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Seeing the above article (e:last page) and Joe's own qualms, for some of them maybe it wasn't fear as much as not wanting to die due to a superior's incompetence and corruption. Though as he says himself, that wasn't too unexpected given the circumstances.
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Dec 1, 2022 00:27
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golden bubble posted:https://rusi.org/explore-our-resear...uary-july-2022/ Excellent link. While it is written by a defence think tank, it is written in a way that is easily approachable even by civilians without formal military training. Anyone with a legitimate interest in military operations at a higher level than just Twitter cheerleading will find this an invaluable resource to understanding what truly happened during the first few months of the war. While most of what in this report will retread old ground for those who keep up with the more serious reporting, like ISW dailies and the more credible twitter analysts, it offers a great summary that helps dispel a lot of myths (especially about the Russians). One question for people who have served in NATO militaries. quote:A further problem with the BTG is its ability to absorb losses. An enabled company group – I am unable to parse what the author means. I thought 30% casualties for a unit was fairly significant and even a NATO military unit's ability to perform would be significantly degraded? I guess it could mean that the BTG was simply unable to function at all rather than merely function at a less than 100% capacity.
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Dec 1, 2022 00:30
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Burns posted:The "we need air support!!" part made me lol really hard. It's kind of wild how a war in 2022 fought by two conventional militaries (one of which was one of the biggest militaries in the world on paper) has so little in the way of use of aircraft. And most common kind of "aircraft" used are ones you can buy in a store.
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Dec 1, 2022 01:11
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MikeC posted:Excellent link. While it is written by a defence think tank, it is written in a way that is easily approachable even by civilians without formal military training. Anyone with a legitimate interest in military operations at a higher level than just Twitter cheerleading will find this an invaluable resource to understanding what truly happened during the first few months of the war. While most of what in this report will retread old ground for those who keep up with the more serious reporting, like ISW dailies and the more credible twitter analysts, it offers a great summary that helps dispel a lot of myths (especially about the Russians). I'm not a military person, but I'm pretty sure the point is that NATO military units are more specialized, so if one of them gets hammered it can be rotated out without degrading the rest of the formation, while a BTG can become unusable if any one of its components takes too much attrition, like the difference between removable and soldered components on a motherboard.
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Dec 1, 2022 01:14
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MikeC posted:Excellent link. While it is written by a defence think tank, it is written in a way that is easily approachable even by civilians without formal military training. Anyone with a legitimate interest in military operations at a higher level than just Twitter cheerleading will find this an invaluable resource to understanding what truly happened during the first few months of the war. While most of what in this report will retread old ground for those who keep up with the more serious reporting, like ISW dailies and the more credible twitter analysts, it offers a great summary that helps dispel a lot of myths (especially about the Russians). Russian doctrine does not focus on small unit engagements as much as the U.S. military. A battle drill (a canned response to certain criteria, like encountering the enemy) for the U.S. is focused on the squad and platoon level. While Russian doctrine executes battle drills at the battalion and brigade level. This allows Russian battalions and brigades to react quickly at those levels without the need for extensive planning that U.S. forces have to do. But it also leaves them more vulnerable to losses. They can't execute those battle drills if key units at the company level are combat ineffective. Meanwhile, a U.S. formation is more resilient because they don't need ever company to be in working order to execute missions. Hope that was remotely understandable and helpful.
