21246

Well, I think the Wagner mercs were definitely being portrayed by many as some kind of elite special ops unit. Partly, this was because they may have been better than normal Russian soldiers, but also because back then lots of folks thought that the normal Russian soldiers were like normal American soldiers.

They clearly aren’t.

Part of this is likely also due to the fact that the US military really is pretty damn good at what it does. We always focus on the fuckups, but the reality is that the US military is pretty battle hardened at this point, due to (for better or worse) being engaged in wars for 2 decades straight.

21247

The Time article on Zelenskyy is worth reading.

21248

Way back in the beginning of this war I remember a… twitter thread? medium post? about the supposedly elite Russian paratroopers (VDV) and how they’re not actually particularly good at fighting, and them being elite was useful propaganda for winning invasions quickly–just send them in and people will give up and not resist. Which works, until it doesn’t. (Also, actual airborne operations are dumb and usually fail.)

21249

I think @alekseivolchok posted something about that in this thread at the start of the war. Apologies for the ping if that’s a misattribution!

21250

Obligatory, because it still makes me giggle:

21251

Are there even any of them left? They got chewed up pretty badly early in the war, and you rarely hear about them, even from pro-Russian sources.

21252

By the time you have set up the conditions under which a large-scale airborne operation can succeed, you probably don’t need the operation. Pretty much the same for large-scale amphibious ops these days too it seems.

21253

Big white phosphorus attack on Ukrainian lines (video)

21254

I’ve seen persuasive arguments that it was never an effective method. At best it caused logistical distractions while sacrificing all the men you sent to do it.

21255

You can definitely make that argument. If you look at all the large-scale airborne operations in history, almost entirely from WWII, the record is at best debatable, at worst abysmal. The Normandy drops were hugely costly and it’s unclear how much the hindered the German response, though the British drops seemed perhaps to be more successful with Pegasus Bridge and all that. But Normandy was like the best of the bunch; Market Garden was a Charlie Foxtrot from the get-go, and most of the other drops were much smaller. I know the Russians did some drops but I don’t recall how successful they were, and of course the Germans did some early in the war. While the 1940 ops were successful, sort of, they weren’t that big, and the big one on Crete was a Pyrrhic victory at best.

Combat drops of any size post-war, usually in colonial-type wars, also didn’t exactly have a great track record either. Turns out tossing men and equipment out of airplanes and hoping they land more or less intact more or less where they are supposed to is kind of a crap shoot.

21256

Well using wargame strategies, you’re taking a perfectly good group of soldiers, downgrading their combat abilities and dropping them out of supply and hoping that your main line meets up with them before they’re all killed.

Oh they also all might die before they ever get near the target.

WW2OL had paratroopers and their success rate was not great. Usually you died during the drop or before you even saw the target to enemy air or AA weapons. Once on the ground, you… probably died before accomplishing anything. And that’s with magical tables that teleported an army to help you if you humped them long enough.

21257

Freaking horrifying. A slow white curtain of beautiful sparkling death to replace your holiday lighting.

21258

The German airdrop on Crete basically wrecked the airborne divisions and they never did that again.

21259

How about Air Mobile, for example in Vietnam (or Afghanistan)? How did that do? My only knowledge of it comes from movies like “We were soldiers once” which I assume is at least semi-accurate and “Apocalypse Now” which I assume is not accurate.

21260

You wouldn’t be able to see burning white phosphorus, it produces huge clouds of smoke (which is what it’s main military usage is, to create smoke screens). That looks more like magnesium, but I can’t think of what purpose it’s being used.

21261

Probably the person to ask about that would be @Navaronegun who has designed games about stuff like that and knows a metric ton of stuff about Vietnam in all of its facets. Certainly the movement of troops by helicopter was and is useful, but my hazy recollection of things is that in Vietnam it got pretty dicey as the enemy got better at shooting at us. More recent wars? Again, gotta be someone here who knows that stuff. All I can recall really was I think we tried some large scale air mobile stuff in Desert Storm with mixed results maybe?

21262

Well the big difference there is that (generally) you can get them out again.

The plan isn’t “jump out of a plane in the middle of the enemy and hope we can rescue you by advancing the line to you”.
It’s “fly someplace and do a thing and then we pull you out afterwards or if it gets bad”.
At least on paper.

21263

Seems like the main value of airdrops were to compromise rear lines and divert attention, without all the support structure they wouldn’t be able to create a real offensive threat vis a vis “we now have an equally valid force in your backlines”. WWII was over such a swath of area it could make sense, particularly because there was a lot of partisan resistance and more or less everyone looked the same out of uniform. Strategic objectives would be about having the right materials and support to establish and push lines, and paratroopers couldn’t do that. But, I imagine it’s no fun when you’ve extended a few hundred miles and suddenly there are troops and sappers and whatnot two towns behind you.

21264

Illumination and setting a wide area on fire?

21265

I wasn’t really referring to their use in airborne ops, but as regular infantry, given that the Russians need troops.