The following is the “Really Bad News” for Russia and the Russian Military. It reviews the mistakes of the war to date. Also, the futility and danger of the continued Russian/Wagner frontal assaults at Bakhmut and the challenges Russia faces against Ukraine’s anticipated Spring/Summer offensive. War-criminal Girkin (Igor Ivanovich Strelkov) considers it “MANDATORY” reading “from cover to cover” for all in the Russian Military.
It covers many of the issues Kos and Mark have been discussing for some time—logistics, tactics, communications, leadership, weapons, air power, training, the importance of NCOs, maneuver warfare (that Ukraine uses, but Russia fails to master), etc. and what Ukraine is doing to prepare for its anticipated offensive.
It is a great assessment of things to come from a Russian perspective. Of course, caution is in order given its Russian provenance. (I cut and pasted the article and translation in full, so exercise caution, and recommend against, using any links below.) The author ultimately fears the collapse of the Russian Federation if things are not fixed soon (a repeat of 1917).
[Note, I am new to posting Diaries, so hopefully this works. All the photos below are from the original article -- I had to separately post them as they did not show up with the pasting of the article. Bold highlights below are in the original article. There is not an author listed with the article and may have been a group effort of the KCPN, which is an organization called the “Novorossia Aid Coordinating Center.”
ed. LOL It didn’t work and has been tied up in review or something since trying to post it late last month. But here goes, trying it again.... ]
REALLY BAD NEWS
03/22/2023 KCPN.info
All the same, all the same
First there were the Javelins. Which at first “they, of course, will not be given,” then “they will, but the old ones,” then “they will, but they will not change anything.” Bottom line: It is the Ukrainian mobile light infantry equipped with modern anti-tank weapons that we owe the “de-escalation” of the RF Armed Forces from Kiev, Chernigov, Sumy and Kharkov, filed as a “goodwill gesture”.
Then there were “Bayraktars”, then “Stingers”, thanks to which the main form of combat work of the RF Armed Forces on the front line was attacks by NURSs of enemy fortified areas from a roll-up, causing healthy laughter from spectators on the ground on both sides of the front due to the ridiculous effectiveness of S-8 aircraft against the concrete fortifications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Now, according to the same scheme, the public is actively discussing the supply of American and German tanks to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. First, “of course they won’t give them,” then “they will give them, but the old ones,” then “they will give them, but they won’t change anything” ... And the problem here is not that the Internet community compares “Abrams” and “Leopards” with T-72B3 or T-90 of the latest models, although the T-72 and T-80 of the first releases are now “rising” to the front as the main replenishment from storage, even without dynamic protection, and even more “ancient” T-62s are massively preparing to fight.
The problem is that the Internet community sometimes repeats the discourse about Soviet and German tanks in 1941 and about the reasons for the defeats of the Red Army at the beginning of the war, up to a comma. The discourse that in the late 90s and early 2000s gave rise to a boom of all kinds of pseudo-historical theories regarding how the excellent newest T-34s and KVs could lose the battles of the summer of 1941 to the Panzerwaffe, in which the German Pz-III and Czech 38(t).
It seems that the current discourse is led by absolutely the same people, but at the same time such books as “Antisuvorov” by A.V. Isaev and "Order in the tank troops?" A.A. Ulanova and D.V. Sheina, published just as a result of those long-standing disputes, seemingly in fairly large print runs and have long been freely available on the Web, completely and completely passed them by. And people are once again discussing millimeters of cannon calibers and other “kilometers-per-hour-on-the-highway”, although it would seem that 2022 gave many reasons to think about the fact that, perhaps, it’s not about the payroll of the armies and other "table values".
Finding out that this is twenty years of complete intellectual stagnation or a generational change is not our task. Our task is to try to explain to the public where, in fact, the really bad news for us is hiding.
Unlearned lessons.
The two main lessons of this war, which seem to have been learned neither by the Russian “interested public” nor by the Russian military, were taught to us during the spring “de-escalation” and during the enemy’s Izyum offensive.
“De-escalation” showed that even huge masses of relatively modern armored vehicles, not being controlled in real time, not conducting constant reconnaissance in all directions and not having sufficient mobile and well-controlled “infantry” around them, cannot successfully solve the tasks of maneuver warfare. Moreover, for a complete failure, they do not at all need to have similar mechanized brigades, divisions or, at worst, enemy armored personnel carriers against themselves. Sufficiently controlled, terrain-oriented and constantly reconnaissance from UAVs of the enemy’s mobile infantry, equipped with modern anti-tank weapons.
When the “Tank Wedges”, which have pulled ahead, find that they have no communications and that even the presence of a tank or two in the supply convoy does not guarantee its successful escort, and communication with the command is episodic and fragmentary, enemy mobile mortars and artillery appear on the scene, again but with their UAVs, destroying all light equipment, except for tanks, after which the tankers can only undermine faulty vehicles and retreat while there is at least fuel for this.
