Russia's War Against Ukraine

[Uberhaus]

Interview with General Zaluznhyi talking about Russia's current efforts to demoralize the army by freezing their families, gain a ceasefire to rebuild and its coming offensive. https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraines-top-general-no-doubt-russia-will-try-again-kyiv-2022-12
Would be nice to read the Economist's original interview.

[JasonPratt]

I expect someone somewhere is making some bank off using inflatable military decoys as bouncy toys for kids.

[FarAway Sooner]

W8t, my friend, you have a dirty mind!

That, or I have a dirty mind?

Oh, heck, I think almost all of us probably have dirty minds!

In other news, I've heard about Russian tanks blowing up in Ukraine a lot...

[Windigo]

observation balloon?

[Gusington]

Russia really puts the 'special' into 'special military operations' eh

[FarAway Sooner]

Is this war a limited war from NATO's point of view (not Ukraine's). Does Russia consider it a limited war? Is there a category between limited and total war?

The war is clearly limited from NATO's standpoint, at least in terms of scope and involvement.  I think everybody acknowledges that this is the first high intensity military conflict between any two nations that we've seen in a long time, but NATO's role as a non-combatant eases all sorts of logistical burdens on them.

But that makes it all the more remarkable how seriously the West has depleted their inventories of conventional munitions and how far backlogged their orders for replacement parts are. 

For various (mostly good) reasons, Western democracies have opted for a "quality over quantity" approach in terms of weapons procurement, which seems to be revealing some curious shortcomings.  While there is no doubt that quality matters, it seems like our procurement and production processes may have underestimated the importance of producing sufficient quantities of less sophisticated items (e.g., shells, short- and medium-range missiles, trucks, low-cost drones, cannon barrels, etc.). 

If there's one take-away for mililtary/industrial policy in the West, it's that we need to optimize our defense spending to find a better mix of quantity and quality.

Nobody expects us to build another 5,000 F-35s in no time flat, but how about producing enough medium-range SAMs or enough replacement hand-helm comms gear or shipping containers?

[W8taminute]

Guilty as charged FarAway!  But remember, a dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste.

As for depleted inventories of munitions I agree with your statements.  One does not simply mass produce missiles in no time flat.

[FarAway Sooner]

Yeah.  Apparently the US won't be able to triple our production of 155mm artillery shells until sometime in mid-2023.  That's more than a year after the shooting started, and at least 9 months since we realized how fast we were burning through inventories.

[GDS_Starfury]

to be fair I dont think the US or NATO planned to fight a war the way its being fought now in the Ukraine.
for instance, there would be no russian air force 72 hours after the shooting starts and that opens up all kinds of targeting options
for a shorter conflict.

[Sir Slash]

And at the current rate, if China moves against Tiawan, we would have almost nothing to send them. Maybe Ping's plan all along.

[GDS_Starfury]

oh its not nearly that bad.  with all that we're giving the Ukraine we still aren't reaching into our critical stocks.

[Gusington]

Meanwhile...

[FarAway Sooner]

Changing topic a bit...  There's been a ton of media narratives that have emerged from the war in Ukraine, but a lot of them have been totally false and/or wrong.  With the benefit of hindsight, some interesting learnings have emerged from the war.  Folks here have posted a lot of good articles, but I'm a little interested in hearing what trends you all see underlying all that.  A lot of these are lessons we (and the professionals) already knew, but perhaps we didn't attach enough importance to them in policy circles.  Others are a bit more surprising.

Did I miss any major learnings?

1) Training and morale matters a lot. This is one area where both sides have had to improvise a lot, but the Ukrainians have clearly bested the Russians so far.

2) The Russian system is as corrupt as it is evil.  The reality is a little more nuanced than that, but not much.

3) Amateurs talk strategy while professionals talk logistics.  Unless one side's army gives up, the folks who lose will be the first ones to run out of ammunition or food.  This war is becoming more about bullets (or shells) and beans than it is whiz-bang weapons.

