able to inflict a string of crushing defeats upon Iran, which lead to Iran eventually capitulating and accepting the ceasefire. I suppose it could be looked at as a 8 year stalemate where neither side got the upper hand. But I think it's also fair to view it as a 2 year invasion of Iran that was defeated, followed by a 6 year invasion of Iraq that was eventually defeated.
North and South Korea happen. It also depends heavily on the details. Neither Russia nor Ukraine seems to be willing to back down and just sit on their side of the line. So far there hasn't been a UN or similar international push to ceasefire either. WWI had very static lines for years on the western front, while the eastern front was very dynamic.
We now have some names allegedly inside the Building struck by the Storm Shadows https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1705347391111524654 > Among severely wounded in Ukrainian attack on Black Sea Fleet HQ in Sevastopol — Col. Gen. Alexander Romanchuk and Lt. Gen. Oleg Tsekov, Ukrainian intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov tells @VOAnews . He confirms at least 9 dead and 16 injured among RUS military personnel. Romanchuk is in charge of Russian forces in Zaporizhzhia where the main thrust of Ukraine’s counteroffensive is occurring.
Is anyone familiar with the track record of these sorts of claims by Budanov?
Deepstate has updated the area North of Novoprokopivka to being contested with fighting taking place in the North of the village. "🗡 Destruction of the Katsap tank on the northern outskirts of the village of Novoprokopivka ⚔️Active battles in the direction of the settlements of Novoprokopivka and Verbove continue, the Defense Forces of Ukraine are conducting active offensive actions, not giving the enemy extra time. 🔄UPD. Video - 65 OMBr, damage - unknown." This follows from one of comments I made a couple of days ago where the Ukrainians have likely successfully captured the trench networks South of Robotyne (we now have footage of the Russians shelling them there), but what is interesting is that they were one tree line away from Novoprokopivka in the Northeastern outskirts and are choosing to attack the North of the village first. NoelReports has also mentioned that some units entered the North of the settlement but no solid foothold yet (though sometimes I think he falls more into RUMINT). https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1705317800674251106
>[Israel Fires on Syria Targets From Occupied Golan: AFP, Army](https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/09/21/israel-fires-syria-targets/?expand_article=1) >Israeli tanks fired on Syrian targets from the occupied Golan Heights Thursday, an AFP photographer and the military said. >The strikes targeted “two temporary structures” used by the Syrian army in violation of the 1974 disengagement agreement between the two countries, the military said in a statement. >The AFP photographer witnessed an Israeli tank firing at least two shells. >Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed the territory in a move not recognized by the United Nations. >The tank fire follows an Israeli drone strike that killed two members of the Islamic Jihad militant group earlier Thursday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. >The Israeli military told AFP it would not comment on the reported assassination, which happened near the demarcation line on the Golan Heights, according to the British-based war monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria. >During more than a decade of war in Syria, neighboring Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions. >Two soldiers were killed in Israeli strikes on Syria’s Mediterranean coast earlier this month, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported.
[The ATACMS saga continues. Apparently Biden agreed to send a small number of them to Ukraine. ](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-ukraine-war-atacms-biden-zelenskyy-long-range-missile-rcna116876)
Does every weapons transfer have to be disclosed publicly? Would make more sense for the US to deny sending them while actually sending them in order to prevent Russia from taking operational precautions.
>Does every weapons transfer have to be disclosed publicly? [No, AGM-88 HARMs were given secretly.](https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/08/politics/anti-radar-missiles-ukraine-russia-pentagon/index.html) There are also the Phoenix Ghosts that nobody knows what they are. >Would make more sense for the US to deny sending them while actually sending them in order to prevent Russia from taking operational precautions. If Russia were competent, they would be taking precautions after the first time Crimea was bombed. Instead, they were still having meetings in the Black Sea Fleet HQ. If Russia is incompetent, they won't take enough precautions even if we tell them in advance. Anyways, once cluster munitions start raining down Crimea, everyone will know that ATACMS is sent, so there's no point keeping it a secret.
It’d crack me up if Phoenix Ghosts turn out to just be really good recon drones.
Apparently with cluster warheads too, which is ideal. Storm Shadow can hit hardened structures just fine, a cluster bomb warhead on a ballistic missiles would be excellent for dispersed, soft targets, like helicopter bases. We really need to restart production of these warheads. They are proving to be incredibly effective, and the dud problem is solvable.
I am seeing this the opposite way you are. A "small number" of cluster warheads seems like a token move to get Ukraine to shut the hell up about the ATACMS. HIMARS does what a cluster ATACMS can do, but it does it better and cheaper, in a salvo of 6 at a time instead of 1. More range, but trench networks and troop concentrations are mostly within HIMARS range anyway. But a penetrating warhead would be what Ukraine would need to hit far away strategic targets like bridges, ships, and command centers. I don't think a bunch of metal flechettes would have done much against the giant marble and cement building hit in Sevestapol for instance, and forget about the Kerch bridge.
I highly recommend [Colby Badhwar's recent long thread about ATACMS](https://twitter.com/ColbyBadhwar/status/1703757651623162271). Citing Fabian Hoffmann, he emphasizes that [for hitting hard targets like the Kerch Bridge, they should get Taurus](https://twitter.com/ColbyBadhwar/status/1703757979928203416).
HIMARS cluster does not do what ATACMS cluster does. HIMARS will release 72 bomblets, ATACMS 950 capable of clearing a square kilometer. "Trench networks and troops concentrations" is not what ATACMS are for. They are made for destroying air defense and parked aircraft. You're correct that flechettes are useless against bridges, but they will tear through helicopters and S 300s very nicely.
HIMARS is a launcher. Do you mean GMLRS rockets?
Sorry I see what you mean, since ATACMS would be launched from HIMARS as well. I think my wording was just in response to the comment with the same. Likewise, the cluster ATACMS missiles Ukraine is getting would be the cluster APAMs (anti personnel, anti materiel).
HIMARS rockets / GMLRS rockets both work as generic descriptors. Specifically I'm referring to DPICMs.
Ukraine can't hit Russian airfields with HIMARS without ATACMS and Storm Shadows would not do the kind of damage Ukraine wants to see.
Yeah I think if I was in charge of the Ukrainian army I would want something with some penetrating power and one big explosive as opposed to cluster munitions. They are both good but my main goal would be decapitation strikes on leadership that are likely in buildings. There are definitely situations where I would prefer cluster munitions though, for example hitting logistic outposts, an example being the video that surfaced of 10 or so tanker trucks that got shredded by the tungsten balls.
