Things Learned About Modern Warfare From The Ukranian War
BY Herschel Smith
2 years, 7 months ago
This is meant to be a tactical analysis, and also to admit I was wrong about certain things a number of months (or years) ago when I discussed 5GW.
The notion behind the F-35 was communications, control of the sky, ability to leverage connection with MilStar Uplink with other air assets, command, and so forth. That’s a simplification, and for the rest of the story you can find better explanations of it online.
True enough, the F-35 program has been disastrous and it would have been better in retrospect to have reengineered and retrofitted the F-22 which was a proven platform. I also won’t hear of any talk of replacement of the A-10, which only an idiot would advocate.
However, it seems to me that the Russians are approaching the battle space as if they are fighting WWII. Ukraine, on the other hand, is using modern anti-tank rocket designs to their advantage, as well as leveraging drones to kill tanks, refueling trucks and APCs. Two things happen when the armor is found and Ukraine has the assets to attack. First, the armor gets killed. Second, the soldiers in the armor either die or quickly abandon the armor and scatter.
Russia is driving tanks and other armor in large, slow moving, laborious, lumbering columns, all of them susceptible to stand off weapons. This makes them susceptible to enfilade fires. If they break out of the lumbering columns, they splinter to the point that they are susceptible to defilade fires. Some of the targeting is being done during the daylight hours, but a lot of it is being done at night, because as I read in one account, “They can’t see us at night.” That report was specifically pertaining to civilian drones, as small as a couple of square feet, being operated by civilians, those same civilians working in military complexes and alongside military observers and tacticians. Once again for emphasis, these are civilians, using small civilian-owned drones. Frankly, I don’t think it would matter if they could see them in the daylight either. They would be looking up in the sky all the time for something that looked like smaller than a bird.
The drone usage is for surveillance and intelligence gathering. From their vantage, they can send ground pounders to use stand off anti-tank weapons or send weapons-carrying drones to perform armor killing functions. Radar cannot see these small drones.
To be sure, Russia can still use large artillery and fighter jet strikes to damage infrastructure, and they are doing just that. Also, when the battle is between ground pounders, it’s brutal, just as it always has been throughout history.
But a tank must be able to function within parameters: weight, ability keep from sinking into the ground, fuel consumption, and armor protection. The turrets and rear ends of tanks are usually much less armored than the front. It’s impossible to design a tank that has thick armor on all sides and the top. It would be logistically unsustainable and wouldn’t move. Engines would tear up, and mechanics would get shot while trying to make them work again.
It would be interesting to see how the M1A1 variants hold up under these circumstances. They might do better than the older Russian designs because they move faster, have explosive reactive armor, and are more off-road capable than the Russian tanks. But who knows?
But you can bet that tacticians in the Pentagon and at Leavenworth are today watching video very closely and asking some hard questions about heavy, lumbering warfare in light of the concepts of 5GW.
At the beginning of the discussions about 5GW, you could have colored me very skeptical. Today I’m convinced. With miniature drones the real-time intelligence and surveillance capabilities are endless. The next barrier for these drones is the use of AI to let them all talk to each other and learn from their losses and successes, operating more autonomously when they perform proper enemy ID and surveil the area for unacceptable collateral damage potential.
Another thing this shows (and I was right about this prediction) is that the Marine Corps was stupid to have ever pushed the ridiculous EFV (Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle) to the point that the Senate had to kill it for them. And they were smart to let it go when they were told no. With drones and modern rocket designs, no EFV would have ever landed on any beach, anywhere.
One thing is certain. The days of lumbering columns of tanks conducting near peer warfare on the field of battle is over forever. No one will try it again, and if they do, they’re fools.
The two things most important in this war are ground pounders and control of the skies (and not necessarily control of the skies at tens of thousands of feet).
On March 20, 2022 at 11:33 pm, Dan said:
The Ukrainians are doing well because they are getting a ton of high tech help from the west.
