The implication from what I briefly saw as that they are moving towards larger, more traditional formations.
abrandt
20926
So more unwieldy and not less.
That’s a bit of a weird article. They suspect it was poison because the guy was 64, but still active and he “had plans”.
Let’s try it a different way: 64 year old man dies from heart attack. Is this shocking?
From here:
Your risk for heart disease increases with age, especially with people of color and for those who are over 65. While the average age for a heart attack is 64.5 for men, and 70.3 for women, nearly 20 percent of those who die of heart disease are under the age of 65.
So, I guess it depends on what your prior probability of death by poison administered by the FSB is. If you expect you’re going to die from poison more than 20% of the time that you die, then maybe this is plausible.
I’d wait for better evidence before I freak out. Obviously Lukashenko has different priors.
More unwieldy but more durable, perhaps. Russia simply isn’t set up for nimble and flexible. The closest they came was during the late Cold War with the OMG (operational maneuver group) concept, but that was on a much larger scale than battalions.
abrandt
20929
And certainly it could work better for them going back to what they know with the tried and true. But Ukraine’s well implemented Western system will continue to provide them huge inherent advantages over that. And before certain individuals come in here and say “BUT WUT ABOUT WW2” I simply say “What about literally every other war where Russia’s top-down inflexible leadership structure only achieved killing huge numbers of their own poorly trained troops?”
Oh, they face challenges aplenty to be sure. And today’s Russia is nowhere near as competent as the old USSR when it comes to this sort of stuff. In say 1988 or so they had years of solid planning, elaborate logistical prep, and well-rehearsed doctrine and warplanning ready to be executed by a far more competent (than today) body of senior and field-grade officers. Even the rank and file back then was a lot more likely to embrace the mission than now, and was it seems treated somewhat better (though that doesn’t take much).
Calelari
20931
To sort of answer my own question, I found a bit more detail. Rather than taking advantage of lessons learned, the assessment is RU broke their battalions up so thoroughly, they are no longer able to reconstitute them along doctrinal lines.
There is still no substitute in modern warfare for infantry in the role of holding ground. If your basic unit of deployment is light on infantry then you end up deploying a lot of supporting units alongside them which can’t actually hold the ground. Inevitably a disproportionate amount of casualties fall upon the PBI and thus it becomes even harder to hold that ground. If you are going to use a ton of those newly mobilised infantry in the defensive role it makes sense to give them an organisational size that allows them to deploy a significant number without having to attach a disproportionate amount of unnecessary supporting units.
Thesper
20933
Do you happen to have a link to that podcast? Or if anyone has any articles or podcasts on the same subject, I’d love to read them. I’m fascinated by how the Ukrainian military managed to make the jump from a Soviet military mindset to a more Western one. Or perhaps calling it a Western mindset is to do the Ukrainians a disservice, and calling it a uniquely Ukrainian one would be more appropriate.
Grifman
20935
Sorry, I looked but could not find it.
Grifman
20937
Interesting article:
Dispersion, artillery and drones.
KevinC
20938
Aid to Ukraine by GDP.
Aid to Ukraine, including aid given through the EU:
Source (also has a bunch of other charts and visualizations):
More specifically: artillery, with drones in service of it and dispersion as a response to it. Reminds me of something in one of the ACOUP articles on the first world war:
schurem
20940
I can’t wait to see what happens when the Ukrainians start firing SDB’s with their HIMARS launchers. It’s a small glide bomb, meant to be carried en mass by things like strike eagles and vipers. But why not bolt it on top of a rocket and fire it that way. You also get a good 100 to 150km range that way. And GPS precision.
AFAIK the SDB is a result of the late 80s storm breaker program where they sought a technical solution to the problem of massed armour streaming up the Fulda gap.
I already see arguments about how it doesn’t help Russia therefore it’s Ukrainian/CIA/Anglo-Saxon provocation.
My current theory is a local far-right nutcase. Alternative theory is a local far-left nutcase.