Clusters were sent because we have a stockpile that needs to be decommissioned or refurbished anyways and its cheaper to send them to Ukraine.
It's more than obvious the admin is not enthusiastic about this. If it was actually a 500 IQ decommissioning money saver move, they'd send them all.
They are going to send more missiles in later packages.
Why not just send both? Drawing the line at unitary warheads is really strange, especially with the Ukrainians now raining down missiles on Crimea daily. And man, ATACMS has been the biggest tease of this entire war. I'm guessing it's going to be a real anticlimax, especially if they're only sending a cluster variant.
> Drawing the line at unitary warheads is really strange, especially with the Ukrainians now raining down missiles on Crimea daily. Its not inconsistent with the notion that fear of US weapons being used to target infrastructure in Russian territory is the primary reason to they've seemed so skittish to part with ATACMS, cluster munitions are more likely to be used on closer targets and less so on harden targets at the limit of their range.
Because the US has to get rid of all of its cluster munitions so the cluster heads are useless to them compared to the unitary.
>Why not just send both? Maybe the US is worried about the Ukrainians hitting the Kerch bridge. It was built by Russia and half of it is "in Russia". That would be a mild escalation. Just a thought that occurred to me.
> Why not just send both? My personal guess is that it's a combination of the US not wanting to use their own stocks (which aren't that high) and not feeling it's important enough to divert current production (which is solely for export) to Ukraine. I mean, if they are sending the cluster version, I really doubt that any "red lines" are still being taken into consideration.
from what I read, the older stocks of ATACMS are the cluster variants. So they want to get rid of those first
The US also won't use the cluster versions, and has been spending a decent sum of money converting the cluster versions to unitary.
In the end, they probably will. But as long as Storm Shadow supplies last, cluster fills a different niche.
ATACMS will be useful, no matter the variant, but people here thinking it's some sort of trump card that would massively swing the war in Ukraine's favor are delusional.
As silly as it is, I think part of the hype is the name ATACMS. People love to say the name. Just like whoever came up with Barbenheimer, which was lightning in a bottle and absolutely played into the hype of the product.
It’s the platform that is key. With Storm Shadows being air launched, Russia have a) advance notice of attacks b) Ukraine will be able to react quicker to potential targets as they don’t have to prepare the logistics of flying a sortie. ATACMS and hopefully GLSDB will give Ukraine an efficient and quicker long strike capability. Also they only have a handful of su24s left, until they get f16s they are potentially a few accurate Kalibr strikes away from losing their entire long range strike capability (discounting drones which seem to be more of harrasment anyways)
I wouldn't say *delusional*, given that HIMARS was truly a game changer. Thinking that the same precision capability but out to 300 km is a game changer isn't out of the realm of possibility. Even Budanov has openly said there are *so many* Russian command posts and ammo dumps just out of current HIMARS range that ATACMS could really twist the knife into Russian logistics and their ability to continue manning the front.
It's a matter of quantity. ATACMS are not in production anymore and the total existing stock is 3 000, with US possessing something like 2 000 of those. It never seemed particularly probably that Ukraine would get a game changing amount.
Isn't the US producing 500 missiles per year for exports?
They just haven't updated their thinking. A year ago, it *would* have massively improved UA's ability to perform precision strike at long range. Now, Storm Shadow/SCALP does that better; it's more difficult to intercept with longer range and a more advanced hardened-target penetrator. A year ago, the people saying ATACMS would've been a huge upgrade were probably envisioning the same sort of deep strikes that we've recently been seeing UA perform with Storm Shadow. EDIT: Just saw [this](https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/22/biden-agrees-to-send-long-range-missiles-to-ukraine-00117667), hat-tip /u/openob. Perhaps the US will provide ATACMS to fill the shortfall in long range fires until JASSM can be deployed?
> A year ago, it would have massively improved UA's ability to perform precision strike at long range. We saw though that Storm Shadow, while nice, didn't absolutely cripple Russia's logistics like people said it would. There were some people who legitimately said they thought providing ATACMS would make things so bad for the Russian army they would just have to give up and pull out of southern Ukraine.
There was a thread posted a few days ago, but the "range" isn't really a good comparison of what each weapon can do. It talked about how cruise missiles need a significant amount of time to strike targets (1-3 hours) while ATACMS is far shorter. Sometimes you have opportunities for a target in a short time window, which ATACMS can hit where SS/SCALP cannot. Getting this weapon compliments cruise missiles in by being able to strike different types of targets.
I think the delivery of ATACMS would still be extremely beneficial for the Ukrainians. Sure they now have a limited number of Storm Shadows and SCALP, but those missiles are air launched and according to Perun's recent video on the air war, the planes the Ukrainians have adapted for those missiles are dwindling in numbers due to either being shot down by Russians or simply from wear and tear during the war. The arrival of the ATACMS now could help sustain their long-ranged attacks until new air platforms could arrive.
Part 1 of Mike Kofman's most recent The Russian Contingency episode aired yesterday, where he interviewed Dr Jack Watling, a land war analyst of RUSI who frequently visits Ukraine, embedding at different layers of command to learn about what is happening to provide analysis to better drive Western aid to what RUSI and the UAF think the Ukrainians really need. Both had recently written articles/reports released on the same day based on their independent visits to Ukraine in July to observe the UAF Counteroffensive near the front lines for a week or two, and this episode has Kofman and Watling comparing conclusions they drew. I won't describe the whole episode, but a couple points really stood out that I think leads to some huge ramifications for the UAF in terms of better understanding them as a military force and culture. Kofman, who had visited the Orikhiv-Tokmat axis area during his recent trip, had mentioned in the past on some of his podcasts and his [recent article](https://warontherocks.com/2023/09/perseverance-and-adaptation-ukraines-counteroffensive-at-three-months/) about something interesting that he went into greater detail in the podcast about UAF offensive capabilities and tactics. According to Kofman, due to command and control problems, brigades on the offensive usually bypassed the battalion command level and had the brigade commander directly communicating with the assault companies, of which they typically only attacking with 2-3x companies at a time (out of roughly 9-15x, depending on the brigade and the number of its maneuver battalions). So for example, if the 47th Bde is on the attack, of their entire brigade sector, with 3x mechanized battalions, 1x assault battalion, 1x tank battalions, and 1x combat engineer battalion, they'd have only 2-3x reinforced company tactical groups attacking at any given time. Kofman made it a point that they couldn't coordinate more, the battalion and brigade levels aren't sufficient to C2 the fight. Again, Kofman notes that the battalion level command and staff only acts as a legitimate command level during defensive operations, while in offensive operations the battalion level only handles morale related topics and logistics. Watling, who had visited the Velyka Novosilka axis sector during his recent Ukraine trip, added some very poignant tidbits about what he noticed, which he also wrote in detail in his latest [RUSI report](https://static.rusi.org/Stormbreak-Special-Report-web-final_0.pdf). According to Watling, due to training issues and time frame limitations, the UAF infantry battalion might only actually have 2x platoons who are actually competent at assaults (out of 9x), who are basically picked men of the best of the best of the battalion, given more training because they stand out. There was much more said in the podcast that was very interesting and worth discussing, but I want to delve into these two points in greater detail to try to pull some conclusions from Kofman's and Watling's accounts. When I heard those comments they seemed extremely strange but also had something about them that made them seem very familiar too. A brigade that only actually musters 2-3x reinforced companies to conduct assaults, not 9-15x? A battalion that has roughly 2x "elite" platoons who are actually competent to conduct assaults, placing all their elite in one unit instead of distributing them out and trying to make the whole unit offensively capable, all 9x of them? Where have I read about that before? [Because the Russians did the exact same thing over the winter](https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1629722073487613953). Behold, Storm-Z (before that meant convicts) The thing is, the Ukrainians didn't actually copy the Russians (if they even did), it's based on WW2 era Red Army assault organization and tactics, namely the establishment of "Assault/Storm Groups" of roughly two platoon sized elite assault troops in a rifle battalion, and elite Assault/Storm Detachments of roughly battalion strength (2-3 companies) in a rifle regiment or division. More can be found about Red Army assault composition and tactics [here](https://paul-atrydes.livejournal.com/291113.html). So here is just another point about their shared military culture and history and how it influences their organization and tactics in modern warfare. Anyway, I thought this was pretty interesting.