Without it the Russians would be doing much better. The real question American patriots must ask is when spicy time arrives here where are WE going to get all those fancy high tech weapons from. Because without them we are in deep kimchi.
On March 20, 2022 at 11:41 pm, Ohio Guy said:
“However, it seems to me that the Russians are approaching the battle space as if they are fighting WWII.”
I’m quite certain this is intentional and has been gamed for multiple probable contingencies.
As I’m sure you know,
The rules of the military are five: measurement, assessment, calculation, comparison, and victory. The ground gives rise to measurements, measurements give rise to assessments, assessments give rise to calculations, calculations give rise to comparisons, comparisons give rise to victories.
By the comparisons of measurements you know where victory and defeat lie.
Therefore, a victorious army is like a pound compared to a gram, a defeated army is like a gram compared to a pound.
When the victorious get their people to go to battle as if they were directing a massive flood of water into a deep canyon, this is a matter of formation.
When water accumulates in a deep canyon, no one can measure it’s amount, just as our defense shows no form. When the water is released it rushed down in a torrent, just as our attack is irresistable.
THE ART OF WAR
SunTzu
On March 20, 2022 at 11:46 pm, Herschel Smith said:
If it was intentional, it was stupid. They’re stalled. They won’t win, and they cannot hold Ukraine, regardless of what you think about the war.
If you’re defending the paradigm of WWII battle, you’re badly mistaken and aren’t watching what’s happening.
On March 21, 2022 at 1:46 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
The next paradigm in armored warfare is unmanned or lightly-manned armored vehicles, including tanks. Much of the tremendous complexity and expense in designing and building a modern main battle tank (MBT) comes about because of the crew. The need to protect the crew, make the tank large-enough and comfortable-enough ergonomically so that the crew can fight the tank efficiently, and so on. That’s what drives the complexity and expense.
Even at the lighter end, modern MBTs weigh in the 45-50 ton range, and the heaviest examples top out at 65-70 tons, all-up weight. Modern depleted uranium armor and Chobham/Dorchester composite armors are very high performance in terms of protection, but they are also bulky and extremely heavy in comparison to rolled or cast steel.
The Russians and some others – by the use of autoloaders, typically – have been able to reduce crew to three men down from four, namely a tank commander, a gunner and a driver. As automation advances that number is expected to drop.
And once the tech is perfected to allow tanks to be unmanned, they can then be utilized as swarming weapons, numerous and well-armed but more-expendible, too, given that they will not require a crew which needs protecting, and that their cost/unit will eventually drop well-below what an MBT costs at present.
The main direct risk drones and UAVs pose to modern MBTs and other armored fighting vehicles is via the use of top-attack weapons, which target the relatively thin armor found on the upper surface of most tanks. And no MBT crew wants a Hellfire missile dropping in on them unexpectedly.
The other danger drones and UAVs pose is that, especially when networked into a battlefield surveillance system, they take away the ability of armor to move undetected by day or night. Even if the UAV can’t attack and destroy the tanks for some reason, it can collect intel and vector other assets in to handle the job.
Air superiority over the battlefield is as vital as ever to the conduct of mechanized ground warfare, whether the aircraft contesting the aerial battle space are manned or not.
On March 21, 2022 at 7:37 am, Fred said:
From experience, drones are very hard to spot, in any terrain and environment except open flatlands, even if you can hear them. And I’m certain that from inside an operating tank you can’t hear them.
Ukraine is turning out to be a little different than only small autonomous cells, as they seem to be galvanized and organizing nationaly. Not every lesson we in America learn from this war will be applicable should our own government’s open hostility toward it’s citizens turn kinetic.
On March 21, 2022 at 10:21 am, PapaSierra said:
Shouldn’t it be easy to jam commercial drones? Are the Russians spending their whole defense budget chasing stealth fighters and hypersonic missiles, and neglecting 3GW or 4GW wild weasels?
On March 21, 2022 at 10:45 am, Nosmo said:
Georgiaboy 61 has the gist of it.
