Great Power contentions

[Shaka_Khan]

If this war drags on without either side looking to win soon then there could be peace talks coming up. NATO would be involved.

[Montmorency]

Ukrainian scout trainee critical of the manifest backwardness of the US military. I suspected this was a trainee of the battalion-scale 6-week "combined arms" program in Grafenwoehr, Germany I mentioned back in the late winter, but the author also mentions it involving a brigade formation, so maybe it was one of the Bradley or Stryker brigades.

One of the major points is the refusal of US instructors to think outside the paradigm of "pure recon on foot." There was zero tactical UAV (civilian drone) training despite repeated requests, and little practical combat training.

A lot of comments proposed that soldiers must be trained in non-electronic and non-drone backup methods, ignoring that these are inferior and waste the precious time of soldiers soon to be deployed in a real-live war with real-life tactics, practices, and procedures that contradict mere dusty doctrine and theory (namely, both sides have from the beginning relied on networked digital apps fed real-time tactical drone observation data to manage most artillery fires; somehow they've not been reduced by EW to wishing for old-fashioned FIST teams). It's like demanding riflemen be trained on iron sights equally as with ACOGs or other optics, reducing overall competence in practice.
@spmetla

[Shaka_Khan]

[Montmorency]

The one big prediction I'm already labeling a wrong call of mine with respect to Ukraine's 2023 campaign - though there's still time this year for events to prove me more prescient - is that almost all of the activity would take place within the administrative borders of Zaporizhzhia. So far it's been a majority, but only a majority. The majority again of that remainder is what we might refer to as "semi-wrong", taking place along the Donetsk side of the Donetsk-Zaporizhzhia border, but the rest is further north, especially around Bakhmut. Call that a sixth of the overall effort. I had thought - hoped - that UFOR wouldn't expend much on pressuring Bakhmut, and I concluded against a Velyka Novosilka axis because I assessed that the optimal location for the eastern axis through the Russian defensive network would be cross-country between Hulyaipole and Polohy.

I'm glad that Ukraine has received elevated artillery munitions flows, but they need more tubes and crews now for coverage. Eastern Europe is gradually producing a marginally self-sufficient production base in large Soviet-caliber rounds, but really the replacement and initial supply of 155mm cannons is not adequate. Ukraine needs to receive at least one per day - with a properly-trained crew - indefinitely just to account for attrition, with the only candidate platform being the large outstanding storages of M109s. That is to say nothing of the need for delivery platforms for new arty brigades by the time NATO can produce a couple million shells a year.

Ukraine still needs a proper war economy with government-directed industrial policy, and proper investment in its development and manufacture of military-grade recon drones. Also, the US needs to really get started on investing in the development of true loitering drones, for point defense and counter-drone war. Just tactical drone warfare in general is a big blind spot for NATO.

But as I've noted since last fall, Ukraine and NATO need to prioritize institutional reform of UFOR from the ground up first of all, increasing the level of skill and professionalism to the extent that the operational and tactical default wouldn't be a consistent convergence on Russian methods. (Literally, by the end of June people were beginning to remark that the structure of the UFOR campaign closely reflected the shape of Russian/Wagner winter offensives.) The feasibility of large-scale forcible recovery of territory can't be rated highly with a basically attritional strategy against a larger opponent and with reliance on external sources of supply.

For yet another formulation:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It's likely that many of the problems we've seen since the offensives of last years will persist. Enduring challenges with command and coordination will likely limit the AFU ability to create significant strategic success in the short term. This is further challenged by dwindling amount of AFU reserves to exploit breakthroughs.
[...]
Equipment is only as good as its users. Experienced UA brigades are doing better with worse equipment than the newer NATO trained ones. Indeed the challenges of this summers offensives should definitely prove that despite western wishes there is no magic bullet to end the war.
[...]
The west, mainly the US, at least has doctrinal and training, as well as high level C2 understanding of how to do large scale mechanized offensives. It's not just air supremacy, seeing how Russia had ability to do some of that coordination in the first weeks too.In general we also have to get away from the discourse where Ukraine is always choosing the optimal solutions or has mastered modern warfare in a unique way. It hasn't. Most of the great successes came on the defensive, and often with great costs. Defence has proven to be a lot easier than offence here. That doesn't mean that the West doesn't have a ton to learn from Ukraine. It absolutely does. However, there is a lot of institutional problems that are in the way of objectively better Western methods of doing things. One big thing is the enduring complaint of Ukrainian hierarchical top-down-command, where instead of flexible mission tactics commanders micromanage subordinates and don't give them freedom to choose solutions that best fit their own tactical situations.
[...]
What this means is that the West must commit for the long haul. Instead of only giving Ukraine quick off-the-shelf western solutions, ie. equipment, we must start building long term solutions together with the Ukrainians to overcome their unique challenges. This will demand a lot of adaptation, compromises, commitment, willignes to learn and maybe even humility, from both sides of the deal. It should look very different from the current piecemeal approach to aid.