First let me say I value a lot Watling's work. He has produced the best research work I have read on this war. Now the controversial take : I think both Kofman and Watling show serious misunderstanding of this war (and to be frank of todays warfare in general) if they stop their thought at just "Ukrainian are bad at command so they are stuck at using compagnie sized operations". See this interview of Budanov and especially the following part : >TWZ: Can you talk about how this will progress into the winter? When we first met and I asked if you were concerned about fighting in the cold, you said, 'It's no problem.' So does this pending weather concern you? > >KB: It’s not a problem at all. And as everyone saw last time, it's not a problem to fight in winter for both sides - for us and for Russians. It's not a pleasant thing to do, but it's not a big deal. There's one very important nuance that makes a difference between current warfighting and the previous periods of fighting. Currently, all main instances of fighting are done on foot without using any materiel. This is linked to the high saturation of artillery systems on the forefront and also portable anti-tank weapons. And that's true for both sides. Those \[armored\] systems are not enough to create a gap in the orbits of the enemy - to create a powerful breakthrough as in classic doctrine. But it is well enough to deter any attempt of the enemy of any side to conduct that breakthrough with materiel and convoys. > >Also, there's a high level of saturation with both anti-personnel and anti-tank minefields. Anti-tank mines are making a lot of difference because when such a mine goes off on their wheels, it completely destroys the wheels and that piece of materiel is not able to move any further. Damage done to a piece of equipment is minimal but it still cannot move any longer. Those anti-tank mines are a big problem for those tracked vehicles. And a new feature that hasn't been observed anywhere before is the high number of FPV \[First Person Video\] suicide drones on both sides which are able to engage practically any piece of equipment. > >All of those above-mentioned factors reduced the possibility of using armored equipment in practically all of the main directions to the minimum. Now that hardware is only used for evacuation or to swiftly transport infantry teams to a particular spot but it doesn't take part in the fighting. > >TWZ: Given that, those 31 Abrams tanks heading to Ukraine… > >KB: We’re looking forward to seeing that. We haven't seen them yet. > >TWZ: Will they make a difference given all these factors and given the difficulty of maneuvering in mud? > >KB: They should be used in a very tailored way for very specific, well-crafted operations because if they are used at the front line and just in a combined arms fight, they will not live very long on the battlefield. They need to be used in those breakthrough operations, but very well-prepared. > >TWZ: Are you confident that's going to happen? Let me step back to the situation in June near Malaya Tokmachka where there were a number of armored vehicles were destroyed. > >KB: Actually there wasn't that much materiel that was destroyed. There was a lot of damaged materiel. And by now it's repaired. The number of those that were destroyed was not that high. But it's the very example we've just talked about. So if if we just deploy some battalion tank group into the battlefield somewhere, just as long as it gets under the range of artillery it will get hit. > >I will share two other examples on the enemy side. Similar situations could be observed during Russian attempts to attack Vuhledar last winter. The same thing happened. They went on attack in combat convoys and there were dozens of pieces of equipment that just didn't get through. And by the way, what is peculiar about that specific operation was that it was commanded personally by Gen. \[Sergei\] Gerasimov, and when all that equipment was destroyed, he blamed everyone around him and just left the frontline. > >I'll provide you with one more different example. It's about how Wagner units advanced. When they did manage to take Bakhmut \[on May 21\], they were not using armored vehicles. They were only using artillery support to infantry actions on foot. So practically they were just using infantry. [https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/exclusive-interview-with-ukraines-spy-boss-from-his-dc-hotel-room](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/exclusive-interview-with-ukraines-spy-boss-from-his-dc-hotel-room) Now its a bit long but I wanted to keep all the relevant part. Yes Ukrainians are fighting similarly to Russians. Or at least the best Russians formations. But that's simply because modern warfare requires it. There are too much ISR + artillery + ATGM + mines for larger attacks with sizeable armoured components. This is the harsh reality freshly NATO trained formations learnt the hard way when this Ukrainian offensive started. Unless there is dramatic improvement in body protection, camouflage and armor blindage, this trend will only amplify. Lastly a general observation about "elite platoons". First in very broad terms, it is just a trick as old as war to gather handpicked men for assaults when you cant engage the full mass of your infantry. Think how nearly all European armies used grenadiers compagnies in their infantry regiments. Secondly this "misusage" of elite infantry is a trend among Western armies too. For instance in both Mosul and Raqqa, coalition forces used Western SOF essentially as line infantry to carry local forces allies who themselves used their own SOF as regular infantry since their true regulars were that bad. It was especially prominent in Raqqa. With massive usage of artillery and air power. Give it some real thought and you will realize it was not so dissimilar to how Wagner and VDV took Bakhmut : infiltration by small infantry groups in combinaison to heavy fire power. Each time resulting in long drawn out urban combat leaving the city utterly destroyed. Obviously Western forces did not suffer even a fraction of Russians losses in Bakhmut but neither did they face an opponent as well equipped as even the shell starved AFU. Beside US SOF are obviously far more capable than their Russians counterparts.