The reasons for this situation, which led to the “de-escalation”, were quite obvious to any person who was interested in the “tank war”, at least within the framework of the Second World War. But this did not stop, of course, many "experts" from stating that, they say, "the time of tank wedges has passed", and the face of the war is again - cratered fields and landings modeled on the First World War. And nothing else. Now, they say, you can’t concentrate anything imperceptibly, you can’t quickly break through the front to a significant depth, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t ... And then the time came for the second lesson - September 6th.
The regrouping of Ukrainian troops in the Izyum direction was opened. And by the beginning of September, only the laziest military commander did not have time to write that "something is being prepared there." Missile strikes were carried out against the deployed units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the real effectiveness of which, however, could not be verified. Meanwhile, the Armed Forces of Ukraine successfully found “windows” on the front in the form of “mobilization” units that did not have heavy weapons, through which they delivered blows that collapsed the front. Normal command and control of troops on our side was lost on the very first day, Ukrainian combat groups, controlled and maneuverable, acting in full accordance with the doctrine of mobile warfare, rushed forward, bypassing the emerging pockets of stubborn resistance and immediately capturing settlements and crossroads where they were met with no such resistance. Our bypassed parts even able to resist, were forced to retreat under the threat of encirclement and complete destruction. Outside the building, only armored personnel carriers of motorized rifle divisions could provide serious resistance to the enemy, behind which were units of the 1st Guards Tank Army. These units did not enter the battle in an organized manner, and as a result, the Izyum grouping of the RF Armed Forces presented the enemy, in addition to warehouses and a lot of special equipment scattered across the fields and roads, from the Orlan UAV complexes in a complete set to the air defense system, also their tank SPAMS near Izyum.
By the time of the surrender of Krasny Liman, the Russian army, which had just with the joint efforts of 1 and 2 AK NM [NM= “People’s Militia”] of the Republics and attached units of the RF Armed Forces, slowly turned the Lisichansk [Lysychans’k/Severodenetsk] “pocket”, somehow suddenly and sharply found itself not only beaten in the same way that it could not in February-March beat the enemy, but also fighting at the limit of human resources, with a miserable amount of serviceable armored vehicles, among which there are already antique T-62s, and in a situation of impending "shell hunger", caused not only and not so much by the methodical destruction of warehouses by "Haymars" [HIMARS], how much of a huge waste of ammunition in the spring and summer.
The Kherson bridgehead, which had stubbornly defended itself for several months, left without a fight. Began, with a great delay, “partial mobilization”, which again gave rise to “rifle regiments” without heavy weapons, although the experience of using such mobilization units, formed in the LPR and DPR, should have suggested that crowds of untrained and practically uncontrollable people from small arms - just targets for enemy artillery and mortars.
It was decided to protect the public from reflections on the topic of what happened and future troubles with a permanent broadcast of the assault on Artyomovsk [Bakhmut] by units of the Wagner PMC. It was decided not to touch on the unpleasant topic of “maneuvering war” in the 21st century and where it has gone with us. But in vain. Whoever does not want to learn will be beaten again and again by an adversary who has not only sources of modern technology, but also demanding teachers.
Why is this even necessary?
Actually, it is the protracted assault on Artyomovsk [Bakhmut] and the bloody events associated with it on the Lugansk and Donetsk fronts that make it possible to explain in the best possible way why, after all, a maneuver war is needed.
With enviable regularity, news portals report that the enemy has deployed such and such a brigade to the defense of the city, then such and such a brigade, then such and such. These portals do not particularly write about the numerous “assaults” organized in the vicinity of Donetsk and at the front in the LPR so that the enemy could not completely rotate troops in the hottest sector without hindrance.
Poorly trained "stormtroopers", assembled from Donbass regiments and brigades, yesterday's "mobiles" ("personnel" infantry of the Republics have long ended for the most part), are trying in conditions of shell hunger, with almost no equipment and without normal communications and control, to storm the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. At the same time, the main measure of combat effectiveness is not the controllability of the “attack aircraft” on the battlefield and not their skills in working with heavy infantry weapons (since there is really no artillery), but “readiness to bear losses”.
The enemy, who has the opportunity to both rotate troops and deliver ammunition, is engaged in exchanging his “mobiles” and “terodefenders” for “Wagners” and other “stormtroopers”. Under the screaming headlines about “front breakthroughs”, our troops turn out to be quite predictable news that, having taken another enemy “opornik”, our troops discovered the next defensive line behind it, and it’s good if they didn’t get into a fire bag. Slowly, with great bloodshed, the enemy’s defenses being shifted by “assaults” stand on artillery, MLRS and mortars, which are provided with data for firing using UAVs and ground surveillance cameras. Enemy losses in valuable military specialists who provide this defense - signalmen, artillerymen, UAV operators - are minimal, losses in equipment too. Tanks in these battles are reduced to the level of heavily armored self-propelled guns firing from concealed positions or “assault guns” given individually to groups of infantrymen. Probably, the first wave of Russian “mobiles” should completely end on “assaults”, so that the military leadership of the Russian Federation realizes that a positional dead end is, after all, a dead end, and the ability to break through a wall with your head is a limitedly useful skill.