[spmetla]

Ukrainian scout trainee critical of the manifest backwardness of the US military. I suspected this was a trainee of the battalion-scale 6-week "combined arms" program in Grafenwoehr, Germany I mentioned back in the late winter, but the author also mentions it involving a brigade formation, so maybe it was one of the Bradley or Stryker brigades.

One of the major points is the refusal of US instructors to think outside the paradigm of "pure recon on foot." There was zero tactical UAV (civilian drone) training despite repeated requests, and little practical combat training.

A lot of comments proposed that soldiers must be trained in non-electronic and non-drone backup methods, ignoring that these are inferior and waste the precious time of soldiers soon to be deployed in a real-live war with real-life tactics, practices, and procedures that contradict mere dusty doctrine and theory (namely, both sides have from the beginning relied on networked digital apps fed real-time tactical drone observation data to manage most artillery fires; somehow they've not been reduced by EW to wishing for old-fashioned FIST teams). It's like demanding riflemen be trained on iron sights equally as with ACOGs or other optics, reducing overall competence in practice.

Considering that the US has not waged a conventional war since 2003 I'm not surprised that American trainers will be seen as a bit behind curve compared to what's happening in real-time in Ukraine. This is probably amplified by the size of the US military which means its trainers must likely stick to current US doctrine and practices which are being updated but have not yet been updated to represent what we've seen the last year and a half. Smaller European militaries are liker to adapt more quickly and implement today's lessons learned in their training rather than the large and unwieldly US Army TRADOC bureaucracy.

The emphasis on ground scouts and recon though reflect a lot of hard lessons learned in decades past in which the US has tried to essentially get rid of ground scouts with technology (recon planes, sensors, ground focused radar etc...) and in every war finds that it must still have scouts on the ground to find enemy gaps.
Think the trend that's not represented in the current training will be that ground recon (infantry and cavalry scouts) will need to be an even more selective group of individuals as opposed to the current US approach in which it's just a mission set anyone can do. US CAV scouts do need higher GT scores to qualify but there's no selection process like for SOF, this may be something that needs to happen though as using SOF to recon in the close fight would be a waste of resources.

Ground recon is much more dangerous and difficult though irreplaceable as drones are not quite up to the level yet of locating minefields, bypasses for obstacles, and so on. For enemy focused recon drones are superior though they are not all-weather. The terrain of Ukraine also makes it much more favorable for drones, much more densely wooded areas would be more difficult for them to operate in.

The current US approach to small drones is still in its infancy for the overall force. Micro drones and off the shelf stuff are in use at the NTC and JRTC and in some current units but it's not uniform across the force yet so doctrine and training TTPs need to catch up.

[Montmorency]

A measure that can boost Ukraine's potential without compromising combat capabilities should involve the training of ~500 NCOs and mobilized officers in the US, in a 6-7 month program similar to the US TBS and OIC courses. This will help to prepare platoon and company commanders.

There is indeed plenty of ground-based recon going on in the war, but it's not a specialized role most of the time as we're seeing. Though it does have a specialized operational structure by Soviet/post-Soviet doctrine, so maybe it's more precise to say that while there are some dedicated recon elements, anyone can be expected to carry out accountable recon activities. We see a lot of ad hoc squad-level recon by fire among both sides. Squad and platoon-level UAS capacity is usually crowdsourced and not supplied by regulation, so if you don't have a drone, there's no choice but to hoof it. There is a heavy reliance on SOF for more complex recon missions, or those that venture through the grey zone into enemy-controlled territory, which shouldn't be that dissimilar to US doctrine. (I think the Ukrainian trainee above was most critical however of a mindset that prioritized doing everything analog and by muscle, so to speak.)

