RUSI article on Attritional vs Manoeuvre Warfare

[Uberhaus]

Great article written by a Lt. Col Vershinin stating what is needed for attritional warfare and how "The West is not prepared for this kind of war."  https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/attritional-art-war-lessons-russian-war-ukraine

[Jarhead0331]

I don't think you need a degree from the War College to know that the west has no tolerance for and is entirely unprepared for attritional warfare. It's a weakness of all democracies and one that our enemies are keen to exploit.

[GDS_Starfury]

last I checked our military's doctrine is to avoid it.
the actual war part, not speaking of the occupation part. 

[GDS_Starfury]

I take particular issue with this line:

However, as a war progresses past a one-year mark, front-line units will gain experience and an improved NCO corps is likely to emerge, giving the Soviet model greater flexibility.

why wouldn't a NATO or US military gain the same experience?  isn't this pretty much exactly what happened in WW2, Korea and Vietnam?  just because some poor shmucks get hazed and raped in a russian conscript garrison doesn't mean they'll adapt quicker or better during a long term war.  Ukraine is proving that.

[GDS_Starfury]

while not a bad article is does seem to limit itself with how the Ukraine/russian war is going as it sticks almost solely with ground combat.  its a good read for nation states with basic air forces and navies.

[Uberhaus]

I don't think you need a degree from the War College to know that the west has no tolerance for and is entirely unprepared for attritional warfare. It's a weakness of all democracies and one that our enemies are keen to exploit.

Never again after the devastation of the First World War, I've heard many second hand accounts of the Lost Generation.  However, that democracies must value their populations doesn't make us so craven that we have never stood up to autocracies with little value for human life.

I take particular issue with this line:

However, as a war progresses past a one-year mark, front-line units will gain experience and an improved NCO corps is likely to emerge, giving the Soviet model greater flexibility.

why wouldn't a NATO or US military gain the same experience?  isn't this pretty much exactly what happened in WW2, Korea and Vietnam?  just because some poor shmucks get hazed and raped in a russian conscript garrison doesn't mean they'll adapt quicker or better and a long term war.  Ukraine is proving that.

Without me having to reread the article and quoting it directly, I think the author was suggesting that the NATO professional officer and NCOs take years to train and educate, so (my example) they can pull off Air-Land Battle and smash the Iraqi army twice, in a few weeks with manoeuvre warfare.  In attrition warfare that cadre will be depleted and the replacements will not have the time to be trained or learn everything needed for the high level of performance and co-ordination for modern Western way of war.

You made me reread it and here is the quote: 

In attritional war, this method has a downside. The officers and NCOs required to execute this doctrine require extensive training and, above all, experience. A US Army NCO takes years to develop. A squad leader generally has at least three years in service and a platoon sergeant has at least seven. In an attritional war characterised by heavy casualties, there simply isn't time to replace lost NCOs or generate them for new units. The idea that civilians can be given three-month training courses, sergeant's chevrons and then expected to perform in the same manner as a seven-year veteran is a recipe for disaster. Only time can generate leaders capable of executing NATO doctrine, and time is one thing that the massive demands of attritional war do not give.

While with the conscript, minimally trained armies those who can and do survive have no where to go but up, having learned valuable lessons in how to survive and beat an enemy in an attrition war, not in a manoeuvre warfare environment.  I think the article gives the example of the Soviets at the end of the Second World War, still harshly disciplined and taking brutal casualties, but not the Soviet Army of 1941 and able to grind down the late war Wehrmacht.

Anyway, I think the author would include the Ukrainians in experiencing this gain, only having had a few years (a decade?) of intensive NATO training, but the article isn't focusing so much on them.  It doesn't name them in the article nor the problems they are experiencing with attrition.  It definitely has relevant examples drawn from Ukraine, like pursuing political and territorial objectives rather than annihilating the enemy while conserving your own as was done last summer.  Personally, I think the article is a warning to current NATO members.

Another comment I'll touch on, but I'm not sure where I read or saw it (Zeihan, RUSI, ???)  Ukraine may be able to make great innovations on the local level, but they usually stay local, not disseminating far.  This is while   Russia, while not making many innovations, with the top-down autocratic leadership, any lesson learned is erm, institutionalized.

[GDS_Starfury]

I'll state as simple as I can.  the stock of people that the US draws from to fill NCO slots are always going to be better then anything thing the russians or chinese can scrape together.
I'll take a 3 month US Sgt over a conscript russian one with maybe 3 weeks of actual training over the course of their 2 year conscription.

[Uberhaus]

I'll state as simple as I can.  the stock of people that the US draws from to fill NCO slots are always going to be better then anything thing the russians or chinese can scrape together.
I'll take a 3 month US Sgt over a conscript russian one with maybe 3 weeks of actual training over the course of their 2 year conscription.

I've met quite a few highly intelligent and competent Russians and Chinese.  Fortunately it seems that they are the ones going abroad, however, it won't be all of them.  Even with Russia and China's demographic problems the sheer size of their populations means that they will just have more people in all categories of intelligence.  Russia in its war against Ukraine and China compared to the rest of the world.  Maybe that is a solution, take in and co-opt their best, but they always retain a degree of loyalty if not the leadership, to their homeland.  Then they can be monitored, threatened, killed.

