Posted on 05/13/2022 7:34:55 PM PDT by lump in the melting pot
Early in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it wasn’t just Moscow that believed its offensive could succeed quickly. In February, even U.S. officials warned Kyiv could fall in days.
Russians had numbers on their side, or more precisely a number: the 3:1 rule, the ratio by which attackers must outnumber defenders in order to prevail. It is one of several “force ratios” popular in military strategy. Russia, it seemed, could amass that advantage.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
This goes beyond force ratio results. Something or perhaps several things have managed to reduce incentive to win, the value of cohesiveness and teamwork, the importance of communication between all levels of their military.
The ongoing need to maintain, update or replace certain equipment within a reasonable time period.
All very large national military forces have much the same basic needs. A big annual budget does not mean the money will go everywhere it’s most needed. Cronyism, competitive attitudes against other departments, grudge holding and plain old stubborness are always part of the picture.
And in the russian case, have you seen the fuel, docking fees, maintenance and crew payroll bills for a 120-meter yacht lately?!? That money has to come from somewhere...
Will.
“The science is settled” comes to mind.
Why did the Russians divide their invasion into four main groups? They should have known that it was not going to be a repeat of 2014 where they seized Crimea without any resistance. Crimea was Russian so it was never really Ukranian. But Kyiv is Ukranian so why would the Russians seize Kyiv in a cakewalk?
False sense of superiority b/c very few countries have dared to directly challenge Russia since WW2. Plus a tendency to believe their own propaganda. North America has a similar attitude, or we did, until Uncle Joe took the wheel.
When the attacked know the landscape better than the attackers, the ratios go out the door.
When the attacked have much bigger reasons to defend, than the attackers have for invading, the ratios go out the window.
When the attacker doesn’t have the same will to win as the attacked, the ratios go down the krapper.
When the attacker doesn’t have everything he needs to keep up the fight in a foreign land, the favorable ratios are nothing but bad statistics.
When the attacker doesn’t have good reasons for attacking, then, he’s already lost or will sooner or later lose.
True. We're a lot more humble now. Especially with the Fall of Kabul. We needed to withdraw from Afghanistan. But Senile Joe botched the evacuation.
The attack on Kyiv was a diversion.
To defend the national capital, the Ukrainians had to leave the Black Sea region with less defense.
Adventurism beyond your borders vs. defending the homeland. Russians are good at homeland defense, not so good projecting power outside their borders.
In military science, force multiplication or a force multiplier is a factor or a combination of factors that gives personnel or weapons (or other hardware) the ability to accomplish greater feats than without it. The expected size increase required to have the same effectiveness without that advantage is the multiplication factor. For example, if a technology like GPS enables a force to accomplish the same results as a force five times as large without GPS, then the multiplier is five. Such estimates are used to justify the investment for force multipliers.
Owing to the range and lethality of modern weaponry, that number long since has been upped to 6:1.
Which why I'm not complaining about the linked article being behind a pay wall. If that's all they've got, I'm glad not to have wasted any more time.
No. If that was the case, Russia would simply mass in Belarus, threatening to attack Kyiv near Chernobyl while attacking on three others fronts. That would tie down the bulk of the Ukrainian military in Kiev while not wasting Russian military in the effort.
Putin went all in and failed. He used the same playbook where the Soviets was able to decapitate the Afghan government in Kabul back in 1979.
A 3 to 1 force ratio means nothing when you’re only sporting a 1 to 3 brains ratio.
They thought the invasion would go much like Gulf War 2. Shock and Awe, decapitation strike, maneuver warfare and combined arms. None of it worked well. This was supposed to be Russia’s coming out party as a “Great Power”, but they found out all of these things take massive amounts of planning, training and money. They didn’t know what they didn’t know. So now they go back to what they know, and it’s a grind.
Good lord Hitler believed that in the nth degree! All the will in the world means squat if u don’t have the resources to utilize it.
"Russia massively miscalculated a number of critical tactical realities. These include the Ukrainian people's cohesiveness and willingness to fight, the bravery of Ukraine's political leadership, its air defenses' abilities and knack for survival, and NATO and the European Union's resolve.Putin was told that Ukrainian generals were bought off, their forces would collapse, the Russian army was ready to fight and would be greeted as liberators. Then the invasion started and the cold light of day happened. Whether or not the Kremlin is in the denial or bargaining stage of death and dying remains to be determined.What's worse, Russia severely overestimated its own capabilities. These included the effectiveness of its own air force, the required quantity and reliability of its standoff weaponry, the quality and resolve of its ground forces, and especially the logistics necessary to support them beyond a single opening blitz. Even the Russian military's ability to deploy realistic planning and effective command and control seemed to disintegrate just days into the invasion. There still appears to be little integration or deconfliction between various field commanders and no single commander leading the war effort."
Russia managed to get everything opposite from reality.
Even if Russia used the 3-to-1 and other ratios, Ukraine introduced their own twist on those formulas. Russian forces have taken three and a half times as many military casualties as Ukraine for two months. This does not count all the civilian casualties or destroyed cities, all of which is unifying Europe for Ukraine and against Russia.
#11. Russia had a 15 day plan to take over all of Ukraine, from documents captured in the first week. The President of Belarus accidentally confirmed this by showing a map of the invasion routes while discussing it on TV.
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