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Thread: The Rus-Ukraine War in progress

  1. #191
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    A great time for Putin now that America is not paying attention.
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    I would suspect that western armies using the US way of war would make quick work of these artillery groups and their air defenses.

    Russia Finally Has Its Artillery War in Ukraine. But Can It Win? - 19FortyFive


    Can Russia win an artillery war against Ukraine? In the months preceding the war, military analysts who correctly concluded Russia was massing troops for a likely attack on Ukraine also thought they had a good handle on the tactics its ground forces would use. They based their expectations on the fighting that had already taken place, in Ukraine and in Syria, starting in the middle of the last decade.


    The key elements would be ad-hoc combined-arms units called battalion tactical groups, or BTGs. They would follow a doctrine of so-called non-contact or next-generation warfare in which battalion-sized mechanized units serve as mobile artillery delivery systems.

    Rather than push forward infantry and tanks to engage the enemy with direct fire, BTGs would rely on drones and electronic intelligence to locate opposing units and plaster them from afar with artillery. The tanks and infantry were there to screen the artillery, only seizing ground after the artillery had destroyed most of the opposing force.

    This doctrine sought to rationalize Russia’s strengths — lots and lots of armored vehicles and artillery — and its weaknesses: not enough capable infantry.
    A Wall of Thorns

    But Russian forces did not use those tactics when they invaded Ukraine this February. Moscow’s war plans were premised on the belief that its troops would punch through Ukraine’s supposedly feckless military like a fist through wet cardboard. Russian forces therefore spread broadly across Ukraine’s borders, and mechanized columns barreled towards Ukrainian cities with minimal dismounted infantry (sometimes just one-third the numbers stipulated in Russian organizational charts). Meanwhile airborne forces were inserted deep behind enemy lines. The idea was to grab as much ground as possible and capture the capital before resistance could solidify.

    But Moscow had badly misjudged the willingness and ability of Ukrainians to fight back. By plunging into Ukrainian cities and suburbs, its armor met a wall not of cardboard, but of thorns. Poorly supported armored columns were decimated by Ukrainian anti-tank ambushes and artillery. Elite airborne forces dropped behind Ukrainians lines were wiped out within hours of landing.

    Russia’s poor logistics further confined advances to road networks (where they could be more easily ambushed), resulting in forward elements in many places failing to receive food, fuel, and ammunition. Combined with Russia’s heavily rail-bound logistics, the result was hungry, isolated Russian troops abandoning hundreds of fuel-starved armored vehicles outside of combat.

    The aggressive warfare Russia attempted essentially highlighted weaknesses earlier identified in their doctrine and organization by a U.S. Army study: poor ability to fight at close quarters (a type of fighting unavoidable in assaults and urban warfare); overreliance on expendable proxy forces to hold ground and perform costly assaults; and dependence on thinly spread drone and electronic warfare assets.

    ***
    The only silver lining for Putin was that by attacking everywhere at once, Russian forces discovered and exploited a weak link: Ukraine’s southern defenses adjacent to Crimea. Russian troops went on to secure all of Ukraine’s coastline east of the Siverskiy Donets river, as well as the city of Kherson on its west bank. Ukrainian troops finally stemmed the bleeding in mid-March by rolling back Russian advances towards Mykolaiv, Odessa and Kryvi Rhi.



    Russia’s military goes back to basics


    As Russian forces withdrew from Kyiv, Moscow spelled out a new, downsized war aim: securing all of the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts – the Donbas region – most of which it already held. Through a pincer operation via Izium and Popasna, Russia hoped to encircle and annihilate a significant chunk of Ukraine’s military and capture the last major city in Ukrainian hands there, Severodonetsk. Meanwhile, Russian forces would defend newly occupied territory in the south.


    Russia’s military had pivoted to its lead-with-artillery doctrine, leveraging its large quantitative advantage to bludgeon Ukraine. The new strategy also greatly shortened Russian supply lines, which ran through secure terrain long held by Russian separatists.

    The resulting attritional slugfest was not exactly brilliant – the attempted encirclement maneuver shrank in scope with each passing month, and Russian forces attempted multiple river crossings that failed with catastrophic losses. However, the sheer massing of firepower and forces exhibited some basic competence, and it enabled Russian batteries to slowly grind down Ukrainian defenses, allowing Russian troops to seize ground.


    Ukraine’s favorable casualty exchange ratio in the first two months of the war declined due to the Ukrainian military lacking enough artillery. (One Ukrainian official claimed a 10:1 ratio vis-à-vis Russia, though that may be exaggerated.) Most ominously Ukraine was running out of Soviet-style 122mm and 152mm artillery shells, forcing it to judiciously ration counter-battery and barrage fires. More and more Ukrainian soldiers were dying under shell fire without even seeing the enemy.



    Will Russia’s Non-Contact Strategy Work?
    ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ


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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1469 View Post
    I would suspect that western armies using the US way of war would make quick work of these artillery groups and their air defenses.