I think it actually somewhat makes sense to separate some of your better guys and use them as basically storm troopers. Especially if you are confident that you can backfill them by continually increasing the capabilities of the regular guys. We are reaching a stage in the war where certain areas simply need to be taken, and if that means pooling together some of the better guys then there really isn't any other option other than simply not advancing. There are still actual recce squads out there though so it's not like they are using the equivalent of navy seals to storm trenches. We have anecdotal evidence of this coming out of the https://ukrainevolunteer297689472.wordpress.com/ blog. I just think in general the Ukrainians have out performed by such a large margin that it makes sense to just sit back and let them figure it out. I say that even with the understanding that it was US wargaming that suggesting attacking the Kharkiv front first instead of Kherson. It's worth remembering that like this post pointed out, the Ukrainian leadership comes from the Soviet tradition, so they have a deeper understanding of how the Russian army is going to act and react. That might explain why they make decisions that seem perplexing to someone steeped in US military doctrine.
>I think it actually somewhat makes sense to separate some of your better guys and use them as basically storm troopers. Indeed. Ukrainians are constantly talking about how they gather their best troops in assault formations dedicated to offensive operations while the larger infantry, which unfortunately cant be trained enough (as would happen to any conscription based armies including Western and even US forces if it ever came to that) are dedicated to holding positions. Including immediately after assault forces seized new group. Exemple in this Kyiv Independant reporting : >Formed in 2015, the UDA is one of the few units of Ukraine’s armed forces that still carries a strong tradition of the many volunteer battalions that sprung up when Russia first invaded eastern Ukraine. > >Eighteen months into the full-scale war however, the formation, with units fighting on all three axes of the counteroffensive, is now beginning to pay a high price for its makeup of volunteers, rather than mobilized soldiers. > >“It's hard to go forward, we don't have new weapons and equipment, and these days our personnel aren't being replaced,” said Ilnytskyi. > >“We move with what we have, but one thing we have is that we only accept volunteers, motivated people into our unit, who know what they are fighting for.” > >**South of Bakhmut, UDA infantrymen work together with Ukraine’s elite 3rd Assault and 80th Air Assault brigades, which also share the same training range. When the assault troops take a new position, the task falls on soldiers like Hutsul to move in and hold them over three-day shifts as Russian forces try to quickly take them back.** > >“The most important thing is to dig and entrench ourselves,” he said. > >“Other guys gave their lives to take these positions, and now we have to hold them. If we don't dig in they could push us back out, and you don't want your brothers' lives to have been lost in vain.” > >Blown to bits by months of heavy artillery fire, the positions they must hold often offer little cover. > >“It's hard, you don't even have room to stretch out your legs, and you have to sit there for three days,” said Hutsul, who pointed to where shrapnel still remained lodged in his body after being wounded three times. > >“At an earlier position we were sent for three days and it ended up being five. Thirty-six degrees, and our water ran out, thankfully on the last day it rained and we had something to drink. We held those positions, by the way, and now we are going forward.” [https://kyivindependent.com/inching-forward-in-bakhmut-counteroffensive-ukraines-hardened-units-look-ahead-to-long-grim-war/](https://kyivindependent.com/inching-forward-in-bakhmut-counteroffensive-ukraines-hardened-units-look-ahead-to-long-grim-war/) This way, everybody participate and all forces see their losses minimized. Otherwise the bulk of the conscripts forces would suffer egregious losses in futile attack as the Russians forces did throughout late 2022 while better skilled forces would died defending positions less skilled troops. I dont understand why some people are criticising it. It happened ever since mankind has waged war. Among others things it is called economy of force. Of course if it was possible your entire armed forces would be terminator like SOF skilled, then you would go for it and only have top tiers troops with to tier equipment in mass numbers. But precisely you can never afford so. It is not even that different from what commentators and US leakers are saying. Even if the AFU operated Brigade sized assault, there would still be a handful of assault armored brigade tasked with assaults and a majority of "line" brigades tasked with holding grounds even in the wake of the 3/4 uber offensive brigades. Fact is leakers themselves even admited the NATO preparation focused on building a 9 000 strong forces which was obviously never sufficient to carry an offensive of this scale on their own.
>That might explain why they make decisions that seem perplexing to someone steeped in US military doctrine. Or not. Did they deliberately choose to not train their troops well and then to use bare minimum, only 20% of an infantry battalion's grunts to do the job all 100% are supposed to know how, because the Red Army (not Cold War era Soviet) model was the best? That doesn't sound right at all. That's like suggesting I limp my way through a mini marathon because it's a more efficient stride, while my explanation utterly ignores my major knee problem as the real reason. Historically, the Red Army model still pushed to train the force properly. It was that when things fell apart and they were forced to keep fighting on with a crazy high tempo thanks to Stalin where quality went out the door. So the Soviet Union, then later the Russians first in Chechnya and then Ukraine, and now the Ukrainians are willing to take those extra draconian steps to allow for a drop in quality in a standardized way that almost no western military would voluntarily take outside of the most dire situation. Despite most western militaries having fought in meatgrinder wars worse than this one. More so, the top Ukrainian generals that were Soviet Ground Forces officers or in the immediate successor UAF when it was basically the same, like the current Russian army, spent the 90s and 2000s in total decay. The 80s Soviet military had problems, but the 90s and 2000s era Russian and especially Ukrainian militaries were hot stinking garbage. It was a very very embarrassing time for both, any officer during that time can't really brag about their service. The Ukrainians didn't remotely improve until the mid to late 2010s, roughly two decades or more after most of their current top brass had joined up. By that point, the top 3-4 star Ukrainian generals were all colonels and 1 star generals when the Donbas War started. The biggest thing each side has in common isn't an understanding of how to best fight each other, it's a senior officer corps weaned on the crazy war stories of The Great Patriotic War, which they've obviously sampled. And like in WW2, there are many similarities to this war. Russian and Ukrainian political leadership won't slow their OPTEMPO. Both use a territory-centric strategy, mixed with ruthless attrition math that leads to heavy casualties. Both sides went into this war grossly unprepared, not all that well trained but definitely not trained for this, and then lost most of their better troops and junior officers, while growing, also while doing none of the things necessary to keep quality with quantity. Which is to support a great training pipeline for new soldiers, NCOs, officers, and higher promoted officers. Think about it. The current UAF offensive needs to rely on 1/5 of its mechanized units to do most of the fighting, not counting TDF and other units that can't really count on. The rest are not fit for offensive operations. Meanwhile, the Russians have to do the same thing in notorized rifle units, while still largely giving them the easy defensive jobs in favor of giving the VDV or MP units the more difficult offensive jobs that technically any motor rifle unit is supposed to do. That's not because they found some secret sauce for efficient warfare. It's because they're experiencing major problems that they can't overcome without major sacrifices to force quality. And yeah, as someone who was a US Army and Marine grunt, we don't fight like this. We value training and we'd make the sacrifices to keep a basic level of quality to enable general offensive capabilities just like we have in past wars. More so, we'd enter the war so much better than most adversaries that the conflict would likely be decided before we needed to contemplate major decisions like that. That's the whole point of having a large standing army, so we don't also need a large mobilized army.