The enemy, meanwhile, perfectly understands why a mechanized maneuver war is needed. Why do we need full-blooded, well-controlled mechanized and tank brigades / divisions. Maneuvering war eliminates the need to storm one line of enemy fortifications after another, during the assault on which he will build a third line, and then a fourth. Having broken through the front wide enough in one place, to the full depth and introduced maneuverable units into the breakthrough, the attacker interrupts the control and supply of enemy troops, smashes his non-deployed reserves, and makes senseless the resistance of the troops left in the "cauldrons" without supplies. They abandon their equipment, retreat, die and are captured by valuable enemy military experts - artillerymen, signalmen, UAV operators, experienced middle command personnel.
Maneuvering warfare is a much more complex process than positional warfare with its “assault operations”. A process that requires much more complex and versatile support in a rapidly changing environment, a higher level of manageability and a higher level of training of command personnel at all levels. But resulting in a completely different ratio of losses, radically different in favor of the attacker. And the really bad news is not that the “ukrops” will be given modern tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, but that the dills have an understanding of how to use them correctly and the organizational structures they diligently build necessary for this. At the same time, our military seems to be doing everything so that we have the same similar structures, battered by battles, in no case reach that level of combat capability, which would allow them to conduct successful maneuver operations. "No mind - storm the houses."
Income and expenses.
For more than a hundred years, defense, when it exists and works, has been based on three things
- experienced middle-level personnel capable of organizing an active rebuff to the attackers, exhausting them, and then it is reasonable to introduce reserves into counterattacks at the right time in the right place,
- working communications, allowing them to lead the troops, that is, first of all, on the personnel of this connection, on signalmen,
- artillery, that is, again, on experienced skilled artillerymen.
If there are these three components and the necessary density of filling the fortified zones with troops, if there are maneuverable armored reserves, a successful defense is possible, breaking all the plans of the enemy.
In turn, an offensive operation consists of, conditionally, an “investment phase”, when you incur losses, breaking through the enemy’s defenses, if, of course, you eventually break through it. Other things being equal(!), you incur losses, as a rule, much larger than the defending enemy, and from the “profit-making phase”, when front breakthroughs are realized in boilers that quickly collapse with maneuverable formations, in which the very frames on which the enemy built everything that you broke through with such difficulty (but still in the most convenient places for you). Their death or captivity in the boiler - this is the main "income" of the operation. If the enemy has time to escape, to pull the troops out of the “cauldron”, even if he has abandoned heavy equipment, the results of the operation become doubtful, because you put your hard-to-renewable resource in the form of people, and the enemy,
At the final stage of the capture of Lisichansk [Lysychans’k], I wrote about this. “Valuable military experts of the enemy” will flee from there - the front will then stabilize for a long time in the Seversk region, because our troops, exhausted by the battles for Severodonetsk, Lisichansk and other captured settlements, will collide with the enemy, who will have something to “sit down” to defend not only in terms of what -some fortifications, this is secondary, but also in terms of control, communications and artillery.
What will the capture of Artyomovsk [Bakhmut] mean now? Only that the enemy considers the defensive potential of this area exhausted. The command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is no longer satisfied with the ratio of the losses of the attackers and the defenders, and it is quite possible that it really is already withdrawing the main grouping from the city. The task of the remaining ones is to let go, put things in order and take up new positions of new defensive lines for those who will continue to gut the next “stormers”.
Russia will receive the ruins of the city and its environs, a sea of PR and victorious reports. But the battle in a closed cauldron, without the supply of ammunition and replenishment, cannot be imposed on the enemy's elite units. And the worst thing is that it will suit everyone.
The idea of “squeezing” the enemy with “assaults” has taken possession of the minds of the military leadership on our part, while the enemy is well aware that the only way for him to win is maneuvering actions that give a radically different ratio of losses. And the enemy is persistently striving to get their hands on the appropriate tools.
Brigades, divisions, corps.
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation began a full-scale war, having in their ranks a lot of “palliative inclusions”, coupled with an unhealthy craving for inflating the total number of BTGrs (R.A. Marchenko dealt with the issue of the composition of some BTGrs in detail here , here and here .
Firstly, for the sake of releasing the “cadre” units of the NM [NM= “People’s Militia”] of the LPR and DPR for offensive tasks, mobilization was carried out in the Republics, which created many “rifle” regiments and battalions from untrained people, with a shortage of experienced command personnel, without heavy weapons and equipment.
Secondly, units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the NM of the Republics were given BARS battalions, the only heavy weapon of which, as a rule, was a mortar battery of random combat capability. Also without armored vehicles, with the same random quality of the command staff. Somewhere - the quality was, somewhere - alas.
Thirdly, units of the internal troops, the National Guard, including the Chechen battalions of the Akhmat explosives, which have neither combined arms training nor experience in such military operations, were widely involved in combined arms battles. Let's add here various departmental special forces, PMCs and we get a very colorful "pattern" of battalions and battalion tactical groups, which was impossible to fully and adequately manage in real time with the level of culture of warfare in the RF Armed Forces.
It would seem that, based on the results of the first 7 months of the NMD, summarized by the Izyum disaster, the RF Armed Forces should have drawn quite obvious conclusions - you need to fight with full-fledged trained, fully-blooded, stably controlled combat-ready formations with artillery and heavy equipment, and crowds of random unprepared people with machine guns in modern conditions of combat value do not particularly represent.