    Russia Finally Has Its Artillery War in Ukraine. But Can It Win? - 19FortyFive


    Can Russia win an artillery war against Ukraine? In the months preceding the war, military analysts who correctly concluded Russia was massing troops for a likely attack on Ukraine also thought they had a good handle on the tactics its ground forces would use. They based their expectations on the fighting that had already taken place, in Ukraine and in Syria, starting in the middle of the last decade.


    The key elements would be ad-hoc combined-arms units called battalion tactical groups, or BTGs. They would follow a doctrine of so-called non-contact or next-generation warfare in which battalion-sized mechanized units serve as mobile artillery delivery systems.

    Rather than push forward infantry and tanks to engage the enemy with direct fire, BTGs would rely on drones and electronic intelligence to locate opposing units and plaster them from afar with artillery. The tanks and infantry were there to screen the artillery, only seizing ground after the artillery had destroyed most of the opposing force.

    This doctrine sought to rationalize Russia’s strengths — lots and lots of armored vehicles and artillery — and its weaknesses: not enough capable infantry.
    A Wall of Thorns

    But Russian forces did not use those tactics when they invaded Ukraine this February. Moscow’s war plans were premised on the belief that its troops would punch through Ukraine’s supposedly feckless military like a fist through wet cardboard. Russian forces therefore spread broadly across Ukraine’s borders, and mechanized columns barreled towards Ukrainian cities with minimal dismounted infantry (sometimes just one-third the numbers stipulated in Russian organizational charts). Meanwhile airborne forces were inserted deep behind enemy lines. The idea was to grab as much ground as possible and capture the capital before resistance could solidify.

    But Moscow had badly misjudged the willingness and ability of Ukrainians to fight back. By plunging into Ukrainian cities and suburbs, its armor met a wall not of cardboard, but of thorns. Poorly supported armored columns were decimated by Ukrainian anti-tank ambushes and artillery. Elite airborne forces dropped behind Ukrainians lines were wiped out within hours of landing.

    Russia’s poor logistics further confined advances to road networks (where they could be more easily ambushed), resulting in forward elements in many places failing to receive food, fuel, and ammunition. Combined with Russia’s heavily rail-bound logistics, the result was hungry, isolated Russian troops abandoning hundreds of fuel-starved armored vehicles outside of combat.

    The aggressive warfare Russia attempted essentially highlighted weaknesses earlier identified in their doctrine and organization by a U.S. Army study: poor ability to fight at close quarters (a type of fighting unavoidable in assaults and urban warfare); overreliance on expendable proxy forces to hold ground and perform costly assaults; and dependence on thinly spread drone and electronic warfare assets.

    ***
    The only silver lining for Putin was that by attacking everywhere at once, Russian forces discovered and exploited a weak link: Ukraine’s southern defenses adjacent to Crimea. Russian troops went on to secure all of Ukraine’s coastline east of the Siverskiy Donets river, as well as the city of Kherson on its west bank. Ukrainian troops finally stemmed the bleeding in mid-March by rolling back Russian advances towards Mykolaiv, Odessa and Kryvi Rhi.



    Russia’s military goes back to basics


    As Russian forces withdrew from Kyiv, Moscow spelled out a new, downsized war aim: securing all of the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts – the Donbas region – most of which it already held. Through a pincer operation via Izium and Popasna, Russia hoped to encircle and annihilate a significant chunk of Ukraine’s military and capture the last major city in Ukrainian hands there, Severodonetsk. Meanwhile, Russian forces would defend newly occupied territory in the south.


    Russia’s military had pivoted to its lead-with-artillery doctrine, leveraging its large quantitative advantage to bludgeon Ukraine. The new strategy also greatly shortened Russian supply lines, which ran through secure terrain long held by Russian separatists.

    The resulting attritional slugfest was not exactly brilliant – the attempted encirclement maneuver shrank in scope with each passing month, and Russian forces attempted multiple river crossings that failed with catastrophic losses. However, the sheer massing of firepower and forces exhibited some basic competence, and it enabled Russian batteries to slowly grind down Ukrainian defenses, allowing Russian troops to seize ground.


    Ukraine’s favorable casualty exchange ratio in the first two months of the war declined due to the Ukrainian military lacking enough artillery. (One Ukrainian official claimed a 10:1 ratio vis-à-vis Russia, though that may be exaggerated.) Most ominously Ukraine was running out of Soviet-style 122mm and 152mm artillery shells, forcing it to judiciously ration counter-battery and barrage fires. More and more Ukrainian soldiers were dying under shell fire without even seeing the enemy.