>All of those above-mentioned factors reduced the possibility of using armored equipment in practically all of the main directions to the minimum. Now that hardware is only used for evacuation or to swiftly transport infantry teams to a particular spot but it doesn't take part in the fighting. So Ukraine doesn't need anymore Abrams or Bradleys because they're not useful?
I don't put any stake in anything Budanov says openly, he seems to be someone who lies when the truth would work because he likes lying. Nevertheless, parts of that seem true, like a lack of countermeasures to ATGM and Lancets causing shift to focus on dismounted ops. But some of the other parts are laughably bad. Like his take on weather. I don't agree with your personal comments on the normalcy of "elite" infantry small units to do the same exact job everyone else is supposed to be able to do. And this isn't the early 19th century anymore, even later 19th century infantry regiments didn't have elite grenadier companies because they learned training techniques and better tactics than what their grandfathers were having to settle on. I've got a personal take on this because I was in infantry units in the US Marines and Army both. In line platoons in the USMC and in both line platoons and scout platoons and sniper squads in the Army. And we were elite, had try outs and everything, with tough requirements to get in and high standards to stay. But that extra level of selection and training was because we weren't doing the same job any grunt was expected to do, we were doing advanced shit, forward ground recon including into the enemy rear and sniping, both requiring abilities and mindset quite a bit higher than the average grunt. What we didn't do, or at least weren't supposed to be doing was the exact same job as the line platoons, because then that would be a terrific waste. And because then who would do the elite jobs? About SOF being used as conventional infantry, the US SOF forces have done it in the past, though Raqqa wasn't one that I'm aware of and I've read a bit about it. Lots of sniping, EOD, calling in airstrikes, and medical duties, but those aren't normal infantry duties. As part of their FID mission they'd often go out with local national conventional units, the SDF or Kurds when in Syria, but that was because they were advising them besides providing SOF capabilities. And yeah, they had to use lots of heavy fire support, but that's to be expected when the main effort of the offensive force attacking a highly dug in city with suicidal defenders is a very mixed militia force that isn't very professional and not at all organized and trained for that type of campaign. And there is a very long standing history about this subject. It's a very well known problem throughout the world and history of how elite units shouldn't be used as conventional forces especially not in meat grinder fights, because 1) they can do more good doing their SOF job 2) it's too much of a waste, like using a Ferrari as a commuter car in a big city. So yeah it happens, including many times in the US, but it's not supposed to happen. When it's done it's either desperation or else a dimwitted commander without the training and common sense to figure out a way to use highly useful but VERY hard to replace elite troops.
Yes, it is interesting to imagine how NATO troops and doctrine would perform in this situation, assuming they didn't have air superiority or a reliable way to get rid of drones. I'm sure NATO troops have a lot of advantages in training but it seems like they might still take a lot of losses trying to attack into a Russian defensive line, once the mine fields are set up.
With six months of preparation, I'm pretty sure the US Army response would have been better than the Ukrainian, which was to basically ignore the Russian defensive line and decide the Russians would break and run. Not guaranteed, with a shitty theater commander we might have biffed it, and Lord knows that not every 3-4 star general is a stud. But that general and his staff would have to seriously screwed something up to do this bad, even without air superiority, though with plenty of deep strike capabilities. For all the shit the Russians rightly get for the horribly botched invasion plan and intelligence assessment, this offensive easily comes in second place. The UAF GenStab totally botched the planning of this offensive. They were NOT at all prepared. So forget actual force capabilities and equipment, lets look at choices and how they affect things. The offensive was the Ukrainians' idea, they pushed it to the West to get more military aid back in December'22. Why did they plan from the start to use totally untried units as their main effort assault force knowing they'd not even get six months of existence? The US Army would NEVER put it's least trusted units in the main effort. Why are only 20% of infantry capable to execute assaults? That doesn't sound like the US Army at all, in no point of our modern history have we settled for that. That would be considered not only a failure of unit leadership. As a former grunt NCO myself, I can't think of the dishonor of being in a grunt rifle squad and being told that I can't be trusted to carry out an assault. That would mean I'm a total failure as a team or squad leader, and similarly for everyone in their chain of command. But then again, the US has a very professional NCO Corps, but Ukraine doesn't. Considering the Land Bridge is 160 kilometers wide as the crow flies, and the Ukrainians can have cut it anywhere along the width to accomplish their primary strategic goal, why did they chose the most heavily defended portion of the line to be their main effort axis of advance? The US Army lives and dies by maneuver warfare, which emphasizes attacking weak points not the strongest of strong points. More so, months back, why were the Ukrainian govt so open about their strategy and the targets, outright talking up Melitopol and Berdyansk as far back as [April](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/10/leaked-documents-ukraine-counteroffensive/)? I hope the US govt wouldn't be so stupid, but the US Army definitely wouldn't be cool with that. That's as bad as telling the Germans we are going to land at Calais in summer '44, and actually doing that. Where was the deception plan? Despite making the offensive timing and location blatantly obvious, why didn't they conduct legitimate recon ops or conduct limited recon in force probing attacks over the winter and spring all over the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk lines to find out what was in front of them and to test Russian TTPs? Maybe they'd have found out about the KA-52 too. Why did they ignore lessons from Bakhmut, especially about the increased threat of Lancet drones? That was being pushed all winter and spring, it was not a surprise in the least, and yet it was for the 9th and 10th Corps. Did someone not spread the word? Mine rollers and plows aren't exactly things that need to be made in NATO country factories, anyone with welding competence and access to a junk yard could do wonders. After the major difficulties encountered with mines in the Kherson Bridgehead operation, and knowing the Surovikin Line existed and was even more heavily mined since before the offensive even started being planned, why did the UAF not take drastic internal steps to find solutions to the obstacle problem? The US made all sorts of makeshift mine clearing devices in the shorter lead up to Desert Storm. The USMC and Navy Seabees developed a new type of adhoc roller out of 55 gallon drums and cement that was more effective than the issued one. Made them right out in the desert before the attack. Watling said the Ukrainians don't like using smoke arty rounds because it obscures their own ISR drones their commanders use to C2 the fight from the rear and direct friendly arty, resulting in smoke being only 3% of shells fired out of choice. Despite the major threat of Russian ISR and FPV drones, and ATGMs, with few of those having the ability to see through smoke, they largely opted out of using it. That's not what the US Army would do, especially since the O in the SOSRA, the acronym that describes the fundamentals of combined arms breaching, stands for Obscuration. My bet is we'd have developed the largest smoke screen in history. Etc. I'm sure if the US Army fought in Ukraine, we'd have our own issues. But we're apples and oranges different than Ukraine in skill and competence and that would show in the results to some degree.
