As written before, even with encirclement of major cities, Russia will not be able to hold territory in the long run. It will at some moment be a contest among dueling ceasefires complete with major threats using proxies and weapons that evoke war crimes. Even if the post-Soviet Russian armed forces fail at combined arms, they remain dangerous because of their lethal incompetence, much like their leader.
Russia’s ambitious invasion of Ukraine has three fronts: a northern one targeting Kyiv, an eastern one focused on Kharkiv and its environs and a southern one attempting to overrun cities including Kherson, Odessa and Mariupol from Crimea and the Black Sea. The scorched-earth campaign includes the bombardment of civilian neighborhoods, and it seems unlikely that the Ukrainian military, however heroically it fights, will be able to prevent the occupation of some of its major cities.
But can Russian forces hold the territory that they seize? That’s far more in doubt. If past conflicts involving the occupations of hostile lands serve as a guide, the Russian army may not be able to, especially if Ukrainian citizens continue to rise up against their occupiers.
Russia has a combined 190,000 soldiers and irregular units inside and just outside Ukraine, a country of approximately 43 million people. (That figure accounts for a million people fleeing the conflict.) Those numbers translate into a force ratio of four soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants. Moscow could deploy additional ground units to Ukraine, but it has not moved to do so yet — and most of those soldiers have little battlefield experience.
There are no precise formulas for how many soldiers are needed to hold conquered territory, but scholars studying past conflicts have made some estimates. Some have suggested that a force ratio of as many as 20 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants is necessary to pacify a hostile local population. One study that I co-authored concluded that the average force ratio to establish security after successful military operations is 13 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants.
Estimates like these reflect the fact that large numbers of troops are essential to establish basic law and order for a sustained period following the end of major combat operations.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
- "We’ve observed limited changes on the ground over the past day. Russian forces continued efforts to advance and isolate Kyiv, Kharkhiv and Chernihiv across the north and east are being met with strong Ukrainian resistance."
- "There does not appear to be any significant movement along the Russian axes. Leading elements remain outside these city centers. We cannot give specific distances today.
- "The convoy continues to be stalled."
- "We assess that the Russians have now committed inside Ukraine somewhere near 95% of the combat power they had amassed along the border."
- "We’ve observed fighting in the south near Kherson and Mykolaiv. We cannot independently verify reporting of Russian forces firing on protesters in Kherson."
- "We have not observed an amphibious invasion in or near Odessa, nor do we assess that one is imminent.
- "We’ve observed continued ongoing fighting and efforts to encircle Mariupol. There continue to be reports of wide-spread utility outages (water and electricity)."
- "We cannot independently verify claims of ceasefire violations," senior U.S. defense official adds.
- Senior U.S. defense official:
- "In the airspace, we continue to observe that the airspace over Ukraine is contested. Ukrainian air and missile defenses remain effective and in use. The Ukrainian military continues to fly aircraft and to employ air defense assets."
- "We are aware of the Ukrainian military’s release of videos and numbers of Russian aircraft shot down," senior U.S. defense official says. "We cannot independently verify those incidents, but neither are we in a position to refute them."
- "Both sides have taken losses to both aircraft and missile defense inventories," senior U.S. defense official says. "We are not going to speak to numbers. We assess that both sides still possess a majority of their air defense systems and capabilities."
- "As of today, we assess that approximately 600 Russian missile launches have occurred since the invasion began," senior U.S. defense official says.
- "We believe the Ukrainian people in most parts of the country still have means of communication, access to internet and the media," senior U.S. defense official says.
- Pentagon says it cannot corroborate any reports of cluster munitions or thermobaric weapons in U.S., can't say whether the Russians are calling up reserves, and can't say whether any Russian naval infantry have been loaded on any "LSTs," a kind of landing craft.
- Pentagon also will not corroborate Ukrainian reports that Ukrainian forces have shot down one Russian Su-25 fighter jet, two Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers, two Russian Su-30 SM planes, and four Russian helicopters today.
- Finally, Pentagon says it cannot corroborate reports that Russian dropped 1,000-pound bombs near Chernihiv.
- This update in text form came instead of background briefings. It is not online, but you've now seen what I'm seeing.
- Would anticipate backgrounders return tomorrow (Monday).
- Observation: Journalists will continue to ask the Pentagon for additional information. But they don't have nearly the same visibility of this war that they do of the ones they are involved in directly.
- As always, getting a clear picture of what is happening on the ground requires layering numerous sources. Even then, there will be gaps in knowledge.
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Not every Iskander can reach the middle of Dnipro. Isn’t that what Gogol said?
