2022/06/18

About unconfirmed expectations

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The Russo-Ukrainian War did not confirm some expectations regarding modern land warfare, well beyond Russians being a bit worse than believed possible. That's nothing extraordinary, wars differ very much from each other. The Spanish Civil War and the French campaign of 1940 were separated by only about 13 months, but were still extremely different, for example.

Some of my expectations for land warfare that so far were not really confirmed:
 
front lines:
I expected that no front lines could be established for lac of infantry. The Russians clearly didn't establish proper front lines, but the Ukrainians did so at least partially. They did it by mobilising much infantry. Still, even they appear to have proper front lines in some areas only.

at least temporary massing of forces:
The Russians do no more mass duel (line of sight combat) forces for breakthrough actions, after their failures in the north. I still suppose a proper fire plan and massing of say 50 MBTs and 50 IFVs should yield more of a breakthrough than all the shooting of the past four weeks, especially since the Ukrainian artillery is dispersed and unlikely to defeat such a force concentration.
 
electronic warfare:
Russian electronic warfare appears to be disappointing, after all. Maybe this is not so much Russians being Russians, as a plain physics issue. It may also be that their EW is too focused on the traditional radio frequency hardware, and not enough oriented against consumer digital radio tech that uses different radio bands.

tracked vehicles:
Videographic evidence keeps showing tracked vehicles moving on roads and dirt roads, not offroad. Dreams of fully tracked battlefield logistics were always 'questionable', but much effort was put into having at least fully tracked combined arms forces - and it appears that the gain in offroad capability rarely gets exploited even by the T-64/-72/-80 series and even MT-LBs, which should have at least equal or superior (MT-LB!) soft soil mobility compared to Western designs. So maybe we don't need nearly as many tracked vehicles after all and the 8x8 craze post-1999 was not all that crazy after all (save for the unit costs)?
 
infantry night combat:
Night vision-equipped infantry should in theory be capable of launching devastating nighttime raids on hostile infantry that has little or no night vision. Maybe this is simply not so suitable for private filming, but so far I have not seen anything supporting the notion that this is going on.

extremely weird performance of battlefield air defences (and fighters) against drones:
On one hand drones get shot down by ManPADS even though they should be quite invisible to ManPADS users (in worst case by Yehudi lights). On the other hand MALE drones defeat radar-equipped air defences that should be able to down them. I understand some reasons behind the latter, but I don't understand why the Russians cannot fix their problems that make MALE survivable sometimes, somewhere.

logistics:
The central question is by now the supply of artillery munitions. The rate of munition consumption appears to differ wildly by locations and days. The Ukrainians in particular appear to use artillery much if not mostly for responsive pinpoint fires, which is good for munitions economy.

morale:
An old rule of thumb is that an army formation can be expected to yield after 20...30% casualties. Some Russian BTGs appear to soldier on with terrible morale after more casualties than that. Then again, they're probably not being subjected to an assault that would give the last push towards flight.

Rosgvardia:
These paramilitary troops were used by Russia as if they were regular army infantry battalions. I did previously only consider them to be troops for mopping up and establishing control over the civilian population behind the regular army.

VDV:
The lightly mechanised Russian airborne arm appears to be a total failure. Their troops were more fit, more motivated, better trained, better equipped with night vision than other regular army combat troops, and it appears to have made no difference whatsoever. They even got bogged down at Hostomel airport instead of an aggressive defence with their bulletproofed vehicles and night vision. So basically Russians being Russians.

raids:
Practically no large-scale raiding appears to go on. Why? There are front-lines in some areas, but other areas appear to be little more than observed.

Russian artillery having more dispersion than expected:
The Russian artillery appears to have more dispersion than expected. Do you remember accounts from the 1942 Battle of Midway? 16 dive bombers killed three carriers in one attack. Compare that to the inaccuracy of the dive bombing against the bigger and slower Yamato and you get a picture of American dive bomber pilots having adopted much less risky attack patterns in 1943/44. Less risk led to les accuracy. The Russian artillery appears to suffer from the same. They do not appear to aim at the wrong point (their accuracy at least with corrected fires appears to be OK). They do appear to have a very high dispersion, which can mostly be explained with them firing at long ranges (and maybe worn-out barrels, but that's less likely). The Russian artillery dispersion patterns look about as bad as in WW2. Meanwhile, the accuracy-seeking Ukrainians appear to shoot at shorter distances to have impacts more close to the aimpoint.

Artillery munitions quality:
Both Russia and Ukraine refused to sign the cluster munitions ban, and I was firmly among those who believed that this gives Russia a huge advantage over Western artillery in terms of raw firepower. After all, cluster munitions are more deadly than normal high explosive.
Well, almost all the photographic and video evidence I saw so far indicates that not only are cluster munitions extremely rare in this war; the regular high explosive munitions are widely if not exclusively used with point detonating fuses.Radio frequency proximity fuses was introduced on the artillery battlefield in late 1944 and is understood to create much more fragmentation effect, especially at certain angles of descent. Well, Russians and Ukrainians don't appear to use such fuses. It's almost all HE with PD fuses, barely more effect per shell than on the 1941-1945 Eastern Front!


Again; keep in mind that the face of war can change quickly, even be different between two parallel conflicts. Yet the face of war in the recent Azerbaijan-Armenia war and in this war appear to be very similar. Almost none of the theoretical, doctrine and sales pitch talk of the post-Cold War period is recognizably present. The exception appears to be the use of drones, which is largely reminiscent of First World War use of airpower.
The face of war in Eastern Europe appears to be almost completely detached from Western preparations for defence, and at the same time major Western armed forces had their pants dropped and their hollowness exposed. The Russians have at least crude artillery munitions in quantity, while the German senior officers merely pretended to lead an actual army that could go to war!

