(Thread IKs:
weg, Toxic Mental)
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Tai posted:e - What I don't understand is that after Iraq 1 and 2 where air power hosed up Iraq, Russia decided to not change. Iraq were mostly using a Russian doctrine of lots of tanks and AA and it massively failed....twice. Here we are and no change. To follow up on what Tigey said, one of the greatest enemies of Russia's modernization effort has been the Russian military leadership This white paper is a few years old and thus doesn't incorporate anything recent relating to Ukraine, but it's the US Army Foreign Military Studies Office assessment of the Russian ground forces as of 2016. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/portals/7/hot%20spots/documents/russia/2017-07-the-russian-way-of-war-grau-bartles.pdf It's a good read overall for anyone interested in knowing more about the Russian military's effort to develop an NCO corps, specialize, modernize, etc. Of relevance here, the authors' takeaway on corruption in the modern Russian military is in the section titled "Ethics in the Russian Armed Forces" beginning on page 18. The tl;dr is that despite decades of effort by Russian government attempts to modernize and stamp out corruption in the armed forces, unethical behavior is still rewarded, or at least not punished, as long as there's a degree of personal loyalty to the highest ranks, who in turn shield lower ranking officers from consequences. Also quote:Perhaps the reason that the Russian military is having difficulty dealing with corruption is the view that Russia, and most Russians, have regarding the relationship between what is legally and morally right. These two concepts are very different in the West, but in Russia, whatever is considered “morally right” is usually interpreted to be “legally right.” This can be seen in state asset seizures of wealthy oligarchs’ property, the annexation of the Crimea, and in the conduct of an undeclared war Eastern Ukraine (in order to destabilize the Ukrainian government, a government which Russia perceives to be illegitimate and installed by the U.S.). This tendency to interpret morally right as legally right make the Russian Armed Forces, intelligence, and security services well suited to operating in the ambiguous “Grey Zone” that many operations are conducted and will occur. However, this way of thinking is certainly making the eradication of corruption difficult, as subordinates see their superiors growing wealthy from graft, and decide that it is only right to take a little for one’s self. This is, of course, the extrapolation of the authors, albeit with their sources cited throughout, so it isn't infallible, but corruption is certainly an issue that the Russian military has been unable to stamp out long before the most recent war in Ukraine. The rest of the paper deals with modernization in general, but it's a case of too little, too late. Looks like one of the only "successful" results of modernization is the military police corps, which didn't exist until the current century and is not yet completely rife with corruption. Edit: that was more general corruption and graft. As far as actual *modernization* goes, the Russian armed forces tried for a shock and awe approach during the first few days of the invasion in 2021, in line with the US approach to Iraq in 2003, and thought they'd capture Kyiv within weeks. They apparently didn't count on burning through their best ground troops, airborne, tankers, and airmen, and have reverted to an older Soviet style of operations reliant on artillery and numerical superiority. This was in part due to failure to secure air superiority. Based on the best available info at the time, and observation of Russian aviators making some really odd choices in navigation and targeting, it seems likely that the Russian Air Force doesn't actually practice the kind of maneuvers and tactics needed to operate in a non-permissive environment. For the Russian air forces, this wasn't 't helped by lack of deconfliction with Russian ground forces and limited annual flying hours. https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/mysterious-case-missing-russian-air-force Arc Light fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Jan 7, 2024 |
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Jan 7, 2024 13:04
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Tai posted:I'm just referring to the start of the war with stuff like doubling down on stuff and needless deaths but yeah you're correct about the evolution of both armies. I'd be interested in hearing more specific problems you have, because this still sounds a bit off to me. First, how do we define "start of the war"? The very beginning of the war certainly came as a surprise to everyone(*) and the initial battles of the war produced horrific casualties as people adapted to new weapons. But that period didn't last very long at all, a few weeks, and then the adaptation was ... well, digging in. And then digging in even more. And then even more, until you had trench lines through all of Central Europe. And the innovation didn't stop there, the war was a constant arms race between the Central Powers and their opponents to figure out new weapons to counter defensive positions, and then new tactics and defensive positions to protect from those. The innovation never stopped. The view that the war was just arrogant generals throwing endless human beings into the grinder not realizing how futile it was and how bad their strategies were, is not really very accurate at all. Sure, bad generals and officers existed, but the tactics and strategies evolved all the time, and the popular culture image of 90% of attacking troops just disappearing in a blast of shrapnel with some uncaring and moroning officer waving the next group to get blown up after them was not the norm at all. The casualty rates were appalling for sure, but not that appalling.