But there were no such conclusions. On the contrary, all the steps taken by the official leadership lead in the opposite direction.
Firstly, the “shell hunger” did not stop the offensive impulse of the Russian headquarters. Having lost the former power of artillery strikes, the RF Armed Forces, with redoubled zeal, began to exterminate the Donetsk and Luhansk infantry, along with the remnants of armored vehicles, in “assaults” on Ukrainian positions on the front from Maryinka to Kremennaya. The word "assault" instead of careful preparation and organization has become synonymous with "indulgence" for their complete absence. Losses? Well, we have an assault! Did not work out? BUT WE HAVE THE STORM! You just have to do it again! In the same place, in the same way, with the same level of “preparation”. When the “assault infantry” began to run out, artillerymen began to be transferred to this very “assault infantry”, and “bald” tanks, without dynamic protection or MT-LB (lightly armored artillery tractors with a machine gun) were given as armored vehicles. All this put an end to the restoration of the combat capability of the most experienced and motivated units of the RF Armed Forces - 1 and 2 AK NM of the Republics of Donbass. Over the past year, neither the regiments nor the brigades of the NM [“People’s Militia”] were taken out for rest, replenishment and retraining, so the quality of ordinary “attack aircraft” dropped in places to complete inability to get somewhere from the machine gun, inability to correctly use the group (AGS, LNG, ATGM) and assault (reactive flamethrowers RPO-A "Bumblebee" and RShG) weapons.
Secondly, a full-fledged educational process was also not provided for the mobilized Russians. Initially, those mobilized from the Russian Federation began to be sent not only and not so much to replenish the battered regular formations of the RF Armed Forces, but to form “rifle regiments” with staffs that are completely similar to the mobilization units of the NM of the Republics, staffed with the same mobilization command staff. The real near-zero independent combat value of such units in modern warfare was demonstrated by the enemy’s Izyum offensive, but this did not prevent the leadership of the RF Armed Forces from repeating “mobilization measures” in the Russian Federation according to the same scenario as in the Republics. Only after several "pogroms" perpetrated by such units by the enemy, and also due to the acute shortage of personnel in the actually fighting units of the NM of the LPR and DPR, the “rifle regiments” of the mobilized finally began to “distribute” in parts into the Republican regiments and brigades poured into the RF Armed Forces, conducting constant “assaults”. And it turned out that the “mobiles” from the Russian Federation, on average, were also not normally prepared for such a war - people who had never thrown a grenade at the training ground went to the “assaults”. And how can people be prepared for the “assaults” carried out according to the principles described above? No matter how skillfully an infantryman handles a machine gun and a grenade, he will not be able to compensate for the lack of normal operation of heavy group infantry weapons, the lack of artillery support, normal communications and control.
Thirdly, with the already existing monstrous personnel shortage in relation to experienced and combat-ready command and sergeant personnel in the RF Armed Forces, aggravated by the formation of mobile units, it was announced that a large number of new large regular military formations would be formed, which would require adequate personnel filling (3 motorized rifle divisions and an army corps, 2 airborne assault divisions of the Airborne Forces, 5 artillery divisions, not counting the formation of high-capacity artillery brigades and the reorganization of 7 motorized rifle brigades and 5 marine brigades into divisions). The same measures raise the issue of supplying modern military equipment for manning new formations, despite the fact that modern technology and equipment are not enough to make up for losses.
Fourthly, technical communication issues related to the absence of wearable and portable base stations in the main system of the army closed radio communication “Azart” have not been resolved and, apparently, are not planned to be resolved in the foreseeable future at the system level .. In practice, this means the impossibility of real-time combat control of any large maneuvering operations. In addition, the armored vehicles coming into the troops as replenishment, removed from storage, have “regular means of communication” in the form of R-123 and R-173 radio stations, which, firstly, do not have encryption, and secondly, they operate in the range of 30 -50 MHz, which differs from civilian-style portable radios widely used by infantry and artillery, are unambiguously identified by the enemy as radios on armored vehicles. Thus, the enemy gets the opportunity to timely transfer his reserves of anti-tank weapons to exactly the area where our armored vehicles will be used even at the moment when the "armor" makes a march to the front.
It is especially sad that in an attempt to “solve the problem of communication”, the leadership of the RF Armed Forces successfully repeated the story with “Azarty”. The Ministry of Defense purchased a large batch of Kirisun portable radios without spare batteries, without base stations and without the required number of repeaters.
An attempt to compensate for the shortage of funds and radio communications specialists by saturating the troops with satellite communication kits via the Internet led to the fact that satellite channels were overloaded. The existing channel bandwidth had to be “cut” equally between a huge number of subscribers, and as a result, the system cannot even support the normal operation of IP telephony, for the sake of which this equipment was imported.
That is, attempts to build some kind of control systems capable of providing real-time control of large maneuvering military groupings, if they were made, then failed.