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8 comments:

  1. My two cents:

    * Regarding night vision, I remember reading a couple of press reports a few weeks into the war about UA special forces operating on the Kyiv axis. According to those reports, they did quite a lot of damage targeting Russian supply columns at night, with heavy use of night vision. In addition, I have seen announcements of crowdfunded equipment for the troops (on both sides), and night vision (alongside communication equipment and drones) seems to feature prominently. So the issue here seems to be lack of availability (and maybe training), more that the uselessness of such equipment.

    * Regarding the low performance of VDV, it is not easy to know how much of it is due to inherent flaws in the concept of elite airborn infantry, and how much is due to the plan with which Russian command decided to invade Ukraine, which seems to have being heavily based on the assumption that UA resistence would crumble if they were pushed hard enough. In addition, supply and reinforcement of airborne troops behind enemy lines is (at the very least) very hazardous without air supremacy, and VVS did not (and still has not) archived it. The surprisingly low performance of VVS is probably a big factor here. Even if your troops are elite, advancing into urban terrain without guaranteed air or artillery support, while the land forces supposed to relieve you are bogged down, is an invitation to repeat the First Battle of Grozny, on a bigger scale.

    * Regarding raiding, I think the problem may be trained manpower, especially infantry. Russia commited much of his peacetime army for this operation, without a substantial reserve, then suffered significant losses in the initial weeks of the war, and had to scale back its ambitions to the east, using a more artillery-centric style of warfare (which happens to be Russian doctrine, BTW). I do not think they have a lot of infantry left for mobile warfare, and they are trying to scrounge up what they can, without triggering a general mobilization. In the case of Ukraine, they commited most of their trained manpower to stop the Russians, and, when that was not enough, untrained territorial militia as well. They may have a lot of such militia, but that is not the kind of people I would trust with raids deep into enemy territory, against better trained troops.

    * Rovsgardia. I think this is a mix of faulty planning and manpower issues. In the original plan, Rovsgvardia were probably supposed to mop up surrendering Ukrainian troops and provide occupation forces. Once that plan failed miserably, they found themselves in the front line, and, with losses starting to mount, they were available as infantry. Attach a couple of leftover artillery and air defense batteries, and a company of tanks, to one of their battalions and there you have a new BTG on the cheap.

    * Artillery dispersion. I think it is manpower again, and disparity in the number of available artillery. The Russians have a lot of tubes, and they can compensate lack of accuracy with saturation, so they can stay out of range of UA artillery as much as they can, in order to preserve the lives of their precious trained artillerymen. The Ukranians, on the other hand, have to compensate lack of quantity with more accurate fires, even if that forces them to take more risks. They are the ones being invaded, after all. It will interesting to see what will happen if NATO can (and is willing to) provide Ukraine with enough long range precision fires.

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  2. I couldn't find out how many Ukraine mobilized. They should significantly outnumber Russia which has more equipment.

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    1. There are some guesses on the Depuy Instuitute page:

      "Opposing forces: Ukraine had before the war an army (ground forces) of 169,000 in 2016. The Russian army (not armed forces) was 280,000. The current Ukrainian army is now probably over 200,000. The Russian army (ground forces) in and around Ukraine is probably around 150,000 (up to 190,000). Donetsk PR is estimated at 20,000 and Lugansk at 14,000. Russia may be able to add more forces from their own resources, but not much more. If they want to add more, they are going to have to mobilize. Russia appears to be hesitant to do so. I suspect with full mobilization; we could be looking at a Ukrainian army larger than 300,000. People are now even talking about a Ukrainian armed force of 700,000 to 1,000,000. At some point, Russia will have to mobilize to continue this war. I do not think Russia can win this war without further mobilization. If fact, with the increased aid flowing into Ukraine, Russia may very well end up losing territory it currently holds without additional mobilization. The failure to mobilize is hard to explain from a military point of view. It is clearly a result of domestic political concerns."

      http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/blog/2022/06/

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    2. The Ukrainian territorial forces are certainly more numerous than 300k not counting the regular January army.

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    3. "The Ukrainian territorial forces are certainly more numerous than 300k"

      Yes, that is not disputed. Armed forces of 700k - 1000k actually imply that.

      The interesting question is when and where to get heavy weapons for a larger army/armed forces.

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    4. >"The failure to mobilize is hard to explain from a military point of view. It is clearly a result of domestic political concerns."
      Kek. You have absolutely stupid ideas about this war in the West.
      Combined detachments from combat groups of various units, commanded by anyone, are fighting. Half of the troops are sitting in the rear and drinking. There are practically no infantry. It saves the fact that Ukrainians are fighting somewhere in the same way, they do not climb to the front line and sit on strong points.

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  3. So Ukraine has vastly more infantry, but can't use them to displace the Russians, who have more equipment and far less infantry. Is there an affordable game changer to enable infantry to win or is the only solution to symmetrically armour up in equipment?

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    1. I suspect the Ukrainians either intend to endure the Russian artillery munition stocks or (preferably) defeat the Russian arty by attrition with PGMs and drone use. The demoralised and thinly spread Russian line of sight combat troops would easily break if assaulted in force and unable to call much arty for help.

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