There could be reasons for the US not to universalize ground recon operations in this way, given the much higher level of both professional training and specialization, and greater availability of large, high-echelon recon drones. I'm definitely not familiar with the current discourse. But even the point about the difficulty of drones with forests only goes so far, since we know consumer drones have been used extensively in the Serebryanka Forest, the Svyati Hori national park area along the Siversky Donets River west of Kreminna that's been contested for almost a year. Videos aren't hard to find, such as this longer one of a Russian drone team guiding infantry through the woods in real-time*. Thermals help a lot too. (In a truly dense forest or jungle, only light or airmobile infantry can really work anyway; we may even recall Vietnam.)

As you indicate, it can be profitable to emphasize organic tactical drone capabilities among infantry while retaining a more focused, specialized element for appropriate circumstances. Just like mobile firepower (e.g. tanks) in the immediate area is more responsive than air support, giving a squad visibility on their immediate area is more responsive than liasing with battalion or brigade HQ. Establishing organic drone platoons/companies at all levels, or special army or theater-level drone units that are assigned on a task basis are also approaches that have been observed.

What's clear with respect to Ukraine IMO is that to the extent Ukrainian soldiers are being given abbreviated courses of individualized training as opposed to comprehensive and prolonged generation of large units, it's inappropriate to insert US doctrine that is contrary to the day-to-day practices on the real battlefield and is too inefficient to supplant them. It wastes precious training time.

And to be cliche, every war is different and there will be good lessons to be discerned both toward general best practices as well as contextual adaptations. Moreover, every country has different circumstances, so there may be some sound lessons that the US, as opposed to other countries, could ignore in favor of emphasizing others (e.g. maybe for sake of argument massive EW and countermeasures could compensate for lack of tactical UAS).


But some lessons are still inevitable:

Boxer, a toy that costs almost 30 million dollars. It will still die to an ATGM, an FPV drone, and will be immobilized by a mine.

Planners in the West must understand that wonder weapons only work against weak opponents, where enemies have limited capabilities.

If the NATO country takes part in the big war, they will end up with 2 armored brigades (6000 people) and 200000 infantry on trucks.

What the war in Ukraine has shown is that scale matters. Paying 80% more for a 20% efficiency upgrade only works on paper.

Have you heard about the new British ASRAAM-mounting Supacat? Seemingly in a few months they jerry-rigged trucks with ASRAAMs, and their double-digit range counters helicopters well, perhaps being better in range and pop-up availability than Buks with Sea Sparrow. I bet designing a new mid-range SAM platform from scratch - albeit with better specs overall - would cost several billion dollars in R&D, take 5-10 years to reach serial production, and then contract for $10+ million a unit. This is just the kind of frugality and improvisation we need more of.


*It's been commented a lot that ubiquitous drone technology will push advanced militaries back towards centralization and micromanagement of tactics, maybe not at the staff level but up through the lieutenant-colonel or equivalent. The availability of real-time information will reactivate those managerial impulses in the command element, so the argument goes, and though it may be effective in some cases (e.g. Wagner's MO), it can also undermine mission-oriented tactics at the lowest level. Not a high-level example, but one that comes to mind is one of the more famous Ukrainian emplaced defense videos, in which a squad commander frequently receives updates over his radio, like "Hostiles inbound 11 o'clock", "Do this", "Do that", "Throw a grenade", "Reposition"... How do you interpret this trend? The revival of "network-centric warfare?" The videogamization of command?

[spmetla]

There could be reasons for the US not to universalize ground recon operations in this way, given the much higher level of both professional training and specialization, and greater availability of large, high-echelon recon drones. I'm definitely not familiar with the current discourse.

The US has scouts at the battalion level (special selection of regular infantrymen), the brigade level (a squadron of cavalry scouts light/stryker/ or heavy), and soon again at the division level with DIVCAV coming back, and in the past when we had regular Corps the ACRs acted as Corps Scouts.

s you indicate, it can be profitable to emphasize organic tactical drone capabilities among infantry while retaining a more focused, specialized element for appropriate circumstances. Just like mobile firepower (e.g. tanks) in the immediate area is more responsive than air support, giving a squad visibility on their immediate area is more responsive than liasing with battalion or brigade HQ. Establishing organic drone platoons/companies at all levels, or special army or theater-level drone units that are assigned on a task basis are also approaches that have been observed.

