Posted on 10/04/2022 6:53:43 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
Reasons for the retreat near Kherson. Of the units I am acquainted with, almost all of them reached out, losses are small. The men fought like lions, but this time fortune was not in their favor.
The reasons I see are:
1. No unit rotation. Units of the 126th Brigade have been fighting since March. Soldiers would go on leave for five days at best. Seven months on the front line without rotation. Constant battles, wounds, experienced and seasoned men were bombarded for seven months in a row.
End of August, these same guys knocked out the AFU’s 128th Transcarpathian brigade so badly that they declared mourning. Our men were left at their positions. The Ukrainians rotated out the 128th, brought in additional tank units and a month later knocked us out of our positions.
Miracles do not happen, no matter how heroic our soldiers may be, if the village is defended by 15 people, and the enemy hammers them with attacks and artillery fire for seven months in a row, sooner or later the unit will lose combat effectiveness.
2. Judging by the nature of the losses, the enemy used a tactic of wedging themselves between our strongpoints. Wildly short on infantry, ours sat at the strongholds, i.e. in the villages and plantations.
After months of reconnaissance, the enemy found places to infiltrate between the strongholds. Then came the insertion of mobile units into the gaps that were wedged open.
Our troops were severely strained, the strongpoints held, but the mobile reserves needed to stop the breakthroughs either did not exist, or were insufficient.
The strongholds would stay intact, but instantly, in the first few hours, would find themselves surrounded, fight until they ran out of ammunition and break out under fire.
By the way, the Ukrainians would have so little strength that they weren't even really trying to catch the encircled men, most of them made it back to us.
Weather was bad, neither side used artillery. So it's logical to suppose if we had some BTGs equipped with heavy copters, capable of seeing several kms, the breakthrough would have been stopped. But I have no info that the tankers fought to the last man, please excuse me if so.
3. Guys from the field report en masse that our tactical insignia, i.e. Z and V, was applied to enemy equipment, causing confusion in the first hours of the battle as the front collapsed.
If this is true, it means the enemy has an American network-centric battle management system, where all units on the battlefield are net-linked and marked on computers, even at company level, let alone at battalion-regiment level.
Thus, even a company sergeant in a Humvee, BMP, or T-64 can see on the screen where his own are and where the others are, and he doesn't care what marks are on the armor.
If this is case, then that's very bad news, since that's a qualitatively new level of troop control, and our retreat would be a consequence of losing parity.
Kherson? Wha happen?
Collaborator Kirill Stremousov just fled from Kherson. So much winning.
This appears to be wishful thinking.
We shall see, but again, and again, events on the ground point to Russian weakness in equipment, training, logistics, and command structure.
Time seems to be on Ukraine's side.
They appear to be gaining strength while Russian strength fades away.
Russian losses in trained men and in heavy equipment and artillery munitions (especially "smart" munitions) are not being replaced.
There is lots of "fog of war".
The future will reveal which vision is correct.
Our small unit doctrines revolves around owning the night, conducting raids/movements etc.
It seems the Ukrainian's are able to ‘out run’ the Russians with small vehicles, setup and fire, repeat. Very similar to Afghanistan, but the Russians have zero, repeat zero air capabilities to respond or provide sufficient support.
This does seem like a battle of daily amazon deliveries, spread out and shipped via small trucks or drones, arriving in hours. While Russia, is bulky, doing the centralized operation of mall shopping, while having to fight the locals and urbans. Fascinating.
Now that we have supplied missile and artillery systems, they have not only been trained to use the equipment but trained in combined arms. I would suspect several Ukrainian BTGs are approaching NATO level capability with combat experience. Meanwhile Russia has squandered most of its few well trained and well equipped BTGs.
The West does not have the industrial capacity to sustain modern war. Everything that has been sent to Ukraine so far has been from existing stocks.
While that is true to some extent, it is only one side of the equation. The truth is Russia has that exact same problem, except it is much, much worse.
1) Russia also has been living off stockpiles, much of which dated as far back as the Soviet era.