    Will Russia’s Non-Contact Strategy Work?
    Germany tried and failed.
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

  6. #194
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    It seems that the old way was often to kill civilians until the military surrendered. Thankfully that is no longer practiced by the west but surrenders are also harder to elicit.
    My take is that war should be avoided wherever possible either way

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    Quote Originally Posted by MisterVeritis View Post
    Germany tried and failed.
    Our current strategy and tactics would have mopped up the Germans pretty quickly too.
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  8. #196
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    Quote Originally Posted by donttread View Post
    It seems that the old way was often to kill civilians until the military surrendered. Thankfully that is no longer practiced by the west but surrenders are also harder to elicit.
    My take is that war should be avoided wherever possible either way
    Yes, wars should be considered only when a nations vital interests are at stake.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1469 View Post
    Our current strategy and tactics would have mopped up the Germans pretty quickly too.
    Assuming, of course that the 1940s German military would remain static.

    The German forces were the most innovative and creative force of their time.
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

  11. #198
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    A New Phase in the Ukraine War


    Wars tend to unfold in phases, though it’s never clear how many phases there will be when the war breaks out, and less clear still where one phase ends and another begins until after the fact. It’s all part and parcel of the fog of war. What’s certain is that the first phase of war doesn’t always presage how the rest of the war will go.

    If you apply that logic to Ukraine, you can conclude that the first phase is over, that both sides are prepared to continue, and that though Russia “lost” the first phase, it has learned enough lessons to emerge stronger as Ukraine faces a number of new constraints.

    Learning From Failure

    Russia’s early setbacks owe largely to its failure to accommodate its own vulnerabilities. Moscow opened up the conflict on three fronts: in far eastern Ukraine, in the northeast along Ukraine’s border with Russia, and in the north along the border with Belarus. The two northern thrusts suffered from intelligence failures such as the number and enthusiasm of pro-Russia forces inside Ukraine that led to misinformed or just plain bad political decisions; from overextended supply lines and poor communication capabilities that left Russian forces uncoordinated and poorly protected; and from an ineffective and often times incompatible mishmash of old and new technologies and tactics. Put simply, it was a mess, and it led Moscow to withdraw its forces from its northern thrusts.


    The second phase, then, takes place primarily in the south and east, and will occur in three distinct settings: cities, grain fields within the forest belt, and near river systems. Urban warfare will involve a lot of artillery followed by the forward movement of troops. Fighting in the grain fields will be akin to guerilla warfare, accompanied by the deliberate destruction of forests and fields, a practice that dates back to the Soviet era. Riverine warfare will be slower and stodgier, since natural barriers will obstruct offensives and counteroffensives.


    Russia’s strategy for the second phase will prioritize military goals and will pursue them methodically. In practice, this means focusing its efforts on the stretch of Ukraine from Luhansk and Donetsk down to Kherson. Russia controls about 95 percent of Luhansk and about 60 percent of Donetsk. Within this conflict zone, Russian forces are creating a number of small battle pockets that allow for massive and concentrated fire on Ukrainian troops from two or three sides. The purpose of this approach is to grind down Ukrainian forces until they reach critically low levels. Unlike in the first phase of the war, in which Russia had a massive concentration of forces, this new tactic instills more flexibility and, in theory, more effectiveness against hard targets. Already, Kyiv has consistently sent reinforcements to these areas to replace the fallen.


    The new strategy – a shift from Russian troop advancement to Ukrainian troop attrition – is partly a response to Ukraine’s fortifications in the east. Moscow understands that Ukraine spent nearly a decade creating multilayered defenses in and around Donbas. The result was a sophisticated underground defense system across an estimated 40,000 square kilometers (15,500 square miles) that made any type of blitzkrieg operation impossible. A strategy centered on pockets of kill zones allows Russian forces to slowly but surely deplete Ukrainian forces without necessarily demanding huge Russian advancements. (Hence why Russia has been observably more active in destroying Ukrainian logistical targets.) In theory, the scene will play out like this: Russian advancements will be slow, and when they meet resistance they will stop, launch a series of rocket and artillery strikes against Ukraine’s defensive lines, and advance slowly again once enemy forces are weakened. Importantly, this entire strategy assumes that Western allies will continue to send only aid and military hardware, not soldiers. It’s a safe assumption, but if it’s wrong, Russia has a real problem on its hands.
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    From Strator email

    This tracks with what I said prior to the invasion was achievable based on the troops and equipment committed to the invasion.

    Last edited by Peter1469; 06-27-2022 at 09:25 AM.
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    They are conducting raids on munitions plants, oil refineries, commo hubs, etc. Sabotage.

    Ukrainian special ops team carries out several successful raids on Russian territory – The Times

    The newspaper obtained interviews with anonymous fighters participating in these operations, known by their call-signs “Adonis” and “22”.


    It’s unclear to The Times what are the ultimate goals of Ukrainian military operations on the Russian territory, but evidence suggests that sabotage actions at Russian oil refineries, munition storage facilities, and communication infrastructure are undermining Russia’s offensive capabilities.
    ***


    At this stage of the war, the Shaman Battalion is focusing on damaging the Russian infrastructure used for the invasion of Ukrainian territory. For this, the Shaman fighters have accomplished several raids on Russia that haven’t been announced publicly.




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