(**) This is not to say that the war was especially smart or good. Tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of men falling to take a few hundred yards of ground (only to lose it a few days later) repeated over and over again is definitely a thing that didn't need to happen, and the insane stalemate nature of trench warfare has given the war an overall futile and needless reputation, again IMO accurately. But it wasn't so much from inept officers doing really stupid things for four years, it was the world coming face to face with industrial war for the first time (well, not the FIRST first, but the first time for many of the countries). But like I said, the popular culture view of the war is what it is, even though it's not terribly accurate. I wouldn't blame anyone for believing it unless they've spent half their life reading phonebook sized books about individual battles and theaters of war. (*) it shouldn't have, because all the major powers had observers in the Russo-Japanese and the First Sino-Japanese war and saw first hand what new weapons like machine guns and improved artillery pieces did to human beings, but they chose to ignore those findings largely out of racism. Sure it could happen to some Russian peasants and Japanese and Chinese dumbasses, but it wouldn't happen to amazing upper class white people like THEM. (**) the two major exceptions to this were, as already mentioned, Americans, and Russians. The Americans joined the war very late, when weapons and tactics had generally become extremely honed, but without any of the institutional learning the various longer fighting forces had accrued, and they weren't interested in taking the time to learn any of it, because they had a war to win and medals to get, damnit. They also joined the war at a time when the stalemate finally broke, and the war went from carefully planned and executed attacks to a mad rush after the retreating Germans. And so Americans had to learn the hard way VERY quickly. The Russians were largely a mess and as the war went on, they started relying more and more on human wave tactics brought on by inept leadership. There were also some theaters of war where the new tactics simply didn't work, for instance because people weren't fighting on soft and diggable Central European soil, but on mountains that were almost impossible to dig into, and also exploded in rock shrapnel when artillery hit. I forget what the specific name is, but there's some mountain stream where it's literally like "the 37th Battle of That One Mountain River" and two groups of dudes just taking turns attacking each other for four years and grinding everyone into a paste. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Jan 7, 2024 |
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Jan 7, 2024 14:32
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Gnoman posted:There was significant tactical innovation on all sides of WWI from the very beginning. There was no "doubling down" - that's extremely outdated scholarship rooted in "well, if those dumbfucks had just listened to AMERICA" nonsense. How many times of ''going over the top will work this time'' before it's becommes doubling down on something? Not sure where the USA thing comes from?
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Jan 7, 2024 15:06
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Tai posted:How many times of ''going over the top will work this time'' before it's becommes doubling down on something? Well, I think we found the disconnect. The ultimate truth is that to win you need to get your guys to where the enemies are, and the only way you can do that is by attacking them. And because World War I was largely fought from trench to trench, that meant attackers coming out of one trench line to attack the other. Since teleporters didn't exists, there's literally no getting away from this. But they weren't doubling down the same stupid poo poo for four years. They were constantly trying to find new ways of getting the attackers to the defenders' trenches as intact as possible, and evolutions and innovations happened constantly. They didn't invent teleporters, but they used insane artillery barrages, came up with new ways of using artillery (for instance crawling barrages that advanced right in front of the advancing forces to mean the defenders were in their bunkers or shell shocked as late as possible), using smoke, trying to use infiltrating troops, developing new types of artillery shells, trying to use tactics to cut down wire before the attackers left etc, experimenting with different formations and groupings the attackers could use to make as efficient use of cover as possible etc. And it wasn't a case of "well it didn't work the 800 times before, but it's definitely going to work now". Everyone involved knew it was a loving slog, and they planned their tactics accordingly. For individual battles they frequently fired more artillery shells in preparation than have been fired in Ukraine in two years. And the problem wasn't "well our troops didn't manage to conquer Jerry's trench with 850 attempts, but they'll definitely do it now". The problem was that after your attackers got to the trench -- which they usually did -- there were literal kilometers IN DEPTH of supporting trenches behind the first one, because again your enemies had been digging in for years. And then you had to move up your supplies and artillery and everything, and try to assault the next trench system and repeat, before your enemies counter-attacked and pushed you back. It was war on an industrial scale, and short of everyone going home (which I of course think would have been the best solution), like ... that's just what it is. Industrial war means you don't win it with your superior tactics on the day, you win it by outlasting the other guy through attrition, but that didn't mean the tactics of the day didn't constantly evolve. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Jan 7, 2024 |