Dry numbers: the enemy has used 85% of Kalibr cruise missiles, 24% of Iskander missiles (the percentages are out of the overall number of available missiles in the Russian Federation, which constitutes 120% of missiles available in the theater).
en.defence-ua.com/...
There will be three basic phases of bombing to support a city attack (thread):
#1 Bombing of high value enemy positions (buildings/places seen from the sky or already known) usually with rockets. Basically softening the enemy force in the city. In this phase, all efforts to hide known key locations should be taken, as well as knowing where to escape.
#2 As forces get closer to the city they will begin heavy heavy bombardment on "enemy." Also hoping defenders give up. This could last days & is where the underground is critical to survive and maintain the weapons and supplies to fight. Defenders must also know if enemy is close
#3 Will be fires as the enemy military is right against the city & attempting to find an entering. This is a dangerous time because the defenders must be able to attack the invaders but also survive their bombing. The rubble from earlier phases makes strong fighting positions.
#2
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- The Ukrainian attitude towards Russians is that “they are brainwashed slaves” unwilling to collectively die for their freedom. I travel this entire country regularly and talk to hundreds of people. “Brainwashed” and “(Putin’s) slave” are commonly used.
- Here in Ukraine, outside of fancy think tank circles full of political correctness, folks here blame the average Russia for what’s happening as much as they blame Putin. There is no trust in Russian society. Putin is the average Russian for those I talk with.
- Over the past two months, I’ve not spoken to ONE Ukrainian here who feels an once of sympathy towards the average Russian. Ukrainians feel Russians think they are superior to them and Putin represents their thinking. Also…
- Ukrainians, collectively, are ready to die for their freedom; folks here don’t see that in most Russians because, as many Ukrainians tell me, they are comfortable in fear of Putin.
- If this sounds like generalizations, we’ll, I’m only telling you what hundreds of folk tell me.
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First, a whole raft of caveats. For one, Transformers is a mostly terrible sci-fi vehicle for Shy Lubbock or whoever, and Megan Fox who is, as far as I can tell, engaged to a heavily tattooed AR-15? It's a popcorn flick from when we thought W was the worst the GOP could do. 2/
Further, Transformers was HEAVILY underwritten by the US Military at a time things weren't going so well on the publicity front and recruitment was suffering as a result of two ongoing wars that would wind up continuing for more than a decade. 3/
Transformers is one of the very most American movies ever made, because its director is the very definition of a mediocre white guy wasting simply amazing piles of not his money to blow things up where brown people live. It's also maybe Bay's best movie. 4/
But more than being Bay's highwater mark, it's THIS CLOSE to being a straight up military propaganda film disguised as a summer blockbuster.
However, because it's also a highwater mark for collaboration between Hollywood and the Military, it's also, surprisingly, insightful. 5/
Pause what you're doing and watch these seven best minutes of Michael Bay's career as a director:
6/
Waiting for you to finish watching... 7/
Oh good, you're still here. What you just witnessed was not only the greatest battle between very attractive people and a giant mechanical scorpion ever put to screen, but a surprisingly accurate recreation of what modern combined arms combat looks like. 8/
Ignore the sat phone and credit card stuff. A small, vastly overpowered ground unit is able to tap into a command-and-control network overseeing an integrated battlespace of multiple combat branches sharing information in real time. Ground. Air. Sea. All on the same page. 9/
Air assets are launched or redirected immediately without fear of interception because Air Supremacy has already been established. They control the skies and don't have to worry about being shot down by enemy fighters or AAA. 10/
An AWACS "Flying Command Center" plane analyzes the situation, knows what's in the air or ready on the ground, and orders A-10 Warthogs and an AC-130 gunship optimized for Close Air Support to bolster the overmatched ground unit. 11/
Ground unit is told immediately what's coming, from where, and that they need to put laser designators down on the target. They do. Hell follows.
Is this scene Hollywood AF? Yes, of course it is. But it was written with actual USAF personnel over their shoulders. 12/
The people in the AWACS plane? The one with the huge radar on top? Actual USAF airmen.
The timeline is compressed, obviously, but this is really, really close to what combines arms actually looks like in the field. It's that level of situational awareness and coordination. 13/
Which brings us to Ukraine and Russia... 14/
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, it's been generally assumed by many people living in the West that the Russian Federation has simply picked up the baton and was now carrying forward the Soviet military machine; a superpower and peer or near-peer to the US. 15/
It was assumed that while our capabilities might not be exactly on par, that the Russians were at least capable and competent in modern forms of warfare and could pose a serious threat in any open conflict.
Well, they don't. 16/
That little propaganda film from fifteen years ago I just made you watch? It turns out the Russian Army and Air Force cannot replicate any single aspect of it. They've been in Ukraine for 11 days and still have not achieved air superiority, much less supremacy. 17/
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