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Dec 1, 2022 02:35
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MikeC posted:Excellent link. While it is written by a defence think tank, it is written in a way that is easily approachable even by civilians without formal military training. Anyone with a legitimate interest in military operations at a higher level than just Twitter cheerleading will find this an invaluable resource to understanding what truly happened during the first few months of the war. While most of what in this report will retread old ground for those who keep up with the more serious reporting, like ISW dailies and the more credible twitter analysts, it offers a great summary that helps dispel a lot of myths (especially about the Russians). It does seem like this is an organizational problem that occurs due to how Russia trains rather than because of the BTG concept as a whole. What I'm reading is that if a BTG loses all its infantry components, it doesn't have a way to replenish it very easily because there's no cohesive subunit of infantry within the BTG to rotate in or out. However, the BTG as a whole appears to be just slapped together parts with no built in cohesion based on the other parts of the report, so I'm not sure why you can't just ship in more infantry (for example). I think another interesting tidbit is this, which explains why the fighting lines were so static early in the war. The Ukrainians were very unwilling to cede ground for political reasons earlier on: quote:It is briefly worth flagging here a political factor that shaped, and in some ways constrained, Also, anybody know if there are pictures of this out there somewhere? It sounds hilarious. quote:It is also a problem that WarpedLichen fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Dec 1, 2022 |
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Dec 1, 2022 02:51
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Amazing how everybody treats the Colossal, Unfeeling Civilian Murder & Rape Machine like an inhuman monster and keeps it at bay at any cost (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 1, 2022 03:26
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WarpedLichen posted:It does seem like this is an organizational problem that occurs due to how Russia trains rather than because of the BTG concept as a whole. What I'm reading is that if a BTG loses all its infantry components, it doesn't have a way to replenish it very easily because there's no cohesive subunit of infantry within the BTG to rotate in or out. However, the BTG as a whole appears to be just slapped together parts with no built in cohesion based on the other parts of the report, so I'm not sure why you can't just ship in more infantry (for example). russia does have problems with training, but that is independent of the BTG organization also having problems so militaries are generally always tampering with the organizational structures of their combat units. there's no real optimal way to organize command, combat, and support elements together in a self contained whole, it really depends on what you have and what you're trying to do with it. for example, the american militay shifted from divisions to the brigade combat team, a smaller unit, to something between a brigade as the deployable frontline unit but with larger, divisional-scale command and support elements. basically you want to deploy soldiers in groups small enough to be agile and easily deployed as a cohesive whole, but large enough to have sufficient support elements - enough trucks to move stuff, enough heavy guns for supporting fire, enough nerds to handle frontline IT and radios, enough soldiers in the command post keeping track of everything, etc. russia has gone pretty far down the scale of having small units as a deployable whole, to the battalion level with brigade-level supporting elements. there's no firm definition for terms like battaltion, brigade, division, etc. but generally a battalion is like, around a thousand soldiers, and a brigade is more like five thousand, and a division is more like 10+ thousand. not all combat troops, you need cooks and truck fixers and IT nerds and so on, but these are the folks who will be able to hear the guns shooting. historically speaking in terms of modern mechanized warfare, battalions are generally regarded as too small to be deployed independently, but it does happen sometimes russia has a problem where they don't have a lot of money to spend on the military. this means that the gear is a grab bag of older, less-maintained stuff, because maintenance costs money, and fewer soldiers, because payroll costs money. this is why russia keeps up a regular conscription of soldiers and sends them into combat if necessary, they just can't afford the high expense of an all-volunteer military. the BTG, being smaller, means that you can really maximize the combat power of each solder you have by increasing the ratio of combat soldiers to support soldiers, as well as integrating them more closely with supporting fire and heavy weapons. basically, less all-infantry subunits and more close integration between a smaller pool of infantry and a proportionally larger pool of artillery, heavy rockets, etc. for their size, the russian BTG carries a lot of firepower, and can punch very hard. comparatively, american formations which are much larger in size tend to have less integrated heavy weapons, american units will call back to a larger formation for supporting fire the biggest problem with the BTG is that it is brittle. if the unit sustains combat losses, there aren't really any other subunits you can rotate into the fight to give the shot up subunits some rest and replenishment. if the BTG's artillery group gets caught out and destroyed, thats it - no more in-unit artillery for a while, and you've got to try to get support from a more distant larger supporting unit. also, critically, the HQ groups on the BTG are a bit too small - if combat gets real nasty or goes on for a while, there are only so many officers in charge to keep track of things, and if they get overwhelmed, fatigued, or start making poor decisions, then you end up with a more distant larger supporting unit trying to make command decisions, which is going to be less effective than the commander of the BTG itself who is right there, making decisions. you also need officers in your unit HQ to do things like keep track of enemy contacts and request heavier weapons or airstrikes and whatnot to shoot at those contacts, which is also difficult to do well if you don't have enough officers making decisions within the BTG itself long story short, the BTG is an alright tactical formation if you just need to send in a smaller number of troops for a limited mission, and you want to make the offensive power of those troops very cost effective to operate. something like chasing down irregulars or backing down a smaller enemy. where the BTG organizational concept doesn't work is in sustained conventional fighting on a broad front where you expect to suffer continual losses, as the BTG is kind of a glass cannon and runs out of combat sustainability very quickly, and it also gets quickly overwhelmed with command decisions due to lack of adequate staffing in the HQ to their credit, the russian military recognized this and really the BTG isn't the end goal of the modern russian military, it was a way to integrate and modernize new technologies into a russian military which eventually fielded larger brigade- and divisional-scale units. except, well, yeah MikeC posted:I am unable to parse what the author means. I thought 30% casualties for a unit was fairly significant and even a NATO military unit's ability to perform would be significantly degraded? I guess it could mean that the BTG was simply unable to function at all rather than merely function at a less than 100% capacity. the main thing here is that a BCT is just a lot smaller than a typical independent formation fielded by a NATO army. 30% of your troops and vehicles gone is going to be a lot more restrictive if you only had 1000 of them to begin with rather than like, 5000 or something. nobody's having a good day with 30% casualties but you can get a lot more done with 3500 remaining combat effectives instead of 700
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Dec 1, 2022 09:11
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FishBulbia posted:New KI reporting about just how much of a mess the international legion is That's an excellent (and very long) read. This part stood out to me as particularly depressing quote:“For seven months soldiers here have been fighting on two fronts, one is Russia’s army, and another one is corruption. The only reason why Ukraine is winning is that Russia is rotten in corruption even more than Ukraine is,” one legionnaire told the Kyiv Independent.