All these four factors in total will give, at least for the spring and summer of 2023, a completely predictable effect - the Russian army will continue to fight with partially completed troops, which have big problems both with the uniformity of the quality of command personnel, and at least with a minimum level of training for privates and sergeants. The control of these battle groups will be difficult both for purely technical reasons related to the materiel of communications, and because of the random combat value of these groups, often difficult to predict before they enter battle in a specific place and specific conditions.
The enemy, in turn, on the contrary, is trying at any cost to create the largest possible and well-controlled mobile groupings of troops with modern heavy weapons. While we were spending our poorly trained and managed reserves in “assaults” on the front from Vugledar to Kremennaya, the enemy, exposing the mobilized and the defense forces under attack in Artyomovsk [Bakhmut], withdraws his combat-ready forces from the potential pocket, understaffs and retrains entire brigades in the rear combat standards.
All the time while the RF Armed Forces fought last summer, autumn and winter in a patchwork of RF Armed Forces, “leopards”, “Akhmats” and various PMCs (and, alas, they will continue to do this), the Armed Forces of Ukraine learned to fully fight with “large battalions”, brigades, and then the corps that they are now creating in the rear and running in during the time that the defense of Artyomovsk [Bakhmut] bought them.
The RF Armed Forces broke off their sharpest “tank wedges” at the very beginning of the war and during the “de-escalation”, then diligently finished them off in smaller, but equally inadequate “mass events”. Already in the summer, the old T-72s were massively pulled from storage to the front, the reactivation of antique T-62s began, the “bald” early T-72s and T-80s, which came as replenishment to the tank units of the Republics, became commonplace. Of course, combat losses corresponded to the level of security of the machines ...
However, the matter is not in tanks alone, and not in them in the first place, not in hardware. The personnel on our side, who could still become the motorized rifle “shoulder” of these “tank wedges,” were lost, “grind down”. Experienced scouts and sappers were lost on "assaults". The continuation of “meat assaults” on enemy positions on a huge front by poorly trained troops in a situation of an acute shortage of artillery ammo for the sake of capturing Artyomovsk [Bakhmut] is a crime, the consequences of which we will soon face.
We will face when the Armed Forces of Ukraine introduce their trained units into battle, capable of working at a completely different level of speed and quality of decisions than ours. Fresh reserves capable of quickly breaking through the defenses and moving further into the breakthrough, bypassing and covering our units. By doing this quickly, maintaining reliable closed radio communications and adequate real-time control, including using satellite communications.
The enemy, as has already been said, does not simply “transplant” his accumulated reserves to new Western equipment, this is just the second problem. The first problem, the main, really bad news for us, is that the most advanced and skilled enemy commanders are learning to work at a completely different pace of operations, to make quick and correct decisions, having a constant stable connection and a constant stream of data about the situation around. The presence of such a control structure by the enemy is much more dangerous for us than any Abrams and Leopards by themselves, because such a structure will always turn their foreheads towards us and keep infantry escorts from UAVs behind them. So wet dreams of the mass destruction of the Abrams by our infantry from the RPG-7 "in vulnerable places" will remain wet dreams. The enemy is well aware that his strength, his advantage over us, will be provided not only and not so much by some special protection of new tanks or the accuracy and range of their guns, but by the speed and quality of control of full-fledged full-blooded mechanized formations. Formations capable, having entered the gap, to carry out swift detours and envelopment of our forces, forcing them to choose between fighting in encirclement and retreat, as it was under Izyum.
The question is not whether the Abrams will drive up a steep ice hill (the T-72, by the way, will not drive either, the maximum climb for cars is about the same - 30 degrees), and not what will happen to a beer mug of at least the famous Leopard video when the tank starts to slow down. The point is that, thanks to advanced command and control systems, in all cases of encounter on the battlefield, the enemy will be in a better position than our forces. The enemy will be more numerous at this particular critical critical point and will be in better positions. And it is precisely this that will have a much stronger influence on the results of battles than any comparative accuracy of tank guns, which, by the way, will also not be in favor of ours.
instead of aviation.
Often, when analyzing the offensive potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it is mentioned that the enemy does not have the ability to massively use aviation to strike at concentrations of our forces that are paving the way for tanks and motorized infantry. If in the case of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation this kind of “lack of opportunity” is a consequence of the presence of unsuppressed air defense systems in the enemy in addition to infantry MANPADS, then in the case of the Armed Forces of Ukraine this is also a consequence of the small number of combat-ready Air Forces. And what kind of "blitzkrieg" without paralyzing air strikes on the "bottlenecks" of the transport system, on the rear and headquarters? But, while they made fun of him, inclining the “Ghost of Kyiv” in every way, the enemy got the same tool that could replace aviation. The tool is cheap and quite effective - GLSDB. This is an aviation glide "bomb of small diameter" with a folding wing, put on the engine from old missiles with cluster warheads planned for disposal for MLRS of the HIMARS / MLRS family
The rocket engine throws the bomb to the height and approximately the speed with which the plane could drop it, then according to the original plan. The bomb opens its folded wing and begins to glide towards its designated target. The result is a very cheap system compared to “classmates” (and this is important for mass use) with a range of 150 km, including the possibility of strikes against sea targets. The task of “bringing” a guided air bomb into the enemy air defense zone without using a large manned aircraft has been solved.