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Jan 7, 2024 15:28
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I think artillery shells are teleporters, in the sense they will teleport your liver elsewhere via mush mist once they touch you
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Jan 7, 2024 15:29
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Tai posted:How many times of ''going over the top will work this time'' before it's becommes doubling down on something? Not sure where the USA thing comes from? That didn't happen. After every failed attack, the generals went "what went wrong this time" and tried to devise new tactics and weapons to try to counter that. The problem was that most of this was brand new, so you saw reasonable plans like "the barbed wire slowed down our attack and turned No Man's Land into a shooting gallery, let's make sure to pound it with artillery to clear the wire" turn into "turns out artillery can't really clear wire like with thought it could, so all we did was tear up the ground and make it even harder to traverse". Or the realization that those week-long barrages meant to smash an enemy before the attack not only didn't do much after the first few minutes because everybody took cover but were a giant "WE ARE ATTACKING HERE!!!!" signal to the enemy and tore up the ground enough to make the attack harder. The "AMERICA" thing comes in because older scholarship (regardless of origin - I've seen it strongest from British writers) had a strong "The technology of the American Civil War wasn't up to the same level, but it clearly showed how strong fighting from fortifications was and they already developed tactics to solve the problem. Too bad a fight between backwoods bumpkins was beneath the Civilized European Powers!" bias. Which is total bullshit, but it was quite agreeable for pushing the "Lions led by donkeys" nonsense. Shaman Tank Spec posted:
That's not quite right either. Everybody involved looked at those reports, studied them, and worked them into the theories of war. The assumption before 1914 was that the next war would be a horrifically bloody cut-and-parry of maneuver where whoever pushed the farthest and fastest would end up in the winner's circle when the war fell apart because casualties were no longer sustainable. That's why you see so much French investment into lighter artillery like the famous 75 - it was considered vitally important to have mobile (for the era) artillery accompanying your rapid-moving infantry to blast machine guns and other artillery out of the way. Settling down into stalemated trench warfare was unexpected, not least because the planners never expected that the war would be so big that the entire continent of Europe didn't provide enough space for the planed outmaneuvering and flanking. That doesn't mean they blithely dismissed the other fights as unworthy of notice.
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Jan 7, 2024 16:14
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Gnoman posted:That's not quite right either. Everybody involved looked at those reports, studied them, and worked them into the theories of war. The assumption before 1914 was that the next war would be a horrifically bloody cut-and-parry of maneuver where whoever pushed the farthest and fastest would end up in the winner's circle when the war fell apart because casualties were no longer sustainable. Yeah now that you mention it, that sounds right. I have no idea where I picked up the racism idea from. Possibly conflating it with something else or giving it too much importance.
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Jan 7, 2024 16:29
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:Yeah now that you mention it, that sounds right. I have no idea where I picked up the racism idea from. Possibly conflating it with something else or giving it too much importance. I mean you can never go wrong thinking Victorian/Edwardiann Brits were racist
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Jan 7, 2024 16:48
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Tai posted:How many times of ''going over the top will work this time'' before it's becommes doubling down on something? Not sure where the USA thing comes from? There was tons of innovations and new tactics tried. https://acoup.blog/2021/09/17/collections-no-mans-land-part-i-the-trench-stalemate/
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Jan 7, 2024 16:56
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Jan 7, 2024 17:08
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now that i mull it about, bret deveraux, who does the pedantry site, is prolly one of the most influential denied-tenure-and-stuck-in-adjunct-hell writers of all time
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Jan 7, 2024 17:42
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One big problem with WWI was that advancing over no man's land and clearing trenches was extremely slow, and rail transport from the rear to the front was extremely fast. By the time you even cleared the first trench, the enemy were already counterattacking.