In WWII American Sherman tanks were no match for the Wehrmacht’s Tigers in armor or armament, but they didn’t have to be because there were 10 Shermans to every Tiger and the AI of the day – trained soldiers – quickly figured out how to use the differences to advantage and minimize the shortcomings.
Carry that forward and it leads to inexpensive semi-autonomous unmanned lightly armored vehicles remotely “directed” (I say directed rather than controlled because the internal AI should need only minimal external assistance (assuming the SW is done right)).
Think “tracked skid loader with sensors, video capability and an 8-round semi-auto Javelin dispenser.” Teach it what an enemy vehicle looks like and send it out to find some, assisted by drones. If it survives, the SW and a geo database will tell it to go to a lager site just like a Roomba returns to its charger, and drop in another 8-round Javelin magazine and a 50-gallon fuel cartridge. If it doesn’t survive, no biggie because we’ve got 1000 more just like it. Add in a sensor-controlled machine gun for protection against ground pounders and infantry assault purposes, 1500 rounds for it, power it all with a 4 liter 4-cylinder industrial diesel and let economies of scale drive the price down. Make it modular enough that 3 guys with impact wrenches can take two or three damaged ones apart and use the pieces to make one good one in under an hour. Air drop them everywhere and turn them loose.
Now, all that’s left is answering Dan’s question (above) about our own domestic disparities in cheap and widely-employed tech…..
On March 21, 2022 at 10:47 am, NOG said:
” I also won’t hear of any talk of replacement of the A-10, which only an idiot would advocate.”
Thank you for this. Couple years ago on a forum I formerly visited I got into it with a A-10 maintainer. He thought the A-10s days were numbered and the Army gunships could do the job they performed. As a former pilot of said gunships I know differently. We could never do what the hog can do, just like they cannot do what we did. I note the hog and the gunships are both still flying. He would just not listen and had many on the forum believing his gospel. Drove me nuts.
What I worry about is what the Russians will do when the Stingers get into regular use. They remember Afghanistan. Will they consider it a act of war against them this time? This could get really bad really fast. With technology advancing as it is, no human is safe in modern warfare. It has just become too deadly.
On March 21, 2022 at 11:43 am, billrla said:
Perhaps, Russia’s military planners are perfectly OK with having their older-style armor chewed up by Ukrainians taking pot-shots, as long as Russia achieves its ultimate objectives in Ukraine.
The thing is, no one knows Russia’s ultimate objective in Ukraine.
Russia is going to fight the way Russians fight. They always have.
On March 21, 2022 at 11:46 am, Herschel Smith said:
@billrla,
You belittle what’s happening. You called them “pot shots.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. They are well aimed shots that have taken out some 500 tanks, hundreds of APCs, keep logistics trains from running, and killed five generals so far (of course, snipers are doing that too).
The point is not what the Ukrainians are doing, the point is what this machinery can do.
They aren’t pot shots.
On March 21, 2022 at 12:22 pm, PapaSierra said:
I think this also shows how prohibitively expensive 5GW is, especially when all of the major players are debtor nations. Do you really want to risk that $150M F22 or the $13B aircraft carrier that you can’t afford to replace?
A 2008-era forward operating base would be untenable today, with cheap drones and precision munitions. While there viable are missile defense systems, how long can one afford to expend $1M missiles defending against $1K rockets?
On March 21, 2022 at 12:31 pm, Herschel Smith said:
@PapSierra,
True enough, but that doesn’t touch the issue of civilian use of $1500 mini-drones for surveillance and intel.
That has become a big deal in the war. The drone aficionados are sitting right beside officers staring at the screens their drones are showing them.
On March 21, 2022 at 1:07 pm, billrla said:
Hershel: I’m not belittling the use or efficacy of precision anti-tank munitions. However, I am most certainly questionning the ability of these precision anti-tank munitions to change the ultimate outcome of this particular “war,” or whatever it is. That is why I used the term “pot shot,” which simply means a shot taken at random or easy targets.