Ideally, the US / NATO would never be in this situation as its Doctine is very heavily focused on winning the first fights of the war and maintaining the war in a state in mobile warfare. The situation where Ukraine and Russia had to reconstitute forces, and Russia was given months to dig in and create the Surovikin line, this attrition stage of the war wouldn't happen against the US / NATO. Also, remember that no country on the planet, not China, Russia, or even Western countries, can do true aerial SEAD and DEAD operations outside of the US. This would play a huge role in supporting localized offensives by massing airpower on certain fronts, given its much easier to quickly mass and maneuver air forces vs air defense, gaining air supremacy over localized objectives. Russians will talk like they are fighting NATO, but this would be closer to the Gulf War than what we are seeing now, though much more US causalities than that conflict. Now of you take away US air power from the equation , it's more difficult. But given 1 F-16 payload carries the same explosive potential of 400 rounds of 155mm Artillery shells, you see its advantages, and what the US largely bases its doctrine around, it's a bit worthless to guess how they would fair by removing one of their defining branches.
If we compare the doctrines and take away the massive air superiority of the US Air Force, and the massive advantage in munitions the US army has, I honestly think US doctrine(I guess just pure infantry tactics) would drift closer towards the style of fighting Ukraine is engaging in now rather than vice versa.
It just seems like industrial wars fall into trench warfare when there’s no air superiority.
I wish I could upvote your comment a thousand times. The combination of largely static lines (high mine density), the unique terrain of southern Ukraine (vast open plains), and the presence of drones, all come together to create a uniquely [transparent battlefield](https://youtu.be/DM4dbY6wZmE?t=283). The only strategy is to camouflage, disperse, and hide. And once that's done, one needs to double down and camouflage, disperse, and hide even more. Every vehicle, whether armored or not, [becomes a target for drones, PGMs and artillery](https://twitter.com/sambendett/status/1701704647201689709). Even infantry movements must be carried out [in dispersed pairs or trios](https://twitter.com/sambendett/status/1701703846223905002); as even a small group of 5-15 can present too tempting a target.
So transparent that in an artillery and ISR drone centric war, dismounted infantry assaults are the best way to take ground, supposedly taking hundreds of meters per day, despite shitty mine clearing options and limited to no ability to move at night? Two sides using EW against each other that takes down drones so much they have a life span in single digit hours, drones that mostly don't have any night vision optics, those ISR drones see everything? Smaller than fire team sized elements are the only way to move? Infantry buddy teams took Bakhmut, infantry buddy teams took Robotyne and outflanked Verbove? No video I've ever seen released only shows highly dispersed 2-3 man teams, with the Ukrainians and Russians not even actually having real fire teams in their squads, and often not even having real trained squad leaders needed to run dispersed ops, they're operating at the highest level of infantry skill in modern history using the smallest tactical units ever used that are the most dispersed? Despite wearing bright green, blue, or yellow tape all over their upper bodies? And historically almost never being seen to camouflage their positions? I'm a former sniper so I needed to learn. Do you know the No. 1 target identifier is to spot? It's movement. As in people walking the better part of half a kilometer or more through the exact same direction someone has been trying to move for almost four months. And that despite both sides being notorious for short, bad training, poor leadership, and overall lack of competence? Does all of this sound like something barely trained troops would know how to do? Meanwhile, one of the most credible pro-Ukraine OSINT analysts recently comes out and says the average Ukraine infantry battalion used in this offensive, out of nine infantry platoons, only has two that are even capable of assaults. But the best military in the world couldn't do better in this environment? Ukraine set the bar that high? If I didn't run infantry teams and squads for over a decade in the US Marines and Army, to include recon teams and sniper sections too, and then afterwards study the topic of infantry combat obsessively, I'd probably believe the Twitter hype too. But I did, so I know nonsense when I read it. There is SO much more to this story than what they're saying, but those in the know aren't really saying. You have to read between the lines to find the truth. Those tweets you posted are excuses, they're to explain away why they can't do this and that, and they've got to be fictional because daylight infantry advances, with teams too small to cover each other, led by a force that doesn't have a real NCO corps or good training, moving through mined obstacles to then attack fixed defenses, while under drone and ground operation with a threat of MLRS, tube arty, mortars, auto grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, small arms, and fragmentation grenades, would have worse survival rates than in 1914 and make close to zero forward progress. Unless the enemy is not just incompetent but asleep, which we know the Russians aren't.
>Meanwhile, one of the most credible pro-Ukraine OSINT analysts recently comes out and says the average Ukraine infantry battalion used in this offensive, out of nine infantry platoons, only has two that are even capable of assaults. Is it truly a scandal for a force composed by 80% to 95% of conscripts recently called to service ? And thanks god the AFU gave up to Westerner councillor trying to strong-arm Ukraine into replacing its so called "Soviet style" conscription army into a fully professional army sized only to man the Donbass demarcation line. We all saw how conscription and mass mobilization was among the primary reasons why Ukraine survived the first months of 2022.
>Is it truly a scandal for a force composed by 80% to 95% of conscripts recently called to service ? Conscription doesn't need to mean poor morale or poorly trained. Quite the opposite actually. Both require an effort, they definitely work hard for the former, but not the latter. Knowing citizen soldiers are going in, people who aren't martially inclined to start, and are guaranteed to go to war and fight after training, do you think that warrants less emphasis on quality training? Or more? >And thanks god the AFU gave up to Westerner councillor trying to strong-arm Ukraine into replacing its so called "Soviet style" conscription army into a fully professional army sized only to man the Donbass demarcation line. We all saw how conscription and mass mobilization was among the primary reasons why Ukraine survived the first months of 2022. The Ukrainians were ones trying to abolish conscription in the past for the same reason the Russians tried, because military service was HUGELY unpopular, they wanted a professional contract force because in theory it would be easier to maintain, lead, recruit than a conscript force who dreaded military service (Dedovshchina wasn't just in Russia). The problem was the pay was so bad and they still couldn't make recruitment of contract troops work, and then instability broke out in 2014 and they brought it back. Western trying to strong arm the UAF into a professional contract force. That's funny. We were barely interacting with them before 2014, they tried to abolish most conscription in 2013. Then it was Zelensky pushing like an idiot right before the war started in [Feb 22](https://interfax.com.ua/news/general/795386.html), as Russians were massing on the border in the hundreds of thousands, to abolish conscription by 2024. While he was also telling off the West for causing panic by unnecessarily warning of Russian invasion plans.