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Dec 1, 2022 10:04
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Charliegrs posted:It's kind of wild how a war in 2022 fought by two conventional militaries (one of which was one of the biggest militaries in the world on paper) has so little in the way of use of aircraft. And most common kind of "aircraft" used are ones you can buy in a store. It is not surprising, precisely because both armies are pretty close in technological parity (soviet tech is the backbone for both) and strength and Russia failed to suppress air defense enough to use aviation freely like they did in Syria. Russian aircraft ARE better (Ukrainian pilot in an interview bemoaned how a generation difference made 1 to 1 engagements between fighters lopsided) but not that much to operate in UA airspace like they own it.
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Dec 1, 2022 10:20
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fatherboxx posted:It is not surprising, precisely because both armies are pretty close in technological parity (soviet tech is the backbone for both) and strength and Russia failed to suppress air defense enough to use aviation freely like they did in Syria. Russian aircraft ARE better (Ukrainian pilot in an interview bemoaned how a generation difference made 1 to 1 engagements between fighters lopsided) but not that much to operate in UA airspace like they own it. Besides Russian (and UA) strength lies in rocketry and electronic warfare. At the beginning of the invasion Russian EW troops were able to jam Ukrainian radars, allowing air forces to run missions in Ukrainian airspace. But despite being successful, they had to stop it as they were interfering with Russian ground forces' radio communications because basic cooperation between branches is for nerds and virgins. To allow generals to ask the tip of the attack column to ask why they are not moving without going there in person they therefore had to end the jamming, and Ukrainian AD hadn't been destroyed yet. Russia would need western quality stealth bombers and HARMs to break this gridlock.
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Dec 1, 2022 11:38
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Nenonen posted:Russia would need western quality stealth bombers and HARMs to break this gridlock. Based on the rusi paper, Russia do use their equivalent of the HARMs (the Kh-58 anti-radiation missile) which combined with EW has allowed them to conduct operations. It also mentions that the Ukrainians have found that HARMs have limitations and are often only enough to force the Russians to turn their radars off for a bit. Better stealth might be an answer, but my take on the paper is that something simple like better coordination between air and ground forces could make a surprisingly big impact.
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Dec 1, 2022 19:16
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After avoiding making such declarations, Biden and Macron appear to have decided that they will accept talks with Putin unnamed conditions. It’s all good and well they say they still support Ukraine doing things on their own terms, but it also doesn’t seem terribly helpful to Ukraine. Seems reminiscent to Macron’s original hopes of being the EU’s grand diplomat and Biden pulling more towards the ill-advised memo released by the progressives in October. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/12/01/us/biden-macron-news “I’m prepared if he’s willing to talk to find out what he’s willing to do,” Mr. Biden said during a news conference at the White House following a three-hour meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France. “But I’ll only do it in consultation with my NATO allies. I’m not going to do it on my own.” …. “Today, we reaffirm that, as I said, we’re going to stand together against this brutality,” Mr. Biden said. “And we’ll continue strong support for the Ukrainian people as they defend their homes and their families and their nurseries, their hospitals, their sovereignty, their integrity, and against Russian aggression.” …. The French president played down disagreements with Mr. Biden about Ukraine, echoing the United States’ view that there should be no pressure on Ukrainians to accept a compromise that they do not agree with. “We have to respect Ukrainians to design the moments and the conditions in which they will negotiate about their territory and their future,” Mr. Macron said.
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Dec 1, 2022 21:03
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horrible optics, it plays directly into the imagery of ukraine as a nato puppet. secret side channel talks are already a thing in international diplomacy, the us and france announcing that they are open to holding talks would not be a requirement if russia had any real interest in discussing realistic terms with ukraine
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Dec 1, 2022 21:23
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Pretty sure Ukraine's position is that its territory is non-negotiable, M. Macron.