In combination with the enemy’s ability to monitor our rear, both using undercover and satellite reconnaissance, these weapons will make it possible to disrupt the work of the near rear of troops, hit identified headquarters, warehouses, repair bases, railway stations with military cargo concentrated on them and become , due to its capabilities and low cost, is another challenge for our air defense units.
Again, as in the case of foreign tanks, the problem with the GLSDB or with the JDAMs that their deliveries may supplement is not that they themselves are some kind of “wonder weapon”, but that the enemy perfectly understands why he needs this weapon, how and when to use it. And this is a cheap weapon, which will be very expensive to intercept with expensive air defense systems, and it may become problematic with less versatile systems.
Another factor capable of additionally shifting the balance of forces in the offensive zone in favor of the enemy is the implementation of the initiative launched by them during the “de-escalation” a year ago at the state border in the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions. With a sabotage and terrorist raid in the Bryansk region in early March, the enemy showed that in the absence of large forces to cover the border, he can carry out such raid operations here whenever he wants and without losses. As a result, the military-political leadership faced a choice - to withdraw troops from the front or, more likely, from the second echelon, in the NVO zone, to guard the border, or to tolerate such raids as a regular occurrence, demonstrating to the population "the helplessness of the authorities."
Faberge lines.
Defensive preparations on our part cannot but arouse bewilderment. As mentioned above about the construction of the defense, it should begin with a sufficiently dense filling of the front with troops and the creation of reserves, with the organization of communications and control for the defenders, and the supply of artillery with the necessary amount of ammunition. Otherwise, no matter how many trenches are dug and concrete “anti-tank” barriers are placed in front of them, they will all be a waste of resources and will be unable to delay the enemy for a significant time.
The Russian military leadership, instead of seriously preparing for defense all winter, despite the lack of shells, continued to stubbornly burn the remnants of human resources and equipment in the furnaces of the next “meat assaults”. Attempts to drive on “assaults” mobilized, unprepared, insecure people, acting in conditions where the fulfillment of tasks is most difficult for them, naturally end with people’s refusal to go forward, threats of executions and mass “SOCs”, unauthorized abandonment of the unit, desertion. People do not even want to live, they want at least some chance to survive. The trend is predictable, not yet very common, but has already taken shape and is “on the verge of going into circulation”, promising the troops large additional losses of the “five hundredth”. (500’s refuse to fight and/or deserters)
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, continuing with the strain of the last forces to attack on the outskirts of Donetsk, near Artyomovsk [Bakhmut] and in other areas, tied themselves to these key points, exposing the rest of the areas. The enemy can strike on the huge "Zaporozhye front" from Ugledar [Vuhledar] to Vasilyevka, very thinly covered by troops in the first line, find "windows" on the "Svatovsky front". Finally, they can also hit the flanks of the ledge that is formed during the capture of Artemovsk [Bakhmut], although this will require the active use of dirt roads, but the prize in this case is good - either the Wagners will have to defend themselves in the cauldron, or they will have to leave themselves with such difficulty taken city, and all neighboring positions.
To decide the fate of potential penetrations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine into the defense of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation - whether they develop into "cauldrons" and / or quick retreats - "regroupings" of our forces or do not outgrow - "according to science" two factors should. The first is the degree of effectiveness of the organized resistance of our forces in the breakthrough areas, the second is the presence of maneuverable reserves close to the breakthrough areas, capable of striking the enemy “wedges” on the flank. As already mentioned, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation chose not to form such trained motorized reserves, not just burning all available human resources in the furnaces of “assaults” in already familiar directions, but also “tying” the assault units in this way to modest achievements occupied with great bloodshed. Leave busy - finally make sense of the losses incurred.
We have few troops, they are exhausted, bound by battles, we cannot bring the units to the rear as a whole, for training, replenishment and re-equipment, and there is nothing special to re-equip them with - the tanks coming for replenishment from storage, old and often faulty, are ahead - mass use of antique T-62s in general. BMPs are ending and more and more often MTLBs are used in their role with little success, including those with improvised installations of ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns, as well as ship-mounted twin 25-mm automatic cannons or 14.5-mm machine guns.
Artillery, in addition to the actual shell hunger, is experiencing the same large-scale hunger of “fresh” barrels - the guns are already worn out, the rifling is “licked off” by a large shot.
Our UAVs, as before, in the segment accessible to front-line commanders are mainly represented by Chinese commercial copters, with the means to “extinguish” which the enemy will try to equip his advancing units in large numbers. Our own electronic warfare equipment, made in the format of massive KUNGs based on trucks, is for the most part pulled to the rear and cannot in any way interfere with the work of enemy artillery spotters on our front line. Handicraft front-line means of “anti-drone” air defense in the form of drone-piercing guns and other jammers are not effective against specialized military aircraft-type UAVs, which the enemy has in large numbers.
The result is disappointing.
The conditions for an enemy offensive have been created almost ideally, and by a significant part - by our own command, which has not learned any lessons from the past year of the war and is not going to learn them.