It remains entirely possible that the Russians are willingly sacrificing lots of armor in the knowledge that Russia’s ultimate military objectives will be achieved by other means.
On March 21, 2022 at 1:21 pm, PapaSierra said:
HS, my point about the cost of 5GW is that Russia apparently can’t afford basic jamming equipment to interfere with civilian drone communications.
On March 21, 2022 at 2:12 pm, Ohio Guy said:
You all may have heard of this. It explains in some detail what some of the alphabet agencies, namely the NSA, have been doing to control our thoughts on issues just like this. My aim is to educate/help. Not anger anyone.
https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/why-vault-7-matters-its-not-about-collection-of-your-information-instead-its-about-control-of-your-mind/
On March 21, 2022 at 2:24 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Your goals in all of this:
(1) Let Christ control your thoughts. The best way to do that is prayer and study of the Holy Scriptures.
(2) Learn from what’s going on around you. Use everything as an opportunity to become smarter and better without becoming part of and siding with wordly things or wordly and wicked men.
Serve Christ, and only Him.
On March 21, 2022 at 2:29 pm, Old Bill in TN said:
PapaSierra is on it. Herschel’s central point is that smaller, less expensive, and dispersed systems are destroying larger heavier more expensive systems. That cannot be sustained by the heavier combatant.
Prognostications on AI and it’s effects are difficult, but certainly mean the above mentioned metric will continue. There will be a LOT of thinking in military circles about the implications of this fight. The Lightfighter concept is probably about to be brushed off & given a new coat of paint.
On March 21, 2022 at 2:51 pm, I R A Darth Aggie said:
One problem for the Rooskies, they don’t seem to have enough trained troops who care about maintenance of their vehicle while on base. This is the head of 17 tweet stream.
https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1505370275273183239
Pull quote:
“The cumulative effects of all these factors leads to horrendous levels of Russian Army Truck fleet operational attrition.
Short form: 6-to-8 weeks more fighting will deadline the entire Russian Army military truck fleet.”
“Between the end of April and Mid-May 2022, the Ukrainian Army will be able to counter-attack EVERYWHERE.
Because there will be NOWHERE more than 20 miles/30 km inside Ukraine where Russian troops won’t be out of food and low on ammunition.”
On March 21, 2022 at 3:15 pm, Matthew said:
The Russians are doing much better than you seem to be suggesting. Also, they’re utilizing advanced weaponry and drones to devastating effect, and the Russians have started to figure out propaganda (the strike on the mall in Kiev last night is a good example, they released drone footage conclusively showing it was being used as an armory and MLRS staging ground, and then destroyed it with a precision strike).
I really don’t understand this idea that the Russians are losing, or even that they’re stalled. They’re advancing on all fronts, even moving forwards to close off Kiev. Mariupol is effectively neutralized and will fall in a couple weeks, if not sooner. That will free up significant Russian infantry resources. Even the ISW map shows significant advancement day by day.
Additionally, most Ukrainian ground units are not being resupplied. Kiev defense can still get supplies in, but there haven’t been supply lines to much of the eastern units for weeks now. They’re dug in for a siege, but with no relief in sight.
I expect Russia will win this war, and that the defeat of the Ukrainian military will be total, at least east of the Dnieper River, and probably within two or three months.
As to your question about American tanks, we have some evidence of how they’d fare against Russian ATGMs from the Yemen War and the ISIS expansion into Iraq. They’re definitely more survivable than the T-80 and T-72, but they have vulnerabilities. You can find videos of Abrams taking direct hits from Kornet missiles and cooking off. You can also find videos of them surviving fine. There’s also a video from inside an Almaty of it taking a direct hit from some ATGM, which is crazy to consider.
On March 21, 2022 at 5:04 pm, PapaSierra said:
@ I R A Darth Aggie,
3rd world armies always fail at maintenance, because they come from a society where the government owns everything. The AK vs M16 illustrates everything you need to know. One requires little maintenance but is less accurate, the magazines don’t drop free because they’re more valuable to the state than the soldier, and they go from safe to full auto to semi auto (spray and pray), while the M16 requires more care, the mags drop free, and they go safe to semi to full auto, as the soldier is expected to be precise and avoid innocents.