The US has actually done so and for a while now. At the company level there are Raven Small UAS systems available which I had when I was a company level commander ten years ago. The bigger problem there is that the Raven is a flying 'sensitive item' that if it goes of course, gets stuck in a tree, etc... is a major property book item to recover and any incident with a Raven crashing in a training area is still an 'aviation crash' of a sort which requires a bit of investigation. Not to mention that (especially the guard) when you only have so much training time available, incorporating the raven into your training plan and getting those soldier (it's an additional duty not a special job set) the qualifications needed to fly without a master trainer nearby can be taxing and generally does not match up specifically against your assigned training tasks so a lot of people just don't really train on them.
The solution to the above is the US needs to treat small UAS and drones as more expendable items, sorta like ammunition so that people can train aggressively with them without the fear of having to walk through the wood line for three days looking for a crashed drone.

What's clear with respect to Ukraine IMO is that to the extent Ukrainian soldiers are being given abbreviated courses of individualized training as opposed to comprehensive and prolonged generation of large units, it's inappropriate to insert US doctrine that is contrary to the day-to-day practices on the real battlefield and is too inefficient to supplant them. It wastes precious training time.

And to be cliche, every war is different and there will be good lessons to be discerned both toward general best practices as well as contextual adaptations. Moreover, every country has different circumstances, so there may be some sound lessons that the US, as opposed to other countries, could ignore in favor of emphasizing others (e.g. maybe for sake of argument massive EW and countermeasures could compensate for lack of tactical UAS).

Fully agree on both points, just as we've seen with armor, application to a breakthrough in the american style without american air power to back it up is foolish.

Boxer, a toy that costs almost 30 million dollars. It will still die to an ATGM, an FPV drone, and will be immobilized by a mine.

Planners in the West must understand that wonder weapons only work against weak opponents, where enemies have limited capabilities.

The Boxer works though in the Australian model in which it's likely opponents are indonesia or china's expeditionary capabilities. Also, an IFV or APC still get infantry farther forward, faster, and with more protection than walking.

What should change though is the top dollar that the west pays out for essentially an APC with a mounted gun. There's a lot of overhead, graft, and inefficiency that's unnecessary, part of that is buying on a scale of dozens to low hundreds instead a production run of thousands.
Much as the Europeans hate to work together on major defense purchases they need to really settle on a one or two base models for each platform role instead of each country having a different version. If all of europe settled on the CV-90, Lynx, or ASCOD for the IFV roles they could make larger purchases at less cost with only small variations from country to country.

[Montmorency]

The Boxer works though in the Australian model in which it's likely opponents are indonesia or china's expeditionary capabilities. Also, an IFV or APC still get infantry farther forward, faster, and with more protection than walking.

What should change though is the top dollar that the west pays out for essentially an APC with a mounted gun. There's a lot of overhead, graft, and inefficiency that's unnecessary, part of that is buying on a scale of dozens to low hundreds instead a production run of thousands.
Much as the Europeans hate to work together on major defense purchases they need to really settle on a one or two base models for each platform role instead of each country having a different version. If all of europe settled on the CV-90, Lynx, or ASCOD for the IFV roles they could make larger purchases at less cost with only small variations from country to country.

From a practical and political standpoint, I personally don't think Western Europe or CAN/ANZAC should prioritize national resources on remilitarization for mass mechanized attrition, so it's not that I oppose something like the Boxer on principle. It would have been for the best if NATO militaries were tightly focused on complementing the US in the Western hemisphere and everyone was on that same page. But from the perspective of Eastern Europe, or most other countries (to the extent a given country should even have a military), you really prefer something like a souped-up BMP-2 type of bulk platform (with higher survivability) as the most cost-effective IFV solution. Russia (post-Soviet) has exported BMP-2s for ~$300K, which I believe is something like the export price of a Javelin CLU and one missile. The Yemen deal in the 2000s was ~$200K per unit. If the chart below is correct, BMP-3s tend to sell for around $3 million/unit (another source showed a contract price for domestic manufacture at around $1 million/unit), which IMO is not worth the added value.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebasti...h=347cbc234b1b
https://dfnc.ru/en/analytics/export-...s-from-russia/