The enemy knows what he wants and how he will get it. The actions of the RF Armed Forces since the failure of the original plan are reduced to the idea of “let's do something”. And the time when the remnants of the forces accumulated by February 24, 2022 made it possible to achieve some results in such a paradigm has passed. Now, by the beginning of spring 2023, the RF Armed Forces are forced to wait for an enemy strike, being maximally constrained and deprived of resources to repel it.
"What to do?"
To begin preparations for the decisive battle of this war (most likely one of the decisive ones) should be from the simplest, but at the same time, the most difficult.
We need to understand what is in front of us. Be honest with yourself about this.
In front of us, this spring and summer, there will be a test, from which the country either, “having passed along the blade”, will come out as another country, and then another, much more powerful and more reasonably organized state, or will not come out, will sink into the abyss of the new " February 1917."
Or, after this crisis, the country will completely get on a military footing with the imperative “Berlin for even centuries, Paris for odd centuries”, or after this crisis we will not have a country and a state.
If the expected Ukrainian spring offensive, using both fresh reserves and new types of weapons with new capabilities, ends only with our retreats and mumbling about “regroupings”, then “February-17” with the subsequent collapse of the state will become inevitable. And, even if after “February” “new Bolsheviks” with a “new October” appear from somewhere, the results of the “troubles” that will be summed up a few years later, even in the most optimistic outcome, do not bode well.
The first thing that can help in overcoming the upcoming problems is an understanding of the seriousness and complexity of the situation, which for some reason, listening to those who see these problems with their own eyes, take it for alarmism.
The situation will be VERY COMPLEX, CRITICAL. Rather, it is already complex and critical, it's just not yet obvious to the majority. Since the top military leadership has done everything possible to drive itself into a dead end and deprive itself “at the top” of any opportunities and resources to prepare for repelling an enemy offensive, it will be necessary to prepare for it as carefully as possible at the middle and grassroots levels. Where loss and defeat for people will mean death or captivity. It stimulates.
We must not wring our hands at the moment when the crisis takes on its finished form - boilers or "regroupings" of our troops, but already now understand what can be done and how. In general, the atmosphere of future events is very accurately conveyed in the book and in the film "They Fought for the Motherland", dedicated to the summer retreat and defensive battles of the Red Army on the southern flank in 1942. Another literary work from the past, reflecting the realities of our near future, not in the details of tactics, but in the emotions of the participants and the general background, is the story “Volokolamsk Highway” by Beck. As for the purely military-practical aspects, of the recent military-historical works, the closest thing to the topic of the upcoming bloody “test work” is A.V. Isaev. This work describes how, after the catastrophe of the Vyazemsky boiler, The Red Army waged a defensive battle on the outskirts of Moscow in the autumn of 1941, collecting defense here and there "from improvised materials." Of course, 1941 and 2023 are separated by eighty years of technological progress in the field of technology and weapons, but this will not prevent the reader from understanding the fundamental principles of making appropriate decisions.
Opportunities for the entire army to regroup (without quotes) and somehow effectively launch counterattacks on the enemy, stop him, the opportunity to have time to conduct another wave of mobilization before it becomes useless, will be bought by fierce rearguard battles.
The areas in which work can increase our chances of success are already quite clearly indicated by the volunteer movement.
Personnel training.
At any opportunity, in any snatches of time, as soon as possible. To teach, first of all, the basics of tactical medicine, and secondly, modern combat as an infantryman, the simplest things, even just the correct work with AK, PC, RPG within the NSD for these types of weapons. Further - in the specialty. Special attention should be paid to training the infantry to appreciate their heavy group weapons and skillfully use them - AGS, LNG, Utyos (ATGMs will be in short supply). The desire of people to learn all this on their own, in any free time, should be encouraged in every possible way.
Another important thing that people should be taught is orienteering in the terrain and orientation in the battle formations of troops applied to the terrain. In order to avoid situations “we left the environment and got lost.”
Communication and management.
Priority attention in the work of volunteer organizations should be given (in many it is already being paid) to the creation of radio networks and communication systems that are resistant to dynamic changes in the situation, with a reserve of mat. systems of long-term autonomous power supply of communication facilities, channel-forming equipment of radio networks and other communication facilities. The task is to make control, both by radio communication and through other channels, as resistant to crisis situations as possible. Among other things, the creation of a highly specialized volunteer community on this topic is obviously overdue - optimizing the provision of power supply “in the fields” for troops by freelance means and supplying standardized power supply kits with spare parts and instructions to the troops (user training )
The continued digitalization of communications (systematically, based on the relay network and base stations, carried out, for some reason, by volunteers, and not by the relevant bodies of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation) obviously “rests” to a greater extent not on the lack of equipment or funds for its purchase, but due to the lack of qualified personnel for future operators, accordingly, people are being trained.
With the existing shortage of armored vehicles (and it will remain for a long time), the stability of our troops in defense will have to be provided to a greater extent by artillery, MLRS and mortars with a shortage of ammo and trained people, plus the already existing need for counter-battery combat with enemy artillery, they require digital radioing of large military " organisms" "from artillery and control" down and towards the infantry.
