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!

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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