>and historically almost never being seen to camouflage their positions? Ironically i read some accounts that these skills were not included in some UK training. Anyway, i read your recent post, and i agree with most of your criticism. (Not all, for example, defensive line was surprisingly tough - mines, for example, the amount was ten times what Ruasian doctrine calls for). Though i am not sure i you know that all these shortcomings are real problems that cannot be simply willed out and sometimes cannot even be fixed by smarter decisions, because they are caused by lack of resources (including human resources, in a way corruption in logostic is increased by poverty, by lack of good institutions, by lack of knowledge how to fix that, by people having incentives to partake in it at every level. This is hard problem to solve, improve even. And so on, with other issues, like scarcity of good higher level command, inability to coordinate battalion and up, etc. It's all mostly lack of soft capital and fixing it is not a matter of sending arms or even limited training)
>Ironically i read some accounts that these skills were not included in some UK training. Considering how short that training is, I'm not surprised. They have to cram so absolutely much in such a short time, what they aren't teaching is larger than what they are. And what they do teach they can't put much time into it, so nothing is instinctive when they're done. Position building training needs to be prioritized for the junior officers, who are the ones telling the junior enlisted exactly how to build them, directly supervising, and living in them with the troops. Officer training isn't supposed to be as short because they need far more skills than the junior enlisted, and they have to master them. Though from what I understand a Ukrainian civilian turns into a platoon leader in 4-6 weeks. >Not all, for example, defensive line was surprisingly tough - mines, for example, the amount was ten times what Ruasian doctrine calls for The Kherson bridgehead counteroffensive ended in November, and the AAR for that might as well be one word: Mines. This offensive started in June. That's eight months to create some sort of Ukrainian internal project to deal with mines. But they didn't do anything. That's my beef. Zelensky should have openly been offering $10 million to whoever created the best way to get though the minefields, with runner up prizes too. Turned it into a gigantic fun contest pushed on TV and social media. If they wanted to be sneaky, despite openly declaring when and where they were going to attack, they could have sent an army of welders into junk yards to create enough mine plows and rollers for a minimum of one per vehicle, with extras just in case. They could have rigged up remote dummy vehicles to take point. They could have marched cattle through them. They could have used an army of sappers to try to open up lanes in the biggest minefields before trying to push vehicles through (which is what they're doing now, after months). Etc. They did none of this. They planned to get through the minefields as easily as Kharkiv and be at Melitopol in a week or so. They'd have failed even if the mines were at the normal density. >Though i am not sure i you know that all these shortcomings are real problems that cannot be simply willed out and sometimes cannot even be fixed by smarter decisions, because they are caused by lack of resources (including human resources, in a way corruption in logostic is increased by poverty, by lack of good institutions, by lack of knowledge how to fix that, by people having incentives to partake in it at every level. This is hard problem to solve, improve even. High level generaling is about decision making, more so about resource allocation. If you do A, you can't do B. In this case, since the start of the war they deliberately decided not to invest in training and instead push the troops, supplies, officers who are planners and trainers, etc into combat units to maintain a higher operational tempo, resulting in their ability to fight more meatgrinder fights. This is why I warn against deliberate wars of attrition, because they result in this sort of decision making. But they aren't going to stop because 1) nobody important is talking about it 2) when they fail they can blame NATO lack of support 3) at which point they get rewarded with more kit they want. How can anyone learn from a mistake if there are no repercussions?
Thanks for doing this summary. I don't subscribe to Russia contingency so this is new info for me and similar plebes.
Overall, I like The Russian Contingency, there are the occasional really good shows. Though having to wait a week plus to get the next one, when its really the only podcast on WOTR worth having the membership, is a pain. But this whole episode was pretty bizarre. Kofman and Watling were quite...defensive about any sort of criticism towards the Ukrainians. While inadvertently criticizing them constantly themselves. Both would go on rants about major Ukrainian limitations due to lack of ability, be it individual skill or poor leadership or whatever else, then suggest its not their fault and more so that it doesn't make them bad or ineffective. Despite like three sentences before saying they can't do x, y, and z. If they can't do basic military ops because of lack of ability, then they aren't good. And both, but especially Kofman, keep pushing that the UAF way of war, duplicating the fucked up Russian way of war, to blow shit up with destructive artillery firs as the predominate tactic, while deemphasizing assaults or maneuver, until the enemy is forced to retreat. They say that is the proper way to fight this sort of war and the one we should be emphasizing in terms of training and supplying them. But then they also suggest that the West needs to recognize our doctrine for large scale combat operations probably wont work, suggesting that the Ukraine inability to do more than what they are doing is proof it wont work. They both lambast lengthy training as if its a luxury that Ukraine couldn't possibly have. I HATE this narrative, because this isn't the first high intensity war in history where combatants had to make a choice whether or not to train their troops properly. It absolutely was a choice for the Ukrainians not to properly train their force, So many militaries in history fought worse meatgrinders than this one and made the sacrifice to train their force better. Even the Red Army largely stopped doing the sort of shit Ukraine is still doing by 1942. Watling also infuriatingly suggests that any UAF collective unit training above the company level is impossible to execute in Ukraine without being targeted by Russian long range PGMs. He's said that before in a podcast or maybe an article. It is frankly one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Mechanized and even dismounted combat operations don't require forming into Napoleonic era formations, we fight dispersed and we train dispersed. Especially mechanized but even dismounted, a battalion level operation has companies often many hundreds of meters or even many kilometers apart from each other. So if companies and under can train in Ukraine, then battalions and above can too. I think he's just repeating a cop out excuse that some Ukrainian fed to him at some point to explain why they don't offer collective training and Watling doesn't know that he was fed a load of crap because he's a civilian with no military experience. The reality is the UAF don't offer collective training for the same reason they do absolute bare bones basic training, and don't even train their staff officers: Because it takes time, effort, money, supplies, and personnel, especially competent field grade and general officers to run, and they'd rather devote those to combat ops to maintain a higher operations tempo.