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Dec 1, 2022 22:06
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:horrible optics, it plays directly into the imagery of ukraine as a nato puppet. secret side channel talks are already a thing in international diplomacy, the us and france announcing that they are open to holding talks would not be a requirement if russia had any real interest in discussing realistic terms with ukraine Depends how you read it, I suppose--this is the Times' reporter's reading: quote:Supporting Ukraine is about “our values,” President Macron says, in English. If we "abandon the full respect of these principles, that means there is no stability in this world.” He says France will increase its military support to Ukraine. And, he says, “We will never urge Ukrainians to make a compromise that will not be acceptable for them.” That is the money quote. He publicly throws his support behind Ukraine being the decider of when to go to the table with Russia.
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Dec 1, 2022 22:14
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So how do they relay the results of NATO negotiations with Putin to Ukraine in a way that isn't in actuality a form of pressure to accept those terms?
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Dec 1, 2022 22:30
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Tiny Timbs posted:So how do they relay the results of NATO negotiations with Putin to Ukraine in a way that isn't in actuality a form of pressure to accept those terms? Where did they say there would be separate NATO negotiations with Russia without the involvement of Ukraine?
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Dec 1, 2022 22:33
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These comments are specifically in the context of pointing out that there was a pre-war security order in Europe that was working really well for everyone, Russia was obviously in no risk of being attacked, Putin chose to wreck it, and Putin has the option of going back to it. Obviously if Putin chooses not to return to it then something new is needed, but it's important not to concede Putin's narrative that he was owed some grand new bargain.
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Dec 1, 2022 22:40
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Sir John Falstaff posted:Where did they say there would be separate NATO negotiations with Russia without the involvement of Ukraine? That was the impression I got from this: quote:“I’m prepared if he’s willing to talk to find out what he’s willing to do,” Mr. Biden said during a news conference at the White House following a three-hour meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France. “But I’ll only do it in consultation with my NATO allies. I’m not going to do it on my own.”
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Dec 1, 2022 22:41
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Tiny Timbs posted:That was the impression I got from this: That doesn't seem to necessarily follow, though--all it seems to say is that Biden is willing to talk to Russia, in coordination with NATO. Doesn't seem to say that any talks would constitute negotiations without Ukraine's involvement. Also doesn't seem to be what the Times reporter got out of it, either, based on the quote I posted above.
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Dec 1, 2022 22:46
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Ukraine's been winning recently, there may be a time that the US changes its stance on letting Ukraine do all the talking, or rather not talking with Russia, but this doesn't seem like a time they would do that. More than that, they've been explicit many times in the past that nothing is getting negotiated without Ukraine being in the room. If they're going to change that they will say so because the only point on changing that is to appease public sentiment, which requires a statement about said change to be useful. They can hear what Putin has to say without changing their own position. Any information is useful information in war and diplomacy. I don't imagine his position will be that different, but any differences in whatever façade he throws up or demands he makes can give some hints about what's going on behind the scenes in the Kremlin.
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Dec 1, 2022 22:57
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How is a NATO discussion on peace terms with Russia not an example of a negotiation?
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Dec 1, 2022 22:58
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Tiny Timbs posted:How is a NATO discussion on peace terms with Russia not an example of a negotiation? If they offer no counter terms and just relay Russia's conditions to Ukraine without comment.
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Dec 1, 2022 23:00
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Deteriorata posted:If they offer no counter terms and just relay Russia's conditions to Ukraine without comment. I guess that could be one way this plays out but that doesn't seem like a good use of anybody's time. At the very least it would be a quick meeting. I get a different implication out of "Let's find out what [Putin's] willing to do," which tells me that there will be options presented to Putin to see where he's willing to compromise.
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Dec 1, 2022 23:05
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Tiny Timbs posted:How is a NATO discussion on peace terms with Russia not an example of a negotiation? I think you will have to spell out more clearly what you are seeing, because in the quotes I read I didn't see anything like that? Checking if Putin is ready to admit that he's losing is not "discussing terms".
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Dec 1, 2022 23:05
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Nenonen posted:I think you will have to spell out more clearly what you are seeing, because in the quotes I read I didn't see anything like that? It's the "I'm prepared... to find out what he's willing to do" part. If the goal was merely to hear Putin's terms that would be a one-way discussion that wouldn't really require any kind of meeting at all. That sounds more like an intent to discuss alternatives with Putin to see what he's willing to compromise on.
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Dec 1, 2022 23:12
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I think you are putting way too much importance in something that will be forgotten by the end of news cycle.