Another important area of application of efforts in the field of communications and control is the implementation of integration solutions that allow you to connect complexes with different encryption into a single radio network, comparable in terms of cryptographic strength - on a more or less permanent basis, and with incomparable - on a short-term basis, for specific combat tasks.
Digital walkie-talkies from the next delivery of KTsPN to the front. September 2022
UAV
Despite the already widespread use of FPV copters as reconnaissance and kamikaze attack drones, copters for the classic tasks of reconnaissance and artillery fire adjustment are still the most in demand among the troops. Since large deliveries of domestic industrial products with comparable optical capabilities to the troops are not to be expected, it is necessary to systematically and widely approach the modernization of DJI Mavic 3 copter kits with conventional and thermal imaging optics supplied to the troops from volunteers. It is necessary to develop and standardize a set of changes in the software of the vehicles and hardware improvements to minimize the effect of control/video signal jammers and GPS jammers/spoofers. There are such solutions, they are purchased, imported, applied,
The second front of work is devices of a different class, aircraft type, possibly VTOLs. Devices with photo and video shooting capabilities, operating at altitudes of about 1000 meters and providing a radically higher, compared to copters, reach for reconnaissance and artillery fire adjustment in the depth of enemy positions (Here, the introduction of technology will also primarily “rest” on the personnel issue , since the operation of this type of equipment will require more advanced training than the operation of commercial copters).
Camouflage, dispersal, maneuver
Considering how large and, at times, even overwhelming the enemy’s advantage in firepower and, in particular, in the means of rapid, operational impact on the second and third echelons of our troops, will be extremely important during the offensive, means of camouflage, as well as the ability to disperse, but at the same time manageably maneuver in conditions of close observation by the enemy. In this matter, the personnel and organizational issue is also becoming more and more important. So, for example, the volunteer project "People's Network" can provide and already provides the troops with significant quantities of camouflage nets, but the issues of their combat use, as well as the issues of organizing the movement of troops in dispersed march formations, are personnel and personnel-organizational issues, often "resting" also in the lack of communication systems among the troops,
Tactics
It is very important to give people an understanding of what they need to do in a timely manner, so that the enemy “invests” as much as possible in his “offensive” and receives as little as possible in the “profitable” part of the event.
The advancing enemy forces should be forced to disperse their time and forces as much as possible in bypassing the positions occupied at key logistical points, which positions will be abandoned before their garrisons are completely surrounded.
Counterattacks on the flanks of the advancing groupings, requiring the withdrawal of forces from the main direction, should become another means for dispersing forces by the enemy. It is simply no longer possible to formulate, and even more so prepare for successful implementation, any radically different schemes of action. The main thing is to slow down the pace of the enemy’s advance by ambushes and rearguard battles, threaten the flanks, pull his forces from major roads “to the fields” more often and more often in order to bypass the defenders from the flank or to cover their own flanks, and timely gather the necessary forces to defend advantageous key positions based on terrain and natural barriers.
New wave of mobilization.
As already mentioned, it will be a great success to have another wave of mobilization before the course of hostilities and the public reaction to it make this event meaningless. For all those men of military age who have not yet fallen under mobilization, the issues of preparation for it are already becoming relevant - the issues of checking the state of health, preparing the necessary equipment, teaching the simplest skills most necessary on the battlefield, studying the materiel of infantry weapons, tactics .
I will repeat once again the main “bad news” of the current moment, which determines the near future.
The Russian leadership seeks to make the war as invisible to the layman as possible in material terms, not to mobilize the country and industry completely, not to “transfer the country to a military footing.”
The enemy, from the very beginning, since 2014, has been preaching the doctrine of maximizing the involvement of the population in the war, “turning the country into a military camp.”
Since the failure of the “quick victory” plans in February-March 2022, the military-political leadership of the country has not developed any serious “military action plans”, believing that it is possible to “squeeze” the enemy by “assaults” on his fortified positions during a protracted positional war. Not engaging in the restoration of the full-fledged combat potential of large mechanized formations, simply “exchange infantry” until the enemy runs out of it.
The enemy, in turn, is well aware that the only way out for him is active maneuvering and is trying with the help of his “Western partners” to get the tools necessary for the further implementation of this idea, which has already been successfully tested once in September 2022 near Izyum .
In general, the enemy knows what he wants and how to do it. Our leadership obviously doesn't know. In this situation, the inequality of resources (which the enemy has already tried to level, not without success) in our favor does not allow us to look confidently into the future.
Today it is already clear to everyone that an easy victory over the enemy is not to be expected. And it is clear that the position “the authorities know better, they will figure it out” is a losing one. It is possible to win only by the combined effort of the forces of the state and civil society. Moreover, it is we, as its representatives, who have to close many of the gaps left by the clumsy and hard-to-learn state military machine.
But we did, do and will continue to do.
You can help our Army through us. Our details are here [Ed. link deleted]
Our cause is just, we will win, the enemy will be defeated!
[ed. Obviously, hoping and believing the “enemy” --RUSSIA— will indeed be thoroughly defeated!!!]
Slava Ukraini!!!