2) Russia's claimed massive stockpiles of tens of thousands of tanks and artillery tubes allegedly sitting in warehouses don't exist. The lack of maintenance, prevalence of theft, cannibalization, and selling of those stockpiles to foreign governments has wiped them out, even if we assume they existed to that extent in the first place.
By way of comparison, the US has maintained stockpiles of prepositioned equipment in Europe, etc, but has had to make a significant investment in logistical and maintenance support to ensure the gear remains operational. We have entire units dedicated just to that. You can't just stick weapons systems in warehouses and expect them to work decades later.
3) Russia's remaining equipment is depleted much worse than is Ukraine's. This is evident not only by the lack of new Russian material appearing on the battlefield, but by the fact that all these mobilized reserves are being sent to the front without being trained to equip new tank regiments, or new artillery battalions And that's because the replacement equipment doesn't exist. So essentially, Russia's cupboard has gone bare while Ukraine has managed to preserve sufficient operational mechanized units to take advantage of Russia's lack.
4) To the extent the war turns into a competition as to which side can produce new weapons systems the fastest, Russia has zero chance of outpacing western production in that regard. Even Russia itself has noted that it is unfairly competing against the industrial production of the entire west.
5) compounding Russia's massive logistical handicap is that it also is handicapped in terms of training. Ukrainian troops are being sent to NATO countries to be trained, and because those NATO countries aren't sending actual troops to Ukraine, they have plenty of experienced trainers. In contrast, Russia is taking these newly mobilized "reserves", and just shipping them off to the front. That is another incredibly important dynamic that will give the Ukrainians an ever-increasing advantage on the battlefield because they will be fielding increasingly professional troops against increasingly amateur opposition.
You guys are in deep trouble, even if you won't admit it.
Modern weapons require tremendous amounts of logistical support and maintenance, both preventative and corrective. My guess is that because logistical and maintenance support don't show up in fancy Victory Day parades, they never got the attention required. I'm guessing there was a lot of shock across the Russian military and leadership when they realized how much of their stuff just didn't work when needed.
Item #2 is as old as warfare: Attack ‘em where they ain’t.
Take the territory, leave the strongholds isolated, and wait for the to starve.
It is a fast and efficient way to win a war.
Part of the tip-off for that is the large number of Russian senior officers that have been killed. There must have been so much political pressure for them to achieve results on the ground that they pushed themselves and their best units to the limit. Now many of them are gone, many of those elite units are wrecked, and they don't have the means to replace them.
It could get really ugly out there.
“The West does not have the industrial capacity to sustain modern war. Everything that has been sent to Ukraine so far has been from existing stocks.“
The thing is that all of those munitions were targeted at the Russians anyway. An artillery shell that came out of reserve stock in Europe was there to use against the Russians all along.
Yes, we are draining reserve stock, but as a result Russia isn’t really a threat to Europe or NATO…so they need less of it. The benefit to the US is that our troops are not dying enmasse.
“ The Ukrainians have developed a system where local commanders can view drone video feeds and direct their armor, infantry, and mortar support based on live video from above the battlefield.”
Thanks, in no small part, to Musk’s Skylink.
This is the US hiding behind NATO pretending Ukraine is fighting.
That is the transparently despicable lie.
NATO had no hand in the first week or 2 of the invasion. Everyone expected Kiev/Ukraine to fall in days if not weeks.
They didn’t. And the weapons we send over don’t shoot themselves.
Yeah, dunno how pmcs/pmi translates into russian.
;)
;)
"Rybar" knows this quite well. This is just an attempt to downplay this retreat and portray the AFU as weak and Russia strong.
I agree. It’s likely how they are finding the ‘gaps’ and weak spots.
“The rule of thumb that we had with tanks when I was in the Army (more years ago than I want to admit) was two hours maintenance for every hour of operation. “
Wow that is an amazing stat. Makes one appreciate even more the logistical side of WWII doesn’t it!
Skylink has certainly been helpful, but the Ukrainians have significant expertise and technology for local RF based communication.
Yesterday their were reports on Russian Telegram channels of Russian combat groups fighting in the Kherson front whose radio systems were jammed to the point of uselessness leaving them unable to request air or artillery support, or even get orders.
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