Also in closed societies, everyone learns to keep their head down and mouths shut, so when the unit commander is kills in battle often there’s no one to step into the breach, unlike a western unit where often a corporal or private will take command when needed.
Victor David Hansen and Robert D Kaplan have written extensively about this.
On March 21, 2022 at 8:20 pm, Elon Muskox said:
I see the Ukrainians using tactics I noted the Muj using against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Like waiting until an armor column is at a choke point, someplace where the armor and other heavy vehicles have limited mobility off the road, or the road is bounded by thick forest. Then disable the lead vehicle. Then do the same to the trail vehicle. Now all of the vehicles in the middle are exposed and vulnerable and can be dealt with at your leisure.
Only the Muj did it without firing a shot. They would provoke rock slides in mountain passes as the lead vehicle approached, then wait for the column to bunch up, then do the same behind the trail vehicle. The Ukrainians are doing it with drones or anti-tank rockets but the end result is the same.
But the Russians have forgotten the lessons from 40 years ago, and the Ukrainians are using that fact to reacquaint them with a verse from Kipling:
“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.”
On March 22, 2022 at 2:31 pm, Brad said:
” I also won’t hear of any talk of replacement of the A-10, which only an idiot would advocate.”
They were going to try and replace it a couple years ago. With a prop plane. Eventually that got shot down. No Pun intended. I believe in the 2019 Military budget they allotted a ton of money for replacing Wing Structures on some of he aged aircraft. They are currently placing a lot of orders for A-10 parts. I don’t think it’s going anywhere.
On March 23, 2022 at 10:40 am, Stilicho said:
There is still a valuable role for armor, especially in delivering concentrated firepower against enemy concentrations. However, it has to be done as a combined arms operation with infanty screening, air support, and effective countermeasures to drone surveillance and attacks. The use of drones in connection with effective, distributed, easily portable anti-tank weapons seriously degrades tank survivability which is its main advantage over other mechanized vehicles. The Russian armor columns, concentrated on roads, are reminicent of Napoleon’s infantry columns attacking the relatively dispersed British lines who were using firepower to decimate those columns before they could close and punch through the lines.
On March 23, 2022 at 10:53 am, DWEEZIL THE WEASEL said:
An interesting read on the Unz Review is an article by Mike Whitney on the Ukranian “Mop-up”. It would seem there are two sides to every story.
On March 23, 2022 at 3:20 pm, Fred said:
I remember Rumsfeld telling us about a mop up.
On March 23, 2022 at 3:30 pm, Russell G. said:
And, how to drones receive their commands?
Indeed.
On March 23, 2022 at 5:13 pm, anonymous coward said:
I think the science of the drone being the queen of the battlefield was already settled in the Armenia / Azerbaijan “conflict”. Turkey provided the drones and the Armenian’s could move above ground without being killed immediately. Wouldn’t surprise me if the turks aren’t providing a lot of the same said drones to the ‘krains. Turkish Russian love for each other is well known.
On March 23, 2022 at 6:16 pm, Fergus said:
Seems to me that drones are only as effective as communications permit. This means counter measures will assume greater importance in the future, and the race between communications and security will assume the same importance as the the code breaking race during the period prior to ww2 and afterwards. If you cannot communicate or guide your weapons what have you got?
Unfortunately in the US merit, excellence takes a back seat to diversity and equality. I wonder what the PRC and Russians will do?
On March 23, 2022 at 8:18 pm, AlfredENewman said:
FWIW, the Russians are claiming, “According to the most recent briefing by the Russian Ministry of Defense, since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, 214 drones, 1483 battle tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 150 warplanes, 584 field artillery and mortar weapons and 1279 units of special military equipment were destroyed.” -southfront