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Jan 7, 2024 17:48
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Arc Light posted:To follow up on what Tigey said, one of the greatest enemies of Russia's modernization effort has been the Russian military leadership Hey thanks for linking me to that blog, it has a lot of amazing reads
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Jan 7, 2024 17:50
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Jan 7, 2024 18:15
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For shooting out a trench without popping your head up. There were a few designs, first I've seen this one though. Most just bolted onto an existing rifle.
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Jan 7, 2024 18:23
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Sniper rifle with built in periscope so you don't get your head aspirated while shooting the bad guys. A WW1 transformer, it collapses into a normal rifle when not in use.
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Jan 7, 2024 18:25
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That's for keeping your head down below the trenchline while harnessing the power of mirrors to see the enemies across no man's land who are not putting their heads down below the trenchline and then shooting said enemies in the head while keeping your head down in safety OP
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Jan 7, 2024 18:25
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I gathered what it was for. It just looks so loving weird.
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Jan 7, 2024 18:35
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:(**) the two major exceptions to this were, as already mentioned, Americans, and Russians. The Americans joined the war very late, when weapons and tactics had generally become extremely honed, but without any of the institutional learning the various longer fighting forces had accrued, and they weren't interested in taking the time to learn any of it, because they had a war to win and medals to get, damnit. They also joined the war at a time when the stalemate finally broke, and the war went from carefully planned and executed attacks to a mad rush after the retreating Germans. And so Americans had to learn the hard way VERY quickly. Everyone was taking massive casualties during the final mobile phase of the war. There weren't massive trench fortifications to protect men, just ad-hoc fieldworks. American training decisions, unit structure, and inexperience did cause them higher casualties to a certain extent, but they were not alone in suffering massive casualties compared to the static warfare period up to the autumn of 1918. Edit: MASSIVE! I should invest in a thesaurus.
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Jan 7, 2024 18:38
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I'm jonesing for Reporting from Ukraine updates again. How do you guys feel about this guy? Combat Veteran Reacts, says he's a US combat veteran, here claiming that the Russian Winter Offensive looks defeated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCZZrFnm1O0
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Jan 7, 2024 19:10
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Denys Davydov seems to be meming less these days, which I appreciate. Is he accurate? Yesterday's update, about Gerasimov potentially going missing after the Sevastopol strike. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0Anfc7itnc Seems level-headed and keeping to the facts in his reporting, but I'm not the best judge of that.
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Jan 7, 2024 19:15
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Karate Bastard posted:Denys Davydov seems to be meming less these days, which I appreciate. Is he accurate? Gerasimov: "Shoigu, where am I?" Voice: "Oh, you know where…" *turns around* 
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Jan 7, 2024 19:45
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Karate Bastard posted:Denys Davydov seems to be meming less these days, which I appreciate. Is he accurate? Denys is pretty accurate and willing to be critical of Ukraine / tell bad news. He's worth following
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Jan 7, 2024 20:49
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mikerock posted:Everyone was taking massive casualties during the final mobile phase of the war. There weren't massive trench fortifications to protect men, just ad-hoc fieldworks. American training decisions, unit structure, and inexperience did cause them higher casualties to a certain extent, but they were not alone in suffering massive casualties compared to the static warfare period up to the autumn of 1918. Oh yes, absolutely. Everyone definitely was taking tons of casualties (often completely unnecessarily when generals decided they needed to get in a few more markers while there was still war to be fought and ordered needless last minute attacks hours before armistice) during the Hundred Days. For the Americans it was just made worse by their lack of institutional knowledge that the Brits and French had learned the hard way, and because it would have taken too long to do advanced training in Europe before hitting the front, that was skipped. So basically the Americans were thrown completely green into a war where everyone had four+ years of hard learned lessons. Peter Hart made the case that due to this, and other factors, the Americans took disproportionately heavy losses. And then the Hundred Days Offensive kicked off and everyone got hosed up.