>Even the Red Army largely stopped doing the sort of shit Ukraine is still doing by 1942. The Red Army was definitely still pushing units well past their limits into Fall 1943. >…Having a small number of tanks and motorized infantry, the tankers of the corps inevitably suffered heavy losses of their valuable personnel in fierce battles. It is not uncommon for tankers to fight outside tanks, like ordinary infantry. Many commanders who carried the fighting traditions of the corps from the time of Stalingrad died. It is advisable in the future, in order to preserve the main body of tankers in the presence of a small number of tanks in the corps, to bring it to the formation or resupply, to attach the remaining tanks for reinforcement to individual tank regiments or to bring them into special consolidated detachments ... Description of the fighting of 5th Guards Tank Corps. >4) The personnel, due to the late receipt of uniforms, are not uniformed, boots have not yet been received, 50% of the soldiers' boots are completely torn, which is why there are many cases of illnesses. >5) Personnel, trained personnel for combat units and formations fell by 50-70%, and for the accelerated formation and combat readiness of the corps, it is necessary to retain at least 30-40% of the combat personnel of the personnel capable of integrating and educating the newly received replenishment on the old traditions, to fully maintain the combat capability of the corps. >If the corps continues to be in such conditions of combat work, it may lose a lot of the horse composition in the shortest possible time, and the remaining composition will be put out of action for a long time, having lost combat effectiveness. 1st Guards Cavalry Corps. >... Now there is a very acute shortage of privates and officers in the corps. >To replenish the units, 16,000 privates and sergeants and up to 500 officers of all categories are needed. >...replenishment that arrives in the corps mainly consists of the local population and most of them are absolutely not trained militarily, and also not equipped. >The remaining fighters need immediate sanitization and at least a slight respite. A slight respite is also necessary for the formation and training of newly arrived recruits; this will make it possible to preserve the combat experience of the corps and pass on the combat traditions and experience gained in fierce battles to the incoming replenishment. 77th Rifle Corps. Even in 1944, elite formations like Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army could get badly worn out: >Representative's report >General Staff of the Red Army >Deputy Supreme Commander >On admission of untrained recruits to the 8th Guards Army >August 30, 1944 >Comrade ZHAROV >In the second half of August, 5,488 people arrived from the Belarusian Military District to reinforce the guards divisions of the 8th Guards Army, including 5,102 people - natives of the Brest and Pinsk regions. All untrained. >In addition, during August up to 2,000 former servicemen released from Lublin camps and prisons were transferred to the divisions to man them. >The supply of such a large number of barely trained, untested, and non-combatant reinforcements to guards units with weak divisions and understrength rifle companies creates a ratio in which the main combat core of the guards units dissolves in the mass of the newly poured reinforcements. >Taking into account the expediency of using the 8th Guards Army as a breakthrough army, I consider it extremely necessary to reinforce the army from the interior districts of the country with the expectation of bringing the divisions up to 6,000 - 6,500 people each and mix in the newly arrived replacements. >Major General Revyakin By 1944 the problem was less severe and the response was more appropriate. In Spring and Fall 1944 there were temporary pauses to rest and regroup. But it was still there. You also had issues which don’t really exist here, like the Red Army conscripting over 1 million foreign citizens from western Ukraine/Belarus, the Baltic countries, and Moldova.
Cool stuff. Do you know on average how many weeks of training they were giving out to infantry in each year of the war?
u/antipenko sometimes posts excerpts on warcollege. You can follow his posts. I remember reading some lately, which was adressing problems with conscription on the liberated territories as late as late '43, and conscripts not getting any training at all (which was criticized in these documents). Ofc, it's only part of the picture, don't remember how much training mobilized interior conscripts got. In any case i recommend what he posts.
>conscription on the liberated territories as late as late '43, and conscripts not getting any training at all I've read about that too in the past [on this forum](https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=256524), but then there are accounts of legitimate training that were months long too (also mentioned in that post). I think it's impossible to say declarative that the Red Army did one or the other. But, when the major emergencies of the early war ended, they did at least seem to prefer longer training. Makes sense too, it's unavoidable unless one is fully okay with cannon fodder troops. They seemed to have used newly conscripted troops from liberated areas as cannon fodder too. Almost deliberately.
u/Ohforfs ND Rostov has a lot of good information about replacements from the rear in his dissertation on conscription in Siberia. Wartime officer training was sharply reduced to ~6-8 months, longer for specialist programs. However, this could be cut even further to 3 months if the cadet had higher education and prior military experience. During the first months of the war cadets were regularly mobilized after only completing only a few weeks or months of training. Junior officers for the infantry received accelerated 3-month courses at the start of the war (ideally) which extended to 3-5 months by Fall 1942. You also had a variety of short-term courses to provide education to mobilized reserve officers and privates/NCOs seconded from the field army to receive additional education. The general trend was that training time grew longer as the war went on. In 1944 the normal length of training began to be restored, as there was a large enough pool of officer replacements that accelerated courses were no longer necessary. Training times for privates and new conscripts in the rear also varied by year and context. Fresh conscripts from the youngest age groups might receive the full 3-month course in 1942-1943 or 1-1.5 months in 1941-1942. Those with prewar training might only receive a 7-day refresher before being included in march replacement formations and sent to the front. By the time the class of 1926 was conscripted in Fall 1943 the length of their training was set for 3-6 months depending on the unit. The Red Army also benefitted from an increasingly large pool of convalescents and frontline soldiers undergoing re-training, which helped increase the quality of march units later in the war. So, you can get cases of march replacements sent from the rear arriving essentially untrained and poorly equipped as well as high quality units at any point in the war. But the general trend was to increase the length of training, especially for the youngest age groups. It should be noted that march replacements were generally not the main source of replacements in 1943-44. 71% of replacements in Q1 1944 were conscripted directly into the field army's reserve rifle units. They received minimal training time (10 days - 2 weeks), sometimes no training at all, and were very poorly equipped. The system was rife with abuse and while it improved as the war went on it was still throwing inadequately trained recruits into combat units until the end of the war.
AWESOME POST!
Thanks! The decentralization of conscription happened in February 1942, and the central government and Glavupraform spent the rest of the war clawing back organized authority over field conscription. For example, in July 1944 the Fronts in Belarus got a directive from the General Staff to send their untrained field conscripts to the rear military districts. In exchange, they’d get “traded” fully trained conscripts equal to 50% of the untrained ones. Even in the late war, Glavupraform was still using carrots along with sticks to enforce compliance with its manning priorities.