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Dec 1, 2022 23:17
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Yeah, I don't think I see the problem here. Sitting down and finding out what Putin wants costs nothing, and you can always stand back up and say "Whelp, we tried" if the terms are unacceptable. Beyond that, though, if Putin genuinely believes that the US is puppetmastering Ukraine, it might be that negotiating with the US is the only way to move forward negotiations at all - from Putin's perspective, there'd be no point negotiating with Ukraine when Ukraine isn't the one calling the shots, and a US refusal to talk at all would be evidence of implacable (and from his perspective, possibly inexplicable) NATO hostility. This is on top of Putin's political beliefs that negotiating with Ukraine as an equal would be demeaning to Russia, which is a great power (in his mind) and above treating a nation like Ukraine as a peer. It might be necessary to play out a kabuki theater where the US ends up acting as the "translator" for Ukraine so that Putin can believe (or at least pretend to his people) that he's negotiating with the REAL party in charge while the US doesn't do much more than ferry demands back and forth between Russia and Ukraine. Tiny Timbs posted:It's the "I'm prepared... to find out what he's willing to do" part. If the goal was merely to hear Putin's terms that would be a one-way discussion that wouldn't really require any kind of meeting at all. That sounds more like an intent to discuss alternatives with Putin to see what he's willing to compromise on. I dunno, I feel like this is reading way too much into relatively minor word choices that from where I'm standing don't really mean what you're seeing in it anyways. Hell, if you really want to get into finicky word choices "Prepared to find out what he's willing to do" sounds a lot more like wanting to find out what Putin is willing to concede rather than what NATO or Ukraine should concede. Besides, this is diplomacy - you can talk about wanting to talk all you like, but that doesn't necessarily demonstrate underlying intent or willingness to agree or negotiate (as witness for instance Putin's own avowed willingness to negotiate with Ukraine).
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Dec 1, 2022 23:23
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Tiny Timbs posted:It's the "I'm prepared... to find out what he's willing to do" part. If the goal was merely to hear Putin's terms that would be a one-way discussion that wouldn't really require any kind of meeting at all. That sounds more like an intent to discuss alternatives with Putin to see what he's willing to compromise on. It still takes some vigorous stretching to make that into "Biden discussing the terms without Ukraine". It seems like a waste of time to talk to Putin, but otoh if there is a slight chance of shortening the war by months or years by having some candid geopolitical talks, then why not. The worst case is that Biden's time is wasted and war continues like before.
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Dec 1, 2022 23:23
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Also, at some point the US is almost certainly going to have to talk with Russia if there are to be negotiations, because one of the principal things Russia is likely to want to get out of negotiations is sanctions relief, which is not something Ukraine can offer on its own.
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Dec 1, 2022 23:30
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fatherboxx posted:I think you are putting way too much importance in something that will be forgotten by the end of news cycle. Here's something I pull out of my hat in conversations like that: "Do you remember the last time they said that?" "No." "Exactly."
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Dec 1, 2022 23:37
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An excellent interview with a British member of Ukraine's foreign legion, mostly about the early days of the war, including the foreign legion base getting bombed on day 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbD4WBqPg4 Lindybeige is also an excellent channel for military history in general.
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Dec 1, 2022 23:45
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Orthanc6 posted:
Not even remotely true. He's an amateur that presents his opinions as facts, and real military historians hate him.
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Dec 2, 2022 02:40
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FishBulbia posted:New KI reporting about just how much of a mess the international legion is I assume that is this article (i cant click Twitter at work...) https://kyivindependent.com/investigations/investigation-international-legion-misappropriation If so one of the examples of theft/impropriety by senior military personnel would appear to be the same guy the Brit volunteer experienced in the video linked above
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Dec 2, 2022 06:10
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ponzicar posted:Not even remotely true. He's an amateur that presents his opinions as facts, and real military historians hate him. Yea, he is very ignorant but also very sure of himself.
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Dec 2, 2022 06:43
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Orthanc6 posted:Lindybeige is also an excellent channel for military history in general. even among youtube or podcast "historians" he's a huge muppet, it's really breathtaking
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Dec 2, 2022 06:59
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Orthanc6 posted:An excellent interview with a British member of Ukraine's foreign legion, mostly about the early days of the war, including the foreign legion base getting bombed on day 3: I don't know poo poo about poo poo and even I know that Lindybeige is a hack.
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Dec 2, 2022 07:16
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ChubbyChecker posted:even among youtube or podcast "historians" he's a huge muppet, it's really breathtaking There is a huge genre of Youtube which seems to just be an appeal to authority but the authority is having a posh accent
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Dec 2, 2022 07:23
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FishBulbia posted:There is a huge genre of Youtube which seems to just be an appeal to authority but the authority is having a posh accent You mean life in general.
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Dec 2, 2022 09:04
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