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Jan 7, 2024 21:22
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True, but the main problem for the Americans was what do you do when you have expanded so rapidly that you don't have enough trained officers and NCOs to properly staff divisional structures? Leave the enlisted men behind and gradually grow the size of your army? Or do what they did and double the size of their enlisted men within a traditional division's administrative and leadership structure? It certainly led to poor command and control and to me was just as responsible as the decision to ignore advances in infantry tactics for the higher losses the Americans suffered relative to the French and Commonwealth forces. I ultimately think that Pershing's decision to keep the Americans as a distinct force from their co-belligerents as a correct one, for both military and political reasons. So his choices for fielding men at a time when the Germans were reeling and the Western Front needed more manpower resources RIGHT NOW were all bad, although he could have done better. Edit: It's a similar problem effecting both Ukraine and Russia, although Ukraine seems to be dealing with it better. Not enough trained higher level officers and NCOs to cope with the massive expansion (or in Russia's case losses) of their army. Russia just seems to be content with throwing meat into the grinder, as that seems to be "working." Ukraine is slowly building up their leadership capabilities, although it is also very costly for them. mikerock fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Jan 7, 2024 |
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Jan 7, 2024 21:37
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:Oh yes, absolutely. Everyone definitely was taking tons of casualties (often completely unnecessarily when generals decided they needed to get in a few more markers while there was still war to be fought and ordered needless last minute attacks hours before armistice) during the Hundred Days. Let's not also forget that Britain and France used Americans to plug up gaps. And why were those gaps existent? Because the casualties in those areas were so loving high and France's military was essentially about to collapse if they continue to try to hold those locations. Now Russia's doing something very similar but Russia's Americans are 18 to 17-year-old kids including Ukrainian occupied people's.
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Jan 7, 2024 21:38
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:
This is what Russia always does. It did it rolling through Eastern Europe in 44/45. Just handing out uniforms and guns to any able bodied man in areas they pushed the Germans out of and sending them right into the front lines. Russia's casualties in those days were appalling, and it mostly wasn't Russians.
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Jan 7, 2024 21:45
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Anyone watched youtuber Kraut? Does a wide range of topics including UA. Seems pretty good and digging right down into stuff.
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Jan 7, 2024 22:33
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Tai posted:Anyone watched youtuber Kraut? Does a wide range of topics including UA. Seems pretty good and digging right down into stuff. Yes he did a nice video on Realism and why it's so stupid and abhorrent.
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Jan 7, 2024 23:04
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Yeah I'm watching it now. It's really good. He explains Mearsheimer perfectly and why I hate him. Lol at him politely taking a dump on tankies.
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Jan 7, 2024 23:35
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Holy poo poo. I never knew that Yanukovych's campaign manger was also Trumps campaign manger.
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Jan 8, 2024 00:44
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXmwyyKcBLk Worth the 90 minutes to watch. Empires History of empires and why they always fail Proxy wars Notable past people who have influenced stuff to this day Why realism sucks making GBS threads on Chomsky making GBS threads on tankies
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Jan 8, 2024 00:48
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Pffft...
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Jan 8, 2024 01:16
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Karate Bastard posted:I'm jonesing for Reporting from Ukraine updates again. I found his stuff while binging Mikeburnfire's campfire chats. He seems legit and is most helpful when he can relay his experience as an Officer. I think it was his video on Hostomel where he talks about setting up perimeters and such: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az5I75WlBnE.
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Jan 8, 2024 02:27
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https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1743930438635151382 AAAAAAAHHHHHH EUROPE IS FROOOOOOZING
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Jan 8, 2024 07:14
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zone posted:https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1743930438635151382 Not our fault we actually filled up our gas storage, checkmate Russia! 
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Jan 8, 2024 07:34
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Moscow is in Europe 
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Jan 8, 2024 08:06
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Moscow is in Europe Not anymore
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Jan 8, 2024 08:16
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zone posted:https://twitter.com/maria_drutska/status/1743930438635151382 Well I was freezing but that's because I opened my windows to air out the place quickly, but then ADHD happened and it was a few hours later. Then I closed my windows and stopped freezing. That's my story, bye!
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Jan 8, 2024 08:50
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Visions of Valerie posted:Not anymore If the US just gave Ukraine all that poo poo that's just currently rusting out in the fields, Moscow would be 
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Jan 8, 2024 09:00
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