A quick & dirty analysis of front-line combat in Ukraine

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The Russo-Ukrainian War has long taken the shape of a trench war, with an apparently somewhat flexible defence by the Ukrainians wherever there's no calm sector or water obstacle forming the front line.

The most entrenchments appear to be in use in the East, but there's also an established (albeit occasionally moving) front-line North and Northwest of Kherson and in the North near Charkiw.

 

I'd like to write a bit about my interpretation of what's going on.

 

(1) Indirect fires are the main killers, likely exceeding 80% of casualty generation. This is not entirely new, we saw that during 18th century sieges, during First World War trench battles, in the Normandy battle and some late Eastern Front battles of the Second World War. American indirect fires and air attacks combined also reached this much effect during the last phase of the Korean War.

Ukrainians are short on munitions and resort to especially (maybe mostly) precision attacks (including with dumb munitions), while Russians appear to usually use area fires (or simply widely dispersing weapons). 

The bird's view by drones appears to be a most important method for spotting with Cold War-ish artillery radars and ground-bound forward observers seemingly being less important (though this may be an incorrect impression due to a bias in availability of videos for publication).

(2) What's the infantry's job in all this?

First, read my old text on repulsion, please: 

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2010/01/repulsion.html

The lethality of small arms and all the tacticool whizzbang about them doesn't matter much. The Ukrainians might be able to hold their lines just as well with Soviet WW2 weapons (machineguns, bolt action rifles, submachineguns). The poorly motivated Russian infantry isn't able to overcome certain all-too human things like survivability instinct on the attack. Their armour fails as well, despite reports of how fearsome the automatic 30 mm fires by large quantities of BMP-2/-3 can be.

The Ukrainians' ability to establish and largely hold front-lines despite the extremely long length of the front appears to be rooted in the susceptibility of low morale Russians to relatively little firepower.

Attacks bog down easily under such circumstances. I've read many WW2 infantry battle reports where a single sniper or a single light machinegun nest was able to stall a platoon-sized infantry attack that did not benefit from support by armour or smoke. 

So if your infantry can establish sufficient repulsion effect on the cheap and is backed-up by fire support that can accurately hit the attackers while they're fixed behind cover or flat on a field then you can indeed maintain a long front-line with little force density and moderate casualties of your own.

Ukraine appears to have what it takes to stop the current flawed Russian ground forces at acceptable losses, but offensive success requires that they be able to mass up somewhat (line of sight combat strength AND support!) and find ways to make Russian defences crumble. That should be possible, but it would look much different from what was reported so far from the Kherson front where Ukrainian advances do not appear to have overwhelmed any major Russian forces.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

P.S.: This is a good opportunity for a reminder that people who think they can overthrow a Western government with mere small arms and improvised explosives are idiots. Infantry without at the very least 60 mm mortars and anti-tank weapons cannot achieve anything of significance.

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