About high-low army mixes for today's NATO

.

Around 2011 I wrote multiple times about a scenario of a Russian surprise attack on NATO (at the only kind of attack that makes kinda sense, for it's the only scenario that gives the Russians a chance) and how this would lead to low force densities (very wide brigade sectors). This in turn would not allow to properly defend a frontline, and the benefits of a frontline (stability, safe resting area behind, counter-scouting) would disappear, the opportunities of a more fluid theatre situation would appear.

Consequently, I wrote many blog posts relevant to that scenario. Now Russia started the biggest post-WW2 war in Europe and the Ukrainians defend the full frontline. Neither Russians nor Ukrainians appear capable of breakthrough. I suppose that's a matter of competence, not of state of the technology or art of war. The Russians even botched the "strategic surprise" part and stumbled into Ukraine as they did into Chechnya in 1994.

My views seemed to be disproven (and I wrote about that a couple times).

Now I would like to claim that the war we're seeing is very similar in many aspects to both World Wars, the Spanish Civil War and the Iran-Iraq War. So there's little new. Even the drones merely repeat the accelerated advance of military aviation in WW1 and the accelerated advance of electronic warfare in WW2.

The concept of both sides appears to be to have a bulk of forces (80-90% ?) suitable for holding a frontline and a few formations set up for either breakthrough (Russian storm units) or main effort (Ukrainian mechanised brigades with Western gear).

Neither side has the competence to do a proper combined arms breakthrough, and the Ukrainian tank forces resemble rather the 'fire brigade' Panzerdivisionen of late 1944 than the 'Blitzkrieg' Panzerdivisionen of 1940-1942. The Russian mechanised forces resemble the French tank divisions of 1940.

It may not sound nice, but both sides suffer badly from insufficient reserves training prior to 2022 and are by now rather amateurish and incapable of combined arms warfare. Both sides are using armed forces that were ridden by corruption for three decades and are rooted in the at most modestly competent Russian army tradition. It's a common symptom that amateurish armies form when armies expand very quickly in wartime, with much of the pre-war experts killed in the opening stage. The American Civil War was such a amateur war. The British Expeditionary Forces were quite amateurish around 1916, too. Historians are usually too nice to point out that insufficiently-trained leaders and troops lead to amateurish, incompetent armies. They do usually research & write about their own country, after all.

The upside of all this is that the Russians gt a demonstration of the limit of their abilities. They do now understand they cannot defeat a 80/20 low-high mix force in the field. They understand that they suffer higher material and personnel losses than a moderately well-done 80/20 mix army, and without the Chinese helping them by the millions of troops the Russians would stand no chance against NATO even if NATO used 80/20 instead of trying to go for all high end forces (in the richer countries).

An all high end NATO might get swamped and overrun by a Sino-Russian force of three million troops in Europe, so maybe we need to counter mass with mass anyway, again leading to 80/20. The Chinese mobilisation potential is well in excess of 150 million men + millions of women for non-combat roles, so NATO might face a sustained incredible numerical inflow of PLA troops of low quality during a long war. We could defeat this only if we're prepared for it - this means at the very least have enough trained junior NCOs to do proper training for our own mobilised mass armies. The point of preparing for this scenario is to deter, avoid the scenario.

The Western way of war proved to be overwhelming to the Soviet arms-equipped 80/20 approach during 1991, but it did so at a time when the West enjoyed a near-monopoly on thermal vision in ground combat and it was in featureless terrain. High-quality munitions were expended at an unsustainable rate. Moreover, most of the ground combat was actually against Iraqi troops already withdrawing in disorder.

The fiscal argument is strongly in favour of 80/20. The 80% troops of the line would not need terribly much training and could be reserve troops. This would greatly save on the scarce personnel, as such reserve forces could have 1,000,000 troops mobilised strength with a peacetime active strength of less than 100,000. This reduces the high direct personnel expenses AND it frees up personnel for civilian, GDP-raising and taxes-paying jobs. A 100,000 € personnel costs soldier job has a true cost to the society of about 150,000...200,000 €. It's plain stupid to unnecessarily keep troops in active duty.

Moreover, those 80% troops of the line would be technologically and fiscally as well as doctrinally feasible for almost all NATO countries. The challenges of a high end tank brigade may not be met by any Western countries these days, and with better effort (focus on conventional warfare) maybe half a dozen NATO countries could master the tank brigade/exploitation brigade pattern well enough for consistent success with it.

So in my opinion 

• We should prepare NATO defence against Russian strategic surprise attack by 2028 or later
• This still means first weeks would have low force densities
• This still means it's important to get combat-ready forces to the front en masse within a few weeks
  
• We should prepare NATO defence against a 3 million men Sino-Russian land force 2026 or later
• This requires enough mass
• Facing demographic challenges and high costs of labour, we should make use of a hi/low mix with focus on mobilised strength after a few weeks. Peacetime military strength of most NATO members does not matter much for defence. To boost it is inefficient.
  
• We should consider helping the poorer NATO members with equipping & training proper brigades of the line
• We should consider helping the NATO frontier countries with equipping & training surprise-resistant 'first line of defence' forces that can delay incursions well.
• I keep insisting that forward-deploying brigades and setting up multinational (poor cohesion) brigades and creating small pools of increased (not total shit) readiness forces was and is all bollocks. ALL forces should be up to their tasks. Set up a multi-brigade air/land warfare training ground in Poland with always three or four (rotating) brigades present and maybe entire brigade sets of equipment prepositioned if we absolutely need such a forward presence.

Is there a place for my low force density ideas left? Well, yes, in the exploitation brigades. They do not need to be classic tank brigades or French-style 6x6 wheeled armoured car-based  formations.

I wrote about affordable brigades with reduced expectations (accepting some dependencies on higher level support) before. There's one draft (~80% done) for a text relevant to this.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

P.S.: I should mention that the German, Japanese and Soviet forces of WW2 followed a similar pattern of bulk of forces being poor quality but 15...20% being either elite light infantry or fully motorized troops.  The only Italian troops of WW2 that were effective were concentrated in two divisions and the Bersaglieri battalions of the infantry divisions. Armies had no such high-low mix during the First World War (they thought they had it with the cavalry divisions being high end, but they proved to  rarely be of use). The German army started to be able to breakthrough the Entente in France once it created high end units (assault infantry with actual trench attack training and equipment) in combination with smarter artillery plans. Overall, a high/low mix proved to be the most cost-efficient approach through centuries in Europe. To go all high-end (as Americans with their fully motorised and tank-rich invasion force in 1944) is a luxury left to those with vastly superior industrial resources (or in peacetime: insane military spending).

.