Czechia recently announced a package deal for 246 CV-90 Mk.IV, a few months ahead of Slovakia signing on 152 units. News reports attest the respective contracts at $2.2 billion and €1.3 billion. Let's round it up to $4 billion total for 400 units plus spares, support, and all else typically associated with such contracts. That's effectively $9-10 million per unit. Cut that cost in half, make it the upcoming Mk.V model, and carry over the price cut to the older models, and the CV-90 could be extremely competitive worldwide. I would definitely prefer a Mk.IV to the overspecced BMP-3 at the same price point. But to make it possible you would probably need to get several dozen European countries to agree to massively subsidize Sweden to produce thousands, which can't happen without an unprecedented quid pro quo and technology transfer between EU members. Especially since it would be matching or beating the Polish Rosomak/Borsuk and South Korean K21 at price point, to say nothing of Lynx or smaller competitors.

I hope we don't have to find out, but in West Africa we may soon receive the first 21st-c. lessons on the requirements of 'real war' for countries that aren't rich or in the top tier.

[Montmorency]

@spmetla

I'm sorry bro, but come on. Come. On.

Just like the trainee reported.

This is right up there with the perennial complaints from the Pentagon in the media on how they wish the Ukrainian military would try just shooting less artillery.

[spmetla]

It's kinda of mind boggling what's coming out of the pentagon. Same with the criticism of the offensive so far. The "this is Kursk not rebels" comment sums it up best.

Ground recon is great but drones are absolutely essential in modern war.

[Montmorency]

The "kids these days wouldn't storm Omaha beach" crowd get super uncomfortable when you then ask them how they feel about mandatory service, nationalized industry and transportation, and rationing

I can't find the quote directly, but in one of Rick Atkinson's WWII books, he highlights how the winning essay in Life's "Why I Serve" essay contest for '43 or '44 was simply, "I got drafted"

National service & national industry combined to bring about victory in both world wars

No discussion about large scale combat operations against a near-peer enemy should happen without discussing both of those things

And yet. And YET. The US military services chalk that up to "political problems that aren't our problem" and then try to make war plans

*Nations* fight wars, as wars are an extension of political and social ends -- but if you try to fight a war without the nation, like, oh, I don't know, the last 20 years, then you get a military that is divorced from national strategy and a people disconnected from reality

And this is why historians don't get invited to many parties. Apparently we're too negative.

Heh. But though it's not the poster's exact point, I reckon if the US has to reinstate a general draft to fight a war, something would seem to have gone very, very wrong. Like "World in Conflict" wrong.

Tangentially, it's generally agreed now that in the past year - including the "partial mobilization" - Russia's military has recruited at least half a million personnel. (I'm referring just to the military, not Wagner or anything else.) There's the well-known 300K, but the rest have been voluntary or semi-voluntary recruits (prisoners, the accused, debtors, immigrants, people tricked by administrative means, covert mobilization, etc.) subject to 'hard-press' treatment. It's probably why the leadership has been acting so confident that their ongoing losses have been covered.

[spmetla]

Would agree with the premise that the US needs to look at economic and industrial capacity in a wartime setting and take that more seriously. If there's a war with China and most of the worlds ships are made in China, Japan, and South Korea we're going to have a bit of a problem worldwide building ships for our own commerce and military if those shipyards are building for their militaries. I think China is still thinking that the US would be a 'paper tiger' in a war over a periphery interest. Think their lesson learned is a direct attack like Pearl Harbor is a no-no but a gradual ramp up in the scale of war from the current 'competition' to more blatant war of Taiwan would cause the US to backdown or just dither about too long before it could make an impact in time.

For terms of conscription, well the US might need to do that in the future just for our peace-time force as the US population continues to live increasingly unhealthy lives and as military service requires more skilled persons than in the past. If kids are still wanting free college but not willing to serve a few years in peace time to do so then what other incentives are there?

[Montmorency]

I’ve consistently seen it remarked that the military’s uncompetitive pay scale and unappealing work conditions discourage potential applicants in the context of a high-employment economy (esp. since the late 2010s).

IIRC in WW2 enlisted GIs were paid comparably to white-collar workers. We can’t afford that now, but I think before long something like the link is going to be the bipartisan consensus.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/...roops.html/amp