As to the West always having exceptional or at least above average manpower there are examples where this is simply not true.  For example,, McNamara's 100000, I won't use the pejorative, to solve a problem of recruitment during the Viet Nam war.  Canada's military suffered for the policy of sending the best and brightest into the RCAF during the Second World War, and the country lost a lot afterwards with a 16% attrition rate in Bomber Command.

I was hoping the takeaway from me posting the article would not be about who is better, but rather about the risks democracies will face should it be necessary to fight another war of attrition, and to move away from the thinking of quick, relatively costless victories in manoeuvre warfare.  From the article:

The West is not prepared for this kind of war. To most Western experts, attritional strategy is counterintuitive. Historically, the West preferred the short 'winner takes all' clash of professional armies. Recent war games such as CSIS's war over Taiwan covered one month of fighting. The possibility that the war would go on never entered the discussion. This is a reflection of a common Western attitude. Wars of attrition are treated as exceptions, something to be avoided at all costs and generally products of leaders' ineptitude. Unfortunately, wars between near-peer powers are likely to be attritional, thanks to a large pool of resources available to replace initial losses. The attritional nature of combat, including the erosion of professionalism due to casualties, levels the battlefield no matter which army started with better trained forces. As conflict drags on, the war is won by economies, not armies. States that grasp this and fight such a war via an attritional strategy aimed at exhausting enemy resources while preserving their own are more likely to win. The fastest way to lose a war of attrition is to focus on manoeuvre, expending valuable resources on near-term territorial objectives. Recognising that wars of attrition have their own art is vital to winning them without sustaining crippling losses.

[GDS_Starfury]

my next question is where this war of attrition is taking place?  if the US goes to war with China thata going to be a air and naval campaign fought over Taiwan.  I see no scenario where we invade mainland China,there simply no reason for it.

[Uberhaus]

Of course not, I'll let a historian from Harvard answer that:

That was somewhat predictable, but putting frivolity aside, the air and sea battle will be of attrition and it's hopeful to think it will only last one month.

I'll plagiarize from ArizonaTank in the South China Seas Heats Up Thread:

Nice Wall Street Journal explainer on how a Chinese invasion of Taiwan might play out using a board based wargame. 

The scary part (besides the fact that US forces are engaged), is that China decides to attack US bases in Japan.

Interesting stuff, makes me want to pull out my copy of GMT's "Next War: Taiwan."

[FarAway Sooner]

Yeah, I think the article is thoughtful and provocative.  The author never states--and I think it's sloppy reasoning on our part to infer--that the next war the West picks with another power will be one of equal prowess.  That's possible but unlikely.

On the other hand, we've hardly had the patience to keep the Ukrainians fighting the Russians, and that's just when we get to give somebody else the weapons and all we have to do is purchase and produce them.

For me, the most salient observation to emerge is that our military procurement approach has to be much more intentional about how we craft and develop our high/low force composition.  This is as true for weapons as it is for soldiers.  Recent technological changes favor a mix of high- and low-quality gear, rather than relying on the traditional high-end stuff that America has favored ever since WW2 (and probably before).

Three of the last 4 wars we've found ourselves embroiled in became attritional wars:  The US managed a stalemate in Korea, and losses in Vietnam and the Afghanistan/Iraq wars.

[Uberhaus]

I don't think the author was predicting absolutely that the next war fought by the West will be attritional but was stating that the West isn't prepared to fight one should we blunder into war with a near peer.  Last summer the West hoped that Russia would be defeated by Ukraine using manoeuvre warfare but it has turned into an attritional war for several reasons.

[GDS_Starfury]

but the Ukraine doesnt have the tools to fight a NATO style concept of war so its a false comparison.

[FarAway Sooner]

NATO could do a lot to promote air superiority over the Russians.  It's unclear if NATO has the ability to sweep the skies of cheap and plentiful Russian drones which seem to have been revealed as among the primary enemies of maneuver warfare.

If they can't, while it's more likely that we could use our own aerial surveillance to identify and neutralize Russian artillery, it's not a sure thing.  I sure hope the US is already building tens of thousands of disposable recce drones, but seeing as how that won't line the pockets of many key Congressional districts, I can see us continuing to focus on the multi-million $$ drones that are five times as survivable and thirty times as expensive.

Western procurement strategy hasn't been terribly rational even as relates to weapons we're making for Ukraine, who happens to be fighting at arms length.  All the emphasis on transferring stockpiles of M1s and Lep2s and HIMARS and Patriot launchers is great, but I think the Ukrainians would have been better served with more ammo for their artillery, their HIMARS and their PATRIOTs. 

I deeply suspect that much of the doctrine that has emerged for the NATO powers in arming Ukraine is driven by what makes the defense corporations rich, as opposed to what Ukraine needs to preserve its borders and save its people.  For those who aren't so busy oohing and ahhing over our wonderful weapons systems, I think even the limited demands of the Ukraine conflict have exposed a real flaw in the procurement systems for the US and especially NATO.

[FarAway Sooner]

On a separate note, the Chinese would be foolish to mount a military invasion of Taiwan.  It plays to the democracies' strengths (high-tech weapons and the professionalism of the crews who man those weapons) and ignores China's own strengths (patience, cost tolerance, and the sheer volume of more disposable items that can be produced).

China instead should (and probably will) impose a total blockade of Taiwan, daring Taiwan's allies to start a shooting war that they couldn't possibly have the stomach for in the absence of a clear-cut provocation.  I wonder how much time and money we've spent helping to arm Taiwan, while probably not doing jack to improve self-sufficiency of food and fuel?