4) There's no way to hide well for long.  This means artillery is still queen of the battlefield.  Between signals intelligence, IR scanning, and visual surveillance by cheap drones, surviving is about mobility as much as it is concealment.

5) Better weapons systems can make a big difference, but the enemy finds a way to adapt and respond.  For various reasons, few of them have been as successful for nearly as long as the media makes them out to be. 

[MengJiao]

Changing topic a bit...  There's been a ton of media narratives that have emerged from the war in Ukraine, but a lot of them have been totally false and/or wrong.  With the benefit of hindsight, some interesting learnings have emerged from the war.  Folks here have posted a lot of good articles, but I'm a little interested in hearing what trends you all see underlying all that.  A lot of these are lessons we (and the professionals) already knew, but perhaps we didn't attach enough importance to them in policy circles.  Others are a bit more surprising.

Did I miss any major learnings?

1) Training and morale matters a lot. This is one area where both sides have had to improvise a lot, but the Ukrainians have clearly bested the Russians so far.

2) The Russian system is as corrupt as it is evil.  The reality is a little more nuanced than that, but not much.

3) Amateurs talk strategy while professionals talk logistics.  Unless one side's army gives up, the folks who lose will be the first ones to run out of ammunition or food.  This war is becoming more about bullets (or shells) and beans than it is whiz-bang weapons.

4) There's no way to hide well for long.  This means artillery is still queen of the battlefield.  Between signals intelligence, IR scanning, and visual surveillance by cheap drones, surviving is about mobility as much as it is concealment.

5) Better weapons systems can make a big difference, but the enemy finds a way to adapt and respond.  For various reasons, few of them have been as successful for nearly as long as the media makes them out to be.

   I've been impressed with the Institute for the Study of War.  Let's see what else -- that I am bewildered by almost everything about this war:

1) why Putin attacked?  That's the biggest mystery.  Even if things had gone as planned it would have been a bloody mess -- maybe worse even if the Russians had gotten in and started
killing everybody -- crazy stuff.  How was that supposed to work?  NATO might have gotten really worried and done something rash.
2) A lot of the indepth accounts of the early fighting essentially say that Ukrainian artillery started hitting Russian concentrations early and just kept it up...firiing faster and from shorter
ranges (which seems weird -- like the Russians were so busy getting ready to slaughter the locals that they forgot about neuralizing Ukrainian artillery
3) So (and this seems weird too)...when the Ukrainians did some disarming (turning in ships and nukes and missiles), they did not turn artillery and tanks over to the Russians
4) The Russians had sent a lot of equipment off to Syria and elsewhere.  Failed to concentrate anything for the attack on Ukraine -- again so busy deciding how to kill the right locals
that they neglected to allow for the possibility that the Ukrainian Army might shoot at them.

BIG LESSON HERE -- win the war before you start working on managing the GENOCIDE

So yeah, the Russian "system" (or lack thereof) is beyond corrupt.  At least with a corrupt system, there are ways to rationalize resource management.  No real
sign of that in the bizarre mess the Russians are presenting as their "regime"

Amateurs talk strategy while professionals talk logistics.    However, even an amateur might be able to suggest that if you are going to attack a country with
40 million people in it and
an army with 200,000 active troops and some trained reserves with fairly modern weapons, you should probably plan -- at least potentially -- on fighting a real war.
  After all, if your initial attack gets into trouble (and how could it not since a) you attack everywhere from day one b)it doesn't occur to you that enemy
artillery can turn roads and airfields into deathtraps c) you have no allowance for any substantial resistance
at all etc.)  Anyway...even an amatuer might point out that you need to at least allow for the possibility of having a war on your hands.

[bobarossa]

I believe they were thinking of along the lines of Nazi Germany attacking Denmark.  I wonder if the Nazi's actually expected it to work that well or did they have a plan for resistance?